Recent posts

#21

Off the Record / Re: What does a BIDEN Presiden...

Last post by Savonarola - Today at 04:28:09 PM

Sidenote - "thou", "thee", "thine" don't throw me off much in reading "old" English, because it's very much the equivalent (not in all contexts but largely) of "Du", "Dir"/"Dich", "Dein" in German.

They're archaic to us; so when I was young I thought thou/thee/thine were the formal pronouns because I had only encounter them in Shakespeare and The Lord's Prayer.  So I reasoned people were more formal back in those days. ()

As I've written before I was surprised to find that in Molière The Misanthrope everyone uses the vous form, even brother and sister.  So a similar change must have happened in French as what happened in English, but somehow they returned to using the tu.

I was also amused to find that the plural informal second tense in New World Spanish (vosotros) is used in the Bible.  I've never encountered it anywhere else (outside of works originating in Spain), so it's like the thee/thou/thine in the KJV.

#22

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by Barrister - Today at 04:21:04 PM

This thread's made me realise how much of an Atlantic gap there is on sitcoms - at least until the 90s maybe.

A lot of those mentioned here I've never heard of, some I think I've only heard of because of gags in Family Guy or the Simpsons (like Three's Company, I think) and some I'm aware of. But I think Mork and Mindy, Married with Children and Roseanne are the only ones I've ever actually seen/made it to UK TV.

Linear TV childhood - different world

Interesting.

I mean as part of being Canadian you either could get US tv signals, or since cable came into widespread availability by the mid-80s you'd get direct US channels from major markets, so we're completely awash in US pop culture.  We do have a side of Canadian content though that Americans are completely unaware of - in case a Canadian ever drops a Littlest Hobo reference on you.

I know there's this whole world of British TV where either the best, or the weirdest, will get picked up by someone in north america, but probably a whole ton of just average shows that I have no idea about.

Curious - what are some of the shows referenced you have no idea about?

#23

Off the Record / Re: Football (Soccer) Thread

Last post by FunkMonk - Today at 04:20:03 PM

First Arsenal Chelsea 5-0, then Everton dunk on Pool and put them out of the race. What a week 

#24

Off the Record / Re: Football (Soccer) Thread

Last post by FunkMonk - Today at 04:18:25 PM

John Bennett
@JohnBennettBBC
Tracksuit Dyche has a 100% record.

 

["Today I am resigning from the Gerald R. Ford board as a trustee. If the foundation that bears the name of Gerald R. Ford won't stand up to this real threat to our democracy, who will?"]

#25

Off the Record / Re: 2024 US Presidential Elect...

Last post by Savonarola - Today at 04:14:59 PM

And, unfortunately, one that's already started to pay dividends:

David Hume Kennerly resigns from Gerald Ford foundation board over refusal to honor Liz Cheney with top award

David Hume Kennerly, a Pulitzer-prize-winning photographer who served in the Ford White House, announced his resignation on Tuesday from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation board over its "short-sighted" rejection of former Rep. Liz Cheney for the organization's yearly award.

"Today I am resigning from the Gerald R. Ford board as a trustee. If the foundation that bears the name of Gerald R. Ford won't stand up to this real threat to our democracy, who will?" Kennerly said in a letter to members of the executive committee.

Kennerly slammed Ford's namesake organization for its choice not to honor Cheney, an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, with the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service.

"A key reason Liz's nomination was turned down was your agita about what might happen if the former president is reelected. Some of you raised the specter of being attacked by the Internal Revenue Service and losing the foundation's tax-exempt status as retribution for selecting Liz for the award," he wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Politico.

He continued, "The historical irony was completely lost on you. Gerald Ford became president, in part, because Richard Nixon had ordered the development of an enemies list and demanded his underlings use the IRS against those listed. That's exactly what the executive committee fears will happen if there's a second coming of Donald Trump."

Gleaves Whitney, executive director of the Ford Presidential Foundation, said in a statement that the foundation's executive committee, "guided by legal counsel, concluded that it was not prudent to award the 2024 Ford medal to Liz Cheney."

"At the time the award was being discussed, it was being publicly reported that Cheney was under active consideration for a presidential run by No Labels," the statement said, referring to the group that had dabbled with fielding a third-party ticket only to abandon the idea last week. "Exercising its fiduciary responsibility, the executive committee concluded that giving the Ford medal to Cheney in the 2024 election cycle might be construed as a political statement and thus expose the Foundation to the legal risk of losing its nonprofit status with the IRS."

Kennerly, who served as Ford's chief photographer and provided an intimate glimpse into the White House, claimed in the letter that Cheney, who also serves on the board of the Ford Presidential Foundation, was rejected for the award three times, despite suggesting her for the honor multiple times.
"After two people you selected instead of her demurred, I weighed in again with what I thought was a compelling presentation to some of the nominators where I reiterated Liz's merits. When you rejected her again in favor of a third person, it became crystal clear to me that something else was going on."

The former Wyoming congresswoman has criticized Trump on multiple occasions. Cheney was one of just two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and Trump's responsibility for the insurrection.

She lost her post in House Republican leadership and, ultimately, her seat in Congress after publicly rejecting for months Trump's lie that he won the 2020 presidential election and voting to impeach him following the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.

Cheney said in December that she will do "whatever I have to do" to stop the former president from returning to the White House.

"Those of you who rejected Liz join many 'good Republicans' now aiding and abetting our 45th president by ignoring the genuine menace he presents to our country," Kennerly wrote. "America is fortunate to have Liz Cheney still out there on the front lines of freedom vigorously defending our Constitution and democratic way
of life."

The Gerald R. Ford Museum is in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan (I won the 1990 Grand Rapids Citizen Bee there.)  My parents are members of the museum and have attended a number of lectures there.  Last year they attended one on the 1976 presidential election with one of the scholars from the Ford Museum and one from the Carter Museum.  This was filmed for CSPAN.  At the end there was a period for questions and answers.  One man got up and, instead of asking a question, got onto a rant about 2020, stolen elections, and our democracy was being taken from us.  They ended the Q&A period after that, and the scholars said they'd talk to him in private if he liked.

I've seen a number of public lectures, and I know the Q&A period can go a lot of ways (none of them good) but that still surprised me.  It's so far from who Ford was; or Carter for that matter.

(Also, do you think David Hume Kennerly's parents were disappointed that he became a photographer rather than a philosopher or historian?)

#26

Off the Record / Re: Israel-Hamas War 2023

Last post by OttoVonBismarck - Today at 04:14:19 PM

David Horowitz explains this situation well:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-goal-of-the-campus-jew-haters-to-render-israel-indefensible-in-both-senses-of-the-word/

The leftists who this very day are working to effect a mass genocide on the Jews of Israel must be seen for the true, genuine evil that they are--the moral stain on them shall last forever.

The goal of the campus Jew-haters: To render Israel indefensible, in both senses of the word

The aggression against Israel and Jews would not be tolerated if aimed at any other minority; its defenders are unforgivably prioritizing free speech above the intended deadly consequences

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters hold a march against Israel outside Columbia University in New York City on April 18, 2024. (Kena Betancur/AFP)
This Editor's Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI's weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor's Notes as they're released, join the ToI Community here.

While Jews have been celebrating the first days of Passover, the ancient festival of freedom, antisemites and their useful idiot collaborators on a swelling number of American university campuses have been rallying and issuing murderous threats in a strategic effort to end Jewish freedom, in the here and now, by destroying the world's only Jewish majority state.

The underlying goal of the encampments and marches at Columbia, Yale, NYU and the other campuses is to render Israel indefensible — in both senses of the word.

The strategy:

First, to misrepresent what Israel has been subjected to and how it has responded since Hamas invaded our country on October 7, slaughtered 1,200 people, abducted 253 hostages, and then hid behind and beneath Gaza's civilians in a bid to survive and do it all again.

Second, to falsely brand Israel as a brutal and indifferent aggressor, solely responsible for a soaring Gaza death toll that would, in fact, total precisely zero were it not for Hamas's genocidal ambitions for the Jews and indifference to the lives of Gazan civilians.

Third, to build pressure for divestment from Israel, for an end to military aid, and ultimately for the severing of Israel's vital alliance with the United States.

And, finally, to thus deprive Israel of the diplomatic and military means to survive the ongoing effort at its destruction, as effected by Iran and its allies and proxies.

At the root of this strategy is, of course, the oldest of hatreds.

The antisemitism is stirred in this case by Muslim extremists, racists, ignoramuses and self-hating Jews; "inspired" on social media, and partly funded openly and covertly by states seeking Israel's demise.

And it is being tolerated in an environment that seems to prioritize limitless free speech over the violent consequences of the abuse of that freedom.

To the university administrations and faculty members defending, enabling and even rallying in support of the activists' ostensible rights to viciously denounce Israel and Jews with calls to burn Tel Aviv, kill soldiers and threaten Jewish students with murder by Hamas, one must put the question: Is the right to free speech unlimited, to be upheld even when the goal and likely potential consequence is deadly?

As the British-Palestinian writer John Aziz has noted, this is "the rhetoric of mass murder."

Were this level of hatred and aggression directed at any other minority group, it is hard to imagine that it would be indulged and tolerated, even at the price of limiting free speech.

But targeting the planet's only Jewish majority state — and extending the hostility to Jews on campus and beyond — is evidently considered an exception, forgivable, even admirable.

That again, all you ostensibly ultra-humane and decent people who support these protests, is antisemitism.

The initial goal of this inexcusably tolerated murderous hostility is to aid in Israel's demise — by establishing our country as a pariah state, and rendering it untenable to be associated with, defended or protected. Protected, that is, from the amoral, rapacious, misogynistic, homophobic, and potent enemies who, as I write, are firing rockets from the north (Hezbollah), trying to do so from the south (Hamas), and advancing toward obtaining nuclear weapons in the east (Iran).

But if those enemy states, terrorist armies and their facilitators get done with Israel, they'll be coming for Jews everywhere (and, no, membership in Jewish Voice for Peace won't help), and, for that matter, for every other minority deemed unacceptable (sorry, Queers for Palestine).

At our family Seder night this year, I understood properly for the first time how it was that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon, studying the story of the Exodus in Bnei Brak almost 2,000 years ago with their own urgent preoccupations, would, of course, have been talking all night, until their students came to remind them it was time for morning prayer.

And I thought at length for the first time — forgive me — of what it must have been like for Jews three or so generations ago to read the Haggadah during the Holocaust, trying to celebrate ancient deliverance while seeking to escape contemporaneous genocide.

With 133 Israelis absent from the Seder, held in captivity by the monstrous Hamas, in a nation still coming to terms with October 7 — with our loss, vulnerability and the surging global hostility to the very fact of our existence — passage after passage took on immediate and extreme relevance.

How could it not?

#27

Off the Record / Re: 2024 US Presidential Elect...

Last post by Savonarola - Today at 04:12:06 PM

Fill up your granaries now because:

Lara Trump Threatens 'Four Years of Scorched Earth' If Trump Retakes Power

He showed us a whole lot that we didn't know was going on — within the media, within Washington, D.C. He exposed a lot of people. So they have to do everything they can to keep him out of that White House 'cause they know Donald Trump gets in for four more years, the jig is up for them. The gloves are off. There are no holds barred here. He is going full-throttle. He's not worried about winning another election. It's four years of scorched earth when Donald Trump retakes the White House.

That's an... uhm... inspirational message. 

#28

Off the Record / Re: Football (Soccer) Thread

Last post by Sheilbh - Today at 04:03:58 PM

John Bennett
@JohnBennettBBC
Tracksuit Dyche has a 100% record.

#29

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by Sheilbh - Today at 04:00:56 PM

That's no way to talk about Richard Whiteley

#30

Off the Record / Re: Football (Soccer) Thread

Last post by Josquius - Today at 03:59:16 PM

 Fucking hell Liverpool. Well they've really bottled that. Arsenal are the only hope now.