“Life is better when we leap together.” Kermit the Frog delivered a commencement speech at the University of Maryland on Thursday, the alma mater of his creator, Jim Henson. nyti.ms/4dwMuhQ
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) May 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Per the NYTimes, “‘Leap Together’: Kermit the Frog Gives a Graduation Speech”:
… You might call the campus his birthplace: Jim Henson, the creator of “The Muppet Show,” was a student at the University of Maryland when he first built Kermit, using his mother’s coats and a ping pong ball cut in half.
Mr. Henson, Kermit said on Thursday, “had a hand in literally everything I did.”
News that the famously cheery frog puppet would be delivering the “Ker-mencement,” as some students called it, was met with mixed reviews on campus. Some wondered if the speech, penned by a Muppets writer and voiced by the puppeteer Matt Vogel, was an effort by the university to sidestep the difficult issues confronting American higher education, like the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal funding and cancellation of some international student visas.
The University of Maryland said it had chosen Kermit to deliver its commencement address to honor the legacy of Mr. Henson, who died in 1990…
He told students to stay connected to their loved ones and to their dreams, “no matter how impossible they seem.”
“Life is like a movie. Write your own ending,” he said. “Keep believing, keep pretending.”
He finished by leading the audience in a singalong to “Rainbow Connection.”
Kamala Harris gave the commencement speech at West Point in 2023. This year’s graduates, not so fortunate (or enthusiastic)…
Trump: The job of the U.S. Armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, but to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun…
Baud
Kermit 2028!
Princess
Can any Americans/Pennsylvanians tell me what’s going on with USSteel? Trump claims a “partnership” between it and Nippon Steel but is that just a fig leaf for Nippon buying it outright? Who is going to be happy/sad about this?
Professor Bigfoot
Bloody hell.
Princess
Also too, some hear Trump saying “NOT to spread democracy at the point of a gun” which would make more sense both in context and with his known views and actions. I can’t bear to listen to the clip to check though.
NeenerNeener
@Professor Bigfoot: Kind of ironic since he’s made sure we’re not a democracy anymore.
lowtechcyclist
Is there a reliable transcript of this abomination out there anywhere? Reading it would be somewhat less painful than listening to Dear Leader.
Baud
@NeenerNeener:
We’re not not a democracy yet. Don’t prematurely give him victories he hasn’t earned.
BretH
I listened. He said exactly that but it was clearly written to say it was not the job of the military. The old fool just botched the delivery.
Baud
@BretH:
I don’t understand. We shouldn’t be spreading democracy at the point of a gun. That would be a sensible thing to say. That’s not his MO.
Betty Cracker
I think it’s possible the mumbly, decrepit orange creep with the hideous, crooked pink tie and awful red hat is being misquoted here and on every other transcript I’ve seen. Here’s Roll Call’s rendition, which matches the caption on Acyn’s clip:
I think he actually said “or” rather than “but.” It’s folly to try to find a thread of logic in the chaos agent’s inane prattle, but “or” would align better with his worldview, which is that foreign autocrats are pals and democratic leaders are chumps.
prostratedragon
@Professor Bigfoot:
There’s that loss of filter again!
Meanwhile, among the sane,
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It’s not the job of the military to host drag shows, but I’d imagine they do it for the enjoyment of the troops.
The lie is that the military wasn’t respected before. No one disrespects the military more than Republicans.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: why not spread “democracy” or our capitalism/ colonial extraction businesses at the point of a gún? It’s a time honored, um precedent.
Muslims and Christian’s both spread their religions at gunpoint…with a few supplemental smallpox blankets at certain points.
(no offense intended toward people who like their religion, or get guidance and comfort from it. But history is clear enough.)
Gloria DryGarden
@Betty Cracker: annihilate
dominate
These aren’t in my recipe book for any good relations. People don’t like being annihilated. And domination, well, most all former children, and a majority of women, have had a taste of that.
Raven
There’s a kinder gentler machine gun hand!
Baud
Is he inviting a military coup?
Gloria DryGarden
@Professor Bigfoot: I know, right?
zhena gogolia
@Baud: It sounds like it was something put in to please Putin. “not to spread democracy at the point of a gun,” like letting Ukraine join NATO.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Now that you mention it, I seem to remember watching a WWII movie where the men in the company put on skits including wearing dresses and it was all just in fun.
But then, I’ve watched “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” and I can testify under oath that it’s all just in fun.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: the thing is, dominating, and annihilating, won’t raise anyone’s testosterone levels, in spite of their toxic masculinity quotient.
if men like him want to feel powerful, can’t they just drive overly tall, overpowered pickup trucks, what’s that term, dickmobiles?
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Much like Trump’s election and his national security decisions and staff.
@Professor Bigfoot:
Drag in the military has been around forever.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
Trump really isn’t that macho when it comes to the military, compared to the Republican norm. His problem is he’s unhinged and mercurial.
p.a.
I’ve donated to the USO for years. I wonder if their offerings are being Heritage-Foundationed like everything else?🤬
Bob Hope poking fun at officers and military “efficiency”: Un-American!🙄
TS
I remember when the press thought President Obama had bad taste because he wore a brown suit – but a ridiculous red cap is just the thing for West Point.
I find the media treatment of trump incomprehensive, submissive or simply in support of a dictatorship.
prostratedragon
A reminder of the French caretakers at Omaha Beach cemetery.
zhena gogolia
@Professor Bigfoot: South Pacific.
prufrock
My grandfather graduated from West Point in 1939. FDR gave the commencement speech. Here is that speech:
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/graduation-address-united-states-military-academy-west-point-new-york
There is a distinct lack of references to trophy wives.
Jerszy
Kermit was much, much less embarrassing and more illustrious than my own U of MD graduation speaker in 1991: Dr. William H. Cosby Jr.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Professor Bigfoot: Not sure it’s the movie but in White Christmas Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye do a drag bit. The war is over so they’re just out of uniform but on the way up to Vermont to try and save their general’s ski resort.
zhena gogolia
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: “Sisters”!
prufrock
@Baud: For decades, they had a drag show at West Point every year. There are pictures of it in all four of my grandfather’s yearbooks.
We are ruled by the most stupid people.
lowtechcyclist
Having read as much of the transcript as I could bear, I can only hope that everyone in the audience – cadets, families, whoever – has now seen what sort of man we have as President, and are unable to unsee it.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Starting to wonder if Trump might get the bird from the military at his glorious parade. Probably too much to hope for but the folks at the service academies at least don’t seem very enthusiastic about him. I have no idea about the attitudes of rank and file enlisted troops though.
Suzanne
@Princess: Lots of the steelworkers support the buyout. Biden wasn’t going to allow the sale, and Trump had made noises that, if he was elected, he would. Then he got elected, and said he also wouldn’t allow the sale, and the steelworkers were pissed.
Should note that this was possibly one of those instances where union members went against the leadership. The Mon Valley towns most tied to US Steel shifted red, while the white, bougie suburbs shifted blue.
ETA: The union endorsed Harris.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@zhena gogolia: Yup
RevRick
@Princess: When I first moved to western Pennsylvania in 1975 to serve a UCC church near Pittsburgh, there were about 120,000 jobs in the steel industry in the area. When I left in 1988, there were only about 23,000 jobs in steel production. In that time period, US Steel bought Marathon Oil and became USX, likely to avoid going bankrupt.
I know that the Steelworkers Union is opposed to the merger, because they fear further job losses. The company wants it, because they need the cash infusion for investments in new plants, equipment and technology. The industry needs to transform steel production into an all-electric formation. Old mills based on the use of coal are obsolete.
prostratedragon
Was Alina Habba his plus one?
TONYG
@Baud: The never-ending obsession with drag shows with these people. I am an old, straight, married man. I confess that the only time that I think about drag shows is when I read about one of these idiots bloviating about drag shows.
They Call Me Noni
I remember watching the Muppets as a kid, my step-father loved that show. It was must see TV back in the pre-VCR days. So much of the humor went over my head and was aimed at the adults. Good memories.
Suzanne
@RevRick: The mayors of the Mon Valley towns where the steel plants are, and where most of the workers live, support the merger. From what I read last year, most of the workers do, too. But United Steelworkers doesn’t. There were a lot of stories in the local rag after the election about the workers voting for FFOTUS despite the endorsement, but I don’t know if there’s any data out there.
ETA: The current mayor of Braddock is quoted in the piece. Recall that Fetterman was Braddock’s mayor and that launched his career. He was popular there.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: And all the Uncommitted assholes and their idiot defenders told everyone that Biden/Kamala were the real threat of Imperialism…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@TONYG: When you think about it, their level of upset over drag is weird.
Professor Bigfoot
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Is it wrong of me to think of Anwar Sadat’s last parade?
Suzanne
@TONYG: The inability to mind one’s own business is the defining trait of conservatives.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@They Call Me Noni: The Muppet Show was my dad’s favorite too. We watched it every week. I think Joel Grey hosted the very first episode and did a performance as the emcee from Cabaret.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Professor Bigfoot: Not familiar with what happened during Anwar Sadat’s last parade but whatever it was, you’re not wrong.
RevRick
@Betty Cracker: I listened to the clip of his address on the evening news, and what struck me most was how he droned the words. It was decidedly low energy. Of course, he had to put in his culture war references to DEI and woke and drag shows, because that’s how his puny personality works.
The graduating cadets know the composition of the army they are supposed to lead, so I suspect they all inwardly cringed a bit. But I suspect they also know that Trump subscribes to Hegseth’s stupid model of military forces of muscular men fighting hand-to-hand combat.
I wonder how the top brass of the Air Force are dealing with Trump’s rejection of stealth technology because it’s ugly. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for those discussions.
Baud
The Muppet Show is the greatest tv ever.
@TONYG:
They need hate to run.
MagdaInBlack
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes and no, because I thought of it too.
Spanky
@Professor Bigfoot: We don’t have a rogue military.
Yet.
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Social conservatism is essentially self-centered; there’s a tacit assumption that everything in society should conform to their aesthetics and preferences.
RevRick
@Suzanne: When we lived in Irwin, the entire area was blue! Now, it’s redder than red. But then the whole Appalachian-Ozarks arc has slowly transformed from solid blue to red in my lifetime.
RevRick
@Suzanne: Drag shows represent an existential threat to reactionary culture. They are, by definition, subversive of the hierarchical dictates of how masculinity and femininity presents to the world. And masculinity and femininity are all about presentation.
satby
@UncleEbeneezer: I just finished reading this deep dive on the election voting stats, contrasted with the latest polling on the felon’s underwater favorables, and how a lot of the analysis about why Harris lost is probably misreading those results. I really found it worthwhile, and encouraging.
satby
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Sadat was assassinated.
Old School
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Close. Joel Grey was the third episode, but the first guest star.
Willkommen.
Suzanne
@RevRick: I read a piece in some local publication, wish I could remember and find it now….. some suburbs/boroughs shifted blue, by a lot. Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, Sewickley. What characterizes those? They’re full of middle-class and upper-middle-class college-educated white people. But the working-class areas shifted even redder than those areas shifted blue.
PA is interesting (by that, I mean “kind of terrifying”)…. I can see most of the changes we’ve discussed here happening within 20 miles of my front door. I remember being on an Amtrak train to Philly, and stopping at the station in Greensburg….. and someone had spray-painted their barn “FUCK BIDEN” so that it faced the station. This is the kind of thing that made me spend all of 2024 in terror.
Spanky
@satby:
By his own troops during a military parade.
Uncle Cosmo
Cast of Rocky and Bullwinkle holding on the red courtesy phone. i was a precocious 15 when i realized Boris Badenov was a multilevel pun for the groanups…
Glory b
@RevRick: Honeself, I don’t think the transformation was slow, it happened after Obama’s election.
And Biden opposed the US Steel deal because of national security concerns, not wanting a foreign country to dominate such a crucial business.
But yes, modernization has resulted in steel making needing about one tenth of the workforce it did previously.
Now, Pittsburgh is “Ed’s and meds,” higher education and medicine. Lots of people come here from around the country and the world for medical care and degrees in science and tech.
I think it was the Wall St Journal that had an article called “The New Ivies,” naming Carnegie Mellon as one of them.
Another Scott
@Baud: +1
For the youngsters out there, a little bit about Geraldine Jones and Maude Frickert. And that’s just two examples.
The folks trying to make drag scary are stupid monsters. People shouldn’t fall for it, and they should punish the monsters pushing this dangerous garbage.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: It was his last parade because one platoon in the parade had been issued live ammo and ordered to attack the presidential reviewing stand with rifles and grenades.
President Sadat did not survive.
Glory b
@Suzanne: AND now, imagine me traveling to Butler, Beaver, Fayette, Lawrence, Mercer and Washington counties to conduct hearings concerning whether those residents would get unemployment compensation benefits.
“Are YOU the hearing officer?” LOL, good times.
Suzanne
@Glory b: One detail that, to me, distills this transition: US Steel Tower is the tallest building in Pittsburgh…. And UPMC has their logo on it. (State’s largest employer and healthcare system.) Total encapsulation of the change.
Pittsburgh’s population grew last year for the first time in something like 50 years. Change is coming.
Another anecdote that I have no data on, but I’m watching for…. I think we’re starting to get more and more displaced Californians who are priced out. I know a few.
Suzanne
@Glory b: A large part of my professional life is working on construction sites. It feels…. much the same.
Trivia Man
Tom Lehrer had something to say about military might – Send the Marines. (my linking skills failed today)
For Might makes right
until they’ve seen the light
they’ve got to be protected
all their rights respected
till somebody we like can be elected
zhena gogolia
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: You’re not familiar?
eclare
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
My personal favorite drag movie: Some Like It Hot. With one of the best ending lines, ever.
Another Scott
@Jerszy: Made me look, as I had completely forgotten.
My grad school commencement speaker was Phil Donahue. Good guy! I remember absolutely nothing about anything he said.
For college, the commencement speaker was a prof at the university (don’t know if someone else invited dropped out at the last minute or what). The topic was “the importance of literature with Classic Status” or some such. That line stuck with me because it was so weird, but nothing else did.
The cadets will be fine. They were probably so hopped up on adrenaline that they’ll remember almost nothing about his words. That’s as it should be! It’s about them, not whatever mouth noises he was making.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Nancy
@Professor Bigfoot:
Perhaps this was a misstatement; deals at the point of a gun seems more likely to be the statement on the teleprompter.
Glory b
@Suzanne: I’ve said that UPMC’s goal is to eventually rule the world.
I might just be half joking.
But they have brought several small town/rural hospitals into their system and saved them from closing, so I guess that’s a good thing.
Spanky
@Nancy: The odds that that moron actually reads the teleprompter are approaching zero. The odds that what comes out of his piehole is on the teleprompter are zero.
Princess
@prufrock: drag skits and shows were a huge part of entertainment at all-male elite institutions — universities, clubs, etc.
Suzanne
@Glory b: Local hospitals are being bought all over the country by larger health systems. It’s either that or closure for many of them. It’s increasingly impossible to keep a community hospital solvent.
RevRick
@Suzanne: In the 1950s, the Philly suburbs were rock solid Eisenhower territory. They are now deep blue, except for Bucks, which has a lot of working class residents. Education has now become a huge divide in our society. All the blue that surrounded Pittsburgh has gone red, and all the red that surrounded Philadelphia has gone blue. The shift started around Pittsburgh in 1980 when Santorum ousted Waldron.
Culture started trumping economics.
As Tex Sample pointed out, working class culture centers on respectability. Is the lawn mowed? Do the kids behave in public? Does dad go to work while mom rules the domestic front? These are all inherently conservative tendencies.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Hedge funds are a problem in this area too.
Another Scott
@satby: Thanks for the pointer. I’ll have to read it more carefully later.
I don’t see the “catastrophic failure” of Democratic campaign officials that he points to. Harris and Walz told everyone to read Project 2025 and see what was in there. That they don’t write plans like that without intending to implement them. Etc.
The biggest problems we had in 2024 and have now is that the Democratic Party was (for whatever reasons) too unpopular, and that too many people in the mushy middle (for whatever reasons) refused to listen to what our candidates had to say. It made enough of a difference that we lost the big close election, and lost ground in the Senate.
How do we fix those two problems? What actually caused those problems? How do we win more close races? Dunno. Maybe they’re not fixable in the short term, and maybe we have to make the GQP less popular instead while we work on them. Dunno.
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Harrison Wesley
@Glory b: Yes, I had to go to Allegheny General for surgery in 2015 because nobody in Philly knew how to do the procedure I needed.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
Was Trump’s speech written by Putin? By Xe? Because it sure doesn’t sound like something written by anyone with American values. It sounds like it was written with the goal of turning the world against the US.
So Steven Miller, I guess.
Baud
@Another Scott:
You don’t get published unless you slag Dems, even if it’s an aside.
BellyCat
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “Only WE get to cosplay, damnit!”
Glory b
@Harrison Wesley: Allegheny General is also the hospital used in the new hit, The Pitt.
The first scene in the first episode is taped on the roof of the hospital, you can see the UPMC logo on top of the US Stdel Tower in the foreground
And speaking of medicine, the remaining employees at NIH are euthanized large numbers os lab animals because no one is left to feed them.
https://bsky.app/profile/jfallows.bsky.social/post/3lpxdxaa4ak2t
Suzanne
@Baud: 100%. Healthcare isn’t my business, but it’s my clients’ business. There is a ton of development and modernization in the industry happening as the Boomers approach their “peak healthcare-consuming years”, and the vast, vast majority of it is in cities and the “nicer” suburbs.
RevRick
@Princess: I remember drag skits being performed at church social events! In fact, when I moved here to eastern PA Pennsylvania Dutch country, one pastor used to put on an act for regional meetings as Elvira! And everybody laughed at his antics.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I’m confident Trump will do something to help out his rural base on the healthcare front.
BellyCat
@Suzanne:
I personally know a number of very progressive city dwellers who had kids, outgrew their small homes with small yards, and decided fukit, might as well go where the best schools are and we can commute via the train.
ETA: Now that their kids are graduating, pretty much all are contemplating a return, while a few have.
Suzanne
@Baud: LAWL. I was kind of surprised that Trump even got out of the car in Butler.
Uncle Cosmo
JFTR, Johns Hopkins holding on the blue jay courtesy phone. There is a desperate death-race in progress to determine whether The Hop manages to expropriate enough of the City of Bawlmer to turn it into a wholly-owned subsidiary before Mikey Bloomberg finds enough billions under his seat cushions to bribe the Bored of Trusties into naming the whole shebang after him – there’s literally nothing else in the “Hopper” of names he hasn’t already bought. (And don’t look so shocked – no reason not to supplant a 19th-century robber baron on the letterhead with the 21st-century model. MBU here we come!)
Harrison Wesley
@Glory b: I’ll have to check it out. Although I never got to the roof – I had a hard time figuring out what planet I was on after they banged on me for eleven hours. Series does sound interesting.
NIH horror story.
Glory b
@RevRick: In the last election though, Allegheny County and almost the entire rest of the state voted in their usual numbers.
The exception was Philly and its surrounding suburbs. Lots of Dems (too many, as it turns out) stayed home. If they had done the same as the rest of the state, chances are that Harris would have won PA.
Suzanne
@BellyCat: Oh yes, a long-established pattern! Bougie suburbs all over the country have been shifting blue for multiple cycles now.
Baud
@Glory b:
Yeah, I know there’s been some analysis looking at percentage shifts in voting from 2020, but I haven’t heard an explanation for the missing voters compared to 2020. Total turnout was down, I believe.
Suzanne
@Glory b: A thing that I have been thinking about: the trend for a while has been that wealthier and more educated people are increasingly voting Democratic and working-class people are increasingly voting Republican. I believe that this year, the majority of households with income over $100K voted Dem and the majority under $100K voted GOP.
So…. wealthier Dems are voting, at least in part, to strong safety nets for healthcare and public schooling, and union rights, and all the rest. And the less-wealthy people are increasingly saying NO THANKS.
BellyCat
@Glory b: Priceless! :-)
Nancy
@Spanky: I imagine you’re right. I’m wondering which of the minions approves the words he doesn’t read.
Another Scott
@Nancy: Made me look.
Axios (from May 2024):
I assume it’s the same people now.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Nancy
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)):
I see you and Another Scott have identified the minion author of the speech.
satby
@Another Scott: It’s a dense article, but his conclusions went well beyond blaming the Democratic campaign officials that you mention. He also included the media, business leaders, the legal establishment, and what he termed “Civil society institutions, including law and business as well as academia, philanthropy, and even many pro-democracy NGOs”. It’s a larger structural problem with society than just tweaking messaging or deciding voters moved to the right on issues. Biggest surprise for me was that careful polling on issues, not party labels, shows non-voters tend to lean liberal. That was what I thought was encouraging in his analysis.
Soprano2
It’s rained so much here that my sump pump is running every 2 minutes. That’s much more frequent than normal. Let’s hope i don’t float away.
Nancy
@Another Scott:
Thank you. S.Miller is the mastermind, FOTUS is the mouthpiece.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Basic culture war stuff. It tends to rear its head more when the economy isn’t bad.
satby
@Baud: and I linked to one suggested explanation above. Which conclusions I don’t totally agree with vis-à-vis Biden or the Democrats, but I think sends the conversation into some potentially useful directions.
Baud
@satby:
Thank you. I’m heading out shortly, but I appreciate you providing the link.
Nukular Biskits
Mornin’, y’all.
Late to the event again, it seems.
Suzanne
@Baud: Agree. But think of this every time you see complaints that the Dems are too “gentrified” or “professional”. Those people would happily throw college-educated women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color off the Dem train to restore white patriarchy.
Baud
@Suzanne:
There’s always a complaint/excuse. Dems are too corporate, too far left, too week, too authoritarian, etc.
We have a diverse population. One size fits all won’t work to satisfy a everyone’s need.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@zhena gogolia: I mean, I’m supposed to remember every single thing that happens in the Middle East? I’m not totally ignorant but what happens in that little corner of the world has never been an obsession of mine despite the fact that it IS an obsession for a lot of US citizens. So I was aware of it when it happened but have long since forgotten.
RevRick
@satby: @Another Scott: @Baud:
With margins by the hair-of-his-chinny-chin-chin to work with in Congress, I don’t see how Biden, or any Democratic President, could have managed any more than he did. Fixing the system in the present context of the last couple of generations is well nigh impossible.
From my perspective, this analysis dismisses the corrosive impact of inflation on the national psyche. It is frankly stupid of us to mock the price of eggs, which is really a shorthand for the economic shock. It’s been two generations since we have had to deal with inflation like we experienced during COVID. And Republicans quite effectively pinned the blame for it on Biden. It was a millstone around his neck.
The author ascribes the loss of a failure to address the broken system, but then shows a graph of the tremendous churn in political power since 2000. And a lot of it is due to shocks that have overwhelmed our capacity to deal with them. No one foresaw the job recovery after the mild recession of 2001. No one foresaw the collapse of the levees protecting New Orleans after Katrina. While many foresaw the speculative bubble in the housing market, like all such bubbles it took on a life of its own and like all such asset crises, recovery drags on an average of six years. While public health experts warned about the risk of a pandemic, that can take on the character of the boy who cried wolf. Humans just can’t deal with future threats very well.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@Professor Bigfoot:
😒😒😒😒
Baud
@RevRick:
We won’t fix everything in 2029 either, I suspect.
ETA: A political party can’t fix a broken culture.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Also, the irony of a dude whose favorite all time song is obviously YMCA by The Village People, railing against drag performances. And when not listening to an ode to 70s gay cruising culture listens to show tunes.
Another Scott
Humans are weird.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Elizabelle
There is something so pornographic about Trump delivering the West Point commencement address.
And in that ridiculous red hat.
West Point has to be deeply concerned about radicalization within the military ranks. Maybe they have kept a careful eye on those who respond enthusiastically to Trump.
Jackie
@Professor Bigfoot: Somewhere buried in a box, I have a photo album of my dad’s time in the service during WWII that includes a few photos of him and four other servicemen dressed in dresses doing the Cancan. Everyone of them have the biggest grins… it WAS done for fun and entertainment LOL!
MagdaInBlack
@Elizabelle: The fuchsia poke-a-dot tie kind of pulls it all together, don’t you think ;-)
Spanky
@Elizabelle:
Assumes they themselves aren’t enthusiastic about Trump. Which is probably true, but…
It only takes one or two.
satby
@Baud: ETA: A political party can’t fix a broken culture.
I agree, and it takes some extrapolation from the various analyses, but there were a lot of factors that “tweaking messaging” won’t fix. And our instant gratification culture doesn’t allow time for solutions to take root either.
Spanky
@Jackie: Navy? If my dim memory serves me, that’s part of the “ceremony” for sailors crossing the Equator for the first time.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Statler and Waldorf were and continue to be my heroes.
Professor Bigfoot
@Nancy: Do we have any reason whatsoever to give that mad marigold MF the very slightest “benefit of the doubt?”
No.
He said what he said.
satby
Because I love you all and it’s a holiday weekend, here’s Josh Johnson talking about health and RFKjr.
pieceofpeace
@Baud: The frightening aspect of this is remembering Biden’s last words in his last official speech were to the military, telling them to “remember your Oath,” because he likely knows that’s a problem that’s coming.
Elizabelle
@MagdaInBlack: Oh Gawd, I had not looked.
Um. Festive!
sab
@Elizabelle: West Point produces officers.
My husband has a theory that Trump despises the officers, he is openly contemptuous of them, and that this appeals to the enlisted people, especially enlisted men.
So it is sort of a class warfare thing.
Elizabelle
@prufrock: Going to read that. Thank you. Fitting for Memorial Day weekend.
The West Point class of 1939. They certainly put their military education to use. Rest in power.
frosty
@Suzanne: I hear you about PA. A couple of my neighbors still have their T#$%p flags out. “Take America Back”. Nice of them to let me know where the assholes live. I guess I’ll have to work the election this fall and see if I can help stop them from ruining the school district.
Elizabelle
@sab: Interesting.
Also, FWIW, it concerns me greatly that Fox News Channel is allowed on military bases. Indoctrination. And false information geared to conspiracy theorists.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: One of the practical problems now with spreading Democracy at the point of a gun is: everyone else has a gun. And rocket-propelled grenades. And IEDs.
Bush learned that the hard way in Iraq, and I think Bush’s experience there influenced Trump’s thinking. It didn’t take a genius to see how the Iraq war ruined Bush’s presidency.
Librettist
Nippon Steel is going to invest in a new (electric arc) US Steel facility in Arkansas. IIRC it is a non-union shop. Option B was a venture capital outfit selling off what’s left of the company.
The goobers in the Mon Valley were on a nostalgia trip, and so was Biden. Nucor is strategically significant, USS is now small potatoes after cashing out its holdings over the last fifty years.
NeenerNeener
@Uncle Cosmo: So was the name “Simon Bar Sinister”. A “bar sinister” was put on a coat of arms to indicate a royal bastard.
artem1s
I hope the military leadership present at this disgraceful display of incompetence at West Point understand how precarious this situation is – not just for this country but for the world.
In January 2025, the Doomsday Clock was moved one second closer to midnight, to 89 seconds – this is the closest the hand has been to midnight since the clock was created in 1947.
frosty
@Glory b:
Yeah, Philly screwed the pooch. For the first time since 1992 my County went over 34% D and we lost the state. That was the threshold for the last 40 years. The Fetterman strategy (Every County, Every Vote) would have worked in ’24 if Philly had come through.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: It’s difficult to not come to that conclusion, really.
It doesn’t help that the people pushing that narrative are overwhelmingly white and male.
frosty
@Nukular Biskits: You’re in Mississippi, you’re at least 50 years behind the times, so being late is right on the money.
Melancholy Jaques
@TS:
I don’t know whether the ratings are as good as the first time around, but we know that the media consider Trump to be great content that costs them nothing.
Nobody made money or achieved stardom covering the Biden administration.
eclare
@Soprano2:
Mine ran like that yesterday here in Memphis. So far today it’s overcast but dry, which was not the prediction.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: You are un-wrong!
Don’t know why we would want to minimize the influence of any parts of the Dem coalition, rather than enlarge it.
dnfree
@Professor Bigfoot:
@Princess: I’ve seen it as OR to spread democracy around the world at the point of a gun, which makes more sense. He goes on to say their job is to kill anyone who threatens this country, or something like that. I’m not going to listen to it either..
Another Scott
@Librettist: Steel is a tough industry. Price matters a lot, scale matters a lot, and upgrading 100 year old infrastructure is expensive and hard to justify when the money is rolling in.
I recall that the USSR loved to tout their massive steel production. It’s a commodity now, but a very important one.
Last year the ranking was China, then India, then Japan, then the USA, then Russia….
Made me look. BusinessNorth.com (from 5/22):
The war on Ukraine has shown the importance of domestic steel production (for 155 mm shells, etc., at the very least). There are national security interests in having strong domestic production. Who owns that production can be argued about, but as you and others say the argument that Japan is somehow a danger is a bit far-fetched.
It sounds like the existing US Steel production workers made a very hard bargain, and did about as well as they could given all the circumstances. The folks at PA plants and other old facilities were probably always doomed, but it seems like they have some options as a result of this agreement. The economy marches on.
FWIW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Glory b
Harvard is now offering its government courses free online.
https://pll.harvard.edu/subject/government
NotMax
@satby
In a lighter vein, Andy Huggins.
;)
Professor Bigfoot
@dnfree: I am always going to assume the very worst possible from this lying pack of omadhauns; I give them NO benefit of the doubt; I assume the worst possible explanation is likely to be less horrible than reality.
Ruckus
@Gloria DryGarden:
shitforbrains doesn’t need a dickmobile to let everyone know who and what he is. He does that by opening his mouth. Besides does he even know how to drive?
Jackie
@Spanky: Army Air Corps.
NotMax
@Ruckus
Obligatory?
:)
Anyway
Surprised Gov Shapiro was not able to do more. I know people that did door-to-door outreach in the Philly environs for both HRC and Harris — they reported not-great engagement. Not sure that’s an effective way of reaching casual voters anymore.
Harrison Wesley
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t think you can go wrong with that approach, since everything they do is pretty horrible.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Steel is, as most can imagine, a massive need in modern life. Not for most people but for the tools that are used in making a lot of things that we all use. Take your car. Most likely a steel body, few are not steel. The tools and machines that make the body parts. Now a lot of wheels are now aluminum but steel is still used. The appliances in your home, stove, refrigerator, microwave – steel. Tools to repair your car, etc. Often the tools that make plastic things are made of steel. The reenforcement bars for concrete items are steel. The list is long and everyone is exposed to steel. You may not have anything to do with making things from or with steel but a lot do. I made things from steel and aluminum my entire working life, and those things are not going away, they are more necessary now than ever because of the size of the population. Large buildings use steel for the framework, not wood. The frame of your glasses is most often plastic but the screws and earpiece hinges are steel. The list is endless. Now many of these products are made in other countries today but the material/tools used to make them – steel.
The list is endless.
Nukular Biskits
@Professor Bigfoot:
I had to look up the definition of omadhauns.
Thanks for expanding my vocabulary!
Ruckus
@NotMax:
One of the great TV shows.
And yes obligatory!
Melancholy Jaques
@satby:
Thanks for the link. It is a worthwhile read. Because this is the internet and because I am nothing if not critical, I do take is with his argument that there was a
I am no fan of Democratic campaign consultants, but my experience of the last campaign was that every Democratic candidate or flack was talking about the consequences of putting Trump back in power. Other than abortion rights, they talked of almost nothing else. People all over the political chatter-world were criticizing them for it – “You can’t just say Trump is bad” and the like.
Enough stupid fucking voters didn’t believe it or didn’t care or thought it would be a good idea because other people would be the ones suffering.
Sorry for the rant, but I am sick of the “we got Trump because the Democrats didn’t do this or that” bullshit.
BlueGuitarist
Kermit > putin’s puppet
Reiterating note from overnight post:
Dozens of protesters at West Point
with American flags and signs
Go Army Beat Fascism
Support Our Veterans
Stop the Cuts
Nationwide Unite for Veterans
protests planned for Friday June 6
commemorating DDay, protesting cuts
Dropkick Murphys at 2pm DC event
No Kings nationwide protests, June 14
these protests deserve more attention
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Anyway:
Conventional wisdom, of which I agreed with, was that our campaign outreach/canvassing was second to none and that would make the difference.
But the results does make one wonder. Either that or a credible examination needs to be made of such efforts last year and see if they in fact fell down for reasons nobody knows or wants to admit…or, they’re not that effective with the low-info/low-motivated voter.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Nobody wants to explore the voters who just will not vote for a woman for president. I expect it’s pretty hard to get voters to admit that. It’s so easy use one of the reasons supplied by the media. And it’s possible that some voters don’t consciously acknowledge that that is the reason they either voted for Trump or did not vote at all.
Librettist
Could be the difference was low propensity, Democratic leaners, sitting around with nothing to do but puzzles, baking bread and voting.
satby
@Melancholy Jaques: again, I don’t necessarily agree with his takes on that or Biden; but focusing on that when his indictment of the failures was much wider and pointed to the obvious systemic faults in our society was where I thought it had value. And that voters who didn’t vote at all were the ones who had the mistake regrets and tend more liberal on issues.
Elizabelle
@Glory b: OMG, those are awesome. Thank you very much. Beyond timely.
Citizen Alan
@Professor Bigfoot:
Mrs. Doubtfire
The Birdcage
Some Like It Hot
Bosom Buddies
Milton Berle
Monty Python
Flip Wilson
In every fucking high school in america where they did a fundraiser with the entire football team dressing in drag to stage a womanless beauty review.
Men have been dressing up as women for entertainment purposes for literally thousands a years. And now it is being demonized because a tiny percentage of sexually repressed, if not sexually confused, religious nuts are terrified that they might see a man wearing a dress and makeup and feel better a spark of attraction.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: Drag has been around everywhere for forever. Do you think they had actresses playing the female roles in Lysastrata?
Harrison Wesley
@Citizen Alan: They didn’t have actresses in Shakespeare’s time, either.
Citizen Alan
@Jerszy: the speaker at my grad school graduation was author john grisham, who opened his speech by saying he had looked up the duration of the shortest commencement speech ever given at an old miss graduation, and he said he intended to beat it. His speech was almost exactly twenty one minutes, one minute under. For my bachelor’s in music education, it had been that piece of shit kirk fordice, our newly elected GOP governor, who gave a long speech about how the problem is with education in mississippi was that the teachers were greedy and overpaid, which set the tone for my very brief teaching career.
Another Scott
@Melancholy Jaques: +1
My best friend from high school in Ohio was a loud and proud “ABC – Anybody But Clinton” voter in 2016. (I’m sure he would have voted for Donnie again, but he passed away in 2017.) No doubt many people felt that way about Harris, and some felt some general unease about her.
And some who didn’t like the religion of her husband (who had no problem with Donnie basically being the Antichrist).
And some who didn’t like her being a “California Liberal” (who had no problem with a New York City “billionaire”).
And some who just didn’t like either of them and couldn’t vote for either of them and just stayed home because they weren’t “inspired” to bother to vote.
In a closely divided electorate subject to voter suppression, a media landscape the values “engagement” over objective information that the population can use, a legal system slanted toward monsters who want a reactionary king and plutocrats to rule, and the Electoral College, those small groups matter.
[ sigh ]
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Baud:
Agreed.
RevRick
@Melancholy Jaques: By all accounts the two most effective ads against Harris were:
1). Where she exclaims, “Bidenomics is working!”;§
2). Where the ads says, “Harris is in favor of they/them, Trump is in favor of you.” *
§ Just shows how tone deaf Democrats are about your economic interests.
*The meta message here is that while Walz went around saying Republicans are weird, the real weirdos are the Democrats.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
There were about a hundred-eighty two versions of “I’d vote for a woman, just not her” in 2016.
The campaign to undercut Hillary that began back when she was just the first lady of Arkansas proved itself to be effective decades later. Did they have a time machine or something?
Another Scott
@trollhattan: +1 But it goes back before then. The RWNJs are relentless.
I [remember] the over-the-top screaming about the dangers of the Equal Rights Amendment, the Hyde Amendment, and Anita Bryant and…
They tolerated a very few strong women, like Sen. Margaret Chase Smith who were on their team. But they fought tooth-and-nail against Democratic women, or non-Republican women, or anyone being overtly non-heterosexual, or …, having any power that challenged their vision of American (white) patriarchy.
I think they are losing. I think they know it, and that’s why they’re trying to break everything now. But I am not sanguine about the pace of change or the arrival of the day when Americans care about gender and skin color as much as we do about eye color and whether we have free or attached ear lobes.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
dnfree
@Jerszy: Bill Cosby also spoke at my youngest daughter’s college graduation in 2003 and paid tribute especially to teachers. He was still thought of as a beloved figure then.
dnfree
@MagdaInBlack: Somehow I love “poke a dot”! A new eggcorn for me. I have always seen it as “polka dot”, but what sense does that make, really?
dnfree
@Professor Bigfoot: Well, it appears your approach of assuming the worst has pretty accurate so far.
MagdaInBlack
@dnfree: Ya know, I wasn’t sure, so I googled. I had always used “polka” but it told me “poke” so, silly me, I trusted it =-)
I supposed “poke” as in “poke a hole in” kinda sorta makes sense ?
Melancholy Jaques
@dnfree:
They are called polka dots because the pattern of dots on dresses became popular at the same time as the polka dance and the two were linked.
Although the dance is associated with Poland & Polish Americans, the word polka comes from Bohemian, according to my Bohemian grandmother.
Both of the foregoing stories might be legend rather than fact.
The Lodger
@Uncle Cosmo: Hey Unc, good to see you again! Hadn’t seen your nym in a while.
Eyeroller
@Melancholy Jaques: The association with the name of the dance is certainly the accepted etymology of the term. Apparently other random things were also named “polka something” when the dance was all the rage, but only “polka dots” survives.
And I knew it wasn’t Polish (that would be more like “polska”) but didn’t know the origiin of “polka” itself.
But it is not and never has been “poke a dot.”
Ilieitz
@Professor Bigfoot:
Ilieitz
I thought the same thing but I didn’t say because I didn’t want a visit from the Secret Service
lowtechcyclist
@Uncle Cosmo:
I think I was in college before I heard of Boris Gudunov, and probably around that age when I first heard of the minor TV celeb Durward Kirby.
Iron City
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Some people from my work doing foreign military sales weere there. The reviewing stand was turned into free fire zone with Sadat and a number of other people killed and wounded. The Americans ran out the back, and then home as fast as possible.
Jerszy
@dnfree: When he gave mine, he was just getting started collecting honorary degrees (now mostly rescinded,) while giving a scolding, “pull up your pants” lecture to students. By 2003 I bet he had really perfected the sham.
chemiclord
@Melancholy Jaques: Right? They can say non-voters actually lean whatever way the pollster wants, often because those voters are so incoherent that they can hold several contradictory political views simultaneously. Just changing the wording of a poll question will turn the most communist non-voter into the most reactionary right winger, and do so easily.
It really boils down to an observation that I saw on Bluesky that goes like this:
https://bsky.app/profile/suannelqr.bsky.social/post/3lp3ozofejc2e
There’s really no “messaging” that’s going to sink in when voters don’t want it to. Even if you didn’t believe a single word that came out of Kamala Harris’s “neoliberal,” “corporatist,” mouth… Trump was not an unknown quantity here. American voters had no reason to not understand the fucking question.
It was the easiest multiple choice question in the history of fucking history, and the American people willfully failed. Everything that’s come since is shitty people trying to deflect blame from their shitty behavior.
dnfree
@Jerszy: You’re right, there was some scolding involved.