Thread before the Gardening Thread, Oct. 17

Can't wait to hear what has been going on!

Let's hear frome some attendees

I’ve never seen a stance that says “take back Texas” less than this one

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) May 27, 2026

On a scale of “Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election” to “Respected nominee to Supreme Court is secretly a serial gang rape cartel leader roaming the streets of suburban Maryland,” where would “it’s weird that this guy in the middle of a hot Senate race hasn’t been on the trail for weeks” rank?

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 13, 2026

Commentary on the News - Category: Women

For sheer weakness and mediocrity, it's hard to top college presidents, as Cornell's president is showing.

— Brit Hume (@brithume) October 17, 2026

You know who is braver than a college president? Wynton Marsalis speaking out against rap and hip-hop in black culture. Not that I agree on all his positions.

Wynton Marsalis covered all the bases. Race. His role in New Orleans’s removal of Confederate statues last year. His deep antipathy to rap and hip-hop. And the damage he believes the genres inflict on African Americans. “I feel that that’s much more of a racial issue than taking Robert E. Lee’s statue down,” Marsalis told me in the latest episode of “Cape Up.” “There’s more niggers in that than there is in Robert E. Lee’s statue.”

I am also disturbed by young non-black kids imitating black gang culture. And I was horrified to hear a non-black neighbor, a fairly regular guy, casually listening to gangsta rap with his friend in the presence of their eight year old daughters. Worse language about women than anything at Cornell. I said something.

This really is - even vs Trump and Biden's antics - zany third world bullshite.

This woman married her own (gay?) brother as part of an immigration fraud scam, which has been low-key known about since decade-old revelations on Somali Spot (sue me if you deny this). She now denies exactly knowing her birth-date.

No real punch line here. What a rude house-guest.

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) October 14, 2026

Click over to "X" for pertinent advice.

This American used to be a liberal and was shocked by what she was told in college about Muslims

“I went to college where a social work professor asked our class, what are you doing on an everyday basis to combat racism and prejudice and bigotry? So I raised my hand as a really proud, liberal, naive young woman. I raised my hand so proud and I said, well, when I go to the airport, I always go out of my way to be really nice and smile at Middle Eastern men. because I assume that people have been really mean to them at the airport, so I always go out of my way to smile at them.

And she looked at me in front of the entire class and said, never do that again, because in their culture, smiling at a man means that you're a prostitute, so never do that again”

“I was stunned into silence. And I don't know who needs to hear this today, but sympathy toward an ideology that is openly hostile, brutally oppressive and objectifying to women is not empathy. It's actually what I would call Western privilege. You have the privilege of extending sympathy to men who buy into this radical ideology because you have never been a Middle Eastern woman subject to being under it. How you look at them will never change how they look at you”

For those that didn’t know this, it’s real. In Muslim culture a woman smiling at a man that is not her husband is considered haram (forbidden) and strongly prohibited

Muslims say a woman uncovering her face and smiling at a man can lead to evil, here’s the actual reasoning

“It is haraam for a woman to uncover her face or to smile at a non-mahram man, because of the evil to which that may lead.”

Our cultures are not equal. Islam is not compatible with Western Civilization

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) October 12, 2026

The Founding of our Country

A Daily Dose of the American Rev

Defeated at the Battle of Bemis Heights, surrounded, and greatly outnumbered, British general John Burgoyne surrendered his 6,300-man army on this day in 1777. The campaign that he had so confidently begun four months earlier, had ended disastrously for him. For the victorious Patriots, it was a desperately needed success, crushing the British attempt to isolate New England and leading directly to the crucial American alliance with France.

As provided in the terms of capitulation, at 11 a.m. Burgoyne’s army laid down (grounded) their arms, overseen by two of General Gates’s aides. The surrendered army then marched out in a column passing through lines of American troops drawn up on either side of them, both sides behaving with solemnity and decorum. Burgoyne and his staff proceeded to Gates’s headquarters, where Burgoyne presented his sword to Gates. “The Fortune of war, General Gates, has made me your prisoner,” he said. Gates answered, “I shall always be ready to testify that it has not been through any fault of your excellency,” as he returned the sword to Burgoyne.

The terms of the surrender provided that Burgoyne’s disarmed army would march to Boston, where it would be allowed to board ships and return to Great Britain, on the condition that none of the surrendered men were to participate further in the war. Congress objected strenuously, however, when the terms became known, protesting that there could be no assurance the British would honor them and that even if they did the surrendered men could simply take the place of other British garrisons which could then be sent to America. So before allowing the British soldiers to leave, Congress required that Parliament explicitly ratify the agreement. But because Great Britain did not recognize the validity of the U.S. government, it would not formally enter into any official agreement with it. That being exactly what Congress had expected, Burgoyne’s men (who came to be called "the Convention Army" ) were treated as prisoners of war, kept initially in Massachusetts and ultimately in barracks in Albemarle County, Virginia. The fascinating story of the “Convention Army” will be a Dose for another day.

The painting is “The Surrender of General Burgoyne” by John Trumbull. Completed in 1821, it hangs in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol.

WEEKEND

I have been skimming some little AI stories in my social media feed. Man, are some of the story lines complex, yet stupidly incomplete. One featured multiple hidden identities and two misidentified deaths. Plus a hidden prison and a child held ransom for a future trust payout.

These old Colombo stories, on the other hand, take a simple story and pay attention to detail. Some politicians might want to pay attention.

Wanna change your story now?

The cat is out of the bag.

The Week In Pictures: Search Me Edition

Another busy week in the news: the midterms approached a climax, there were riots in France, Katie Zacharia came and went in record time, Elon Musk unveiled a flying (sort of) automobile. But from a meme point of view, the number one story was Homeland Security's raid on Ilhan Omar's D.C. house. Speculation as to what crime is being investigated is rampant, and Omar's statement in response sounded like a farewell address. But that is too much to hope for. Meanwhile, no word on whether they searched her underwear drawer.

Music

One of the Texas Rags

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, October 10, Real history

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