WE DON’T REALLY BAN BOOKS, BUT THE LEFT BANS PEOPLE:  Banning Books and People.

THEY’RE NOT NICE. THEY’RE PUDDINGHEADS:  Nice People Do a Lot of Damage.

I’M STILL PRAYING, BUT LOSING HOPE THIS WILL ALL BLOW OVER WITHOUT A MESS:  Tucker Carlson warns that Biden is actively criminalizing political opposition.

YEAH. I AIN’T BUYING IT:  January 6 Pipe Bombs Get Curiouser and Curiouser.

WELL, NOW, IT’S NOT LIKE HE “PARADED” IN THE CAPITOL, AFTER ALL:  Democrat Las Vegas Official Accused of Murdering Journalist Keeps His Paycheck and Position.

WHICH IS WHY BIDEN IS DYING TO HAND THEM MORE PALLETS OF CASH:  Israeli Defense Minister: Iran Turning Syrian Military Sites Into Missile Factories For Terrorist Groups.

AS IN EVERY PLACE THE DEMS RUN:  Crime Rises in Asheville, NC, and Many Blame the Democrats Who Run the Town.

YES, INDEED. HOW DARE THEY HIGHLIGHT HIS CORRUPTION AND INVOLVEMENT OF THE SITTING “PRESIDENT” OF THE US, HIS FATHER?  Poor poor Hunter and the invasion of his privacy by the big bad Republicans.

SNIFFS. IT’S STARTING TO SMELL A LOT LIKE GERMANY…   Today’s blacklisted American: Two students harassed and blackballed from a “sexual assault survivor’s club” because they were Jewish.

The left, ladies and gentlemen.

NOT JUST THE DOJ, THE WHOLE LEFT IS GOING ORWELL ON STILTS:  Trump’s lawyers file a response about the Special Master.

SO, THEY’LL CURE  IT ONCE AT UNTOLD EXPENSE, PROCLAIM VICTORY, AND NEVER TRY IT AGAIN?  Cancer Moonshot Announced By Biden In Boston.

BRAVE BRAVE WOMEN WATCHING THE DREK FOR US:  Gutsy Part One: Hillary And Chelsea Star In “Le Flop”.

IT’S ALREADY PRETTY WOBBLY:  A Railroad Strike Will Break Our Supply Chain.

WAS NERO A BETTER CLASS OF MUSIC ACT, YOU THINK?  I’ve Seen Gaslighting and I’ve Seen the Stock Market Tank.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Tick, tock, the railway strike clock counts down and Mayor Pete is nowhere around. “When last we saw our Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, he wa. . . wait. When last did we see Pete Buttigieg?”

OFFICIAL BULLYING AND INTIMIDATION: Tucker Reveals FBI Just Raided Mike Lindell, the Pillow Guy.

Related: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.

Remember, Biden’s own press secretary says that if you disagree with the majority, you’re an extremist!

“ON THE COVER IT SAID ‘DON’T PANIC’ IN LARGE FRIENDLY LETTERS”: Monkeypox Boogaloo: Pestilence Panic 2022 (VIP)

GOOD NEWS FOR CRIMINALS: IL SAFE-T Act goes into effect 1 Jan: No cash bail and lots of other good stuff.

OUCH:

ALREADY? It’s time for another Open Thread.

YEESH … THOSE BRITS CAN PUNCH HARD:

“There’s a reason those Brits used to be a mighty empire, you know. I may not want to live in under a waning empire that’s evolving into a proto-woke surveillance state, but darn it all if the Brits can’t hang civility and decorum over our heads. Their society might be turning into a circus alongside ours, but it’s an orderly circus, dangit. Here, we’re just descending into absolute madness.”

I APPROVE: Saudi Women Take Up Shooting After Gun Ownership Legalized. “In barely two years, Saudi women have earned the right to both drive and to own a firearm.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: New moon mineral discovered in China’s lunar samples: The discovery means China is the third country to discover a new lunar mineral, following the United States and former Soviet Union.

MICHAEL ANTON: The Immorality of The Godfather.

In the second scene, a wistful Don Vito laments to Michael that his son was, in effect, forced into the mafia.

VITO: I knew Santino was gonna have to go through all this. And Fredo … Fredo was … uhh. But I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life—I don’t apologize—to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool, dancing on the string held by all those … bigshots. I don’t apologize—that’s my life—but I thought that, that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone. Something.Note, first, that the don presents his own, and Michael’s, dilemma as a choice between starving his family or a life of crime. This is hokum. And it is immediately belied by the don’s sorrow that his youngest son couldn’t become a governor or a senator. What about a middle-class life practicing an honest trade? The idea isn’t even contemplated, for himself or his sons.

Note, too, that Sonny, the eldest brother, “had to” become a Mafioso. Why? This isn’t explained, beyond the hoary cliché to “take care” of the family. But the Corleones are richer than the dreams of avarice. “Need” stopped being a motivating principle for them well before 1920, with the first shipments of Corleone-financed Canadian booze to Corleone-controlled speakeasies all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. And why, in the end, did Michael have to follow his father’s and brothers’ footsteps? He didn’t. The central tragedy of the film is that he chooses to, ostensibly to save his father—this is what he tells himself—but really because he enjoys power.

There are three ways to interpret all this. The first is that Michael, and the don, really believe what they say. It may be genuine belief, or it may be rationalization, but it is not said to deceive.

The second is that Michael is just shining Kay on, telling her what she needs to hear so that she can justify to herself her otherwise shameful desire to marry a gangster.

The third interpretation hinges on Puzo’s and Coppola’s intent. Are Michael and the don speaking for author and auteur, channeling, especially, Coppola’s Watergate-era cynicism? (Though the break-in itself would not happen until three months after the film’s release, the movie is commonly lumped with other jaded products of the early 1970s.) Coppola justified to himself taking on what he considered a low-grade project unworthy of his genius by his ambition to transform the tale into an indictment of capitalism, greed, and the American Dream.

Leave the gun, take the cannoli, and read the whole thing.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Doctor pulls off ‘likely the world’s first’ electric car-powered vasectomy.

Electric cars are known for their lower fuel costs, emission reduction and, apparently, powering vasectomies.

Dr Christopher Yang, a urologist from Austin, Texas, revealed his unique solution to performing a vasectomy at his clinic after the power went out — using his Rivian R1T truck.

Yang had rescheduled other appointments when the outage hit on Aug. 25, and was set to do the same for the vasectomy when colleague jokingly suggested doing the procedure using Yang’s pickup truck as a backup power source, per NPR affiliate WGLT.

Futhermore, Yang said his patient didn’t want to reschedule because he’d already taken time off of work for the procedure, so he agreed to go through with it despite the novel power source.

Yang powered his operation by running an extension cord from the carpark all the way to the patient’s room.

That’s nothing — get back to me when Dr. Yang performs the procedure in a car that’s moving: