Flotsam and Jetsam - Kamala Kameleon

Insty, SHE DON’T FEEL NO WAYS TAHR’D: Steve Guest@SteveGuest, "WATCH: Over 3 minutes of Kamala Harris using different phony accents throughout the years. Despite spending her childhood in Berkley, California and Montreal, Canada, Kamala uses what she thinks is a Detroit accent, what she thinks a southern accent in Georgia, a French accent, and more!" Matt Palumbo at Bongino, Kamala Harris Can't Stop Putting on Fake Accents When Pandering. OTP, ‘Foghorn Leghorn’: Kamala Harris Unveils 7th Fake Accent So Far. At Breitbart, Kamala Harris to Georgia Voter: I Washed My Collard Greens in a Bathtub. From the Wombats In The Mailbox: 09.03.24, Legal Insurrection, ‘Detroit Speak:’ Kamala Harris Cannot Stop With ‘Cringe’ Accents,  The Babylon Bee quips about 10 Ways Kamala Addresses Crowds Of Different Races "#6 "Tell Jewish voters 'Oy Vey! Trump And Vance Are Meshuggeneh!'": This might work as long as she remembers to not break into pro-Palestine chants right after." Hat Hair's Capt. Ed adds "Gotta say that #7 might actually work." Nick Arama at RedState relates Classic Gold: Doocy Grills WH About Kamala's Fake Accent and KJP Implodes. VOZ@ Voz_US, "#OPINION | Kamala has been known for years for her weak oratory. When she speaks she has a hard time keeping the thread of the conversation, and she also has a nervous laugh that not only gives her away easily, but also annoys many". VodkaPundit at PJM, Harris's New Trick to Avoid Reporters Backfires Spectacularly. "One detail does not pass the sniff test, though, and you can see it at about the eight-second mark. Harris, earbuds in her ears, lifts the phone up to her ear as if to talk to someone — that she isn't already talking to through her earbuds?"

From the Wombats In The Mailbox: 09.03.24, Twitchy, Tulsi Gabbard Expertly Reminds Dana Bash Who Should ACTUALLY Be The Focus Of The Arlington Story, and American Thinker: The Truth About Arlington. At WaEx Byron York discusses Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and Arlington cemetery. Benny Johnson@bennyjohnson "Biden-Harris' Afghanistan withdrawal, marred by the tragic deaths of 13 American heroes presents a huge threat to Kamala's campaign. This weekend Kamala signal-boosted one of her all-time gravest failures. Good on the Gold Star families for speaking up against her like this— WOW." WaEx, “We invited Trump:” 8 Gold Star families send video messages to Kamala Harris. Ace, Gold Star Families Blast Kamala Harris for Her Part in Democrat Media Hoax About Arlington Wreath-Laying ". . . The Gold Star families resent being used in the latest Democrat-Media-Deep State Party op." Jeff Blehar at NRO thinks The Harris Campaign’s Stall in Momentum Is Reflected by the Non-Scandals It Promotes. Capt. Ed, "The media has gone all-in on carrying this particular scandal water, even as the Gold Star families push back. That tells you something about their desperation, too." 

Hat Hair's Duane Patterson sees Kamala Harris Stumble Out of the Blocks of the Labor Day Sprint To November. Doug McKinnon at TownHall thinks The Kamala Harris Campaign Is Collapsing. Aop Da Hill, Carville Lists ‘Imperatives’ For Harris To Become ‘Certified Fresh Candidate’.From the Wombats In The Mailbox: 09.03.24, at Am Great, Can They Really Reinvent Kamala Harris in 70 Days?, Victory Girls, Imagine This – Kamala Harris Leading Our Military. At Twitchy, Kamala Claims to Have Always Had Only 'One Client' (LOL, Guess How THAT Went Over on Twitter). Althouse find "It's not the economy, stupid: Why Kamala Harris should focus on everything else." Well, she can't brag about the economy, stupid. AP, Harris opposes US Steel’s sale to a Japanese firm during joint Pennsylvania event with Biden, stealing another Trump idea. At JTN, John Solomon thinks Kamala Harris speech from 2023 on transgender rights risks boomerang with American voters, "“What Vice President Harris calls anti-equality laws are seen as common sense by most Americans,” pollster Scott Rasmussen says." Roger Simon thinks Obama, Not Trump, Is Kamala's "Dictator". So sad, at OTP, Hillary Clinton Got COVID At Democratic Convention, Bails Out Of Harris Fundraiser. At PJM Matt Margolis wonders Is Biden Trying to Help Kamala Lose? "Even Newsweek is wondering why Kamala is letting Joe campaign with her." She doesn't know how to say no. 

OTP, Walz Boasts He’s Not ‘In The Pocket’ Of Organized Labor: ‘I Am The Pocket!’ Restoration News reports on Pornography in Schools, Brought to You by Harris-Walz. When I was a kid we had to find it ourselves. Madeline Leesman at TownHall suspects, Did Tim Walz Lie About Getting Turned Away From a George W. Bush Rally? Looks like it. 

PJM's Stephen Kruiser reports Joe Biden Is Back From the Beach to Give His Hamas Buddies Some Love. NYPo ed board, Will Harris-Biden act to counter Iranian agents behind anti-Israel campus protests? Wanna bet? Ace, cites Nitwit Actor George Clooney: Biden Quitting Was the Most "Selfless Thing Since George Washington" "That must gladden Joe Biden's heart. He went to school with George Washington. Biden was a flankerback on George Washington's football team. George Clooney is the biggest jerkoff since Aaron Burr." From the Wombats In The Mailbox: 09.03.24, at Am Great, Biden, Back From 2-Week Vacation, Delivers Remarks on His ‘Accomplishments,’ Suffers Brain Fog, Refuses to Take Questions.

Mark Green at NYPo, Stats show the Biden-Harris administration just stopped caring if criminals crossed the border. From NewsMax, Convicted Murderer Deported 4 Times Arrested in Texas. At Da Caller, Teen Girl At Baseball Game Randomly Stabbed By Previously Deported Illegal Migrant, Police Allege. Da Blaze, Previously deported illegal alien stabs teen girl at a baseball game in the random attack: Police. Leak Barkoukis at TownHall, NYC Cops Estimate What Percentage of Crimes Were Committed by Illegal Immigrants  Hat Hair's Jazz Shaw reports Migrants Now Make Up 75% of Arrests in Manhattan. VodkaPundit at PJM quips Midtown 'Migrants' Are Just Doing 75% of the Crimes Americans Won't Do. Be fair, New Yorkers voted for it. Stephen Kruiser PJM, More Awful 'Migrant' Madness for Trump to Bury Harris With in Debate. Ace, Colonizers: Now Venezuelan Gangsters Take Over Apartment Building in Chicago. Well, they voted for it, too. Insurrection Barbie@DefiyantlyFree. "Michell Obama and Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush wrote a letter about the children that were being separated from their families at the border when Donald Trump was president. Do you notice the radio silence by all of these hypocrites and hacks that 320,000 children have gone missing under the Harris/Biden administration?" Elon Musk@elonmusk, "Most of Earth should move to California! Illegals get free medical care in California as of January and now get “payback optional” $150k loans, funded by California taxpayers, among many other benefits."

From Insty, MILTON FRIEDMAN LOOKS DOWN AND SAYS “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO, YOU MORONS.” James Lavish@jameslavish, "The market is reacting negatively this morning to extremely poor ISM manufacturing data. The TL;DR: Demand fell, inventories rose (due to unsold stock), and prices *rose* (due to labor and shipping costs). This is the definition of stagflation. The Fed’s worst nightmare." VodkaPundit warns Tighten That Belt Even More Because Here Comes the Dreaded S-Word.  Worse than Carter. But Hat Hair's John Sexton warns Progressives Are Hopeful They Can Raise Your Taxes Next Year. OTP, CA Democrats Reject Tax-Free Tips. Hey, they got "migrants" to pay! From the Wombats In The Mailbox: 09.03.24, First Street Journal  Youts Have A Big Vote Decision: A Good Economy Or Climate (scam) Action, and Happy BidenHarrisflation Labor Day Weekend!

At NewsMax, Pollsters Who Called 2016, 2020 Say Harris Losing Steam and Jim McLaughlin to Newsmax: Media Is Under-Sampling Republicans in Polls. WaT, Pro-Democrat samples fuel Harris surge; unfavorable vice president closes gap with Trump in polls. Hat Hair's Dave Strom looks at Why Nate Silver  Is Showing Trump More Likely to Win. NYPo claims Latest swing state polls suggest Trump could score decisive victory against Kamala Harris. From the Wombats In The Mailbox: 09.03.24, Don Surber on Making it too big to rig. WSJ, cited at Hat Hair, Harris Is Still Trying to Rebuild Biden’s Winning 2020 Coalition and Capt. Ed says "Enthusiasm numbers among Democrats have gone up briefly with the change to Harris, but that probably won't last. "   Capt. Ed thinks it's Too Fun to Check: Walz Cost Harris 5 Points in ... Minnesota? Matt Margolis says Whoa! Tim Walz May Actually Be Hurting Kamala's Chances of Winning Minnesota. Matt Vespa wonders Based on This Minnesota Poll, Did Kamala Choose the Wrong Horse for a Running Mate? 

From Fox, Illinois Gov. Pritzker says nobody should 'underestimate' Trump in debate against Harris. Da Caller, Renowned Pollster Says Trump Can Trounce Harris In Debate With These Key Questions.  “Why did inflation get so high under your administration? What exactly are you going to do if your policies caused it? What can you do to solve it?” “And most importantly, are you better off today than you were four years ago?" That was four question, but what the heck. At PM, BREAKING: Trump says he would have 'no problem' releasing full Epstein list. Althouse hosts Jordan Peterson, "Yeah, well, Trump has that unvarnished element, and that's also something that's very appealing to working-class people...." ""He doesn't talk down to people.... He's very good at that.... Yeah, well and he's got that gift of spontaneity." And Lex Fridman does a distinctive interview with Donald Trump.... Sundance at CTH likes it too, President Trump Podcast Interview with Lex Fridman. From PM, Secret Service failed to prevent juvenile from trespassing Mar-a-Lago for hour, jumping in pool in 2023.

OTP, 63 Days Until Election Day, But Voting Starts On Friday; 57% Will Cast Ballots Early. From the Free Bacon, Do You Like NASCAR? This 'Non-partisan' Voter Registration Group Doesn’t Want To Help You "The Voter Participation Center excludes NASCAR fans, golf aficionados from its voter registration efforts."  At Hat Hair Jazz Shaw, Cornel West: Harris Tried to Bribe Me to Drop Out and Dave Strom has a Prediction: The Return of Students to Campus Will Have a Big Impact on Presidential Race. From the Wombats In The Mailbox: 09.03.24, The Federalist: RNC Alleges Pennsylvania Dems Recruited Out-Of-State Poll Watchers In Defiance Of Election Law, The Now-Forgotten ‘Climate Crisis’ Was Just A Cynical Ploy For Democrats To Gain Power, Pennsylvania Court Says Improperly Dated Mail Ballots Must Be Counted, In ‘Untethered And Unprecedented’ Ruling, Democrat-Controlled States Refuse To Clean Voter Rolls And Fix Election Problems, and CBS News Present Leftists As ‘Experts’ To Smear Opponents As Spreading ‘Disinformation’.

At NewsMax, Federal Judge Rejects Trump Request to Intervene in Wake of N.Y. Conviction. Capt. Ed comments It would have been an extraordinary intervention at this stage, certainly. Trump's attorneys must have known that too, but it doesn't hurt to try. From Da Wire, Andy McCarthy On Trump’s New Legal Peril And Jack Smith’s Next Move. "Special Counsel Jack Smith has revised the federal charges against Donald Trump, responding to the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity." Josh Hammer at Da Caller on Jack Smith, Democrat Lawfare Complex Hit Man "No one should have been under any preexisting illusions that Smith was a noble lawman dedicated to upholding a neutral rule of law." Matt Vespa points out Here's Where FBI Officials Realized What Could Be the DOJ's Goal in Raiding Mar-a-Lago. "There’s another theory: The DOJ felt that the comprehensive binder on the Russian collusion investigation, all the dirty laundry about this probe that House investigators compiled in 2019-2020 was at Mar-a-Lago. This binder reportedly went missing before the COVID pandemic, and the usual Deep State subjects were fearful that Trump had a copy of the original file on the property." They can have multiple motives. 

Linda Sun

Hat Hair cites NYT, Hmmm: Feds Arrest Former Hochul Deputy Chief of Staff, Capt. Ed, Feds: Former Aide to Hochul, Cuomo a Spy for China. Nicholas Ballasy at JTN reports Former aide to NY Democrat Gov. Hochul charged with acting as agent of Chinese government "Her husband, Chris Hu, was also arrested at the couple's $3.5 million home located on Long Island." AP,  Former aide to New York's governor is charged with being an agent of the Chinese government. "Linda Sun, who held numerous posts in New York state government before rising to the rank of deputy chief of staff for Hochul, was arrested Tuesday morning along with her husband at their $3.5 million home on Long Island." From NYPo, Ex-Hochul and Cuomo aide enjoyed $4M mansion, salted ducks, ballet performances and other luxury gifts from double life as Chinese agent: feds.

At Hat Hair, Victor Joecks, How Democrats Undermined Democracy, Dave Strom, Suddenly the Constitution is 'Dangerous', and The Third Reich (Robert). Walter Kirn@walterkirn, "The last few days have seen an almost symphonic surge of attacks on our most fundamental rights, by officials, newspapers, politicians, celebrities, & academics. It's not rhetoric anymore, it's an organized massing of institutional forces prior to big moves which seem imminent.." Quotes Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley "Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary, is calling for the arrest of Elon Musk for his refusal to censor speech. https://foxnews.com/media/ex-labor-secretary-robert-reich-claims-elon-musk-out-control-says-regulators-should-threaten-arrest… Reich has long been a staunch ally of the anti-free speech movement..." The Populist notes Brazilian President Calls Elon “Far Right” because supporting free speech is now "far right."  Chris Bray at Tell Me How This Ends calls them Jackbooted Paste Eaters "it's illegal for you to notice that i pick my nose, you fascist, so you have to go to prison." Insty, WHEN THEY TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY WANT, BELIEVE THEM: and a bunch of videos including:

“They are directly speaking to millions & millions of people without oversight.”

Exactly. That’s free speech. No oversight by government bureaucrats. @jaketapper looks genuinely dumbfounded that this could possibly be her actual position. pic.twitter.com/yOSMq0rMfx

— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) September 3, 2024

Mia Cathell at TownHall, More of the Nashville Trans Shooter's Manifesto Just Dropped. Twitchy reports it's Absolutely Left-Wing TERRORISM: Covenant School Trans Shooter Audrey Hale's Manifesto Writings RELEASED. 'Bonchie' at RedState, NEW: Nashville Trans Shooter's Full Manifesto Released, and It Makes the Cover-Up So Much Worse. 

Insty, FOLLOW THE “SCIENCE:” "Women have more strokes than men, but new European Guidelines remove ‘women’ bc it omits ‘non-binary’ & transgendered people." JTN, 26 states have blocked Title IX, nearly 700 schools won’t comply. "Biden’s new gender-affirming Title IX rules redefine sexual discrimination to include sexual orientation."

Insty, HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: "Anti-Israel activists kick off new school year vandalizing Cornell buildings. 44% of Jewish students don’t feel safe on their own campus: Poll. Pro-Palestinian protesters ‘shut down’ Pomona College convocation. Senior Hamas official encourages U.S. students to ‘escalate’ anti-Israel protests on campuses. Flashback: Jewish students, come here to the South — where you’ll be safe."

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Sunday Morning Coffee and FMJRA 2.0: Is It October Yet? up and garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

You May No Longer Say Someone is Outstanding in their Field

She's outstanding in her field

 It offends the easily offended. At the Free Bacon, Michigan Cites Racism in Decision To Ban Term 'Field Worker' ‘While the widespread use of this term is not intended to be harmful, we cannot ignore the impact its use has on our employees’

Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services says it will no longer use the words "field worker" in agency communications, citing the term's "implication for descendants of enslaved Black and Brown individuals."

The department said "staff and stakeholders have raised concerns" about the term’s allegedly racist connotations, according to a January 4 memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

"While the widespread use of this term is not intended to be harmful, we cannot ignore the impact its use has on our employees," the memo reads. "Establishing shared language is essential to our collective progress."

 

The memo came from Demetrius Starling, the director of the department’s Children’s Services Agency, and Dwayne Haywood, the director of the department’s Economic Stability Administration, neither of whom responded to requests for comment. Its letterhead includes Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (D.), who in 2021 mandated "implicit bias training" for all health professionals in the state.

 

The government of Michigan is not the only progressive body to put "field" out to pasture. On Monday, the University of Southern California’s school of social work announced that it had removed the term from its curriculum, citing the need to "reject white supremacy."

"This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant," an email from the university’s education department said. "Phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign."

Formerly known as the "field education department," the school’s education program will now be called the "practicum education department."

Sheer lunacy. Back when I was an active scientist, "field work" was the best part.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: 2B or not 2B up on time and under budget at The Other McCain.

That Wasn't a Mugging, It was an "Interaction"

NYPo, Shark advocates call for rebranding violent attacks as ‘interactions’

Marine experts and advocates in Australia are urging the public to refrain from using the word “attack” in reference to sharks, declaring that the majestic predatory fish has been unfairly stigmatized as a deliberate killer.

Instead, officials have suggested that violent run-ins with sharks be dubbed with more neutral words — such as “interactions.”

Others have suggested swapping the word with the terms “negative encounter,” “incident” or simply “bites,” the Sydney Morning Herald recently reported.

Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.   

” ‘Shark attack’ is a lie,” said University of Sydney language researcher Christopher Pepin-Neff, who argued that a majority of what people call “attacks” are merely nips and minor injuries from smaller sharks.

He also told the Aussie outlet that such phenomena were once called “shark accidents,” prior to the 1930s when prominent Sydney surgeon Victor Coppleson began calling them “attacks.” 

The change marked a shift in mood as shark nets were also being implemented on Australian beaches at that time.

Government agencies have also begun to adopt new language, including the Department of Primary Industries in New South Wales (NSW DPI), which has worked with a shark-survivors support group, Bite Club, to identify more sensitive vocabulary to describe an audience with a shark.

Which reminds me of a song my Dad used to sing:

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Bunny Girl Senpai ready for your digital delight.

How Much Did He Know and When Did He Know It?

Stacy McCain on the 'Hilaria' Baldwin "scandal" ‘Mi Casa en Beacon Hill’

It was discovered that Alec Baldwin’s wife, who pretended to be a Spaniard named “Hilaria,” is in fact a New England WASP of colonial stock who was known as Hillary Hayward-Thomas to her private-school classmates at the Cambridge School of Weston, growing up in a five-bedroom home in the prestigious Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston.

The most interesting aspect of this fraud is how Alec Baldwin himself has acted as an accomplice in his fake-Spanish wife’s hoax. Ace of Spades pointed out that there are video clips of Baldwin making media appearances in which he mocked his wife’s “Spanish” accent . . . 

Obvious question: How could Baldwin not know the truth?

Obvious answer: It’s impossible. We must assume that Baldwin has met his wife’s parents, Dr. Kathryn Hayward and attorney David Thomas Jr. Since her parents are entirely American — they retired to the Mediterranean resort of Mallorca, but living on a Spanish island doesn’t make you a Spaniard — Baldwin must know his wife’s accent is phony.

Just FYI: My oldest daughter’s husband is Argentine, and she spent a full year in a Spanish-language immersion program in Argentina. She is fluent in Spanish, and they use both languages in their home, but my daughter doesn’t speak English with an accent. Do you see the point?

 

No matter how fluent in Spanish one might become, a native speaker of English doesn’t lose the ability to speak English, yet “Hilaria” Baldwin pretends she doesn’t know the English word for “cucumber.”

So what’s this about? We know that “Hilaria” owned a chain of yoga studios in New York. Is it possible that there is some sort of government program in New York that grants favorable treatment to minority-owned businesses, and that she was taking advantage of that? Because otherwise I cannot think of any other reason why this Yankee WASP would pretend to be Hispanic, except perhaps that she might be mentally ill.

Well, she did marry Alec Baldwin . . .

A phony in Hollywood? Scandalum magnatum! Besides, she's clearly a better actor than Alec.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Rep. Lauren Boebert up and running. 

Hilarious!

Megan Fox at PJ Media, Cultural Appropriation Alert: Alec Baldwin's Wife Torched for Faking Spanish Accent and Heritage

Hilaria Baldwin is married to Alec Baldwin, the mouthy star who does a terrible impression of Donald Trump for Saturday Night Live. Hilaria, or Hillary Hayward Thomas as she was known growing up in Boston, is on the receiving end of internet sleuths who seem to be out to cancel her for faking a Spanish accent and lying about where she was born. Page Six has the story.

Hilaria Baldwin has been forced to defend her fluctuating Spanish accent — and admitted that her name is “Hillary.”

 

The wife of Alec Baldwin took to Instagram Sunday morning after a Twitter storm erupted following a tweet which read: “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”

Baldwin’s own bio on her agency’s speakers site states that she was born on the island of Mallorca, Spain, and raised in Boston. Her 2016 interview with Hola! magazine also stated: “Hilaria, who was born in Spain, has made certain to raise her children with her native language, Spanish.”

 

During TV appearances, she has spoken with a pronounced Spanish accent, and on one occasion during a cooking segment she even seemingly forgot the English word for “cucumber.”

Here’s an ABC video of her with a strong accent describing married life, and another of her “forgetting” how to say cucumber.

Here she is pretending not to know how to say cucumber in English 😭 pic.twitter.com/g8xYNktsNY

— elena ilana alana alina elana (not) (@lenibriscoe) December 21, 2020

Twitter is having a lot of fun digging up the inconsistencies in her constantly-changing stories.

A minor crime. Let's stone her! 

I'm Not So Sure This Is a Good Idea

World’s first talking killer whale: Wikie the orca learns to say ‘hello’ and ‘bye bye’

Scientists say they have recorded a killer whale named Wikie repeating the words ‘hello’ and ‘bye bye’, counting up to three, and even saying the name of her trainer ‘Amy.’

The 14-year-old orca lives in Marineland at Antibes, France, and is the first in the world ever recorded by scientists allegedly saying human words.

The achievement is even more remarkable because whales do not have the same vocal ability as humans having evolved to make their own sounds underwater. While humans use the larynx to speak, whales produce sounds through their nasal passages using bursts of air.

Recently scientists have discovered that whales have different ‘accents’ or ‘cultures’ and the new study suggests that those differences are picked up when young through imitation of adults, in a similar way to how children learn to speak through copying.

In the new trial, Wikie was trained to understand a ‘copy’ signal then invited to repeat 11 completely new sounds given by her trainer. They included words and also noises such as an elephant call, a wolf howl and a creaking door.

Wikie was given a fish or an affectionate pat when she achieved the sound to reinforce the learning. Six judges were then asked to rate whether the vocalisation matched the original word or noise.

The researchers concluded: “In sum, Wikie made recognizable copies of the demonstrated sound judged in real time by two observers, Wikie’s trainer and one experimenter, later confirmed by both after listening to the recordings.

“The subject’s matching accuracy is all the more remarkable as she was able to accomplish it in response to sounds presented in-air and not in-water, the species’ usual medium for acoustic communication.

“It is conceivable that our data represent a conservative estimate of the killer whale’s capacity for vocal imitation.”

The whale words were also analysed in waveform and matched the human words when the acoustical recordings were compared.

Are we sure that teaching the world's largest and strongest predator our language is such a good idea?

Reason #5561 That Trump Was Elected

This is CNN: FakeNews CNN's Alisyn (What?) Camarotta Asks Spelling Bee Champion to Spell "Covfefe," Then Says That Maybe She Got It Wrong Because It's Not Sanskrit

It's remarkable how some rules just don't seem to apply to the Ruling Class, isn't it?
For starters, she and her Mentally Retarded Male Mansplainer Chris Cuomo marginalized the achievement of a marginalized non-white female, pushing aside the news of her victory in the national spelling bee in order to foreground, get this, a minor tweet made by a White Male.

Then, feeling it wasn't enough to tell this Girl of Color "We don't care about how many hours you studied for this, we just want to talk about the White Man Who Makes Us Feel Alive," Alisyn Camarotta Otherized the girl by assuming that she was somehow familiar with the Sansrit language -- a language that while technically still in use, is primarily in use for religious and philosophical purposes (as Latin is still technically in use in the West), assuming that a girl from America must be a practicing (and, indeed, advanced) scholar of the Vedas just because her parents are Indian.

When the Marginalized Girl, whose victory was de-focused to foreground a White Male's spelling error, got the spelling of "covfefe" wrong, Alisyn Camarotta tried to comfort her: "We're not sure its root is Sanskrit, which is probably what you're used to using."

Um, she's American and speaks English as a first language. Why would you claim she's "used to using" a language primarily used in liturgical contexts?

Though, in a small corner of India, it's used as a primary language -- but I do mean "a small corner." 14,000 people, primarily in Uttarakhand, speak it as a primary language.

Bear in mind, India's population is 1.3 billion.

India's main language is of course Hindi, not Sanskrit, and it has 122 main languages, and over 1300 other languages spoken there.

Via Wombat-socho's  "In The Mailbox: 06.05.17" Don Surber has 929,000 News Stories About Covfefe

When Is Bullying Based on National Origin Appropriate?

Why, when it's done to a Republican, or at least a Republican's wife. Gigi Hadid Faces Major Backlash Over Her ‘Racist’ Melania Trump Impression During AMAs Hosting Gig.

Wow, that was clever . . . Not.

The new supermodel war? Gigi Hadid is under fire for her Melania Trumpimpression while cohosting the 2016 American Music Awards at L.A.’s Microsoft Theater on Sunday, November 20. Watch the talked-about moment in the video above!

The 21-year-old supermodel mocked Donald Trump’s former model wife and poked fun at her RNC speech that was plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Many viewers weren’t too happy with Hadid’s snarky impersonation of the 46-year-old Slovenia native. “Gigi Hadid’s frankly racist impression of Melania Trump is really unacceptable,” one tweeter wrote, while another added, “Making fun of Melania’s English accent is overdone, rude, and kinda racist. Gigi could’ve done better.”

I wouldn't be expecting her to get any White House or Mar-a-Lago invitations for a while.

Others pointed out that people should be proud that the first lady–elect is multilingual. “@GigiHadid Melania Trump speaks 5 languages… I’m not a Trump supporter in any way but publicly humiliating her for having an accent? #NOTOK.”

Meanwhile, some were confused by the joke since both of Hadid’s parents are immigrants and have accents. Her mom, Yolanda Hadid, is from the Netherlands and her father, Mohamed Hadid, is from Israel. “Disappointed Gigi Hadid ridiculed first lady elect Melania Trump. Mean spirited and in poor taste. For record, Hadid’s mom has an accent,” one tweeter wrote.

Major backlash, my ass. A few conservative sites (like this) got mad, or made fun of her. Big deal, it won't cost her a dime and will only make her more popular in the "in" crowd.

Actually, impression sucks bad, the accent isn't even a good try, but I have to give the baby faced supermodel props for the physical impression; I didn't think she could suck her cheeks in that far.

So, Gigi or Melania?

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho has "Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday" ready at The Other McCain.

Network Anchor is Easily Amused

News Anchor Cracking Up Over Indian Womans Name "Dikshit"!

...

What the ... Why everyone and your mother started using ellipses ... everywhere.

On the surface, the rise of ellipses doesn’t make much sense. They don’t generally provide any sort of typing shortcut. Aside from when the shift or alt keys are involved—or when a new character screen must be accessed to type a mark using one’s phone—ellipses often require more key strikes and time than the alternative punctuation they are intended to replace. Plus, in most instances, we tend to prefer punctuation that is, first and foremost, clear. Ellipses, at least as they are used in text messages and emails and other forms of online communication (Twitter comes to mind) appear to offer the opposite of clarity.

So if ellipses aren’t shortcuts, and they aren’t especially clear, what’s going on here?
For Clay Shirky, an author, scholar, and New York University professor who studies the effects of the Internet and technology on society, the flood of ellipses is one signifier of a unique and interesting moment in the history of written language. He suggests ellipses are most often used as replacements for pause words such as umand uh. So, he says, “people are communicating like they are talking, but encoding that talk in writing.” For the majority of history, he adds, written words were drafted to be read much later, which led people to compose their thoughts in the form of full sentences.

“Now, though, much of what is typed is for swift delivery and has more the character of speech, where whole, unbroken sentences are a rarity,” Shirky says. “Speech is instead characterized by continuous flow, with lots of pauses, repeats, false starts ... and pauses to indicate changes in direction. We’re living in a moment a bit like Alexander the Great’s time, when he adopted the altogether remarkable habit (or so Plutarch reported) of reading silently. The relationship between the alphabet and talking was progressively broken as people learned to sound things out in their heads. Now we’re seeing a moment of reversal, where people are trying to use alphabets like we’re talking, and it’s ... hard. So we reach for the ellipsis.”

When queried about his ellipsis overuse, my friend on the terrible softball team—who is also a professor in the communications department at a large Midwestern university—went even further in connecting the dots to speech. He said he uses ellipses mainly because they help him feel as though he’s engaged in a more dynamic written conversation—with the ellipses serving mostly as intentional, meaningful pauses. “It’s largely a preference for what seems like a more dramatic way of presenting something,” he says. “When I’m writing my friends, I see that writing more as I would in conversation with them: more intimately, more expressively, usually with pauses for facial contortions and intentional negative spaces. On the phone, enough of the elements of in-person conversation are present that we can imagine what the person looks like on the other end. But email, and even texts, are so cold this way.”

For Sicha, there was something else at play when he was typing all those dots, though. “It was a way to write lazy emails, honestly, without having to think about syntax or relation of each sentence to the next,” he says.

I noticed a few years ago on message boards that ellipses were being abused ... and promptly adopted the habit.

Singer Roasts Starbucks for Anti-Welsh Discrimination

Coffee shop customer allegedly 'told to speak English or get out' when ordering in Welsh

A customer who placed an order in Welsh at a Starbucks was told to “speak English or get out”, it has been claimed.

Welsh classical soprano Gwawr Edwards, from Aberystwyth , said the reaction from a member of staff when another customer ordered in Welsh was “a disgrace”.

Gwawr took to Twitter to complain about the alleged incident in her hometown.

Gwarth mai ymateb un o staff @StarbucksAber oedd "speak English or get out" wrth gwsmer yn archebu yn iaith gwlad ei hunan! #tramorwr #sack

— Gwawr Edwards (@gwawredwards) April 12, 2016

Its translation is: “It’s a disgrace that the reaction of a staff member in @StarbucksAber to a customer trying to order in their own language was ‘Speak English or get out’.”

Gwawr, now that's name to conjure with!

Once Upon a Time in the Land of Oompapa Dao

New research traces popular fairy tales back to the Bronze Age

Academics have revealed that fairy tales including Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin can be traced back thousands of years, with some even predating the English language.

In the 19th century Wilhelm Grimm, of the famous Brothers Grimm, believed that many of the stories they popularised were rooted in a shared cultural history dating back to the birth of the Indo-European language family.

But later thinkers challenged that view, saying that some stories were much younger, and passed into oral tradition having first been written down by writers from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Using techniques normally employed by biologists, researchers studied common links between stories from around the world and found some have roots that are far older than previously known.

I have some doubts about the applicability to genetic methods applies to evolution of language, since there is no fixed object to measure, like the structure  DNA that determines the spoken word.

'Some of these stories go back much further than the earliest literary record and indeed further back than Classical mythology - some versions of these stories appear in Latin and Greek texts - but our findings suggest they are much older than that.'

The university's analysis, which is published in Royal Society Open Science, showed that Beauty And The Beast, made famous by the Disney cartoon in 1992, is 4,000 years old.

That's pretty old, but it only overlaps the younger period of Stonehenge.

Jack And The Beanstalk is said to have been rooted in a group of stories classified as The Boy Who Stole Ogre's Treasure

Rumpelstiltskin, the renowned German classic, is also believed to be from the same millennium.

It can be traced back 5,000 years to when Eastern and Western Indo-European languages split.

Wow, now that's way back!

Dr Tehrani said: 'We find it pretty remarkable these stories have survived without being written.

'They have been told since before even English, French and Italian existed. They were probably told in an extinct Indo-European language.'

Fairy stories often have themes common to humans throughout the world and through all ages, such as family, betrayal, violence and survival, he said.

I don't find it that surprising. The stories themselves are simple, and in a clan based society, it's easy to imagine them being passed down over and over, at least if there were no cell phones to distract the kids.

Retired German professor Jack Zipes of the University of Minnesota had previously suggested that fairy tales were older than most people thought.

In 2009, when research suggested Little Red Riding Hood was 2,600 years old, he said: 'Little Red Riding Hood is about violation or rape, and I suspect that humans were just as violent in 600BC as they are today, so they will have exchanged tales about all types of violent acts.

Yes, the old stories were about real worries, terrible animals, warring human beings, death. You had to break the kids in early before reality broke them.

Melvin Joel Konner, Professor of Anthropology and of Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia, believes storytelling and fairy tales could have been going on for hundreds of thousands of years.

In his book, The Evolution of Childhood (2010), he wrote: 'Even the simplest and most static of human cultures is an engine of inventive mutual influence and change. Furthermore, at least orally, human cultures preserve historical record, imaginative or real, couched in a human language.

'The past pervades human consciousness to some degree even in the simplest societies, and discussions of past events - narrating, sometimes dramatically, commenting on the narration, challenging points of fact or logic, and co-constructing a suite of stories - occupied many an evening for perhaps 300,000 years, but not for millions of years before that.

'And while our ancestors were arguing, many ape communities not far away in the forest were making their - yes, traditional - nests and drifting off to sleep.

'The only modern apes that have learned language learned it from human teachers, and none of their wild counterparts has anything like it.

If only the apes could talk.

Wombat-socho has the giant "Rule 5 Sunday: Blue Shirt Double-Dip Edition" ready at The Other McCain.

Great Tits Use Good Grammar

Great Tits Use Syntax

Until recently, it was thought that only humans are capable of language that uses syntax--conveying the meaning of vocalization by order in sequence. But now, after much careful observation, scientists Toshitaka N. Suzuki, David Wheatcroft, and Michael Griesser have determined that Japanese great tits (Parus major) also demonstrate syntax in their chirps. They published their findings in the journal Nature Communications:

Here we report the first experimental evidence for compositional syntax in a wild animal species, the Japanese great tit (Parus minor). Tits have over ten different notes in their vocal repertoire and use them either solely or in combination with other notes. Experiments reveal that receivers extract different meanings from ‘ABC’ (scan for danger) and ‘D’ notes (approach the caller), and a compound meaning from ‘ABC–D’ combinations. However, receivers rarely scan and approach when note ordering is artificially reversed (‘D–ABC’). Thus, compositional syntax is not unique to human language but may have evolved independently in animals as one of the basic mechanisms of information transmission.

I know what you were expecting, so:

Monday Morning Language Lesson

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: The Hearts of Space" up at The Other McCain.

Your Daily Dose of Trivia

How do you say 'pecan'?

April is national pecan month, and while it's easy to celebrate by cooking up some pecan treats, it's a little hard to talk about it. Is it pih-KAHN or PEE-kan? Or maybe puh-KAN? There may be as many ways to say it as there are pecans in a pie. What makes this word so hard to pin down?

The main thing people disagree on is which syllable to stress. The pe-KAHN vs. PE-kan difficulty can be traced back to a problem that's plagued English for a long time. . .

by contrast "pajamas"

Looks like almost nobody talks about pecans (however they're pronounced) very much. FWIW, I was raised with "pi-KHAN" and "father" in pajamas.

How to Say "Yes" in Northern Sweden

Remember this, if you ever find yourself in Northern Sweden.



"Yes", it sucks.

Wombat-socho has the master "Rule 5 Sunday: Shake It Off" post up at The Other McCain.

Some $#!* Southern Women Say

It's all true Slower Maryland is part of south, or at least it would have been had not the North occupied it during the Civil War, and the "native" accent isn't quite this strong, but all this rings exactly right.

Dr. Suess in 68 Accents

The Amazin' Missin' G

In one of his recent attack on Romney and Ryan, Vice Preznit Joe Biden made it a point to drop his "G"s in his speech in North Carolina, even though droppin' Gs at the end of words is not a common practice in the middle class (and certainly not the upper class) in Delaware, his home state.

Commentors have noted in the past how politicians not from southern states, including Hillary Clinton (Connecticut), Barack Obama (Hawaii??, by way of Indonesia and Chicago) have also used the vernacular dropped G when trying to appear "folksy".

According to this article by Charles Cooke at the National Review, they may be more correct than they imagine, and that the actual pronuciation of common English at the time the United States was settled was without the pronounced G:

Southerners and Gs

In Britain and in certain parts of America today, dropping Gs is perceived as a negative class or educational indicator. This is especially true in England, in which country a “cockney” or “estuary” accent is — albeit unfairly — redolent of ignorance, lack of social grace, and naivety. This association is a modern trend. Until the mid-20th century, the phenomenon was as strongly associated with the upper classes as those at the bottom of the social ladder. A favorite aristocratic pastime? “Huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’.”

This being the case, it would presumably horrify many to learn that, per the esteemed linguist Henry Wyld, as late as 1936, G-less pronunciation was “still widespread among large classes of the best speakers, no less than among the worst.” Among these “best speakers” was King Edward VIII, who was recorded asking a friend wearing a particularly loud tweed to Royal Ascot, “Mornin’, Harris. Goin’ rattin’?” Much research bears Wyld out, showing as it does that for most of the time in which modern English has been spoken, the G has remained predominantly orthographic. Even Bertie Wooster, P. G. Wodehouse’s dandyish blueblood, was prone to dropping his Gs — at least until his habit was kicked in 1934’s Thank You, Jeeves.

But why is the Southern accent different? Simplistically: From 1717 up to the eve of the War of Independence, Scots-Irish from the northern and western parts of Britain moved to America, helping to populate the South. Ultimately, most of these immigrants followed the rivers, setting up home along their paths. As the University of Pennsylvania’s John Fought has argued, the consequence of this was that the inland South was filled by immigrants who extended their manner of speaking “beyond the Mississippi to Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and beyond . . . taking Inland Southern down the major rivers.” As they moved away from the coasts, the accents and modes of speech that these immigrants brought with them were incubated and preserved in the new country.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Britain, Rs were going out of fashion, softening almost to the vanishing point in words like “Lord” and, for that matter, “word,” and Gs were coming in, especially among the upper classes and those who aspired to their ways. During the 19th century, British English changed dramatically, leading eventually to the quasi-codification of the Received Pronunciation that is still the calling card of the elites. Slowly but surely, the new way of speaking spread through the old country, and then to a lesser extent across the Atlantic. To varying degrees, in the cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and in a few other parts of the upper East Coast — plus a few snobbish Southern outliers such as Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah — American accents were influenced by these British changes. But outside of these areas, distance inured most from being affected, and they kept their older pronunciations, including the silent G.

In fact, the language that Shakespeare wrote and spoke in, probably sounded a lot like the Scots-Irish  derived Appalachian accent of today:

The British Library has completed a new recording of 75 minutes of The Bard's most famous scenes, speeches and sonnets, all performed in the original pronunciation of Shakespeare's time.

That accent sounds a little more Edinburgh — and sometimes even more Appalachia — than you might expect. Actor Ben Crystal, director of the new recordings, joins NPR's Scott Simon to talk about the effort to perform Shakespeare's works authentically.