The Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) of 21st February 1941 reported that a song titled Padoodle, “about a boy, a girl and a “one-eyed automobile””, had been announced a nation-wide second place winner in Tommy Dorsey’s Fame and Fortune. It had been written the previous year by a Pittsburgh orphan boy, Robert Ruben, who, encouraged by this success, went on writing songs.
The earliest occurrence of the form padiddle that I have found is in the comic strip Archie, by Robert William ‘Bob’ Montana (1920-75), published in the Nevada State Journal of 23rd May 1948:
America remains the freest nation on earth. Does that mean you get to keep your student visa if you use it to support terrorism? No, but to cite that as proof that Europe is more liberal on free speech is laughable. The Economist should be ashamed. //
Bootsie
3 hours ago
In Europe you have freedom to say anything you want, as long as it is what the government says you can say. Is that about right? //
anon-g9p7
3 hours ago
Diversity leads to tribalism.
The most vicious tribe wins. //
anon-aqgv anon-exgv
3 hours ago
Europe has "free speech" for Leftists only. //
TexasVeteran
3 hours ago edited
"Europeans can say almost anything they want both in theory and in practice."
That’s a bald faced lie, just ask Tommy Robinson! Even pointing out a negative fact about Islam will land you in jail.
"Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other."
Because there's no dissent.They all think alike— on the left!
"No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza."
Another lie, they’ll, end you to prison for supporting Israel!
Strong to severe thunderstorms moved across northern Indiana, southern Michigan and northwest Ohio during the afternoon and evening on March 30th, 2025. Storm surveys were conducted in multiple locations across northern Indiana and far southern Lower Michigan on March 31st and April 1st. Surveys were paused as the area prepared for and was impacted by yet another round of severe storms on April 2nd.
Last week I gave our loyal readers a heads up that STARRS (STAND TOGETHER Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services) was going to hold a Town Hall concerning service members who think that it is appropriate to denigrate President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth, engage in “malicious compliance,” and downright defiance of lawful orders issued by the Trump Administration, especially as regards the removal of DEI: U.S. Military Opposition to the Trump Administration A Matter of Concern:
There is an enormous problem in our nation’s military, one that I have not seen discussed in depth elsewhere. I have heard from multiple sources that many active duty officers openly and deeply despise the Trump Administration, and they are not at all shy about expressing their opinion both in and out of uniform. One active duty major I know estimates that it’s 1 in 4 who have this problem…
This is an astonishingly bad problem. Putting aside for the moment that this is a clear violation of Article 88 of the UCMJ, this is how military coups take place. I guess I should not be surprised given Mark Milley’s traitorous actions towards his Commander-in-Chief, but the fact that this has permeated to lower levels of the officer corps surprises me and causes me great worry. //
Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius
.
I got out of the Army in 2007.
What I am seeing now with senior officers being publicly insubordinate to the National Command Authority is so far outside of the bounds of decency, professional responsibility and my experience that I have a very difficult time understanding how it is even possible. What has happened in our military that this is even a thing? It is inconceivable that any of this could have happened on such a scale when I was serving on active duty. What went wrong?
9:47 PM · Apr 10, 2025. //
TargaGTS | April 11, 2025 at 11:20 am
Being cashiered cannot be the end of this process for this general and her fellow travelers. Instead, it must only be the beginning. If a non-rate enlisted man made these comments about the base commander, there would be an immediate Article 32 investigation which would produce charges under Articles 88, 92 & 134. They would – properly – throw the proverbial book at him even without those contemptuous comments posing any credible threat to civilian control of the military.
When flag officers make these comments, it is a clear & present danger to a First Principle of our nation, civilian control of the military. There should be courts-martial. There must be courts-martial because if you allow command to utter these kinds of contemptuous comments about POTUS, how do you enforce any kind of discipline throughout the chain of command? //
Alex deWynter in reply to henrybowman. | April 11, 2025 at 2:58 pm
What she can say — PRIVATELY to whomever is directly above her in the chain of command — is “Sir, I believe Vice President Vance’s remarks yesterday will cause everyone’s mission to fall down around their ears. This is what I propose to prevent that happening. Do I have your permission?”
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my post about the recent shake-up at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), resigned, citing significant disagreements with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policies.
Marks claimed it was because of Kennedy, and the new HHS Secretary’s viewpoints on the worthiness of vaccines.
However, there is more to the story.
Marks left after refusing to grant Kennedy team unrestricted access to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database. Marks asserted that such access could lead to manipulation or deletion of sensitive data, which includes unverified reports of vaccine-related adverse events submitted by the public. //
There are a number of reasons that this issue is troubling, especially given Marks’ profanity-infused response to the new HHS team seeking the usual level of access to government databases that the Secretary normally has. To begin with, as I have previously noted, studies have identified a rare but notable link between myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
As a reminder, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released 148 blank pages of data in response to a FOIA request for information connecting covid vaccinations to heart inflammation. //
The agency has already released some reports, such as this one in The Lancet, which asserted that virus-caused myocarditis was worse than the one that arose post-vaccination. //
Finally, a recent study conducted by the Cleveland Clinic has raised concerns about the effectiveness of this season’s flu vaccine. Published as a preprint on MedRxiv, the research analyzed data from 53,402 healthcare workers during the 2024-2025 flu season and found that vaccinated individuals had a 27% higher risk of contracting influenza compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.
The calculated vaccine effectiveness was reported as -26.9%, indicating that the vaccine may have increased the risk of infection rather than reducing it. //
BobM | April 11, 2025 at 11:39 pm
As someone with IT experience, especially in DataBase design and admin, I have to advise the reader that there are multiple non-nefarious reasons to allow both raw data access & edit access to a DB. Especially if you suspect the current key holders have been “cooking the books” to make a DB support wanted conclusions. Edit access allows you to look for groupings in the data that may not be obvious because of the way the raw data is currently organized and categorized. Or to look for improper groupings that make conclusions based on them garbage.
As an example, the “sky-is-falling” Covid panic was at least in part supported by “death by Covid” numbers that often assumed if you died and had Covid at the time that it was a Covid death. Washington State DOH, for instance, has since admitted “DOH includes deaths of all persons who tested positive for COVID-19 in its totals, even if the victims died from other causes, such as gunshot wounds.”.
Other examples include crime statistics databases where politicians and law enforcement have played games with crime categories to be able to tout imaginary “decrease in crime X” or “increase in arrests for crime Y” for their own reasons. Most recently, the Biden administration database of border enforcement stats famously was used to tout that Biden was “tough on illegal entries” when in actuality the raw data showed they were touting catch-and-release interceptions the same as actual prevention of illegal entries.
If folks have lost respect for scientific experts, it’s because all too many have taken to treating access to the raw data and descriptions of the data manipulation used to reach their “expert” conclusions as closely held proprietary secrets not be disclosed to the hoi polloi. That is NOT good scientific practice and is a huge red flag. You see it all over in climate “science”, and it’s spread like a cancer thru science in general lately.
On Thursday, the Department of Government Efficiency revealed that three deep-blue states—California, New York, and Massachusetts—were responsible for $305 million, or 80%, of the $382 million in fraudulent unemployment payments issued since 2020.
DOGE also reported that 68% of unemployment benefits paid to parolees flagged by Customs and Border Protection as being on the terrorist watchlist or having criminal records were issued in California.
The DOGE team found that $59 million in unemployment benefits was paid to 24,500 people listed as over 115 years old. Another $254 million went to 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5, while $69 million was distributed to 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future.
The report highlights one case in particular: an individual born in the year 2154—not a typo—received $41,000 in benefits.
Torvalds said in 2007 that he could not remember “exactly when I started git development” but that he probably started at or around April 3rd 2005, that the project was self-hosting from April 7th – the first commit of Git is 1244 lines of commented code and described as “the information manager from hell” – and that the first commit of the Linux kernel was on April 16th. //
Git did what he needed within the first year, said Torvalds, “and when it did what I needed, I lost interest.”
Torvalds described himself as a casual user of Git who mainly uses just five commands: git merge, git blame, git log, git commit and git pull – though he adds later in the interview that he also uses git status “fairly regularly.”
Why did Git succeed? Scott Chacon, co-founder of GitHub and now at startup company GitButler, said that it filled a gap at the time when open source was evolving. SVN, which actually has an easier mental model, is centralized. There was no easy way in 2005 for an open source contributor to submit proposed changes to a code base. Git made it simple to fork the code, make a change, and then send a request to the maintainers that they pull the changed code from the fork to the main branch. Git has a command called request-pull which formats an email for sending to a mailing list with the request included, and this is the origin of the term pull request.
So... this is all you do all day is it?"
"Most days. Other days Carl or Peter does it."
"Carl or Peter?"
"Yeah, we work shifts - because the market never sleeps."
"So let me get this straight. You don't have any servers, you don't have any real work - AND THERE ARE THREE OF YOU - so you just make problems to keep yourself in a job?"
"Yep, That's pretty much it." //
A minute of silence passes, then finally the geek cracks. There's no server hardware. Nothing. Over the last five years the entire company operation has moved into online services - theoretically leaving our geek with no job.
"So what do you... do all day?" the PFY asks.
"SOME days, I'll take a complete snapshot of our cloud infrastructure," he says.
"Once a month you mean?" the PFY surmises. "So what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I, um, manufacture outages," he admits.
"Manufacture outages?"
"Yeah, I'll light up the RED lamp on a server and, uh, take a cloud service offline."
"Why?"
"Because then they'll call me and get me to fix it. I'll bring them in here, fire up a linux laptop with the Matrix screensaver, edit a JPEG with a Hex editor, pretend to find a virus signature or an internal consistency error, then 'fix' it and bring the service back online again."
It seems so simple now that he says it.
In the last week, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal to make Elon Musk's space company the Pentagon's leading launch provider, and then it assigned the vast majority of this year's most lucrative launch contracts to SpaceX. //
The reason Bruno can say Musk's involvement in the Trump administration so far hasn't affected ULA is simple. SpaceX is cheaper and has a ready-made line of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets available to launch the Pentagon's satellites. ULA's Vulcan rocket is now certified to launch military payloads, but it reached this important milestone years behind schedule.
The Pentagon announced Friday that SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin—Jeff Bezos' space company—won contracts worth $13.7 billion to share responsibilities for launching approximately 54 of the military's most critical space missions from 2027 through 2032. SpaceX received the lion's share of the missions with an award for 28 launches, while ULA got 19. Blue Origin, a national security launch business newcomer, will fly seven missions.
This comes out to a 60-40 split between SpaceX and ULA, not counting Blue Origin's seven launches, which the Space Force set aside for a third contractor. It's a reversal of the 60-40 sharing scheme in the last big military launch competition in 2020, when ULA took the top award over SpaceX. Space Force officials anticipate Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will be certified for national security missions next year, allowing it to begin winning launch task orders. //
So, why did ULA only get 22 percent of this year's task orders instead of something closer to 40 percent? It turns out ULA was not eligible for two of these missions because the company's West Coast launch pad for the Vulcan rocket is still under construction at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Space Force won't assign specific West Coast missions to ULA until the launch pad is finished and certified, ... //
A decade ago, ULA was the sole launch provider to deploy the Pentagon's fleet of surveillance, communication, and navigation satellites. The Air Force certified SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for national security missions in May 2015, opening the market for competition for the first time since Boeing and Lockheed Martin merged their rocket divisions to create ULA in 2006.
ULA's monopoly, which Bruno acknowledged, has now eroded into making the company a niche player in the military launch market.
"A monopoly is not healthy," he said. "We were one for a few years before I came to ULA, and that was because no one else had the capability, and there weren’t that many missions. There weren’t enough to support many providers. There are now, so this is better.". //
"They tend to be more efficient at the LEO drop-offs, I’ll be honest about that," Bruno said. "That means there’s a competitive space in the middle, and then there’s kind of these end cases. So, we’ll keep winning when it’s way over in our space, they will win when it’s way over in theirs, and then in the middle it’s kind of a toss-up for any given mission."
NatGeo documentary follows a cutting-edge undersea scanning project to make a high-resolution 3D digital twin of the ship. //
In 2023, we reported on the unveiling of the first full-size 3D digital scan of the remains of the RMS Titanic—a "digital twin" that captured the wreckage in unprecedented detail. Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions conducted the scans over a six-week expedition. That project is the subject of the new National Geographic documentary Titanic: The Digital Resurrection, detailing several fascinating initial findings from experts' ongoing analysis of that full-size scan. //
The joint mission by Magellan and Atlantic Productions deployed two submersibles nicknamed Romeo and Juliet to map every millimeter of the wreck, including the debris field spanning some three miles. The result was a whopping 16 terabytes of data, along with over 715,000 still images and 4K video footage. That raw data was then processed to create the 3D digital twin. The resolution is so good, one can make out part of the serial number on one of the propellers.
"I've seen the wreck in person from a submersible, and I've also studied the products of multiple expeditions—everything from the original black-and-white imagery from the 1985 expedition to the most modern, high-def 3D imagery," deep ocean explorer Parks Stephenson told Ars. "This still managed to blow me away with its immense scale and detail."
Imagine the scenario. Britain has been wiped out by a surprise nuclear attack.
The prime minister has been killed. Should Britain's nuclear submarine fleet launch its own missiles in retaliation?
It's a decision that will hopefully never have to be made. //
The UK has four submarines capable of carrying Trident nuclear missiles.
Since 1969, one of those subs has always been on patrol, gliding silently through the world's oceans. //
Every prime minister has to write four letters - one for each submarine. They are addressed to the Royal Navy commander on board. They are usually handwritten.
The letters are locked in a safe aboard the submarine and destroyed, unopened, every time a new prime minister comes into office.
It's not known exactly what they say.
"There are only so many options available," says Prof Seligmann
"Do nothing, launch a retaliatory strike, offer yourself to an ally like the USA or use your own judgement.
"Essentially, are you going to use the missiles or not?" //
"The submarine has to make a judgement that the UK has been hit by a nuclear strike," according to Prof Seligman.
"The commander does that by trying to make contact with the UK via Naval Command or listening out for radio signals."
It's thought one of the key tests is whether the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 is still broadcasting.
If all the checks fail, the commander will go to the safe, remove the letter and find out what the orders are.
Beginning in the early 1980s, UK homes could have electrical meters installed with a radio teleswitch attached. These switches listened for a 198 kHz signal from the BBC's Radio 4 Long Wave service, primarily broadcast from the powerful Droitwich Transmitting Station. These switches listened to 30 messages per minute, waiting for a certain 50-bit data packet to arrive that signaled that electricity was now at cheaper, off-peak rates ("tariffs" in the UK).
With this over-the-air notice, homes that bought into Economy 7 or Economy 10 (7 or 10 hours of reduced-price power) could make use of ceramic-stuffed storage heaters that stayed warm into the day, prepare hot water heaters, and otherwise make use of off-peak power. How the electrical companies, BBC, and meters worked together is fascinating in its own right and documented in a recent video by Ringway Manchester (which we first saw at Hackaday). https://hackaday.com/2025/04/10/farewell-economy-7-a-casualty-of-the-long-wave-switch-off/
But BBC Radio 4's Long Wave transmissions are coming to an end, due to both modern realities and obscure glass valves.
Two rare tungsten-centered, hand-crafted cooled anode modulators (CAM) are needed to keep the signal going, and while the BBC bought up the global supply of them, they are running out. The service is seemingly on its last two valves and has been telling the public about Long Wave radio's end for nearly 15 years. Trying to remanufacture the valves is hazardous, as any flaws could cause a catastrophic failure in the transmitters.
Rebuilding the transmitter, or moving to different, higher frequencies, is not feasible for the very few homes that cannot get other kinds of lower-power radio, or internet versions, the BBC told The Guardian in 2011. What's more, keeping Droitwich powered such that it can reach the whole of the UK, including Wales and lower Scotland, requires some 500 kilowatts of power, more than most other BBC transmission types.
As of January 2025, roughly 600,000 UK customers still use RTS meters to manage their power switching, after 300,000 were switched away in 2024. Utilities and the BBC have agreed that the service will stop working on June 30, 2025, and have pushed to upgrade RTS customers to smart meters. //
Arstotzka Ars Scholae Palatinae
8y
970
Subscriptor++
Taunted Happy Fun Ball said:
Seems like the obvious solution would be for the regulator to decree that any customer using an older meter following the shutoff will be billed at the off-peak rates for all usage.Then watch the utilities fall all over themselves to deploy updated meters.
It's rare you can have a technological solution to a people problem, but here it is -- the last transmission before shutdown can be "switch to cheap rates". The utilities will figure it out, after all, because it might cost them money. //
jvok Smack-Fu Master, in training
3y
7
plectrum said:
This is the BBC conveniently lying because it suits them. Nautel recently-ish (2017) installed a 2MW solid-state transmitter for Antenna Hungaria on 540kHz. Their NX400 system is based on stacking phase-locked 25kW modules feeding into a combiner - just buy as many modules as you need. 600kW is no problem - at 90% efficient they're much more efficient than vacuum tubes (50-60%).I think the bottom line is the BBC just doesn't want to spend the money, on either upgrading the transmitter or on the power bill. Which is fair enough - LW reception is only getting worse given the amount of RF smog from power supplies nowadays so there aren't so many listeners out there any more - but they should own up to it.
I completely buy the idea that the transmitter needs replacing (its 40 years old after all), and that the limited number of listeners left on longwave doesn't justify the expense. It fits with the BBCs and other broadcasters pattern of closing down other legacy services over the last few years (e.g. the local radio AMs). The content broadcast on 4LW is the same as you get on Radio 4 FM and DAB now anyway, the opt-outs (e.g. for cricket coverage) were discontinued a few years back. Hell, how many people even still own a longwave radio?
I get a serious case of Gell-Mann amnesia reading that Guardian article though. I get the impression that the author heard some off-hand comment about the transmitter using valves and decided to turn it into some "OMG critical BBC infrastructure is still using old school valves" story. Even calling them glass valves (which isn't accurate) to invoke images of us all gathering round the wireless like its still the 1930s. When in reality high power transmitters using valves is pretty normal and they're still manufactured today. But of course the public doesn't know that so it still makes for a good story. //
video series on how the 900MHz system in the US works.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYlhncU2MojDY9gxU36pxNVkiylGGcbwq&si=D0j-q_xzW_uuYAQp
Defense was neglected.
After the October 7 attack on Israel, defensive equipment was rushed to US installations in Iraq and Jordan. Tower 22 was "assumed" to be at a lower risk than other bases and got nothing.
No drone defenses available.
CENTCOM had requested anti-drone defense systems based on its risk analysis, but the entire US Army only had one, count them, one, system available, and it was reserved for redeployment training. Why you'd bother to use training time to gain familiarity with a system you will never see again is an unanswered question. Needless to say, nothing is too good for the troops, and that is exactly what they get. The base had one electronic warfare system designed to counter drones, but it was not used. //
Tower 22's radar was not optimized for the most likely threat. Frequently, operators could not distinguish birds from drones. A better radar system had been requested and denied. //
A fish rots from the head down. From what we know of the report, everyone seemed to think that the danger facing the troops at Tower 22 was manageable. Tower 22 did not have defensive anti-aircraft systems, though a suitable anti-aircraft system was available. The laissez-faire attitude toward security obviously perked down to the command and operations staff at Tower 22. They seem to have assumed away the possibility of an attack because none had taken place previously.
Given the leadership in the White House and the Pentagon, none of this should be a shock. It was virtually preordained that the same brainiacs who gave us Abbey Gate would go for an encore.
Originally Posted by Hollow Man
Does amazon also delete azw3 files? I only know of it happening with kfx/azw8 since I experienced it.
There have been reports of azw3/KF8, KFX and mobi files being deleted. All that seems to be required is for the book to contain an ASIN matching an Amazon book that you don't own/have a loan of an Amazon copy and to keep your Kindle from connecting to Amazon for a long period.
In my testing, since I use the ISBN and ASIN for downloading metadata, my calibre generated Amazon format books had an ASIN. Since most of the books were sourced from Kobo, StandardEbooks, etc. in ePub format, I did not own an Amazon copy. When I took my Paperwhite 4 out of airplane mode after 5 or 6 weeks, most of the ebooks I had sideloaded vanished (according to the log files, they were deleted). Not a big deal to me since I only use the PW4 for testing ebooks I am formatting but for others where their Kindle is their prime ereader, an extremely annoying action. //
Yes, Amazon keeps track of which Amazon-sourced books are supposed to be present on each of your Kindle devices and will in some circumstances remove any unexpected copies. //
I see there is some theory that not having an ASIN may help with stuff not being deleted? Not my experience. Some of my sideloaded stuff was fanfic from archiveofourown and so of course, no asin or isbn, etc. and it was still deleted.
I haven't tried the personal doc type vs ebook, but will give that a try. But I think I also saw that I need to send to device from calibre as kfx instead of azw3 for that? Is that right?
I had been keeping my kindle with wifi off but at the end of Nov. I took advantage of the $0.99 for 3 months offer of KU and so of course, wifi came on. Then my previously sideloaded books disappeared...
Is there anything else that came up over the 51 pages of posts that I should know about?
I may just keep my oasis in airplane mode and bring my k4bnt back out for KU only. //
You cannot change the type from EBOK to PDOC if you convert to AZW3. So yes, you'd need either to convert to KFX, use Send to Kindle, or keep your Oasis always offline.
This is CLI tool for day-to-day synchronization of kindle books between local directory and directory on device over the wire - using either MTP or old USBMS mount or by using Amazon e-mail delivery.
It was created to support day-to-day side loading usage scenario (based on my multi-year experience owning various Kindle devices):
I have one or more local directories containing books in Kindle-supported formats, possibly organized into subdirectories by authors or genres for easier navigation. I would like to run a single command (not a tool with a UI or additional complexity) from the terminal or console to send these books to my device, while preserving the original directory structure. If there are any additional format specific actions possible (like copying generated page indexes or extracting and copying thumbnails for books) they should be performed transparenly.
Later, I may add new books to the local directories. At the same time, as I finish reading books on the device, they may be removed there. When I run the tool again, I want these changes to be synchronized bidirectionally: new or updated books should be sent to the device, and completed (and deleted) books should be removed locally.
The tool should maintain a history of actions performed. If a book is added to the device outside this process, it should be ignored by the tool and left untouched. Similarly, any additional directories or files created by the device (e.g., Kindle-generated files) should not be affected.
Rentry.co is a markdown paste service
service with preview, custom urls and editing. Fast, simple and free.
To cut a long story short, the rumor says Amazon nukes all sideloaded books marked as EBOK because they weren't technically bought on the Kindle Store.
The proposed solution is to mark them as PDOC as Calibre still tags all sideloaded books as EBOK and it still doesn't offer an easy way to change the tag, we are going to hack an existing plugin.
If you're using KFX or MOBI, skip these steps.
But if you want to use AZW3, read the following instructions:
Links Every Kindle Owner Should Have
[This sticky thread was originally created by MR member daffy4u - who originated the idea of having a central location for Kindle users to quickly find links to useful information that could improve their Kindling experience. She encourages all MR members to contribute links that they think would be useful to other MR members, and to comment on the usefulness of these links. daffy4u and all the MR members who have contributed links to this thread have created a community of knowledge that will continue to grow as the Kindle community adds new members, and new sources of information.
It must be nice to sit in a climate-controlled CNN studio, debating the merits of whether American workers deserve skilled trade jobs, without a second thought about who made that studio bearable in the first place.
That’s exactly what happened this week, when CNN analyst Nia-Malika Henderson casually dismissed jobs like HVAC installation and repair—along with other skilled trades—as the sort of thing Americans shouldn’t really care about. Her reasoning? That bringing these jobs back to the U.S. might make stock markets in other countries “nervous,” and she questioned whether they’re really “worth it.”
Let that sink in. //
This is the kind of elitism that’s been rotting through the national media for years. They’ll nod along to phrases like “the dignity of work” and “supporting working families,” but the moment actual working-class jobs are on the table—pipefitting, HVAC, diesel mechanics, welders, electricians, machine operators—they wince.
It’s always the same story: Those jobs aren’t “aspirational.” They’re too dirty. Too noisy. Too blue collar. Too real.
Completely set the tariff issue aside. As much as she would want it to really be about those tariffs, she is revealing her fundamental bias against people with working-class jobs. People who don't wear the nice outfits she gets to wear on television while looking down on them. This is also a group of people who largely voted for Donald Trump, and that increases her disdain of them a hundredfold. //
You won’t hear these folks mock a Wall Street hedge fund analyst who makes millions rearranging numbers for a living. But a guy who keeps schools, hospitals, and newsrooms cool in the summer and warm in the winter? Suddenly, that job isn’t “worth it.” //
Let’s be clear about something: Without HVAC workers, that CNN studio wouldn’t just be uncomfortable—it would be uninhabitable. Without truck drivers, no one’s getting makeup shipped to the green room. Without electricians, the lights go out. Without welders, no one has a desk to sit at. Without construction crews, there is no building to broadcast from.
This country runs on the backs of skilled workers—the very people elite media types so often ignore, stereotype, or outright ridicule.
These jobs aren’t beneath anyone. In fact, they’re the backbone of the middle class. And when the media mocks them, they’re not just showing their ignorance. They’re revealing their disdain for the people who keep America running.
When Henderson asked whether these jobs are “worth it,” she wasn’t just questioning economic policy. She was questioning the value of the people who do those jobs.
A video shared by a White House staffer captures press secretary Karoline Leavitt praying to Jesus for guidance before she heads out to another press briefing to take on the reporters in the room.
Leavitt has often cited her Catholic education for instilling discipline and making her the confident woman she is today.
“Lord Jesus, please give us the strength, the knowledge, the ability to articulate our words, have fun and be confident. In Jesus’s name. Amen," she says while waiting behind the entrance to the briefing room.
https://x.com/MargoMartin47/status/1910753975537643780
Leavitt, the youngest White House Press Secretary in U.S. history, has said she prays daily and cites her Roman Catholic upbringing in shaping her beliefs.
During a Catholic Current podcast in 2021, she emphasized that point.
“My upbringing is absolutely everything to me. It is why I’m a conservative, it’s why I believe in the American dream,” Leavitt explained.
“It taught me discipline, it brought me closer in my own relationship with God, and it also taught me the importance of public service and giving back to your community.”