.
Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, himself an immigrant from Cuba, delivers the oath of allegiance at a naturalization ceremony in the East Room of the White House, with President Biden looking on. pic.twitter.com/NkDoARL5G4
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) July 2, 2021
There are six members of the U.S. armed forces who were sworn in as U.S. citizens at the White House today. pic.twitter.com/IhSlPk3O9w
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) July 2, 2021
the Vegas strip for the next four weeks pic.twitter.com/VShAmg2qW6
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) July 3, 2021
Elsewhere…
are any senators spending the fourth in moscow this year or is that no longer cool
— kilgore trout, dna harvester (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 2, 2021
I kinda wish Republicans would spend the fourth in Russia again. At least we’d know our Capitol is safe for a weekend.
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) July 2, 2021
Happy Fourth of July to Sens. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), Steve Daines (Mont.), John Hoeven (N.D.), John Neely Kennedy (La.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) and Johnson, plus Rep. Kay Granger (Tex.). https://t.co/ZOhhKzHO3R
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) July 3, 2021
Patricia Kayden
Have those Republicans ever explained what the hell they were doing in Russia on the 4th of July? That’s just not normal.
Scout211
Bringing back the pledge to allow non-citizens in the military to earn US citizenship is one of the many, many good things about our new President.
Back in the Bush II years, my SIL became a US citizen while in the military.
mali muso
It was 8 years ago today that my husband was sworn in as a new citizen in a very moving ceremony held at Monticello. The special guest speaker was Dave Matthews. Looking at the diverse group of new Americans that day gave me hope. Still trying to hold on to it today, but onward we go.
gkoutnik
Every July 4th I listen to the folks from NPR read the Declaration of Independence. I would recommend this; there is some very hot stuff in there.
This particular year, I was struck by this, one of the many complaints against King George III:
“Formidable to tyrants only.” As we continue to push back against voter suppression, this is a pretty good motivator, I think.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Puppetry convention?
prostratedragon
Even small nice things can help. No doubt Sec. Mayorkas was thrilled.
debbie
@gkoutnik:
Tangentially, I think this was the first year they noted the racist complaints about African Americans and Native Americans.
Baud
@debbie:
I remember the racist line about the American Indians. What’s the complaint about AAs?
terraformer
@Patricia Kayden:
This is on the long list of questions of goings-on in the past administration. Everyone in that group has said and acted in a clearly pro-Putin manner or otherwise repeated or mirrored whatever was – and still is, particularly in the case of my Senator, Johnson – in the best interests of Putin
jackmac
I waited until today to view the New York Times’ video report on the Jan. 6 insurrection. What I found was a well-produced account that was — astonishingly — so much worse than impressions received via video clips and print reports. Hey FBI and prosecutors, you haven’t arrested nearly enough of these traitors. There’s room in jails and courts to charge several hundred more of these doughy, middle-aged white guys. There’s also room for their GOP Congressional accomplices.
J R in WV
Happy Birthday, United States of America!
This is one great way to recognize the proper inclusive nature of the nation, and the Rosie the Nurse artwork is pretty amazing also too.
Anyone who objects to this ceremony can sit on the proverbial rusty farm implement and rotate. A Wonderful American ceremony for the Forth of July~!!~
Dorothy A. Winsor
@jackmac: I’m looking forward to hearing more about the congressional accomplices
zhena gogolia
@jackmac:
I’ve watched about 15-20 minutes. I had seen a lot during the second impeachment, but what’s revelatory here is the way they highlight the key inciters in the crowd (Proud Boys and Oath Keepers). It takes some strategy to get an amorphous crowd to break into the Capitol building, and this film shows how it happened. Sickening.
Gin & Tonic
When I was working, it was a custom for a bunch of co-workers to go to a local minor league baseball game on or near the 4th. There were always fireworks after the game, which was cool, but often before the game there was a citizenship swearing-in ceremony on the field. The diversity of the new Americans, and the import of the ceremony would invariably get me all verklempt.
Now, I just hope I’m able to move under my own power by the time it’s my daughter-in-law’s turn.
Rocks
@jackmac: @jackmac: Now that the FTFNYT has actually produced this, will it cause the kind of introspection that would make their editorial page less of a Title D landfill? Asking for a friend.
FelonyGovt
I remember my mother-in-law’s citizenship ceremony about 40 years ago. It made me tear up, watching her and the other diverse new citizens. I’m glad our country seems (for the most part) to be back.
debbie
@Baud:
I checked the transcript. The lead-in to the complaint was a list of the complaints that were removed at the last minute, in late complaint about the slave trade. Sorry.
WaterGirl
@Rocks: Hope springs eternal.
germy
This cartoon about an immigrant family and their hopes for their children:
https://thenib.com/tiger-son/
They just wanted him to have the freedom and room to be happy, but it took him a while to figure that out…
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
The statements that only a few hundred got inside the building? Lies.
Betty
They need to have signs like the Vegas one all over the coumtry. Shout it out!
mrmoshpotato
That’s a great comic from John Deering.
Mary G
I smell another divorce in the offing:
WaterGirl
@Mary G: I don’t get it what am I missing?
Robert Sneddon
@gkoutnik:
George III had buggerall to do with control of the British colonies, the treaties signed with the French and Native American tribes, passing laws and all the other stuff the Founding Fathers were dead set against.
Question — without looking it up does any American reading this know the name of the Prime Minister in charge in Britain at the time of the First Treasonous Slaveowners Rebellion? Hint — his first name is “Lord”.
WaterGirl
@Robert Sneddon: Lord Peter Wimsey! :-)
Wag
@gkoutnik: Nice pick up! Yes, we need to point out their tyranny using the DoI at every chance
Baud
@Robert Sneddon:
@WaterGirl:
Lord Baud has a nice ring to it.
zhena gogolia
@Rocks:
No.
zhena gogolia
Any of you crossword fanatics out there, Evan Birnholz’s puzzle for the WaPo today is stunning.
H.E.Wolf
Wonderful update by John Deering of Norman Rockwell’s “Rosie the Riveter” image.
Every July 4th I wear my T-shirt with Rockwell’s “Rosie” on it. Here she is with her overalls decorated with union badges, trampling Hitler’s verdammt book.
https://i.etsystatic.com/17244327/r/il/b58279/3035588342/il_794xN.3035588342_tfcm.jpg
And here’s the Michelangelo original (Isaiah). Note that he and Rosie both have haloes. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah
ETA: found a more complete version of Rockwell’s painting.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: Thank you. Will check it out.
Have been working through the older [but this iteration] New Yorker crosswords; they started the feature anew in spring 2018. Some of them are a bit tough because perhaps millennial speak, which was current in 2018 but not heard now. Learning a lot about pop culture. References to Cardi B have appeared in two puzzles by now.
They’re fun, though. 19 pages back in the crosswords section.
Comrade Colette
@WaterGirl: I’m just guessing, but sounds like Bezos/Gates/Musk-level midlife/privilege acting out in a way that suggests – and causes – trouble at home.
Also, fuck that guy.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle:
Yes, I enjoy those.
Steeplejack (phone)
@zhena gogolia:
I did it early this morning, don’t remember anything striking about it. I’ll have to go back and look.
TomatoQueen
@Robert Sneddon: Lord North.
WaterGirl
@Comrade Colette: Ah, that would make sense.
Maybe if you’re one of those guys, the red sports car doesn’t say mid-life crisis, it says a day ending in Y.
Matt McIrvin
@Robert Sneddon: Lord North, right?
(I looked it up, I was right.)
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia, @Steeplejack (phone):
Oh, yeah. I solved it, but I never did figure out the gimmick with certain clues and the quotation.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Mary G: zuckerberg & snowden are worse than seung-hui cho as yung virginians of promise.
fuck all of them.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
I had to go read Birnholz’s explanation. Yes, it’s ingenious, but the extras are way too complicated for me.
James E Powell
@zhena gogolia:
How so?
frosty
@H.E.Wolf:
Amazing. Deering borrowed it from Rockwell who borrowed it from Michaelangelo. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best!
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: I got the red sports car back on April, but “mid-life” is pretty far back in the rear view mirror. Plus, it’s something dear wife and I have been coveting for some time.
Steeplejack
@James E Powell:
If you don’t care about doing the crossword, you can see the solution and detailed explanation here. (Spoilers, of course!)
Mary G
@Mary G: @Comrade Colette:
That was my thought, many times a man of a certain age has done something to reassure himself of his masculinity, trouble brews. He is a new man and his wife is the same old, same old, yelling about socks on the floor. His ability to hold the flag while wakeboarding is more impressive to me than a red sports car, or Bezos’ yacht so big it needs a support yacht, or Bezos/Branson/Musk space ships. But he’s still an asshole and Facebook is a crime against nature.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: ooh, sounds pretty. For nearly a year before my niece turned 16 she must have said a million times that what she wanted for her birthday was a red porsche.
So I dutifully went to a hobby store (do they even have those anymore?) and got a little model of a red porsche, and I had it sitting in the driveway when she got home from school on her birthday.
It wasn’t the real thing, but it was something!
Mary G
@Mary G: Also, too, here is a brilliant thread about billionaires in space:
WaterGirl
@Mary G: Even whatever he was doing on the board looked fake – it looked like it was a board on a post. Or is that a thing? I really need to get out more.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mary G: Zuck Fuckerberg with a chusty rainsaw.
If there was ever a good excuse for defacing the American flag, ramming that one still on its pole up his pseudohuman arse and twisting hard would be it.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Have a thing against red cars and trucks in general. In bright sunlight it can become nigh impossible for those behind one to determine when the brake lights are on.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Not mention that Facebook and the NYT are in bed together.
WaterGirl
@Uncle Cosmo: UGH.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Good thing I won’t be driving in your neighborhood in the foreseeable future.
Mary G
@WaterGirl: It’s a thing, kids do it here, and you need a strong core, leg and arm muscles. I think it looks fake because he fell a lot and the takes are stitched together with “the best” AI, whose makers hate his guts. And the water is suspiciously smooth for a wake. Or that’s my fantasy, anyway.
James E Powell
@Steeplejack:
Thanks. I did it. I didn’t really think it was anything but ordinary, but maybe because I was watching TV while I’m doing it, I missed all this.
Uncle Cosmo
Old expression: Good poets borrow; great poets steal.
NotMax
@Mary G
Well, currently Facebook is in Dutch, as it were.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
I thought the thing with the clues was brilliant.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mary G:
Related, but I’ve totally not been being paying attention the last few years, but I guess we’re going back to the moon
Kinda crazy it could only be a few years away and a woman/POC could walk on the moon
Spanky
@NotMax: I got my current pickup in red because the green one I had before was apparently invisible to other drivers, even with my lights on. None of them managed to hit it, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Anyway, close calls have fallen way off. Given I’m driving the same roads with pretty much the same people, I’ll cite the variable that has changed most.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mary G:
@WaterGirl:
What I don’t get is why he picked “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. Like, what does that have to do with July 4th? What’s so patriotic about that? It’s like Data from TNG trying to be human without the charm and all the smarm of Lore, his “brother”. Also, poor John Denver. He must be revolving in his grave
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Has strong “your call is very important to us” vibes
Steeplejack (phone)
@zhena gogolia:
Yes, it was. Just a bit too ornate for my taste.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Enough boilerplate to build a locomotive.
;)
Another Scott
@Mary G: $12,000 “efoil”
https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-electric-surfboard-lift-efoil-2020-7?amp
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: You California kids! :-)
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Happy Birthday Papa Cisco!
He’d have been 84 today.
JoyceH
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Dang, if you’d told 1970 me that in 2021 we wouldn’t have so much as a BASE on the moon, and no human had reached Mars yet, I would have called you a liar.