The leaders and ....what?

Former Michigan offensive coordinator Matt Weiss is now being indicted for allegedly stealing the personal pictures of about 3000 mostly female athletes, and for getting into the medical records for about 150,000 more NCAA athletes.  

We might joke that it is a good thing that Michigan was stealing signs from their opponents, because obviously Weiss probably didn't have much time to actually run Michigan's offense with all those pictures he was looking at, and perhaps their bowl losses those years had something to do with Weiss's lack of preparation as well.

On a darker side, somehow it seems odd that the database Weiss accessed actually had the social media accounts and private pictures of those students.  I ran a little in college, and if my coach had insisted on seeing all the private pictures I had, we would have had a talk, especially if those pictures had included some that I didn't want my parents to see.  (thankfully, my college life was a little more boring than that of some athletes...)

Perhaps more instructively, 150,000 records is about 80% of the 190,000 student-athletes at the D1 level, and another level of investigation is whether Weiss was using those medical records to screen athletes for possible recruitment.  If so, it would be yet another level of cheating by Michigan, and one that would have to have some technical assistance for Weiss--it would be a big deal.  It would, along with the sign stealing getting three coaches fired and two more censured, indicative of a pervasive cheating culture in Ann Arbor.

On the light side....

My daughter came back from a Florida spring break trip looking a little bit like Rachel Zegler (absent the dark brown/raven hair), and now that she's peeling, she looks a little more like Snow White, sad to say.  

(seriously, Disney, if you want to jettison pretty much everything about the original movie, just give it a new name...) 

Just thinking....

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has noted the cases of Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, and Rachel Morin as reasons for the mass deportation of Venezuelan illegal immigrants.  

Now apart from the legality of deportation, let's think about the wisdom of deportation.  Miller is telling us, more or less, that his approach to illegal immigrants who rape and murder is to....deport them to a country where they know the language, and where they have a better chance of escaping?

No, sir, I'm all in favor of keeping them in our prisons, where we can make sure they can't cause problems until their hair falls out or turns gray.  So if this is indeed a major part of our deportation drive, let's think about what we're doing here.  No sane person wants these guys to escape from a Salvadoran prison to again come north and rape again.

Happy Spring!

 

Like I've said before

Trans advocates demand admission to a womens' only banja (Slavic version of sauna) event in San Francisco, one frequented by Orthodox Jews--who of course do not want to be seen naked by any male but their husbands and (intermittently) their doctors.  So the trans advocates respect their own culture, but apparently not anyone else's.

However, it gets worse.  Apparently one of the trans advocates who made the scene is on Megan's List for a sexual assault "by force or fear"; in other words, for the level of sexual assault most of us instinctively think of (and fear), forcible rape.

This is, like it or not, how far out there the progressive left is; not content with ignoring the right of women to decide which males they're willing to see naked, or be seen naked by, they're proceeding to ignore the right of women not to be placed into situations where sexual assault is likely.

Just thinking

Contemplate puberty suppression, cross sex hormones, and reassignment surgeries in light of the fact that low testosterone levels in males are correlated with depression.  So we might wonder whether these "therapies" really amount to "jumping from the frying pan into the fire".

The same thing holds for women whose estrogen is suppressed; depression is often a result.  This might explain  why study after study does not show significant mental health benefits to transgender therapies, and we might ask as well whether the analysis is being done on a one sided basis, where we would look only for signs that there is an improvement, or whether it is done on a two sided basis, where we would ask whether the therapies could even make things worse.

Or, really, whether we might see statistical "tails" on both sides.  Really, it's yet another place where the current mania towards "all or nothing" thinking may be doing immeasurable harm to those with gender dysphoria.

Scary reality

On one side of the aisle, we have ordinarily thinking people like Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance failing to rebuke Trump for his risible lies about Ukraine, and bullying of the same.  On the other side of the aisle, we have Senate Democrats voting unanimously to reject reserving women's sports for those with two X chromosomes, ignoring the fact that when "trans women" are admitted, one gets needless injuries of women, women lose opportunities, perverts on Megan's List gain admission to women's spaces to commit sexual assault, and fans won't be interested in watching "men in drag" beat up on women.

In other words, we've got a situation where, for the sake of political power, a lot of people are refusing to state obvious facts.  It could be a rough ride going forward.

And it gets worse

 It appears that the rare earths that President Trump wanted an "agreement" (extortion) for in Ukraine exist mostly in the pages of a Soviet era evaluation that really didn't examine extractability at reasonable cost (which makes sense, it was Communists after all), and four of the six deposits are actually in areas controlled by Russia, while the remaining two are perilously close to the war zone.  Geologists who have been there note that there is no clear evidence that the deposits can actually be developed.

So the supposed basis for peace is, put gently, a chimera, technologically, and a likely albatross around Ukraine's neck.  Chalk it up as yet another example of Trump acting in haste, whereupon the world will get to repent at leisure.

I pulled the lever for Trump because I felt that it was a less disastrous choice than Harris, and I stand by that, but the scales are a lot closer to balanced today than they were last November.

Not an auspicious sign

Talks between Russia and the United States regarding the resolution of the war in Ukraine (and Russia) not only exclude Ukraine, but are also being facilitated by the same guy believed to have ordered the hit on Jamal Kashoggi in a country with one of the most repressive regimes in the world.  Worse yet, rumors are going around that the price for peace will be a huge portion of Ukraine's mineral wealth.

The ugly reality here is that not only do we seem to be kowtowing to neo-Soviet dictators, but we appear to be doing so in the same basic way that the Versailles Treaty paved the way for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.  At the very best, an impoverished and humiliated Ukraine becomes susceptible to the very totalitarianism that we theoretically want to avoid, and could very likely become a Russian puppet state.

I hope I'm wrong, but I would hope that we would have the basic maturity to realize that sometimes we have to pay a price for freedom, and nations like Russia (Iran's biggest sponsor) are not likely to leave us alone if only we withdraw from Europe.  To that effect, Putin's minions have already been talking about taking Alaska back.  Their ambitions do not stop in the Donbas, or with the Dnipro.  They likely cross the Bering Strait and extend to the Vistula, Elbe, and even the Rhine in Europe--if not further.

Bloat, or flat out edema?

The University of Michigan, already infamous for its approach to football, apparently has 1100 DEI employees.  To put things in perspective, the "school" has 8426 academic staff at their flagship campus in Ann Arbor, but nearly 25,000 administrative staff.  In comparison, my alma mater had 5703 instructors in 2023, but only 7365 administrative staff.

Suffice it to say that easy student loans and grants have created a world where too many "leeches" are sucking the financial lifeblood from financially vulnerable students.

Throw the book at them

The University of Michigan is making what I consider to be a rather absurd claim; that somehow the rest of the coaching staff didn't know about Connor Stallions' sign stealing scheme.  Let's go through the evidence:

• Michigan's win percentage went up 25% during the scheme, and then down 30% when it was exposed.
• The major losses during the scheme were relatively un-scoutable bowl games.
• In contract talks, former stinky weasels coach Jim Harbaugh insisted on protection from NCAA investigations.
• Harbaugh has been banned from the NCAA for four years for refusing to cooperate with the investigation.
• Current Michigan coach Sherrone Moore has already been sanctioned for his role.
• Several coaches' computers and phones showed evidence of the scheme.  Three have been fired, and the defensive coordinator moved to the NFL.
• Are we to seriously believe that Harbaugh, Moore, Jesse Minter, and other Michigan coaches missed the fact that they were amazingly more likely to be in the right defense in 2021-3 than they were in 2019 and before?  (2020 was a forgiveable lost season for them)
• Are we to believe that nobody in the coaching staff never slipped up as they applied their knowledge of offensive signs when calling the plays defensively during the game?

Now the NCAA has telegraphed their unwillingness to seriously punish the stinky weasels already by saying they won a national championship "fair and square", but the bulk of the evidence suggests that Michigan needs to give up their wins from 2021-3, as well as about six scholarships per year for the next four years.

Interesting confession

After pardoning President Nixon for crimes related to Watergate to avoid an endless set of investigations and prosecutions, President Ford carried a card in his pocket noting a Supreme Court decision that said that the man who accepts a pardon implicitly admits guilt.

In that light, it's very interesting that basically Biden's whole extended family is getting pardons, and it suggests that we might do well to continue investigating to see exactly how bad the breaches of national security have been. And yes, Dr. Fauci, I'm looking at you, too.  I don't know if it's technically a breach of criminal law to do gain of function research with the Chinese, but certainly it's a breach of moral law and basic common sense.   

Grounds for disbarment

Judge Juan Merchan has decided to "punish" President Trump with an "unconditional discharge" for his, um, "crimes".  What this means is no fines and no jail time, and what that means is that at the root of things, Merchan does not believe that Trump really did anything that was that harmful to the country.

Which is exactly what any sane person would have thought when the charges were introduced; more or less, expired misdemeanor charges become a...felony...through unspecified other felonies not mentioned in the jury verdict, most likely federal election charges not under the jurisdiction of state courts to begin with...when untold numbers of New York businessmen hide payments to their mistresses and other embarrassing expenses in precisely the same way, and the city/state of course did not, of course, dig up unspecified felonies to prosecute these men, let alone prosecute them for this during the period specified by the statute of limitations.

It is extremely unlikely that this remedy will be applied in New York, where their "Supreme Court" has already signed off on this travesty, but in a sane legal world, this would be grounds for disbarment for everyone involved, including Merchan.  The ugly fact of the matter is that the costs of defense for this proceeding likely go to the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and what this means is that to prosecute a legally tenuous case involving misdemeanors, the prosecution has committed multiple felonies (it is a felony to steal more than $1000 from a person, no?) against President Trump.

I am no fan of adultery or hush money, and have my misgivings about President Trump, but if we want justice in this country, I can think of at least 17 lawyers who need to be disbarred, if not imprisoned: Juan Merchan, Alvin Bragg, and Bragg's entire team, especially Michael Colangelo.  In general, those who "make the process the punishment" need to be reminded, harshly, that they are indeed imposing penalties on men without a conviction.  It is not a game.

Moreover, Colangelo, and the people who almost certainly paid him off to join Bragg's team (which was a huge demotion for him), also need to be prosecuted for public corruption.  This would likely include Joseph Robinette Biden, Alvin Bragg, and Merrick Garland, among others.  Somebody had to promise Colangelo a nice payoff for going from a prime DOJ spot to a relatively "podunk" post in Gotham City.

An interesting experiment not intended

I saw on "Powerline" today how the rate of traffic tickets issued in San Francisco has plummeted in the past decade.  For reference, here is the graph, and the crazy thing is that while the rate of issuing tickets has dropped by a factor of 30 or so, the vehicular death rate is about the same in the same time period.  

Now perhaps San Francisco imposes a degree of traffic sanity found  in not too many other places with large hills and lots of stoplights, but I do have to wonder if this is an indication that if it's public safety we're looking for, we need to take Officer Friendly off traffic patrol and have him start investigating serious crimes like rape--or replace him with someone who can.

The Russian re-Sovietization plan appears to be working too well

I am one who sees the recent history of Russia as, more or less, Vladimir Putin's project to re-Sovietize Russia and (if he can get away with it) the entire region.  Particular points of interest are Putin's description of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 as a "catastrophe", his utter lack of remorse for his assistance of the Stasi in East Germany, the incredible prevalence of drug use in Russian Olympic teams, the apparent murder of dissidents and journalists with KGB methods (plutonium, Novichok, throwing from windows), and of course an expansionistic foreign policy that seeks to force neighboring nations into submission with tactics that can only be charitably described as "terroristic."   

And now, another couple of points of reference are that Russian winter crops (rye, winter wheat, etc..) are failing, just like in Soviet days, and also significantly, the Russian rate of AIDS deaths greatly exceeds that of the United States.

The latter bit may seem counterintiutive, but Mr. Putin is not in reality the traditionalist he makes himself out to be, and calls for a higher birth rate appear to be made outside the bounds of marriage.  More or less, "if you're a patriot, get those eggs fertilized by whatever means necessary", and the ugly reality is that this is a very effective way to spread disease.  It is, more or less, the same thing that the old Soviets called for in the 1920s and 1930s as formerly robust birth rates in the more prosperous Tsarist era gave way to Soviet depression.

On a side note, I would suggest that the barbarism of Russian (and formerly, Soviet) armed forces may have a lot to do with the fact that divorce rates (and the rate of absentee fathers) were sky-high.

And hopefully our government leaders will recognize the real significance of what is going on here.  It may well be that Putin will exhaust the demographics of Russia before he can get very far, but that's not something that I want to be counting on.

Update: Putin is now blaming Russian consumers and farmers for high food prices.  Apparently the five year plan to have enough meat and butter is not working out, just like the good old Soviet days.