#Priorities

Apparently, a string of bad decisions and some evidence of possible mental illness (Taylor Swift incident, not marrying you know who) isn't a big deal around the liberals who know Kanye West, but a couple of statements supporting Donald Trump is.  One might infer that the well being of a fellow human being isn't that big of a deal to them, but partisan politics is.


Like I wrote, #Priorities.

Ewwww.....

Larry Nassar's former boss has now been accused of.....doing about the same thing that Nassar was convicted of doing, just with adult victims.  Really, the case of Strampel makes clear that MSU needs to have independent investigators do a full investigation of not only Title IX compliance (or lack thereof), but also a full investigation of how many nasty things were suppressed by MSU HR staff. 


And, to be honest, a good look at Strampel's former employer, the U.S. Army, might be in order, too.   This is a golden opportunity for many organizations to take a good look at what they may, or may not, have tolerated and repent.

What a disgrace

Democrats in the Senate have come up with a completely anonymously sourced document claiming that VA nominee Ronny Jackson abused his authority in his job, was careless with prescription drugs, and moreover came to work drunk on multiple occasions.


The way I see it, the Democrats should be compelled to reveal their sources, and all of them should be fired.  If the claims are true, these people have put the President in danger by their silence.  If the allegations are false, they're slandering an innocent man.  Neither qualifies them for continued government employment.


And yes, this needs to be reported to medical boards, too.  And finally, for using anonymous sources this way, all of the Democrats need to be fired from their jobs, too.  This is nonsense, to be very polite about the matter.

Thank you, Lizard Queen

Newsweak reveals that Hilliary Clinton helped scuttle her chances at the Presidency by not taking seriously the fact that she's seriously unlikeable.  She couldn't even fake sincerity and compassion, apparently, and quite frankly, had she made it back to 1600 Pennsylvania, there's no telling what she might have done. 


And along those lines, this might explain a lot about the Clintons.  Did she lose human compassion in grief at Bill's seeking love with others, or did Bill seek love with others in response to her lack of human compassion, or did both things feed on each other?    Or are they simply two creeps who richly deserve one another? 


Give her enough chardonnay, and you might get an honest answer.  Thankfully for her, the Secret Service will prevent you from hearing her answer.


Update: this might be the answer.  Apparently Mrs. Clinton described herself as a "misanthrope" all the way back in college, well before she met Bill. Quite frankly, I'm surprised Bill didn't nix her Senate runs to prevent damage to his political party, but perhaps that was the price he had to pay to avoid an embarrassing and costly divorce.  Or something like that.  

Yes, death panels

Let's remember Sarah Palin's lie of the Year truth that the Democrats didn't want made known as we consider this sad case from England, where (once again) a court is deciding who does, and does not, get medical care.  In similar news, apparently mental illness is now a criterion for euthanasia in the Netherlands and Belgium. 


So if you'd prefer not to be murdered by your government when the cost of keeping you alive gets to be too much, you might support free market health care.

How Americans can dominate in distance running

Apparently, judging by the results from the Boston Marathon, all you've got to do is run distance events below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and introduce some strong winds.  Maybe we could do the Summer Olympics next time in Murmansk (Russia), Barrow (Alaska), Oulu (Finland), or perhaps even Antarctica.  Suffice it to say that the runners from the U.S. and Canada showed some serious sisu. Well done!


It reminds me of watching--with some despair of course--the Big Ten team's (nearly) annual collapse in the Rose Bowl back in the eighties, and pondering whether they'd have done better if the game were played in a more neutral venue like Lambeau or Soldier Field instead of UCLA's home field.   Either that, or I would have just enjoyed watching all those Californians shiver on New Year's Day. 

Sigh

My wife and I got a fund-raising letter from Michigan State University--we're both alumni--starting with a sentence about bringing healing, but the overall subject of the letter was to get funds to build a new place to store special library/museum collections.  Yup, I'm sure that all those ladies who brought Larry Nassar to jail will be ecstatic that some books are warm, dry, and well cared for.  It's nearly as tone-deaf as this invitation to an alumni dinner in Jackson.


Worth noting is that MSU does have a good communications arts school that at least used to turn out graduates who understood PR.  Maybe they should talk to someone there and learn a few tips.  Or maybe just talk with a logic professor who might be able to explain the concept of "bait and switch" to them. 

Wow

Apparently James Comey admits in his book that he modified how he handled his non-investigation of the crimes of Hilliary Clinton due to a desire to avoid marking her as an "illegitimate" President.  That's awful nice of you, Jim, but what would have been even nicer would have been if you'd actually convened a grand jury to collect some actual evidence, and best of all would have been if you'd applied the law as it's written.


But apparently that's a bit too much to ask of a career investigator.  Lock Comey up, he's obviously been obstructing justice here.

Picture of government intervention

Check out these pictures of graveyards for abandoned "bike share" bicycles in China.  Writing as an amateur bike mechanic for my family's bicycles, it's just plain sad to see so much wasted.  Now writing as a bike enthusiast, I must also note that if I have a choice, that kind of bicycle is not what I want to choose--you're simply too restricted in the number of gears, in the physical dimensions important for comfort, and quite frankly the "step through" design tends to be pretty heavy as well.


What's telling especially, though, is that in a country that half a century ago was seeing tens of millions of people die of hunger in the Cultural Revolution, they are now seeing bicycles being thrown away because they're not worth bringing back to the owners.  It even appears that a lot of these bicycles aren't being taken by amateur mechanics like me for someone else to use.


It's a great thing that there is now such abundance in China, but it would be nice if governments would stop pushing these solutions that don't work.  We have enough junkyards as it is, don't we?

Things that make you go "hmmmm....."

Yesterday's raid on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen raises an awful lot of questions, to put it mildly.  First of all, if Robert Mueller is actually investigating the possibility (impossibility, really) of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, exactly how does the non-issue of Trump's alleged dalliance with Stephanie Clifford play into this?  Exactly why did Mueller take enough evidence regarding the matter to make a referral?  As Mr. D. notes, this looks like a reason for firing a LOT of people in the FBI and DOJ.  There is no plausible reason that Mueller should have been doing this, and no less than Alan Dershowitz agrees. The only possibility, really, is if Rod Rosenstein made the bounds of Mueller's investigation impossibly broad, which is in itself a violation of rules governing special counsels.


(and to the obvious rejoinder, L'affaire Lewinsky, remember that that was drug in when Paula Jones sued Clinton for harassment--a suit that was tangentially related to the Whitewater investigation)


Then we have the question of why the federal attorney's office in New York picked up a case with such clear implications of the violation of attorney-client privilege, and when there are a lot of other far more important cases to take there.


To be blunt, I have to wonder who's really running the country.  Somehow it doesn't seem like it's our elected officials anymore.

Political differences defined

Apparently former First Lady Michelle Obama has characterized her husband as the "good parent" in contrast to the current President.  Now apart from who I voted for, I've got to note that I object to this for a very simple reason; government is not my parent, nor does any sane person want government as a parent.  Anyone who reads this history of the 20th Century would conclude that this would be child abuse, after all. 


Along other notes, apparently my high school sport of choice, distance running, has joined weightlifting as a sport where the inherent differences between men and women aren't significant enough to prohibit transgender individuals from running the Boston Marathon as "women."  Now granted, not too many guys are going to get mutilated just to score better in the age groups after Heartbreak Hill, and the East Germans and Czechoslovakia made a farce of sprint and middle distance running in the 1970s and 1980s with their steroid programs (along probably with the Chinese in the 1990s in the 3000 meters), but the fact does remain that being male does correlate with narrower hips, tighter ligaments, and higher bone density, all of which are very helpful in distance running. 


Again, people have been cheating on these things for millennia, so this comes as no surprise, but it's still disheartening when it's made official. 

Either words matter, or I've been assaulted

Say what?  Here's what; an article that notes that the famous statistic of "one in five college women has been sexually assaulted" derives from research which includes forced kisses and groping as sexual assault. 


Now I'm not a fan of either forced kisses or groping, but having experienced both in college, I'm going to have to guess that it differs in character and impact from things like date rape and forcible rape.  In my case, a young lady decided that since I was a runner, my thighs were fair game for Roman hands.  I removed her hands and said "no", and that was that.  Another time, I did something kind (I forget what, maybe killing a spider or something) for a different young lady, and when I responded to her "thank you" by noting it was nothing, ended up with a peck on the cheek.  In her defense, she made clear that a peck on the cheek was all she had in mind, and I still cry laugh about it today. 


Yes, I'm not a very good victim, and to be sure, young ladies (gentlemen) whose lips were mashed and body manhandled by a drunken frat boy (s-girl)  had a much more traumatic experience than did I.   Even so, however, these overly broad descriptions of misbehavior don't do those who are genuinely traumatized any good, since we end up looking for a lot of perpetrators who simply don't exist.


And in the process, we fail to convict perpetrators who are very, horribly real.

A very real tragedy

Contrary to the usually very good reporting of the Babylon Bee, it turns out that not only was it legal to produce God's Not Dead 3, but it has been produced under the name God's Not Dead, A Light in Darkness.  What's the tragedy?  Well, look at the rating--3.2/10--and compare it with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Killer Tomatoes Strike Back, and Killer Tomatoes Eat France.  Yes, you read it here; GND3 rates below all four Killer Tomatoes movies, twice by a long shot.


Really, Christian movies need to come to grips with the fact that a lot of them are just plain awful, and that we need to learn something from good movies, even if they contain elements with which we disagree.