Or perhaps, a great failure. I have taught both of my sons to tie a tie without bringing them to tears.
The most interesting, and kind of entertaining, thing about this is the response of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. OK, Trump pardoned him, so maybe this is payback, and Blago doesn't really address specifics, so I'll leave it at that; interesting, but not dispositive. I remember his trial in 2009, however, and the most interesting thing about it was that the Chicago Tribune broke the case wide open.....late enough in the investigation for Blago to be impeached and removed from office, but not late enough that bids for Barack Obama's Senate seat would implicate the big hitters in Chicago politics for a generation, crippling the Democratic Party statewide.
But regarding the Trump trial and conviction, here are my thoughts:
Diplomats are aghast at the apparent fact that an Israeli "hit" on a place where terrorist leaders were said to be hiding ended up igniting at least a fuel tank, and maybe an ammunition depot. Now given that refugees do not cook with diesel fuel or gasoline, and are not supposed to be combatants, why, pray tell, was there at least a large fuel tank in the vicinity? It is also worth noting that a good portion of the injuries spoken of in the published reports are by shrapnel. So unless the hit was by a couple of cluster bombs instead of small 17kg bombs, as the Israelis claim, we are looking at yet another war crime by Hamas that is getting a lot of their own people killed.
I do not know what you do with people who will do this to their own flesh and blood.
Update: it turns out that the bombs used had 16-17kG of explosive, but were about 250 lbs overall, but recordings from the site do indicate that an ammunition dump was accidentally hit, decimating the refugee camp. So once again, "distrust, verify, distrust some more" is the proper response to breathless Hamas reports from the region.
WIth regards to the ICC's allegations that Israel is "using starvation as a weapon of war", it turns out that the Israelis have allowed 500,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza since the war began in October.
We might joke that, given up to 500 pounds of food aid per man, woman, and child in Gaza being available, that the Israelis are not using starvation, but rather obesity and gout as weapons of war against Hamas. It is the same war that the supermarket and Mrs. Bubba's cooking wage on me, but I'm not sending Mrs. Bubba to Den Haag for obvious reasons.
Keep waging war on me, Hy-Vee and Mrs. Bubba! Burp.
Seriously, this is one big reason that I don't want the United Nations anywhere near the administration of justice. You get the brothers of pedophiles like Karim Khan coming out with ludicrous indictments like this for political reasons.
The latest tirade against Clarence Thomas by the New York Times is, apparently, that he's too close to his wife. Now one would think after President Trump's embarrassments, not to mention L'Affaire Lewinsky and a host of other truly scandalous behavior by politicians, that commentators would start to think that it is a good thing when a public figure is devoted to his wife, but apparently not.
I guess, given my relationship with Mrs. Bubba, I will be seen as completely incapable of assuming any position of prominence by the progressive left. That noted, given my stances politically, I kind of knew that already. My hunch here is that this is yet another one of those selective stances by progressives. It's bad if a conservative is close to his wife (because they might make a lot of babies in addition to laws progressives don't like), but it might be tolerated in a fellow progressive.
Apparently one of the top experts on federal election law, a law upon which Alvin Bragg's prosecution persecution of former President Trump lies, was denied the opportunity to speak openly on the complexities of that law in the trial under the logic that only the judge gets to instruct the jury on the intricacies of the law. This is, in my view, one of the chief weaknesses of our current trial system; if a judge decides to "neglect" to explain the law accurately, as is exactly the allegation against Merchan, then the judge can swing a verdict in favor of one party or the other. If lawyers and expert witnesses are not allowed to comment on the law, one also must wonder precisely why defendants are afforded the right to representation.
Suffice it to say that the more I see, the more I realize that "Judge" Merchan and Alvin Bragg's entire team need to be disbarred. Again, I'm not a huge fan if President Trump, but they're gleefully railroading a man when Bragg's predecessor, the FEC, and the DOJ all declined to prosecute. That should mean something.
Check out this report where a mugger decided to attack the wrong couple, and paid dearly for it.
For those about to rock, we salute you!
....is how radical Islamists, most of whom are of Arabic descent, choose to decry Jews as the "brothers of apes and pigs." To which those who take Genesis 12:3 seriously might respond "Now remind me, precisely who was the brother of Isaac?". Not quite sure why an Arab would make that argument, to put it mildly, as even the Qu'ran establishes this pretty clearly.
Also on the darkly amusing side, Gregg Jarrett of Fox News has noted, along with Bob Costello, that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's testimony in the current criminal case contradicts his testimony at Trump's trial for falsifying business records. One might infer that Cohen's testimony in both cases ought to be thrown out in toto, which is of course exactly what I'd suggest given Cohen's 2018 conviction for perjury.
Really, is this all that complicated? We know that Cohen is a liar, so anyone thinking of building a case off his testimony can move on and do something productive instead.
Apparently, the Social Security trust fund runs out in 2035, and I will, Lord willing, hit 67 in 2036. So on the off chance that someone on either side of the aisle will actually give up demagoguery and listen to reason, here are some realities.
All in all, government needs to realize that they are not the solution here, and the main thing they can do is get out of the way.
Just saw an article noting that a chef had decided use "Aztec culinary tradition" to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Since the major Aztec culinary tradition I'm aware if is ritual cannibalism after human sacrifice, no, thanks!
(seriously, a good portion of modern Mexican cuisine derives in part from the more respectable parts of Aztec cooking, like the use of chilies and chocolate, but sorry...could not resist...)
I am not a huge fan of former President Trump, nor do I endorse his character, but if indeed Alvin Bragg's case against President Trump does not actually describe the crime of which he's accused, and if indeed Bragg's calling "Stormy Daniels" to the stand has nothing to do with whether this crime might have occurred, we need to get the disbarment courts going for Bragg, his team of 15 attorneys prosecuting the case, and of course the judge who should have spotted these obvious flaws and stopped this whole charade.
The reality here is that the "crime"--misrepresenting spending on hush money--is a misdemeanor, with the statute of limitations expired for over five years, but the damage done to Trump and the public (who are paying Bragg and his staff of course) amounts to many felonies. Bragg, his staff, and Judge Merchan should all really be imprisoned for what they've done, especially Bragg, but realistically speaking, the best we can hope for is that they all be disbarred.
And when, Lord willing, the disbarment train stops in New York, it needs to head south to Georgia for Fani Willis and her team. There are very real reasons to put politicians on trial--I can think of some fairly obvious sale of influence by our current President--but when prosecutors have "creative new ideas" on how to prosecute unpopular politicians, they are generally weaponizing the courts, and need to be removed for life from the legal profession.
British actor, an atheist, makes the claim that the Bible is one of the "worst books ever". Well, worst ever, except for being the wellspring of the thinking that made Western Europe and North America some of the most humane culture out there, instead of leaving Mr. Cox to paint himself blue and throw innocent kids on a bone-fire, I guess. And except for the--ahem--institutionalized atheism that generated the world's worst genocides in the 20th Century.
If you read this article carefully, you'll probably notice what I'm noticing; the studies that prove that gas stove use causes unsafe levels of nitrogen oxides in home air does not mention something that most kitchens in the country have; a ventilation fan to the outside.
It strikes me as very interesting that the researchers miss something I've had in every home that I've owned, save one that didn't even have natural gas service to the building. It's almost like they're starting the so-called "research" with the end goal in mind, that of eliminating good cooking from the country.
Apparently, the "lost & found" page for the pro-Hamas, pro-Nazi demonstrators at Columbia includes an entry where the owners of Heinrich the Piglet lament the loss of his suicide vest.
So apparently the neo-Nazis at Columbia see nothing amiss with naming a piglet "Heinrich" (nice German name) and making a hog an emblem for jihad. With friends like these, the only worse enemies Hamas could have are the IDF and Mossad.
And really, when thinking about this, it strikes me that if those who chant "from the river to the sea" need to be reminded that what they're cheering for is the destruction of a mostly Jewish nation of ten million people.
Note to those who do this; just put on your swastika armbands already and start chanting "Sieg Heil". Wave around your copies of Mein Kampf while you sing the Horst Wessel Lied. Want to be a....words not suitable for this blog....then have at it, but be honest about who you really are.
If, on the other hand, you're a sane person, raise a cold one to the brothers of Pi Kappa Psi at UNC and their Greek brothers and sisters who stepped in and protected the U.S. flag from the Nazis. Maybe even contribute to the party they're planning, as it should be a lot of fun.
And of course, pray that some of them get better taste than "White Claw", but that's a side note.
It strikes me that one thing the "trans rights" movement does not grasp is the relative nature of "unclothed encounters" between people.
To draw a picture, when two men or two women encounter one another in a fully or partially unclothed state, they have, assuming a rate of homosexuality of 3% or less, very low odds (0.09%, one in a thousand or so) that both of them will be looking at something they are sexually attracted to in a state which suggests that sexual relations could happen.
However, when two people of the opposite sex encounter one another in a fully or partially unclothed state, the odds are 99.9% that at least one of the two people in that encounter are attracted to the sex they're looking at. Add more people, and of course the odds become virtually certain.
Now with due "respect" to rude jokes about appearance, what this means is this; when people of the opposite expose more than a certain amount of skin, a degree of sexual tension is inevitable. It is, at its core, what's going on when actresses and musicians of modest ability but spectacular beauty put that beauty on display; the attempt is being made to divert the rational mind and engage the hormones. It works.
And so when I consider the reality of "trans women" entering womens' only spaces, it's obvious that this sexual tension is being created, and the relevant question is whether or not they are aware of this tension, and if they are, whether or not they care. At a certain level, we would suggest that people are intentionally breaching womens' only spaces in a way that is....much like "flashing"....a level of sexual assault.
Inside and outside of sports, it's time to make it stop.
A Russian Iskander missile, accurate to within 30 meters and loaded with a cluster bomb, hits a building used as a school, killing at least five people. Double bonus is that the owner has been historically pro-Russian, so one wonders what he did to tick off Putin.
But to the point, you have to wonder what on earth is wrong with people who would launch a cluster bomb at a school. This is why military academies have a fair amount of coursework regarding war crimes...well, at least in the civilized world. Maybe that's not the case in Russia.
