Message received

The NCAA, fresh off issuing fines--but no forfeited games or probation--over the University of Michigan's sign-stealing scheme that netted the program about a dozen wins they otherwise would not have gotten--has ordered Michigan State to vacate 14 wins over about $10,000 in "improper payments" to six players, and to spend three years on probation.

Message is received; the NCAA has no clue, and that was proven a while back when they declared the stinky weasels had won their "national championship" "fair and square".  Um, no, the ban on stealing signs is there for a reason, and being in the right place on key plays is a huge deal.  

What it says, moreover, is that the NCAA seriously needs to upgrade its rules, as the $10,000 improperly spent by MSU pales in comparison to the $16.3 million + spent annually in NIL payments by Michigan.  Yes, the old system--you get your education and a few bucks for meals and such--was a huge injustice to the strong majority of players who had no prospects of playing in the big leagues, but nevertheless risked life-altering injuries on the field.  

What would I suggest?  First of all, no more "general studies" programs--we should be nudging pro leagues to set up farm teams in football and basketball for those athletes who really have no business in a four year college.  As illiterate All-Pro Dexter Manley could tell you, it's a big problem.  Next, there needs to be some limit on NIL funding in the same way that the pro leagues have salary caps.  Maybe a cap at $12 million plus insurance policies for life-altering injuries would be a good start.  You want more?  Go to the pro leagues.

Finally, the old system of investigating colleges when a coach buys a player a sandwich needs to be discarded.  The Pareto Principle ought to matter; when the average player is taking home over $150,000 annually plus his scholarship, that sandwich, or even an improper payment of a thousand bucks or so, simply isn't going to change things much.

How not to pass the bar exam

Apparently Ms. Kim Kardashian is blaming AI, specifically ChatGPT, for her failures to pass the California bar exam.  Somehow, the notion that one ought to study, say, law books in order to pass the bar escaped her, and she's learning the hard way that "hallucinations" (AI errors) leave a nasty mark when the exams are being graded.

It reminds me of a joke I learned in college: a young woman, dressed seductively, comes up to her professor and says "I'd do anything to pass your class", and then casually flips her hair.  The professor decides to play along, and says "Oh, you'd do anything, huh?".  Another hair flip, a breathy "yessss......", and the professor responds:

Would you.......study....? 

How not to make friends and influence people

As my legions (ha!) of readers well know, I am a died in the wool conservative with libertarian leanings, but on my Twitter feed, what I'm finding is that many people on the port side of the aisle actually like what I have to say--and it's not that I'm changing, but rather that we are finding we have something in common.

Along those lines, an interesting link I saw from one of these "likers" was an explanation of why the left didn't run away from Zohran Mamdani in New York City and the like.  It goes like this:

• If you have $0, you get welfare
• If you have over fifty million dollars, you get bailouts (and I might add, corporate welfare)
• If you have $2300 in savings, you qualify to fund the whole system and get lectured about how to budget better

 What's being illustrated here, really, is that what we have in our country is not capitalism with a safety net, but rather mercantilism--and it might be added a mercantilism that our President and his adherents fully support.  It is you and I, after all, that got stuck with the bill for Trump's six bankruptcies--those bankers taking the loss had to get that money from somewhere, and you have an account.

So we might infer that a way to reach the left, yes, even the progressive left, is to abandon mercantilism and go closer to classic conservatism.  WHen the progressive left sees that we are no longer subsidizing the rich, they're going to listen to us better when we point out that government run grocery stores and rent control lead to hunger and homelessness.

Brilliance in the judiciary

Faced with the impending end of SNAP (food stamp) benefits due to the government shutdown, a federal judge has apparently ordered workers from a to be determined federal agency that may not exist, and who are not currently being paid, to send out SNAP payments/checks from a fund to be determined that also may or may not exist.

Funny me, I'd thought that involuntary servitude was banned with the 13th Amendment, and that if you're going to be spending money, maybe that ought to start with Congress, per Article 1, and ought to be directed through federal departments that actually exist and from resources that are actually known.  One thing I know for sure is that when federal judges act against the 13th Amendment, they ought to be removed from the bench and disbarred.  Crazy chicanery like this needs to have a serious penalty.

AI needs a little bit of work

I decided to take a look at my Twitter feed today, and was surprised to see that a number of supermodels had moved to my town just to be near me, and they'd figured out how attractive I was from my Twitter feed.

The one problem is that the picture shown in my Twitter feed is of a bird.  So either AI is having some real trouble differentiating birds from handsome men, or there are some people out there whose sexual preferences are really, really sick.   

Glad I'm not a Muscovite

Check out the picture of Russian air defense around the Kremlin here.  Apparently the height of technology for Russian air defense is a machine gun mounted on a western pickup, and Muscovites can look forward to periodic rains of 7.62mm (or maybe 12.7/.50 caliber) bullets raining town on their neighborhoods.  If you look at a map of Moscow, you will see that within the range that these bullets can be fired, there are literally millions of people.

We might joke somewhat bitterly that one of the most dangerous places in the world is to be "protected" by the Russian military.  Hopefully Russians wake up soon to the huge danger their dictator and his minions pose to them.

A fun project

One of the difficulties today in terms of footwear is that for whatever reason, many manufacturers don't have the good quality leather which will take a dye without excessive surface treatments--more or less, the lack of leather quality is quite literally covered up with a heavy polyurethane treatment, resulting in a shoe that is far less breathable and flexible.  Comfort takes a hit.  Part of this, I'm convinced, is because we don't eat much veal anymore, and some of the best hides for shoes do come from young cattle.

So for fun, I took a sanding block (sandpaper over foam) to one such pair of shoes, and was able to remove not only the grime from mowing, but also a good portion of the polyurethane (though not so much that one could see the base leather.   Putting them on was a revelation--it was a lot more like the high quality shoes I've bought in the past.

So if you've got some leather shoes where appearance is not key--don't do this with patent leather dress shoes for obvious reasons--and you'd like to get a little more comfort out of them, you can give this a try.  I used about a 120 grit sandpaper for this purpose.

An idea born of totalitarian idiocy

If current Russian president Vladimir Jugashvili Putin wants to show that his thinking is better than that of the Soviet era--where escaped Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko noted that they were trying to grow maize in Siberia--he could do little worse than the evident proposal to make a tunnel between Siberia and Alaska.  

How so?  Well, look at a highway map of Alaska, and then move over to the Russian side.  If you look closely, you will see that there is something pretty obviously missing.

Roads and railroads to the area.  

And of course, there is a reason for this; it's incredibly difficult to build roads on permafrost.  To get to Welsh, Alaska, you can take a boat (in summer), a plane, or, when you've got diptheria antitoxin to deliver and a good dog named Balto, a dogsled.  To build roads on permafrost, you're talking a similar amount of money as was spent on the Alaska Pipeline--$8 billion in 1974, or about $52 billion today.  The Russian side would be even worse, so we're really talking about somewhere north of $100 billion when....if there really was a market for U.S.-Russian trade, ships could embark from the end of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in Vladivostok and arrive in Seattle. High speed rail in California looks positively intelligent in comparison.

The reality here is that such a proposal is a gambit by Putin to soothe the ego of our President and get him to sell out Ukraine.  If it were, by some tragedy, actually built, it could also serve as a highway to achieve something Putin's minions are hoping to see; Alaska again as a territory of Russia.  Let's hope and pray neither happens.

PSA for cyclists

This is the helmet of a young friend of mine who learned the hard way that hitting big bumps at 30mph leads to road rash.  Thankfully, apart from cuts and scrapes, he's going to be OK, but notice here that the helmet is pretty well cracked.  Without the helmet, it of course could have been his skull.

Thanks again, Mom

Back when I was a young skull full of mush--now I am an older skull full of the same--my mother responded to my asthma and allergies by getting me on the swim team, under the notion that the moisture would do me good.  I never seemed to figure out how much good it was doing me at the time, but yesterday, I hit the pool after a rougher day breathing and....

...well, you're right again, Mom.   

A real risk of marijuana

A study of drivers who died due to car crashes finds that about 42% of them showed signs of recent use of marijuana and THC, with a mean THC level of 30.7 ng/ml, about six times the legal limit in Colorado.  Compare this with only 15% of Americans using cannabis in any form, and it would seem that we are starting to see significant evidence that THC indeed impairs safe driving.  The next step, in my view, is to see what percentage of those fatalities also included alcohol or other drugs, and to determine what portion of users use THC at this level.

I write this as someone who is generally friendly to the notion that marijuana is nowhere near as dangerous as opioids, and I stay by that view, but we simultaneously ought to realize that the use of THC, a mild hallucinogen, will not be without consequences.

An interesting claim

Apparently Joy Reid, in decrying an alleged plot by the GOP to end the income tax and allow people to earn as much as they want, is trying to connect efforts to end the income tax with Jim Crow and the like.

Which is interesting, because the architect of the income tax, Woodrow Wilson, is also the person who returned Jim Crow to the federal government.  So if I'm going to make a correlation, I'd argue that the income tax and Jim Crow go hand in hand.  Yes, there was pervasive discrimination even before Wilson, but Wilson further entrenched it in the federal government, and in doing so, probably gave Jim Crow a good portion of another 40 years of existence.  The large increases in the size of the federal government further gave Jim Crow new life.

That said, if only the GOP were going to end the income tax.  It costs close to half a trillion dollars per year just to administer and comply with it, and its heavily progressive nature discourages building businesses that would employ people--people like poor blacks that Reid claims to care about.  In doing so, it also introduces patently false ways of doing accounting which, again, put productive Americans out of work.

Regarding her notion that "you can earn as much as you want", quite frankly, if that were possible, I might have given it a try, and it's really basic economics that gets in the way.  Sad to say, I do not earn the wages that Michael Jordan and Tom Brady earned simply because I've never been able to handle a basketball or football the way they did, not because of a lack of desire to earn more money.

Amateur hour in the White House

Russian stooge Dmitry Medvedev taunts President Trump by noting a lack of U.S. submarines near Russia, to which Trump responds that he's moved a couple nearby.

Amateur move.  If you want to do psy-ops, you've got to respond with "Well, as far as you know.", or some such thing.  Uncertainty and doubt--especially in light of the fact that U.S. submarines are famously quieter than the Russians--can be far more effective than bluster.

Yikes

If there is any truth to Ukrainian President Zelensky's claim that Russia will not wait to defeat Ukraine before attacking the rest of NATO,  we would have to assume that history, specifically the part of how bad an idea a war on two fronts against multiple enemies is, is not taught at Russian universities, military academies, and of course the KGB/FSB.

This is why, in my view, Putin's aggressive tactics towards the NATO border countries need to be responded to rather directly with something like "Mr. Putin, you're losing a war against Ukraine, and the help NATO has provided amounts to about 2% of our weapons systems.  You do not want to see how quickly things go badly when the other 98% start to be used.".

Slava Ukraini, and Putin delenda est!

On the light side

It was nice, but a bit disconcerting, last night when the young man at Culver's gave me my first senior discount.  Hey, 72 cents off is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick!

I also read that former NFL player Shaun Alexander and his wife Valerie are expecting their 14th child.  Call me weird, but I think Valerie's got just as much right to a spot in a Hall of Fame as her husband--and that's not disparaging Shaun's accomplishments at all.   

Is this the new style?

It appears that after cartridges used by the murderer of Charlie Kirk had messages scrawled on them, the same thing was done for cartridges used by the shooter at an ICE facility.  So either this is becoming a fashion among the far left, or maybe it suggests that there might be some coordination between some of these guys.  Might be worth looking into.

And hopefully, of course, this causes the cartridges to fail to seat properly in the firing chamber, leading to inaccuracy and jamming.  Perhaps someday, we will even have a situation where the mainstream media look at these things and say "you know, somebody might be trying to tell us something here...".

If it were possible to spin in one's grave as one's life's work was trashed by one's successors, I think my great uncle would be doing so.  It is reasonable to ask "is this for real, or is this a diversionary tactic?", but not to ignore the evidence entirely.

This will leave a mark

Judge Steven Merryday, appointed by Donald Trump, strikes down Trump's lawsuit against the New York Times, filed in Tampa.  OK, the President's home is in Florida, but we have to wonder if there was some venue shopping going on here, as the southern district is far closer to Mar-A-Lago.  

But that noted, the judge's big objection is not venue, but apparently a violation of federal law that more or less says a complaint must be concise and understandable.  Trump's attorneys apparently have pulled a trick out of Kamala Harris' hat and written a legal complaint in "word salad".  

I am getting to be a broken record here, but it seems that too often, lawyers who ought to know better are failing in basic duties to their clients.  This may not be a case where Trump gets to get these guys disbarred, but at the very least, he's entitled to a refund of his legal fees.

More on the Macron/Owens fiasco

Apparently the lawyer (s?) for French President Macron and his wife are a bit slow on the uptake about how one is to win a defamation lawsuit.  For the uninitiated, when someone has access to the press, as the Macrons doubtless have, one must prove both that the accused knew that what she was saying was a lie, and that it was done with actual malice.

In this case, by saying they are going to provide "scientific evidence" that Madame Macron is female, what they've just done is to concede that (a) one could indeed have reasonable doubt about whether Macron was born female or not, and (b) hence Owens' mental state when making the claims is of no importance.

Chalk that one up to "time to refund those billable hours, counsel", and of course my hope and prayer, for the sake of any jury that might be seated, is that the evidence is a cheek swab and not some other evidence of being born female.  "I did not need to see that.", that sort of thing. 

Again, the better way for the Macrons to retaliate against Candace Owens would have been to present the results of a cheek swab, pictures of Madame Macron while pregnant, and the like and ask "what kind of idiot would, knowing that Brigitte Macron is a mother, make up such a story?".

On that free speech vs. hate speech

Apparently many on the left are up in arms about the recent firing of Jimmy Kimmel after he claimed--after news was coming out that Charlie Kirk's murderer was living with (or romantically involved with) a trans person, had inscribed socialist writings on cartridges, etc..--that the murderer was somehow "MAGA" and a Trump supporter.

For those unclear about the matter, yes, the First Amendment does, with narrowly defined exceptions, to say just about anything.  However, what it does not do is prevent others from making decisions on whether they will associate with you based on what you say.  So if you're running a TV show based on current events, and you completely misrepresent current events, your employer just might wonder if you're up to the job.  It is worse if your interpretation of current events will offend half the prospective audience.

Again, there have been very real, very nasty fascist movements out there.  Firing Jimmy Kimmel when he spouts off nonsense is not evidence of one.

Just sayin'

Trans cyclist (and near-Olympic qualifier) tells those objecting to biological males in women's cycling to "suck a sawed off shotgun", among other things showing clearly what a paragon of class the individual is. 

Pro tip for Wolfe; there are things called "history books" that explain precisely what the real Nazis did, and you might do well to read one.  Suffice it to say that the real version went well beyond making speeches on college campuses.

Thoughts on the murder of Charlie Kirk

I've been refraining a bit to let passions--maybe--die down a bit, but maybe I've got something good to say here.  First thing is that I really don't like the term "assassination", but prefer "murder" to describe this sort of thing, because "assassination" can lend an air of respectability to a crime that left a woman a widow, their children fatherless, and all in the name of a perverse sort of politics.

Murder it is.  Regarding the claim that a hot temperature of rhetoric led to this, maybe, but we might be a little more specific.  The habit I can think of that makes things the worst--the one that inflames passions--is generally the habit of making false allegations.  They are often close to true, but in reality, they are false.

A good example is the claim that Kirk said that black women did not have the brain power to be taken seriously.  Now I am not enough of a fan of Kirk's work to comment on his whole life's statements on this (and on many issues he seems to have changed his mind), but I am smart enough to listen to what he said in that video, which was that some specific black women did not have the brain power to be taken seriously.

We might say that Kirk ought to have considered the fact that some of these women have Ivy League degrees, whatever their affirmative action status, but in context, his actual statement is nowhere near as inflammatory as many, including supposed fact checkers, claim.  It is the difference between the Aristotelian categories of "some" and "all".

And so how might we respond to this tragedy?  I would dare say by choosing our words carefully, and by pointing out the problem when peoples' words and deeds are twisted to something they never meant.

Why not speak clearly?

It is said that sometimes, diplomacy is the art of telling a man to go to Hell in such a way that he looks forward to the trip (attribution unknown).  That is, the art of saying things indirectly. 

But that noted, as I review the situation in Ukraine and Russia, I wonder if a bit more directness directed towards the Russians might be helpful.  Specifically, several treaties signed by Russia--or by the Soviet Union before it and renewed by Russia--prohibit aggressive war and the redrawing of borders by force.  So instead of politely talking about the matter, just say 

As a signatory to the United Nations Charter, Helsinki Accords, Geneva Conventions, as well as the treaties ending the Soviet Union, Russia needs to honor these treaties and immediately cease its illegal war, withdraw from all Ukrainian territory (1991 boundaries), and deliver those generals involved in long range attacks on civilian targets for trial on war crimes.

Economic sanctions against Russia, including against trading partners buying Russian oil and natural gas, will continue until this is done. NATO will also continue to provide arms to Ukraine for its defense.

More or less, if Putin wants his neo-Soviet experiment, he can deal with how we treated his Soviet ancestors.  The USSR was an evil empire; the renewal of the USSR by Putin is the same.  We ought to treat it that way. 

Does Ukraine have a Democratic Party?

If they do, it appears Russia attacked a treasure trove of voters recently.  

Seriously, if Russia's best missiles can't avoid hitting such obviously non-military targets as graveyards, maybe they need to stop launching them; it is as if every launch is a war crime.  

Let's put this into the cost equation

A study from my alma mater, Michigan State, has concluded that for a more electrified future with up to two million EVs on the road, about 66,000 more chargers will be needed in Michigan.  Interestingly, that's about the number EVs on the road in Michigan right now.  

But for perspective, there are just short of 200,000 gas stations in the U.S, and just over 6000 in Michigan serving about 2.7 million passenger vehicles, plus trucks, motorcycles, and other uses.  Now if I do the math for my own vehicles, I find that about every 300-400 miles, or ten hours of driving, I will need to spend about ten minutes or less fueling the vehicle.  So I have a drive: fuel ratio of about 60 or more.  Each vehicle will require about 7 hours at the pump each year, so those 6000 gas stations will be used about 700 hours per year, or with five pumps per station, each pump will be used about 2.5% of the time.  

In contrast, best practices for an EV indicate that for every 200-250 miles (you never want to run an electric until the batteries run out) or 5-6 hours of driving, you will recharge (level 2 charger) for about....6-12 hours.  So your drive:fuel ratio drops by a factor of 100.  Even if you use "superchargers", you end up with a drive: fuel ratio of only about 10:1.

So if Michigan indeed ends up with millions of EVs, and each one gets driven 300 hours per year, that requires 3-500 hours per year of charging.  If you have a mere 66000 chargers, that means, with two million cars, the amount of charging hours needed exceeds the available chargers by a wide margin.  Even if only 25% of charging is done outside the home, that means that charging infrastructure would be subject to long wait times.  10% is probably the upper bound for what could be tolerated.

Long and short of it is that the MSU study underestimates the infrastructure for EVs by a wide margin, even assuming large numbers of home charging units--and renters will often not be able to have these, because what landlord is going to approve the installation of a 240V charging unit.  Maybe it's time for advocates of EVs to start calculating metrics honestly.

Interesting....

Vladimir "Hitler" Putin has gifted a Ural motorcycle to an Alaskan "concerned" about things, and just for kicks, I looked up what it is.

Yup, it's a knock-off of a 1941 BMW R71  originally used by the Wehrmacht. In its current incarnation, it makes a mighty 41hp (Harleys and Hondas start at about 90hp +), meaning that Ural certainly hasn't been wasting money on R&D.  Maybe de-Nazify Russian motorcycles?

If we simply return the wannabe Soviet Union to the trade conditions the old Soviet Union had, I think we can break its back in a hurry.  There is no reason to ease sanctions as long as Vladimir Putin and his cronies are in power. 

Alrighty then.....

 Hunter Biden, who may or may not have actually been at some of the parties the Trumps attended while dating, has alleged without providing evidence that it was none other then Epstein who introduced them, and that the Trumps were in thick with Epstein.

The Trumps have responded rather predictably by filing a defamation lawsuit against Hunter, but I'm thinking that since Hunter can't draw on political patronage anymore, their chance of recovery parallels that of the Macrons suing Candace Owens.  When compared to the Trumps, Biden really doesn't have two nickels to rub together, and while they might make his (and their own lives) miserable by suing him, their better approach is to simply stand by their own stories of how they met and courted--it's salacious enough as is--and suggest that a guy hooked on crack just might not be able to process evidence well.

Sometimes the best response to lewd allegations is simple dignity.  I wish the Trumps would learn about it a little.

We might breathe a little easier....

.....after seeing this brilliant episode of Chinese seamanship; a Chinese Coast Guard vessel collides with a Chinese Navy destroyer while pursuing a Philippine Coast Guard vessel at top speed.  It's a perfect, clear day, glassy seas....and one has to ask "did no one post a watch, or look at radar, to see what other ships might be in the vicinity?".  

As things are, two Chinese ships are out of commission for a while, which is just fine by me, and the navies of the world, especially those of Taiwan, Australia, Great Britain, and the United States, have been put on notice that Beijing does a lot better at putting steel into salt water than actually using that steel as a warship.

In related news, a brand new Russian tugboat has sunk in the shipyard, just like a North Korean frigate did last month.  We might suggest that totalitarian government and competence don't exactly go together.

Separated at birth

While reading through the Babylon Bee's list of ten top quotes from Kamala Harris' new book,  it occurred to me that nobody has ever seen Ms. Harris together with Margaret Hamilton.

Sadly, my youngest son and wife noted that I do a pretty good job of imitating the Wicked Witch of the West, too, but they were heartened to know that if they needed to scare away neighborhood children, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Mormons, I could help.  However, they're still concerned about roving bands of Democrats, who for obvious reasons are immune to Kamala's/Margaret's cackle.

On the light side

My wife and I have become aware of new AI-enabled scales in the health club to which they belong, and they have somehow learned Italian.  So when I stood on the scale, it honestly (if a bit insultingly) said "Grasso" (fat), and when my very slender 13 year old stood on the same scale, it said "magro" (skinny).

The scales got a little bit cocky, though, when they were put into the women's locker room, and apparently about a dozen of them got smashed to atoms before they learned to just say "bellisima".  

Now which country needs to be de-Nazified?

Now I will concede that I do not speak or read Russian, so I am at the mercy of the translators, but if their work is correct, Ria Novosti, a state controlled media outlet in Russia, is apparently endorsing the extermination of Ukrainians.

Pro tip for the Russians; when your rhetoric sounds like Hitler, but in Russian, you're the country that needs to be de-Nazified.  Or, rather, de-Stalinized, and the world needs to remember that the number of avoidable deaths due to Stalin is 2-3x larger than that for Hitler.  The hammer and sickle should be no more acceptable in polite society than the swastika, in my view.

Let the science speak?

H/T WND.  The American Academy of Pediatrics is apparently endorsing the end of conscientious objections to childhood vaccinations, apparently forgetting that in the past five years, multiple vaccines have been found to pose serious dangers to a portion of those taking them--for example, the link between COVID vaccines and myocarditis.  One would think that failures like this would impart a bit of humility at the AAP, but apparently not.

Really, this has been my complaint with public health officials and vaccine advocates for over a quarter century; it never seems that they simply present the benefits and risks, and let us make our own decisions.  Rather, it's generally been "do this or you're stupid", followed by attempts to make them mandatory, even when the vaccines are new and relatively unproven.

All too often, our public health authorities seem to be their own worst enemies.  You've got this, you've got the push for pediatric transgender interventions (leading to a LOT of permanently mutilated young people), and finally we had the disastrous public health approach to COVID that did things like put COVID patients into nursing homes--the most vulnerable place in the world.  Hopefully public health officials and the AAP learn their lesson and start actually working from data and evidence before their credibility is completely squandered.

In memoriam

I never met him except through his songs, but on Saturday, the eminent parody writer Tom Lehrer died in his Massachusetts home at age 97.   So in his honor, sing a few bars of Fight Fiercely, Harvard or Bright College Days, or even better, take a bag of peanuts to the local green space and sing this.

Perhaps not the right approach

Apparently French President Macron and his wife are suing Candace Owens for claiming that France's First Lady was not, in fact, born a woman. And while I understand the motivation, I'm not quite sure that this is the right approach, because Owens' way of doing things thrives on outrage.  She survives a ton of scandals (support for Weinstein, Putin, Holocaust denial, defense of Kanye West, etc..), and despite her notoriety, probably doesn't have that much money for the Macrons to grab.  Why waste the effort and ironically help Owens?

Personally, if I were Madame Macron, I'd be tempted to bring up picture of my children and say something like this--and with a huge smile:

Madame Owens, these are pictures of my children, which could not have been conceived with eggs from my very female ovaries, nor could they have come out of my very female uterus through my very female vagina if I had not been born with two X chromosomes.  

Of course, as I've hinted above, Owens has survived quite a few scandals already, so she may be relatively impervious to things like this, but I have a hunch that laughter will be a more effective strategy than outrage.

Cancel all those degrees

Sunny Hostin of "The View" argues that the cancellation of a mediocre late night show amounts to a severe hazard to the Constitution. Suffice it to say with such an erudite understanding of the First Amendment, it would be a good idea for Notre Dame Law School to cancel her law degree, and for the jurisdiction that gave her her law license to revoke that as well.  

Just like Steven Colbert, Hostin needs to learn that while the First Amendment does protect your right to say incredibly stupid things, it does not grant a right to have one's job despite doing so.  To be fair, though, the entire reason for being for "The View" seems to be "Let's make massive profits by saying stupid things to foolish people.", so to a degree, I can understand her confusion.

On that autopen

The kerfuffle about former President Biden's use of "autopen" to sign pardons and other documents is interesting, and probably the big thing to address here is to what extent executive privilege protects the process.  Overall, if Cabinet members are in the discussion, the privilege is fairly absolute, but it's less certain when it gets down to the level of ordinary White House staffers--an infamous example being when White House staffers were called to testify in L'affaire Lewinsky.  

Also of interest is that executive privilege is stronger when there is a claim of national security.  So for all those autopen-signed pardons, I'd argue that the paperwork flow is far less privileged than for other functions.  It is, really, more akin to L'affaire Lewinsky than Biden and his handlers would like to admit.

All in all, my view is that if the President did not sign off on those pardons, they are null and void--and thus a special prosecutor ought to examine all of them.  Ouch, for President Biden, and for all those freed by his actions.

Eau de feedlot, or Eau de graveyard

Apparently Russia is releasing a "Aromat Putin" to boost patriotism,  but somehow I'm thinking the dreaded smell of a feedlot or mortuary would be a more appropriate thing to bottle in his honor.

Doubt that?  Well, Russia apparently has been forced to import a million workers to keep factories running, a number that correlates well with Ukraine's estimates of Russian casualties.  Now some of this is "we need more workers for increased military production", but I'd guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that a startlingly high proportion of casualties are fatalities, and those that are not are creating invalids.  

Whether he likes it or not, Vladimir "Smells like death" Putin is destroying his country.

Never again? "Never mind", says Russia

Russian "third rated war criminal" Sergey Lavrov commits to providing enriched uranium to Iran, strongly encouraging that rogue regime to put it into nuclear weapons and use them on Israel.

Next time he meets with Marco Rubio, Lavrov needs to be asked why his boss appears to be all in favor of another Holocaust.  Lavrov knows full well that Iran, like its sponsor Russia, is all about attacking civilians, so he has no plausible deniability here.

Here's hoping and praying that Putin, Medvedev, and Lavrov soon have an adverse interaction with the Mossad.

A plan for the Houthis

Apparently having figured out that launching rockets tended to get them shot down, Houthi terrorists have started to attack shipping as classic pirates.  Now the fine people at Powerline suggest hanging them from the yardarm, which is a good idea, but the thought that occurs to me is that the civilized nations of the world ought to provide ships with "transit crews" which would have a simple rule; if your boat is loaded with masked men with Kalishnikovs, and comes within a mile of a merchant ship, you will become acquainted with Ma Deuce.  Hope you can swim, boys.

An interesting, and terrifying, thought from Scripture

I recently read through the end of 2 Chronicles, and one thing that strikes me is that the great Passover held by Josiah is followed rather quickly by the final descent of Judah into idolatry and exile.  It mirrors, really, the previous cycles of revival and apostasy found throughout the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, and the question has come to mind of whether the revival was real, or whether it was just a superficial observance of Passover (etc.) that made little difference in the everyday lives of the people.  

I'm leaning towards the latter, and that seems to be evidenced by the fact that the sacred groves and high places always came back--as soon as the King's soldiers were gone, as far as I can tell.  

And what does that mean today?  Well, we might consider that fundagelicalism's love of programs and big events has something of a parallel here, and we ought to see if there really are long term benefits, or whether it's "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing", to paraphrase MacBeth.  I must, regrettably, agree with MacBeth regarding many of these events.  There are other, better ways of getting the job done. 

Just like the original Alcatraz....

...."Alligator Alcatraz" is set to be an incredibly expensive boondoggle, though not for the reasons one would guess.  The claim is made that security will be by alligators, but when one looks at the site, there are clearly roads in and out, and it's not quite as swampy as Everglades National Park to the east.  Plus, most deportees are low to moderate security.

So where does the expense come from?  More or less because it's being built super quickly in a place not suitable to hasty building , really--involving tents (hard to insulate, vulnerable to hurricanes), generators, solar panels, and more.  This is one of many times where politicians really ought to be reminded to consult the experts in building and accounting before they sign contracts.

Well, let's get on with it, then

In what I must consider to be a huge diplomatic faux pas, or perhaps a mistake in translation, Chinese diplomats have evidently told EU diplomats that China does not want a Russian loss in its war with Ukraine because it would allow the U.S. to concentrate fully on the threat China poses in Asia, in particular with regards to Taiwan.

If that's not a great reason to support Kyiv, I don't know what is.  Slava Ukraini, and Putin delenda est.

(side note; it appears that the FSB/Putin has just killed the former transport minister of Russia after firing him....)

Berg's law

On the "Shotinthedark" site, host Mitch Berg has a list of laws, or really more aphorisms about the hypocrisies he sees, especially on the progressive left.  And so I would like to adopt, and slightly modify, Berg's Seventh Law dealing with progressive projection to use it regarding Russia, which has lately claimed via mouthpiece Sergei Lavrov that increased defense spending will destroy NATO, and hilariously claims that Russia plans to reduce defense spending next year.

In other words, bluster to get Ukraine to accept Russia's unworkable terms that would more or less re-integrate Ukraine into a new version of the Soviet Union.  

But that noted and mocked per "Darth Putin's" adage to never believe anything about Russia until the Kremlin or state media denies it, there is a big risk to NATO that most media pundits don't seem to be up to speed on; we can call it the "Tom Daschle" effect.  That effect was that until Republicans wised up to what was going on, Democrats realized that with sufficient money spent on the Dakotas, they could get compliant Senators who would reliably align with the Democrats.

Same basic thing in the poorer countries of Europe; Putin realized quickly after the fall of the Berlin Wall (which he called "colonization" and a "catastrophe") that they could be bought off through vote-rigging or corruption.  The trouble with this is that NATO works a lot with unanimity, so if Slovakia or Hungary objects, NATO cannot act strongly.  

The long and short of it, I think is that nations bordering Russia and Belarus are going to need to "bring the goods" in countering Russian aggression, and they'll not be able to count on extensive help from the whole of NATO.  Moreover, the U.S. and other defenders of freedom are going to need to work to expose FSB interference in the affairs of Russia's neighbors.  

And an update: the Prime Minister of Hungary claims that 95% of the vote regarding the possibility of Ukrainian accession to the European Union is "no".  I think that's a good example of the "Tom Daschle Effect" led by the FSB (successor to the KGB).  Nobody gets 95% of the vote in nationwide referenda honestly.

A moment for rejoicing?

Just for kicks, I ran one of my posts through "Grammarly" to see if there was evidence that it was written by AI.  I was heartened to see that 0% of the content was deemed to have been written by a bot.

Now, of course, what precisely that means is, and ought to be, up for debate?  Is it simply because their natural language models are not yet mature enough to figure this out?  Is it because my writing is so far out to lunch that not even a computer would admit having written it?  

I am hoping, to be sure, that it evidences a little bit of creativity in my thoughts that is not easily replicated by a computer.  But I will let you, the gentle reader, be the judge of that. 

Missing a couple of big factors

Senator Bernie Sanders (CCCP-Vermont) has authored a column alleging that there is something unconscionable about why poorer Americans have a lower lifespan than their wealthier neighbors.  Well, yes, but really not for the reasons that Sanders notes.

Some of the known risk factors:

• The rate of smoking among the poor is close to twice that of the prosperous.
• Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are far higher among the poor.
• Drug use problems are higher among the poor.
• Finally, crime, especially murder, is far higher among the poor, especially minority populations in inner cities.

And yes, it is true that many top doctors do not choose to serve in poor communities--you have the danger factor, and quite frankly, you also have the fact that Medicaid compensation ratios don't make it very profitable.  And yes, you also have the difficulty of getting to a clinic, paying for copays, and related expenses.

But that noted, the fact remains that if you're 50 pounds overweight and huffing the cancer sticks, there is only so much medical science can do for you.  Smoking reduces lifespan by 10-15 years, obesity reduces lifespan by 3-10 years, and dying of an overdose or murder deprives that person of many decades of life.  I dare suggest it's long past time for the country to address the real drivers of shorter lifespans among the poor and working classes.

Well, duh

A study from MIT has found that those using AI "authorship" like ChatGPT  showed less brain connectivity--i.e. "thinking"--when asked to write without using help from AI than those who actually learned to write on their own.

As a former college TA (math and engineering), and as a homeschool dad who grades his kids' math, may I say the obvious?

DUH

Let's be blunt here.  Those of us who were blessed with, shall we say, "the ability that made people want to cheat from our papers", were told, if we had a teacher who cared one iota, that if we "helped" our classmates this way, we would end up truncating their ability to do the work on their own.  

In the same way, when someone cheated his way through freshman courses in college, we observed as the  poor guy learned the hard way that those courses are called "prerequisites" for a reason, and that the same person made a great pizza deliveryman, so to speak.  Really, the notion that we can obtain results without work has been disproven so many times, we ought to have finally learned our lessons.  But apparently not.

Maybe this will wake us up

It appears that Russian second-in-command Dmitri Medvedev has claimed that "numerous" countries are willing to supply Iran with nuclear weapons now that (I hope) their own native program has been shut down.

Well, for starters, since the nuclear "club" consists of the U.S.A., Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, India, and probably Israel, I'm pretty sure that it's not "numerous" countries, but rather Russia and China rattling the saber.  Remember; don't believe anything about Russia until the Kremlin officially denies it!

But if indeed Russia and China are willing to supply Iran with nuclear weapons, there are a bunch of questions that come up.  First of all, given that the weapon would almost certainly be used against Israel, we might ask "OK, so Russia is signing up to commit a new Holocaust....why?"

The next thing to be considered, IMO, is "have Russia and China considered how Iran might respond if they start to realize how Moscow and Beijing treat Muslim minorities like the Uyghurs and Chechens?".  There are probably things Moscow and Beijing do to avoid facing their own weapons, but if it's a nuke launched by someone who doesn't terribly worry about death, I don't know that such methods would deter Iranians from diverting a missile intended for Tel Aviv to land in Moscow or Beijing instead.

Really, along these lines, it strikes me more and more that the proper way to respond to madmen like Putin, Medvedev, Pooh, and Khamenei is to use not "diplomatic" language of minced words, but rather with straight talk of "I see what you are doing there, and a thermonuclear Auschwitz is not an acceptable alternative to my country.".

Brilliance from the CIA

Here is a bit on the CIA's assessment of Iran's nuclear program: more or less, they have gone well beyond the 3% concentration of U-235 needed for civilian purposes, but there is something that is lacking.  

Now since the construction of a nuclear weapon really consists of the forming of the fissile material into two sub-critical masses, combined with a housing to hold them, a set of shaped charges to drive them together, and electronics to detonate those shaped charges, what the CIA actually told Tulsi Gabbard is, IMO, that Iran was and is very close to having at worst something of a "dirty bomb" which could make an area uninhabitable for a while.  

To me, this illustrates one of the most infuriating things about the CIA; they seem to at times confuse their role in intelligence gathering with diplomacy, and they're soft-pedaling the reality that if Iran has their electronics and explosives program in a different place, then it can all come together very quickly.  It would be very funny if so much wasn't at stake, but of course, it is.

What I fear about Trump insiders...

 ...has been brilliantly illustrated by Steve Bannon, who argues that if Senator Lindsay Graham keeps "stirring it up" regarding Russia's war of aggression and war crimes against Ukraine, he "should be arrested."   Bannon is apparently unclear on the concept of the "First Amendment" and "freedom of speech", and I dare suggest that views like Bannon's ought to be rewarded by cordially refusing to allow Bannon and others who think like him to go anywhere near the corridors of power.  Too many American boys (and girls) died for that First Amendment to give it up without a fight.

This is especially the case because Bannon is more or less protesting the destruction of a key means of war crimes for Russia.  One would figure that we would see this as a good thing, meaning that a lot more Ukrainian dity and babi (children and grandmothers) will live to see a new day.

But not, apparently, in the political area where clear signs of Putin's Stalinism go unobserved or unheeded.

Slava Ukraini, Steve! May Putin soon be inhaling sulfur!

The limitations of technology in architecture

A "pencil" style building in New York City appears, in my view, to be a great picture of the limitations of technology in architecture.  How so?

Well, the residents are noticing cracks in the concrete already, indicating that the engineers' work to support the nearly 1400' tall building is insufficient.  What strikes me is that the building is only 100 feet wide, whereas the similar-height Sears Tower (*) in Chicago is over twice that width.  The key issue here, structure-wise, is that the lateral strength/rigidity is proportional to the square of the outer dimensions.  This means that, all else the same, the Sears Tower is four times as robust as 432 Park Avenue, and the stresses on the lateral support beams that much greater on 432 Park Avenue.  It makes a difference.

A side note here is that since this is not an office building, but a residential building, what we have is a building where the inner hallway/atrium around the elevators is going to be up to 35 feet from the windows.  In contrast, at a truly big mansion, Buckingham Palace in London, the windows are only about--except for the great hall--about twenty feet from the inner hallways, I'd guess.

In other words, when you try to go too tall--I'd guess a ratio of height vs. width of 10:1 or greater--you get to a point where a wonderful apartment becomes, due to a lack of proximity to windows, an unlivable closet.  So if we're talking the "Buckingham Palace Rule", we are talking an approximate upper limit of about 500 feet tall or about 40 stories. You could get some additional room for height by using the old World Trade Center's center zone for elevators and utilities--probably up to about 700 feet or fifty stories--but all in all, you're limited if your goal is to provide liveable space.

It is worth noting as well that there are additional economic/engineering and practical reasons not to build too high.  Building 100 stories high costs about five times as much per square foot as building five stories or less, and how many people really want to be looking out from their 50th story window at....someone else's 50th story window?

* Yes, I know it's called the Willis Tower now, but like any Chicagoland native who values the past, my view is that it keeps its original name, no matter what the corporate types say.

A confession by Nike

In mid April, the news came out that Nike was sponsoring studies aiming to analyze the effects of things like puberty blockers on children and teens with gender dysphoria--more or less seeking to answer questions about whether it is fair for "trans women" (i.e. men, XY) to compete as women at various levels in sport.  So far, Nike has not answered questions about the study, and in my mind, what this does is to assure me that yes, Nike did initially sponsor the study, and they're either hoping that the storm blows over, or they're considering truncating or ending the sponsorship.  

(Thankfully, they do not appear to have provided enough money to actually fund the transition procedures, so the subjects of the study victims of the new Dr. Mengele will need to find other sources.  This should at least cut down on sample sizes and statistical power.)

Well, in that light, I encourage my "legion of readers" (ha) to help Nike to see that it is unethical to do experiments on children with permanent side effects.   How so?  Well, if you're buying Nike shoes and apparel--and this would include not just Nike, but also Converse, Cole Haan, Bauer, and Jordan--just stop, and send Nike a nice note explaining why.  Then, you can go further, and stop wearing Nike shoes and apparel.

Yes, if you have a lot of Nike shoes and apparel--I have precisely one pair of Nike shorts in my wardrobe, so it's easier for me--it means a certain amount of adjustment, but the consequence of not doing so is that young people will be hurt, and Nike will continue to think they have carte blanche to do this sort of thing.

A strange decision in Michigan

 Well, at least it's strange if you forget that Democrats have been appointing judges there for a long time.  A Michigan judge has ruled not only that a 24 hour waiting period is unconstitutional, but also that regulations preventing nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and physician's assistants from performing prenatal infanticide is unconstitutional.

Now call me weird, but given that a surgical abortion is, after all, a surgical procedure, maybe it's important that those doing these, for the sake of the mother's safety if not the baby's, be....like....surgeons, or at least have a medical degree that qualifies them to do simple surgeries, like....an "MD" or such?

What we have here, really, is yet another admission by the pro-abortion lobby that in order to keep prenatal infanticide available, they need to either subsidize it, or reduce the cost structure so that the clinics can stay open.  

Yet another example

 ....of where Putin is trying to take Russia; his forces have put up a monument to Stalin in Melitopol, Ukraine.  His sycophants are laying flowers, but I think Hezekiah had a better idea what to do with such shrines.  I'd be glad to help venerate it that way, preferably during colonoscopy prep.

Update: and another statue of Stalin erected in a Moscow metro station.  Again, if I were Russian, I'd be very, very nervous.  For that matter, Putin's promotion of Stalin makes me very nervous as an American.  I've read enough Solzhenitsyn to know what Stalinism was about--and is, under Putin.

Also in the "how much are you consuming" category

People are looking carefully into the flavenol profile of red wine to determine why, in some cases, red wine leads to debilitating headaches.  Perhaps we might do well to look to Proverbs 23 and ask "Just how much of the stuff did you drink before you got those headaches?".  I've been enjoying red wine for many years, and in the "dosage" I favor--a glass or two at the most--I've never had a problem.  

Maybe time to rephrase RFK Jr.'s phrase again; "Make America Less Gluttonous". Even apart from questions like flavenols, alcohol, and the like, the "wine-bibber" is going to have a serious problem with the number of calories taken in--or if he's smart enough to restrict other eating, he'll have some nutritional deficiencies.

OK, this is wild

    Apparently Tyson Foods is eliminating synthetic dyes from its meat and poultry products.   Writing as an avid cook, this is weird to me, because the most appealing colors inherent in meat and poultry products are the same ones that God gave them.  Can one improve on the golden brown exterior and creamy white interior of a properly crafted Wiener Backhendl or Chicken Kyiv, or even basic chicken nuggets?  I think not!

So what's being said here, really, is that they've been using synthetic dyes to cover up for either a lack of skill, or a compromise on ingredients, that would impair the wonderful Maillard reaction in frying.  We can have huge arguments over whether synthetic dyes are a problem--my response is a firm "maybe a little one"--but it strikes me that the big problem we've got is that many food manufacturers are using them to cover up for a lack of quality ingredients and skill making the product.

I might rephrase RFK Jr.'s slogan as "make America cook again".  When you know how to cook, and know the difference the right ingredients and techniques make, your health will follow.

On those dangerous food dyes?

Apparently the studies that "linked" red dye #3 to some cancers were done at a dosage of about 200 times tha maximum likely dosage of .25mg/kG of body weight.  OK, let's parse this out.  At my body weight of close to 100kG, we are talking about a maximum dose of 25mG.  In terms of what they were feeding the lab rats, we're talking about 5 grams per day, suggesting a scene of Democrats chugging bottles of food dyes because Trump wanted to ban them.  

It really suggests that we need a revival of instruction about hormesis, the tendency of many chemicals to be harmless or even slightly beneficial at low doses, despite being poisons in high doses.  I am again no fan of foods with a lot of red dye, but the comparison here is basically getting all of one's nutrition from foods with this dye, and then ignoring the fact that what's really dangerous is all the sugar in them.

Make incarceration great again?

Regarding President Trump's proposal to re-open Alcatraz as a supermax prison, supplanting the current supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, the question that comes to mind is "Why?".  Yes, "why?", and that's because Alcatraz is built in an earthquake zone with intensive exposure to salt air--which means that it's far more expensive to keep buildings operational there than it is elsewhere.  At the time it was closed in 1963, it was over three times as expensive to operate as similar prisons, and proximity to San Francisco makes it especially problematic if people escape.  In contrast, Florence is about 40 miles from the nearest good sized city, Colorado Springs.

I get that "The Rock" holds an outsized image in our country due to the former residency of Al Capone and other gangsters, but re-opening it would open a large gash in budgets that is simply not necessary.   

An inadvertent confession from Putin

He would presumably like us to forget that his job in East Germany--a job that got him rapid-fire promotions at a young age--was to support the Stasi, a secret police essentially the same as the Gestapo, but with a hammer and sickle instead of a swastika.  He would like us to forget that he characterized the re-unification of Germany as "colonization", and that he's been having his Russian Red Army fly the hammer and sickle, and that he installed statues of Lenin in some cities in Ukraine.

Now, for their victory day celebrations, he's having the airport in Volgograd carry its former name: Stalingrad.   In related news, Putin is claiming that he's fighting Naziism and anti-semitism while....Russia has concluded a defense treaty with Iran.  Iran, of course, is aiming to destroy Israel and the United States, and is a major publisher of Farsi and Arabic translations of a book called Mein Kampf, as well as versions of Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

If you doubt that Putin is 100% in favor of Communism and anti-semitism, and that his government is in great need of de-Nazification and de-Communization, read the above again.  Do not listen to what he says; watch what he does.  It should be no more acceptable to honor Stalin than it is to honor Hitler, and Putin has crossed that line, and many others.

Why the food dye bans are problematic

I should start this by noting that I'm not a guy who uses or injests a lot of food dyes.  I outgrew Froot Loops and other "radioactive" cereals in my childhood, don't drink Kool-Aid or alcopops or bug juice, and usually pass on brightly decorated cakes that appear to be from Wal-Mart or the like.  Maybe a bit on birthday cakes--and I guess with six kids, three sons-in-law, and a grandchild, I eat a bit of that--but all in all, I'm probably in the bottom quintile for use of food dyes.

However, I am bothered by the Trump administration's attempt to ban a bunch of them.  The reason is simple; it does not appear that they've done the necessary scientific and regulatory work to establish that there is indeed a statistically significant risk.  Now for food dyes, that's no big deal--OK, no Froot Loops, and Kool-Aid needs to use beet juice for its color.  Whatever, and kids might learn to eat real food without garish colors being added to the mix.  In itself, probably a net win.

What is significant is that the broader perspective that chemicals can be banned without a serious look at whether or not they pose a hazard, and that means we're talking about pesticides (including mosquito repellent), herbicides, fertilizers, and a lot more.  It would nationalize and worsen one of California's nastiest laws, Proposition 65, whereby if a chemical causes cancer in any concentration, no matter how ludicrous that concentration is in real life, it will be labeled with "may cause cancer."  In this case, however, it goes well beyond Proposition 65 in actually banning those chemicals from use.

To draw a picture of what the impact might be, typical maize/corn yields a century ago were about 40 bushels per acre, whereas today's combination of hybrids, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides have yields up around 200 bushels per acre.  So if RFK Jr.'s approach to food dyes is applied broadly, we have a situation where we could seriously crimp the amount of food available to feed us, and with no overall health benefits.

A bit of how it ought to be

Jay Leno comments on how he is enjoying caring for his wife, who is suffering from dementia.   That is, to a degree, how things ought to be when one makes marriage vows, and reminds me of when the head of Columbia Bible College, John McQuilkin, resigned to care for his wife.  

It is also some tough work, really.  Now I know that theoretically, Leno can buy a lot of help, but even with help, it's tough for a man to care for someone with dementia who often does not know who he is, even if the sufferer is of the "happy drunk" category and not the "mean drunk" type.  (or woman, for that matter)  Well done, Mr. Leno.

About those "evil" seed oils

In reading this article about the economic consequences of eliminating seed oils from the diets of Americans,  one thing stuck out for me; the average consumption of seed oils per capita in our country is 58 pounds.  Doing a little bit of math, this means that the average American uses 72 grams of seed oils per day with a total caloric value of nearly 650 calories.

Now thankfully, Americans waste a lot of their food, but if the average waste of 30-40% holds, this still means that the average American is getting the first 400-450 calories of their diet from seed oils.  This does not include fats in meats, fish, poultry, dairy, or other foods, and it is in addition to the ~17 teaspoons (about 250-300 calories) of added sugar in our diet.  If we assume an actual caloric need of 1800-2000 calories per day, what this means is that approximately the first 650-700 calories of our diet is added sugars and fats, and any other dietary fats are in excess of the USDA recommendation of about 20% of overall calories.

We might infer that, yes, there is some truth to RFK Jr.'s claim that seed oils are killing us, but the first reason is not that there's anything intrinsically unhealthy about them.  It is, rather, that we are eating so darned much of them and supercharging obesity and heart disease.

Just askin'

A man says his wife is the worst "backseat driver".   Perhaps just a turn of phrase, and the husband needs to find his inner Petruchio, but the instant question I had is "Why is his wife in the back seat instead of beside him?  That might have something to do with her mood while traveling."

Whatever the facts of the matter, sounds like they have much bigger problems than I can either diagnose or solve here, so my prayers are with them.

A brilliant illustration of why hasty deportations are a bad thing

I realize this is satire, but this "truthy" blurb from the Babylon Bee illustrates why we don't just want to deport illegal immigrant criminals without punishing them first.  When we deport people before they serve a rightfully earned prison term (or execution), they are then free to escape prison in their home country (far less secure than our prison) and....come right back here.

Yes, it costs money to prosecute and incarcerate them, but given that failure to do so will indeed cost lives and a lot of property, it's worth it.

Here's a Hobson's choice for you

A DOJ lawyer has been suspended by Attorney General Bondi for failing to "zealously advocate" for the positions of leadership.  OK, fair as far as it goes, but what the prosecutor was being asked to do was cover up the fact that critical evidence required by the court was being withheld by the DOJ.

So the lawyer had the choice between being suspended or fired, and being prosecuted himself for obstruction of justice and contempt of court.  Pam Bondi seriously needs to consider what she's asking the DOJ to do, because it could destroy all federal prosecutions if she's not careful.

And yes, arguably the DOJ was doing it the other way during the Obama and Biden administrations, and arguably even during the first Trump administration.  However, that doesn't make it right or smart.

How not to do things

As a rule, I like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, but I think in his recent criticism of Randy Fine, he goes over the top.   

Now to be fair, there are reasons that I would favor someone else over Fine.  Fine has apparently made statements supporting increased gun control, opposing immigration enforcement, and even seems to have hinted at sanctuary cities.  

But that said, DeSantis said instead "he's a squish", and he did so the day after Fine won the election.  Pro tip; you might get a bit further if you simply noted policy differences, and did so in a timely manner, rather than going after him when he's about to be sworn in.  My take is that if I were Randy Fine, and DeSantis were going to ask me for favors, I'd have to be persuaded to do so.

And it's not just DeSantis; this is just a good, recent example of the phenomenon I'm seeing far too much lately; politicians are using ad hominem (fallacious) attacks instead of legitimate policy differences to differentiate themselves from others.  The end result is that too many of us are at each others' throats when we really ought to be having a good, full throated debate.

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.

Update: here's the list of devices seized from Weiss, about half a dozen computers and phones, and a large number of external storage devices, too.  Suffice it to say that the guy seems to have had a library going, and this could get a LOT uglier.

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.