Trump/Murdock Match, Jan 6, Courts, Age of Biden, Impeach, God, Loss, Grief

  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has the links, but seems decidedly unsympathetic to either contender, as mr Trump challenges Rupert Murdoch to a senility contest.
     
  • In Georgia, the Fulton County court drama continues with Trump lawyers, co‑conspirator lawyers, and the Fani Willis team.
     
    Frances Langum has read through last week’s release of the complete, full, unredacted, original Fulton County, Georgia Grand Jury report. Turns out the Grand Jury wanted a few more indictments. How many more? Oh MY!
     
  • Congressional Representative Jim Jordan (R‑OH) is irritated by the Georgia indictments of Donald Trump and decides to do something about it. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, he issues a subpoena for all of the prosecution’s evidence.
     
    The Palmer Report brings us a summary of the Fani Willis response to Rep Jordan. She did not simply refuse. She explained her legal reasoning, how state trials work, the standards of US Constitutional law, and (wonderfully) congressional committee procedures.
     
    Pretty much made Jim Jordan look unfamiliar with his own rules.
    Who could have guessed?
     
    Key introduction to Congressional procedures:
    In her letter, Willis pointed out to Jordan: “As you know, Chairman Jordan, the congressional power of inquiry ‘is not unlimited.” She followed that statement with appropriately related case law.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac has a marketing idea for Gym Jordan Footwear.
     
  • PZ Myers sees the judicial sentence applied to an insurrection leader as a reason to hope for justice.
     
    My minor objection. The 22 year sentence for Enrique Tarrio is not justice.
    We are confined by legal and ethical limits on punishment.
     
    Justice would have been much harsher.
     
  • Just when I thought I could never empathize with this group:
     
    Andy Borowitz brings us the right wing terrorist group, the Proud Boys, many of whom have been sentenced to terms so long that on release they may have to change the group name to something more age appropriate.
     
    Key name rejection:
    “Yes, I will eventually be an Elderly Boy,” Enrique Tarrio told reporters. “However, let’s be clear: while we Proud Boys are considering changing the name of our group, ‘Elderly Boys’ is not one of the options in the mix.”
     
  • Since we are now up to 91 counts, Green Eagle decides it’s time for someone to say straight out what is really going on.
     
    Key narrative summary:
    Joe Biden, who happens to be a doddering dotard, is also engaged in this massive, perfectly timed plot to destroy the one who is poised to return to power and wreak his justified vengeance on anyone who ever stood up to him, while profiting handsomely in the process. That’s their story, and as the song says, they are sticking to it.
     
  • MadMikesAmerica speculates that voters may turn toward the right‑wing in 2024. Has to do with the way we look at age.
     
  • Tommy Christopher brings us the quote as President Biden, colorfully and accurately, credits a John Wayne movie while referring to climate deniers as lying dog‑faced pony soldiers.
     
  • News Corpse has Biden staffers NOT avoiding any comment on Republican plans for impeachment, but even directing media attention to them.
     
    Now a few Republicans are recoiling and accusing the administration of dictating coverage.
     
    My thought:
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit calls the impeachment nonsense what it is: another move to guarantee the re‑election of President Biden.
     
    I have yet another thought:
  • Vivek Ramaswamy wants to be President, and says he will pardon mr Trump in order to “help reunite the country.”
     
    Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged explains that it will do the opposite and, considering the future of said country, would otherwise be a really bad, horrible, dumb idea. She counts the ways.
     
    Key reason never to offend Vixen:
    When Ramaswamy says it, it sounds like the pandering of a slick, green, shallow man who has never thought hard about public matters a day in his life.
     
    Ouch! I don’t even like Vivek and that hurt.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice Kathy Gill dives deep into Texas law, politics, and polls and tells us all about the impeachment and coming state senate trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton.
     
  • Dave Columbo takes apart and reassembles Tucker.
     
  • driftglass watches Mitt Romney prepare to exit Republican politics, leaving behind one last bit of both sides are equally at fault.
    One problem: driftglass isn’t having it.

  • The Psy of Life reviews the campaign of Senator Tommy Tuberville (R‑AL) to weaken the US military, holding up all promotions because women defending our freedoms are free themselves to get abortions.
     
    CalicoJack objects when Senate Republicans try to shift blame to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
     
    My thought on an additional Tuberville issue:
     
  • Former Republican official, now registered Democrat, Ron Filipkowski is unimpressed with Lauren Boebert as her reported vaping, singing, illegal recording, and general disruption get her booted out of a theatre during a performance of the ‘Beetlejuice’ musical.
     
    My reaction is decidedly unoriginal, but I’m happy with it:


    The Mayor of Denver has today’s final word:

  • The Propaganda Professor evaluates terms that those on the right seek to make pejorative. Not every effort is successful. Woke, for example is viewed as a positive by the vast majority of Americans
     
    Key theme:
    In fact, it’s absolutely certain that any perfectly reasonable term is going to be, sooner rather than later, stolen, twisted and defiled by right‑wing propagandists. You may have noticed, for instance, that purveyors of misinformation are generally just about the only ones who stake a claim to the word “truth” anymore. (See Truth Social, Project Veritas, etc.). Thanks to their tireless efforts, and the linguistic laziness of the population in general, there are quite a few words that no longer mean what they once did.
     
  • A librarian in Oklahoma posts
    My radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind
    along with a satiric tiktok mime to nonsensical lyrics:
     

    Disaffected and it Feels So Good tells us of a weird sort of school superintendent (the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 had nothing to do with race, the Chinese government is secretly infiltrating OK schools) leading the charge against the librarian. Schools in the area close down as right wing bomb threats proliferate.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger knows the polling numbers. The percentage of American adults wanting the new Covid boosters does not total to a good omen for American health.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy stiff‑arms anti‑masking grandstanding, as US Senator Mike Braun (R‑IN) introduces a bill:

  • In Scotties Playtime, Scottie discovers that, when it comes to Covid, Florida’s (which is to say DeSantis’) Surgeon General is a bit of an ass.
     
  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson has details on President Biden’s quick action on helping Florida through the hurricane disaster and the Presidential visit, skipped by Ron DeSantis.
     
    Key Contrast:
    Biden’s promise to the Republican‑dominated state of Florida even in the face of DeSantis’s pettiness was a striking contrast to former president Trump’s withholding of federal aid from Malden and Pine City, Washington, almost exactly three years ago, when a September 2020 wildfire destroyed 15,000 acres and 85% of the buildings, including 65 homes.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara recoils, as young people are successful in an environmental lawsuit against Montana. The decision in favor of the young folks was based on explicit language in Montana’s state constitution.
     
    Michael is a climate change denialist, so he thinks the kids are wrong.
    Well, actually he thinks they are more than wrong. In fact, he gets a bit emotional about it. Mad dog angry!
     
    Key character call:
    These young so‑called climate activists are the ultimate in our Age of Ingratitude. They are a bunch of greedy, rotten, spoiled, ignorant, ungrateful, entitlement‑minded brats. That’s all.
     
    Imagining the response:

     
  • The Anti-Defamation League did an intense study on Twitter hate speech and produced a report. It seems Elon has readmitted notably harsh hate filled offenders, put into effect limp and lenient policies, and issued his own share of toxic opinions. The league counted and graphed a dramatic increase in hate, including virulent antisemitism, in posts.
     
    The report issued criticisms of monitoring policies that, it said, reflect a seeming unawareness of potential dangers. The research had been intense. Specific examples were presented. They had the receipts.
     
    So Elon blew up. How dare they accuse him of antisemitism (Nope, they didn’t)!! And he would sue. What choice did he have?
     
    Hackwhackers goes to Xland, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and finds several reactions to Elon’s overreaction.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has a few prospective highlights as Google’s antitrust trial begins.
     
    The most interesting Google defense seems to be that it is okay to push internet gadgetry to install Google as a default search engine, because casual users are completely free to drill down and figure out how to change the internal workings to something else.
     
    Key quote:
    People don’t use Google because they have to — they use it because they want to.
     
  • The American public now sees the term pro‑life as negative, referring to intolerant cranks. Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez has wisdom for pro‑life Republicans who want to rebrand:

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz makes an obvious defense of Christianity:

  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce experiences yet another psych analysis by a Christian who knows from reading her Bible the REAL reason Bruce left the faith.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook asks readers why Jesus needed to die and then rise. It’s a worthwhile question for those of us who are of the faith.
     
    Since most of her respondents are not religious, their comments pretty much have to vary only in how the answer is phrased:
    Because it didn’t happen and religion is a bunch of hooey.
    It is a reasonable response, but the inevitable repetition gets wearisome.
     
    I like watching The Godfather, but probably not 50 times in a row.
    Okay, maybe 50, but no more until after I take a nap.
     
    Still, she does pose a good question.
     
    Among those in the faith, there are several possible opinions.
    One in particular has meaning to me.
     
    A young preacher was apprehensive about counseling those in periods of loss.
    What wisdom could he have for grief he had never experienced himself?
     
    His hypothetical fears came to reality when a young man was killed in a tragic accident. The preacher was called upon to visit the widow.
     
    What could he say? In what way could he adequately empathize? What answers could he provide? What path did he know?
     
    On the way, he had a sudden inspiration.
    He stopped by the home of another woman.
    She had also lost her husband a few years before.
    He asked her to help with the visit.
     
    She could say what he could not.
    She had gone through the pain, the despair, the loss.
    She knew the sense of drowning in an endless sea of suffering.
    She had walked through the valley of the shadows and felt the sudden, lasting, loneliness.
     
    And so, for the young preacher, the murder of Jesus meant that God not only knows, but has experienced, what it is like to be a human in pain and despair.
     
    I remember the story because that preacher was my dad.
     
    Years later, he did not lose his faith, exactly.
    It was more as if faith was wrenched from him after an afflicted child had died in agony.
    How could a loving, merciful God allow an innocent to perish in torment?
     
    It still seems to me that God must have a special place of love and respect for those who turn away because they care:
    Those whose faith is shaken by a furious anger: faith not rejected, but shattered by helpless compassion for others.
    Could God have anything but love for someone shaking a fist in rage because of love?
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 steps away from comedic insights for half a minute and goes to an artful expression of depression to which we who may still miss a loved one can relate.
     

     
    In a few weeks, the earth will have revolved around the sun 30 times since my father was taken by a brain aneurysm.
    It astonished me that the universe could stumble on, seemingly unaware that it had lost its star player.
     
    In my life, I have known perhaps five truly great men.
    My dad was three of them.
     
    Years ago a young boss, having lost his own dad, asked me how long it had taken me to stop hurting.
    I told him I’d let him know.
     
  • Billy Bob Thornton gets off‑screen real as he talks about his brother dying of a heart condition at age 30:

  • Vincent, still recovering at A Wayfarer’s Notes, loves Mom and her flowers, and has photos of both.
     
  • Clickbait satirist Reductress has a groundbreaking new study that proves scientifically that the human body requires daily intake of eight cups of water plus one latte and two diet cokes.
     
  • Not unique, but relatively rare, that this degree of insight can come from a literary review.
     
    Infidel753 tells us about a woman transported through time to ancient Rome, and the lessons she, and the reader, learn about that time and ours.
     
    Key non-spoiler insight:
    To the extent that Household Gods sets out to deflate our tendency to idealize and romanticize earlier and “simpler” times, it succeeds brilliantly. You will never again take our much‑overlooked modern conveniences, or even simple cleanliness, for granted. At the same time, it inspires an appreciation for what a remarkable achievement the Roman civilization actually was.
     
  • The ever-wonderful Sarah Cooper falls in love with a stranger on an elevator, and tells us about it.
     
  • At The Onion, an enlightened baby boomer understands that the younger generation is not to blame for problems caused by minorities.
     
  • Mark Waulberg (No, not Mark Wahlberg, the other Mark) cautions us: Be careful what you steal!
     
  • Max’s Dad really loves pretty much everything about Division 3 Football, and has for 60 years.
     
    Key enthusiasm:
    But Division 3 college players truly do play for the love of the game. There are NO scholarships, no NIL money (I think Tad once got $50 bucks for tweeting about Runza once), nuthin. They have no incentive to lift weights, work out, practice 6 days a week, take long ass bus rides to far away places and then back in the dead of night other than they love the game of football.
     
  • In Georgia baseball, The Savanna Bananas have unusual pitching. It is successful. We can hope it’s legal
     
  • Returning home from California, SilverAppleQueen has anxious cats very happy (relieved) at her return.
     
  • YellowDog Granny encourages us to be extremely positive in an extremely negative sort of way.
     
  • Science fiction author John Scalzi intended to celebrate his first 25 years at his blog: Whatever, but got continually interrupted by life. It happens.
     
    But, his family, friends, and fans were secretly conspiring behind his back.
     

– Podcasts (Which may still be semi‑timely) ‑
 

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