Treason, Cruelty, Snakes, Trump and Obama and JFK and Churchill

• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post begins with a story, generally accepted as true, involving Winston Churchill relieving himself on Germany’s Siegfried Line as a show of disrespect toward Hitler. Jack goes on to suggest that Trump similarly shows disrespect toward everything that Makes America Great Already.
   
• In the deluge of Ukraine and China related Trump strong-arming revelations, the fount of wisdom known as Vixen Strangely asks us not to forget the sick fantasies my president talked over with aides about calculated cruelties toward desperate refuges.
   
• At the Ant Farmer’s Almanac, Lairbo tests the feasibility of President Trump’s plan for a moat along the southern border by interviewing alligators on their willingness to move.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger provides a two-second contrast, explaining the greatest difference, during the last 10 years, between two occupants of the Oval Office.
   
• Those were idealistic times. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil contrasts, with what we accept as normal today, a 1963 Action Comics meeting between Superman and JFK. Actually, I remember reading that very comic book when I was a kid. My young universe collapsed one Friday afternoon when the unthinkable came to pass. 

• Green Eagle goes paralegal, consulting the Constitution and subsequent legal history, finally figuring out for us what does and does not constitute the crime of treason.
   
• My president is furious at Representative Adam Schiff for misrepresenting the now famous transcript of Trump’s Ukraine call. Actually, Schiff was offering a parody, which allows for certain liberties. Iron Knee at Political Irony does a side-by-side comparison of transcript and parody, discovering that the parody stunningly parallels the real thing.
   
• Dave Dubya has been wondering how my president has so far escaped any consequence for his many and varied crimes. But Dave is now cautiously optimistic. That would be cautiously.
   
• The best rants, best ever, come from Max’s Dad. This week’s rant is a celebration of the coming end of Trump rule. Sort of a pre-Ding-Dong witch song.
   
• When I want a strong dose of wisdom, one of my first visits is to nojo, who now suggests that, to stop the suffering caused by Trump, we have to settle for something less than democracy and justice.
   
• Yet another scandal. Andy Borowitz reports on secret messages as Democrats beg Trump to stop impeaching himself so they have something to do.
   
• Frances Langum reports on a pitiful attempt by a couple of pro-Trump personalities to smear Elizabeth Warren with a fake sex scandal and Warren’s humorous response. Did I mention the smear attempt was pathetic?
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit declares war on the War on Drugs. She is right. As I see it, the war is wrong on practical grounds – treatment works while incarceration/enforcement simply punishes and kills. And it is wrong on philosophical grounds – sentient adults have the right to poison themselves.
   
• Perhaps there actually is a level of evil below which they will not go. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reports on a Fox News radio host who has been let go after telling listeners that Democrats worship Moloch, a pagan god associated with human sacrifice. Still, sounds like an accusation my President should get a foreign government to investigate.
   
• A local politician attacks Islam as an evil religion because the Koran is an evil book, which (and here the logic becomes quite cloudy) urges the destruction of Israel and the United States. Presumably, non-prophetic mortals would have had a hard time predicting, in the 7th century, the founding of the United States and the re-establishment of Israel.
   
  Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is upset at the condemnation of those anti-Islamic remarks by another politician who calls the attack racist. LaFerrara correctly points out that there is a linguistic distinction between racism and criticism of religion.
   
  It does bring to mind those long ago days of my youth when Catholics were among of the targets of hatred in my neighborhood. Perhaps Michael might consider whether there is a distinction between theological criticism, which he defends, and religious bigotry, which he seems to overlook.
   
• Infidel753 does this every once in a while. I share it with a few casual friends. One stares blankly. Two give courtesy chuckles. Two join me in laughing hysterically. Infidel provides alternate definitions cleverly based on word spelling. I think it’s hilarious. You decide.
   
• Atheist Bruce Gerencser is asked if he has faith. It is a conceit by at least some of my brothers and sisters in Christ that anyone who differs must have an alternate faith, including atheists who claim to have none. Bruce answers with an analysis of just what faith might mean. He has faith, but it is not based on the Pauline construct of the substance of things hoped for or the evidence of things unseen, but rather truth as determined by experience and the best available data.
   
• Professor PZ Myers joins in speculation. What evidence would be left for us to find if there had been previous technologically adept species on earth whose societies had self-destructed through environmental carelessness or war or whatever, as it appears ours soon may. A geological record? Some layer containing unnatural remnants? What? Professor Myers develops a nightmare vision of the lessons we would learn. Or wouldn’t. Sleep well, one and all.
   
• Amid life’s little adventures, author John Scalzi celebrates the virtues of a haircut with two photographs. Jealous? Me? He also breaks a tooth. No, I’m not gloating. Really.
   
• Still, there is hope. The Journal of Improbable Research discovers a successful experiment that uses electricity to grow hair on previously hairless mice. No, I’m NOT contemplating the electric outlet across the room.

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