Midway, Lawyers, Wisconsin Bias, Tax Showers, Sex

  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit stops by Midway Airport and reflects on the peacetime volunteers who fought the air battle part of that WWII turning point.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice looks at the strange legal standards proposed by Trump lawyers and remembers strange theories from the past.
     
  • The coming Trump-promised demise of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would mirror efforts on the state level. In Wisconsin, for example, Republicans did some secret fancy footwork in the middle of the night. They slipped into a budget bill last year a provision barring lawsuits against paint manufacturers on behalf of little kids harmed by lead in that paint.
     
    Turns out those Republicans were receiving three fourths of a million dollars from one of those paint manufacturers. The fellow accused of doing the bribing has since died, but the investigation and the court actions following live on. Investigators swept up lots of Republican documents, and some of those had nothing to do with bribes or lead poisoning of children. The judge overseeing the mess is accused of bias against the Republicans.
     
    Wisconsin Conservative James Wigderson has taken an interest. The heart of the accusations against the judge is an internet exchange that occurred before the judge was assigned the case. James and the judge argued about the accuracy about some of the outbursts by Republicans. Both James and the judge had forgotten the exchange. The question is whether the exchange means the judge is biased. Best part is the argument itself, which James helpfully provides.
     
    Not much sympathy in his account for the little kids, who don’t seem to have enough resources to bribe legislators. But James is, after all, a conservative.
     
  • Let’s see. The famous dossier contains the tale of the alleged “golden shower” arranged and viewed by the ever vengeful Donald Trump in Moscow. He supposedly paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed in which President and First Lady Obama had once slept. And the new Tax Bill is still in process, incorporating into the body margin notes scribbled by lobbyists. Jon Perr at PERRspectives provides both data and a sort of icky analogy between hotel flow and the trickle down theory behind the Tax Bill. Jon explores who is being trickled on.
     
  • patrickB at the Bjork Retort cartoons the other inappropriate groping: where Republicans are putting their hands.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, looks into the sad case of Trent Franks. All he did was ask several female staffers if any would agree to be a surrogate birth mother. Vixen suggests that the most sanitized interpretation is creepy and lewd.
     
  • Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass draws a line between those who oppose anti-discrimination laws that apply to bakeries and those who endorse Roy Moore.
     
  • driftglass develops a series of 2 line vignettes about the non-evolution of mainstream media.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil rummages through his “No, really?” file for a link about gun deaths that are somehow related to guns.
     
  • Reconciling the existence of evil and suffering with the existence of an omnipotent, beneficent God is one of the major challenges for thoughtful, religious people. In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, former pastor, current atheist Bruce suggests a simple reason for unanswered prayer.
     
  • PZ Myers has horrible memories of high school enforced square dancing and traces it back to its well financed roots.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research dives into theoretical physics in the construction of a model of heat loss from a semi-spherical cow udder.
     
  • This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from Salon, arguing that Trump’s campaign against reality isn’t a distraction or a sign of mental illness. It’s his historical mission.
     

Oh, by the way,