Why do Bad Things Stick?

1284
The Republic of Pisa is defeated in the Battle of Meloria by the Republic of Genoa, thus losing its naval dominance in the Mediterranean.
1777
American Revolutionary War: The bloody Battle of Oriskany prevents American relief of the Siege of Fort Stanwix.
1806
Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicates ending the Holy Roman Empire
1862
American Civil War: the Confederate ironclad Ship CSS is scuttled on the Mississippi River after suffering damage in a battle with USS Essex near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1914
World War I: First Battle of the Atlantic – two days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Helgoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.
1930
Judge Joseph Force Crater steps into a taxi in New York and disappears never to be seen again.
1940
Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union.
1945
World War II: Hiroshima is devastated when the atomic bomb “Little Boy” is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning.
1991
Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.
1996
NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
2011
A helicopter containing members of Navy SEAL 6 is shot down in Afghanistan killing 38.

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Tyranny is not freedom just because you voted for it.

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More than 900 million SpaceX shares are set to unlock Thursday, more than doubling the publicly available stock in Elon Musk’s space and AI company.

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A new tactic is emerging in the evolving Social Security failure:

'Social Security is less a need-based program than a transfer of wealth from the young and unpropertied to the old and comfortable.'

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The Democrat's search for muscles has arrived in a tight black T-shirt and a mystery degree in Michigan.

This will be a rarely meaningful election as it offers a serial candidate who dislikes the country he wants to represent. That is a serious test of national tolerance.

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Is a "deal" a "treaty"?

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German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has suggested a state actor was behind the explosive-laden drone that was found at Leipzig airport.


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Why do Bad Things Stick?

Can we transcend our history? Should we? Somehow the great achievement of the Revolution has been eclipsed in recent years and replaced by guilt. Is that permanent? Does everything in history create a permanent alloy, or are they just blends of colors to be washed away?

Things in America are different now. Silliness is no longer simply dismissed. Foolish people who want to dismantle the Constitution are taken seriously. The President codifies petulance. He puts state money into company investments. These are significant, philosophy-altering events. Can they be rolled back when he leaves, or will we stagger on with the new, heavier and distorting alloy of what we once had?

This is one view:

"America at 250 has never been wealthier or more powerful. It has grown two-thirds faster than Western Europe over the past 20 years. Rival ideologies – Chinese authoritarianism, Islamism – are hideously unappealing.

Yet, at the same time, the US is starting to behave like a tinpot autocracy. The best way I can describe it is as Third Worldery. The attempt to browbeat the Nobel Peace Prize Committee; the obsession with building big arches; the tariffs; the annexation threats against Canada, Denmark, and Panama; the renaming of public institutions after a living leader; the successful attempt to bully FIFA over a red card. Such things are the hallmark of insecure dictatorships, not of confident democracies.

Opting for strongman government seems to have opened the way to Third Worldery across the board. Once you build your head of state into a Father of the Nation type, once dissent from his latest whims is portrayed as a form of treachery, other things follow.

It is the same pattern everywhere. When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insists that the rest of us refer to his country in English as “Türkiye”, he invites us to treat Turkey as a post-colonial failed state rather than as the Western democracy it was before his time. I mean, we use English exonyms for serious places. No one demands that we say Deutschland or Nippon or Magyarország. But touchy third-worldists demand Côte d’Ivoire, Timor-Leste and Cabo Verde – and now the Gulf of America - the classic needy-country move.

…..

Then again, as Lady Macbeth says, “What’s done cannot be undone”. Those who have downplayed, excused, or ignored Trump’s venality will struggle to find grounds on which to oppose equally sleazy stuff from a successor in either party. Standards have been permanently lowered. We will look back wistfully on what was lost."--from Hannan

It's hard to know where to start. Trump? Biden's Presidency-from-the -Crypt? Johnson's creeping Authoritarianism-with-Good-Intent?

Bad ideas will always get a hearing. Some will lie fallow and, unopposed, will fester. The Bell Curve is nonjudgmental. But tolerance for error and respect for precedents has momentum. Ask Dred Scott.

Seriously vs Literally

On this day:

1879
Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Rorke’s Drift – 139 British soldiers successfully defend their garrison against an intense assault by four to five thousand Zulu warriors.
1917
World War I: President Woodrow Wilson of the still-neutral United States calls for “peace without victory” in Europe.
1968
Apollo 5 lifts off carrying the first Lunar module into space.
1973
The Supreme Court of the United States delivers its decision in Roe v. Wade, legalizing elective abortion in all fifty states.
1987
Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself during a televised press conference, leading to debates on boundaries in journalism.

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“They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?”--Diana

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There’s been an ongoing general diversification away from US assets, especially by global central banks, according to Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund firm Bridgewater Associates.
“When you look at gold being up 67%, it’s not a precious metal that goes up 60%,” Dalio told Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua in Davos on Thursday. “It was bought by central banks particularly, but others, and in order to diversify fiat currencies, not just dollars.” 

This is indicative of serious anxiety among big money. Maybe this is the reason European leaders cry during interviews.

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"lilliputian hallucinations" – the psychiatric term for the perception of tiny human, animal or fantasy figures. It is so named after the small people who inhabit the fictional Lilliput Island in the novel Gulliver's Travels. It is specific — and consistent — to certain mushrooms. Or looking at Congress.

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Is this excitement over the Minnesota fraud 'news'? Is there something unique here? Suddenly, this is taken seriously? Does this imply that we can no longer afford this voracious abuse?

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Lutnick's speech at Davos was clarifying. It would be interesting to hear how the Carney insight translates into a future of debased currency, exporting manufacturing, and importing people who hate you. 

No wonder the European leaders cry.

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Seriously vs Literally

Trump publicly boasted that “drug prices are falling at levels never seen before, 500%, 600%, 700%, and more” in a Truth Social post. The greatest anyone has ever seen. ...no one has ever seen before...bad things will happen, very bad...not seen since...

Exaggeration on the edge of nonsense.

These are all from Trump's "seriously but not literally" file, a peculiar style that might be a way of calling attention to things he knows will not be treated fairly in the press. He certainly spends a lot of time and effort trying to put the question to the harassment and slander of the past. And he adopts the language of his enemies. People call him a nazi, he returns with 'moron' and "the worst in history."

In fairness, it is hard to believe his presidency is always a source of ridicule and criticism while the Biden Regency, its enablers, and the party responsible for the fraud are rarely even mentioned.

Transparency can be just foolishness. Hyperbole might focus attention, but at some point, it becomes engulfed in the same political exaggerated insincerity that makes people turn their minds off and retreat into cynicism. 

And, of course, there is the risk of misunderstanding. Or it can morph into uncertain symbolism. Sometimes forthrightness can be a ploy. Remember, the U.S. sending a female ambassador to Iraq-- a curious decision--was said to be understood by Hussein as the U.S. turning a blind diplomatic eye toward his ambitions in Kuwait.

And what happens if his audience does not remember? Or hates him so much they don't care? Does that turn him into a blowhard? Is his harping on the Nobel instructive or petty?

Philosophy-Free Zone

  

On this day:

1971
The Harrisburg Seven: The Reverend Philip Berrigan and five others are indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.
2010
The 2010 Haiti earthquake occurs killing an estimated 316,000 and destroying the majority of the capital, Port-au-Prince

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As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness. Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out. Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

 –from Letters of E.B. White

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“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”--Adam Smith

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What is Portland's police chief crying about?

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Philosophy-Free Zone

The 'Horseshoe Theory' in politics tries to explain the curious seemingly similar appearance of the behavior of extremes on the political spectrum. Rather than a straight line, political positions are really an arc, where the far-right and far-left bend towards each other like a horseshoe. Both are intense, populist, with similar policies aimed at dissimilar goals. They are divergent ideologues with a common, utilitarian stem.

More like a Thanksgiving wishbone.

Look at Trump. He's talking about Greenland as if he has no understanding of American history at all.

He wants to declare an outright ban on institutional buying of single-family residential real estate by those investors who own more than 100 properties, as if there were no limits to presidential power and private property was passé.

He wants Government control of executive compensation at defense and aerospace companies, along with, under loosely defined circumstances, a ban on such companies’ returning capital (whether by share buybacks or dividends). He has acquired government interest in select American companies. 

This sounds like Elizabeth Warren, not like any Republican you can name.

It is. We are in a time of the utilitarian, the disruption of means for ends, of confused authority. Dangerous and hard to unwind, especially in times when reflectiveness is disregarded.

And, of course, the idea of the wishbone tug-of-war is to break it and end with the biggest piece.

"Putin is Winning."

On this day:

1531
The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City.
1917
World War I: In Palestine, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby captures Jerusalem.
1937
Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing – Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing.
1946
The “Subsequent Nuremberg Trials” begin with the “Doctors’ Trial”, prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.
1950
Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1965
The Kecksburg UFO incident: a fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that it examined the object.
1979
The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
2008
The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for a number of crimes including attempting to sell the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency.

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“With $1 million, you could earn 50% a year, but you have to be in love with the subject. You can’t just be in love with the money.” --Buffett

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Ilhan Omar is worth $30 million. Read that again.

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Looters in politics wearing different uniforms are on the same team: themselves.

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China just put a 13% VAT on birth control meds and devices.

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"Putin is Winning"

There is a narrative on the Left that "Putin is winning," in a general, international way. Biden's weird, observant non-response fit well with Europe's dithering. Trump's position is hard to understand, even if you assume he is 'philosophy-unburdened'. 

These are excerpts (sort of) from The Telegraph on their assessment of the situation Russia and Putin are in with their Ukrainian invasion. They think Trump is foolish in his efforts, but their opinion of Putin is worthwhile.

After two years of growth artificially fuelled by higher defence spending, Russia’s oil and gas income, representing up to 50% of state revenue, is down 27% year-on-year, and recession looms. Inflation is up, at 8%; interest rates top 16%. The budget deficit is rising, more than half of Russia’s liquid sovereign wealth fund has been squandered since 2022, state monopolies face huge debts, foreign investment has plunged, import costs of strategic goods have risen by 122%, and consumer taxes are soaring, all to fund Putin’s war. Russians must even pay more to drown their sorrows: the price of vodka is up 5%.

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Ukraine has identified a weak spot: Russia’s refineries, pipelines and “shadow fleet” of oil tankers carrying illicit exports. A third tanker was set ablaze in the Black Sea last week by naval drone strikes. Kyiv is regularly hitting energy facilities deep inside Russia, causing panic and fuel shortages. Meanwhile, Russia’s two energy giants, Rosneft and Lukoil, are reeling as Asian buyers, including in China’s vital market, rush to avoid secondary US sanctions.

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Syria, a prized Middle East ally, turned to the west and Iran came under US and Israeli attack. Now Venezuela, too, looks in vain for support. Ties with China have been upended, with a humiliated Russia relegated to the role of dependent junior partner. Visiting India last week, Putin cut a needy figure in a country that, following US pressure, now boycotts Russian oil.

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Despite his surprise, full-scale invasion and overwhelming advantages in manpower and materiel, Putin has utterly failed to subjugate Ukraine – a failure measured in shocking Russian casualty figures: more than 280,000 killed or injured in the first eight months of 2025; about one million in total. The average Russian frontline life expectancy is 12 days.

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The latest US negotiating fiasco has once again exposed Trump’s idiotically lopsided Ukraine “strategy”. Appeasing Russia from the start, he has undermined Ukraine by attacking Zelenskyy and halting arms supplies. Trump’s egotistic eagerness to play peacemaker and make a quick buck, choice of inept relatives and cronies as amateur envoys, and attempts to sideline and pillory Europe assist and embolden Putin.

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Trump’s meddling is prolonging the war. He should butt out before he does more damage – and Europe (and Nato) must step in with more weapons for Ukraine, reparation loans using seized Russian assets, fully enforced energy sanctions, tougher kinetic responses to sabotage and cyber-attacks, and a more united determination to help end Putin’s age of terror.

Contemplating the Live Hand Grenade

On this day:

437
Emperor Valentinian III, begins his reign over the Western Roman Empire. His mother Galla Placidia ends her regency, but continues to exercise political influence at the court in Rome.
1881
Charles J. Guiteau shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President James Garfield, who eventually dies from an infection on September 19.

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Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, gave an eye-opening interview on NATO and the Russian efforts in Ukraine, and North Korean involvement. He flattered Trump--except for one moment where he said future negotiations with Russia should include more than a "historian."

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A minority opinion: The gender debates in locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports received unintended stimulus when female reporters objected male reporters had an advantage over them when they could enter football locker rooms for post-game interviews. The culture demurred, and women were allowed in, causing surprised guys coming out of showers, a scramble for towels, and annoyed interviews with half-naked men.

It was sold as a women's rights question, but that crossed a line.. I don't recall any effort to make those men more comfortable. Men and women mixed in the locker rooms. The camel's nose was under the tent.

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Raising taxes, substituting social workers for police, and inserting government into private business is a good way to cause the flight of the only people in NYC who can help. As always, the Left creates what it tries to prevent.

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Contemplating the Live Hand Grenade

Zakaria had the bad judgment to give a platform to Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor under the Biden Regency, to rewrite the history of Ukraine and the Democrats' mishandling of Iran. First, he said that the Iran bombing could eventually be overcome with money and effort--a remarkably simplistic and obvious statement that led to the more obvious idea that only the participants' decision to prefer peace could keep the area safe. But the reason for the bombing attack was exactly that. And the idea that giving the Iranian regime money to continue their nuclear plans was not a solution, it was collusion. Obama--and the Biden Regency--underwrote Iran's nuclear development and contributed to the region's instability.

Remember, we are not trying to protect Israel from Iran; they don't need help. We are trying to protect the Middle East and ourselves from Iran's insane ambitions and Israel's inevitable insane vengeful response in its death throes.

Compounding this nonsense, Sullivan also criticized Trump for not being more forceful and supportive of Ukraine, this from a guy whose presumed boss called the invasion by Russia a "minor incursion."

All of this went unchallenged by Zakaria, who continued the tradition of journalistic one-sidedness. One obvious reason is the Press's political bias. However, another, painful, and discouraging factor is that these problems are dangerous and are felt to be more safely dealt with by platitudes. As in Ukraine and the national debt, the Left defaults to the safer, short-term news cycle rather than the challenging, long-term, and more dangerous policy.

No Kings

On this day:
1673
French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course
1775
American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the Battle of Bunker Hill.This was a significant encounter, a planned battle, and the British famously bayonetted the American wounded. It became a focal point and rallying cry. The important Patriot leader, Dr. Joseph Warren, was also killed.
1930
U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.
1939
Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison
1940
The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.
1944
Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.
1972
Watergate scandal: five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.
1994
Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

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Can Israel (and the world) be successful against Iran without U.S. air strikes?

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Some ask with outrage, Why are ICE agents masked? Because some in this country are so crazy, they will identify their opponents, hunt them down, and kill them and their families. 

That's the reason to identify them, right? So they can be intimidated? Even harmed? And their families? Right?

And masked criminals in demonstrations are ok?

Is the idea here that the government's agents cannot be held responsible for their acts if they are masked? In a country that can read a license plate from space?

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Some publicity was gained when a Canadian Indigenous leader who greeted world heads of state arriving for the Group of Seven summit said he was “filled with rage” and considered leaving before Donald Trump arrived, saying the U.S. president has “caused much pain and suffering in the world.”
Why this man felt this way or deserved this publicity was not explained.

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No Kings

The No Kings marches are over. It was a tough sell, being held on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. military responsible for separating the U.S. from England and...its king. And, of course, America doesn't have a king. And had a democratic election 4 months ago as mandated by its federal constitution. And a Supreme Court. Maybe they don't know how monarchies work. It was especially difficult in Canada, which has a king, so they bravely called it No Tyrants.

But at least Canada has a monarchy to protest, albeit fecklessly. The U.S. is a constitutional republic with a Supreme Court, not a monarchy. But these are the same people who did not care at all that the last president was non-compos and was surreptitiously substituted for by a masquerading cabal. That is an aristocracy. That is treason. One would think those supporting the anti-autocracy No Kings would be outraged.

One might look at the considerable contribution of teachers' unions. This probably means the No Kings moniker is poetic, but with 40% of the country's 8th graders unable to read, it might be that the teachers really don't know America doesn't have a king, any more than they know what a woman is. They clearly have little regard for the American Revolution.

At the dark heart of the protests is Indivisible, a far-left activist group that has reportedly received $8 million in funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation between 2017 and 2023. Soros is not a king. Nor is he just one of the boys.

And big contributions from billionaire Walmart heiress Christy Walton, who is hard at work trying to put the "ditz" in "philanthropy."

One particularly galling bit of information includes a list of non-profits receiving federal grants contributing to this embarrassment. It is linked below for the impending furious (don't know the link):

https://datarepublican.com/nokings/

Another View of Biden

On this day:
1453
Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. Although the date of May 29, 1453, is that of the Julian Calendar, the event is commemorated in Istanbul on this day of the present Gregorian calendar.
1660
English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of Great Britain.
1780
American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford’s Continentals, allegedly after the Continentals surrender. 113 Americans are killed.
1914
The ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives.
1919
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington’s observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil.
1931
Born October 19, 1899, in Sardinia, Michele “Mike” Schirru, Anarchist against Fascism, U.S. Citizen, is executed by an Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. The U.S. Government did nothing to help Schirru.
1953
Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.

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If you do not take the money from someone who has earned it and do not give it to someone else who hasn't, is that a "transfer of wealth?"

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Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a professor of business administration, who was accused of data fraud.
In 2018 and 2019, she was the fifth-highest paid employee at the prestigious school, receiving more than $1 million in compensation each year, The Harvard Crimson reported.

***

 

Another View of Biden 

I think this Biden episode is a threat to the stability of the nation, vastly worse than Nixon. And it creates an undercurrent of faithlessness in the voting public. It was aristocratic, manipulative, arrogant, and mendacious. It destroyed the executive specifically, politicians in general, and the Press. It should destroy the Democrat Party. It should be a constant topic of discussion. 

I think it's treason.

This is from The Contrarian, written by Jennifer Rubin. She resigned from her position at the WashPo to join Substack. It is her take on Biden. She thinks he is a noble statesman; I think he is an undistinguished, evolved racist hack. She believes the major problem with his presidency was the mismanagement of its last months that allowed Trump to sneak into the White House. Generally, she thinks all of the problems I see in the Biden presidency are present only in Trump's. There is a wistful longing for those European hierarchies we thought we buried long ago.

This is a woman of accomplishments, and her thinking is hard for me to understand. It seems very much like a deep and virulent religious zealotry from a mysterious foreign culture. Nor, from what I read and see, is she alone.

She sees " racism, fascism, disinformation, and xenophobia that we foolishly told ourselves would not take hold here" where I see a deliberate attempt to subvert the basic constitutional structure, perhaps before the 2020 election but definitely after--when Trump was defeated and gone. The Regency had nothing to do with Trump for years. It just got more prominent when the election came around again. The enmity she feels toward Trump and his supporters is based on I know not what.

We face staggering problems, none as great as that of defining ourselves. The importance of the individual citizen and how he chooses leadership is the essence of the nation. Undermining that is revolutionary--and criminal, in my mind. Creating a sham government is criminal. Then come the other problems: immigration (20 million illegals, including 40,000 young Chinese men--or, if you prefer, 40 divisions,), our defensive capabilities, our ability--or willingness--to educate our young, among many.

And the great circling plane, our astonishing debt of $36 trillion--with us fussing about how much money we do not have to give away. That plane, at some time, will land.

I do not know if Trump can solve any of these problems. We have promised too much to others. We must, however, keep those promises we made to ourselves. The Biden coup has shown the Democrats can not. 

But I should give some hearing to other views, and here is Ms Rubin's.

 

Joe Biden

The confluence of former President Joe Biden’s terrible cancer diagnosis and a highly promoted book on his supposed mental and physical decline has resulted in a great deal of breathless, heartless, dumb commentary. People need to get a grip and exercise some basic humanity grounded in basic truths.

First, a dedicated public servant (whose contributions to America will need to be recognized by later generations, given the utter lack of seriousness in the current political-media climate), a father, a husband, and a grandfather has received news all of us would dread. That he and his family must endure this ordeal during a time of pearl-clutching and angry accusations underscores the meanness that now courses through our politics. Instead of “Who knew what, when?” the appropriate question is “What will we lose when he passes from the scene?” (The answer: A statesman who defended the post-WWII world order and a clear-eyed, center-left champion of the middle class.)

Second, the notion that Biden was a feeble, inert, and nonfunctional figurehead during his presidency is utter nonsense. He made decisions, delivered some marvelous speeches, crafted far-sighted foreign policy alliances, and presided over a flurry of productive, bipartisan domestic bills. On his worst day as president, he was more insightful, knowledgeable, productive, and effective than not only Donald Trump (as would be any sentient being) but many other presidents.

Third, none of this excuses those around him and, yes, Biden himself, for failing to recognize sooner that he lacked the verbal acuity and forceful presentation skills needed to run a successful campaign. He should not have decided to run. It was his worst decision, enabled by advisers who could not bring themselves to level with him. As a result, we are undergoing untold horrors in Trump 2.0. Depending on the success of pro-democracy forces in defending our fragile system, Biden and his inner circle will have played a role in the human, economic, and constitutional damage his successor will leave behind.

Fourth, for all the media caterwauling, when the heck are they going to level with voters about the current president’s mental and emotional descent into utter incoherence? Trump crafts his lies and then reflexively imbibes his own disinformation, conspiracies, and lies. By continuing to treat him (during his presidency) as if he is all there and by absolving Republicans of playing along, the media repeats—at the worst possible time—the profoundly irresponsible, lazy treatment of Biden they now bemoan. They are picking over the remains of a presidency allowed to persist too long (as did Woodrow Wilson’s, for example) while ignoring the five-alarm fire of insanity currently consuming the White House.

The utter refusal to systematically reveal, analyze, and hold him accountable for his divorce from reality constitutes the worst media malpractice imaginable. At some level, voters know corporate and billionaire media refuse to level with them, which is why so many news consumers have fled to The Contrarian and to other independent media outlets.

Finally, expecting every Democrat to have perceived what the media did not (Biden’s accelerated decline) and expose what the media failed to do is rich, even for a corporate media already corrupted by desperation for access and self-interest. Aside from those in the inner circle, most saw what the press did—an aging but still effective president.

It’s quite something for the media to demand Democrats take responsibility even as the corporate media ignore their own obtuseness while refusing to engage Republicans on the latter’s astounding deceit and lack of constitutional loyalty in enabling Trump to trash our economy, democracy, and national character.

Where does that leave us? Essentially, where we have been since the November election. The fate of our endangered democracy is the seminal challenge of our time. Recriminations about the past and idle speculation about 2028 distract us from the task of solidifying a broad coalition to defeat the racism, fascism, disinformation, and xenophobia that we foolishly told ourselves would not take hold here. It has.

Only if we focus on ripping out the MAGA menace root and branch will we spare ourselves of the horrors that Europeans have experienced over millennia. Perhaps that is why EU countries have consistently chosen center-left leaders in the Trump era. They know exactly what is at stake.

Gifts

On this day:
1868
President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate
1918
The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.
1969
Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.
2005
Kuwait permits women’s suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.

***

A podcaster described Psul Skenes as "a chandelier in a haunted house."

***

City Journal reports on
"a trove of internal documents that reveal Harvard’s racial favoritism in faculty and administrative hiring." More than “unconscious bias” training, they are vectors for systematic discrimination against disfavored groups: namely, white men. As one Harvard researcher said, “endless evidence” suggests that the university continues to discriminate against the supposed oppressor class in hiring and promotions.

***

Gifts

There is debate over Qatar's offer of a plane gift to Trump. Some claim concerns over possible hidden, nefarious motives despite its blatant transparency. Democrats raise their heads from the mire of their corruption and cry, "corruption!" This is especially interesting in light of the enormous financial gifts the Middle East has given American Universities, which no one seems to object to.

A question.

Trump is trying to cobble together a Persian rug of Middle East leaders in hopes of preempting more conflict or, if Iran is a plus one to the party, World War III. Qatar is a principal in that effort.

So, what, in Middle Eastern culture, are the implications of refusing a gift?

Eclipse

 

The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago, a new genetic model suggests. The unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function.

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‘I NEVER imagined,” former NATO secretary general Anders Rasmussen wrote in a Wall Street Journal column last week, that “I would hear a US president declare his intentions to ‘expand our territory,’ as Donald Trump did in his inaugural address.”

***

Arson of Tesla products continues. Fortunately, the Crew-9 splashdown occurred at sea, surrounded by dolphin guardians, inaccessible to vandals and psychotics.

***


Eclipse

We've come a long way from those days when the Church would put an army in the field. But those changes may be logistic; the Church is under-armed.

 The tendency to politicize everything by everyone lives on.

Even the most remarkable human achievement in history has been eclipsed by politics.

This is from a tech site I don't know well:

"In February, President Trump and the chief executive of SpaceX, Elon Musk, began to say that the two astronauts were "stranded" in space because the Biden administration did not want to bring them home. "They got left in space," Trump said.

"They were left up there for political reasons," Musk concluded.

Just what those political reasons were never specified. But the basic message was clear: Biden, bad; Trump, good.

The reality is that NASA set a plan for the return of Wilmore and Williams last August. The spacecraft that brought them back to Earth on Tuesday safely docked to the space station in September. They could have come home at any time since. NASA—not the Biden administration, which all of my reporting indicates was not involved in any decision-making—decided the best and safest option was to keep Wilmore and Williams in orbit until early this year. Musk knew this plan. He had to sign off on it. Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons.

And still, the lies came.
 
On Monday, the president posted a long statement on Truth Social that repeated this canard of the Biden administration, "They shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be very embarrassing event for them—another thing I inherited from that group of incompetents."

Trump then went on to state that he and Musk had just sent up a SpaceX Dragon (which, in point of fact, launched last September) to rescue the crew

One of the common refrains about spaceflight for decades and decades is that it is nonpartisan.

That is, the Apollo Program brought the country together in the turbulent 1960s and helped make everyone feel good about the country. Pretty much ever since then, Republicans, Democrats, and independents have generally supported NASA and civil spaceflight. If you watch committee meetings in the House and Senate, the members always say this, and the discussions are nearly always cordial. As for the "incompetent" Biden administration, they didn't really play politics with the space program. They liked the "Artemis Program" created by the Trump administration well enough that they simply kept it.

But if we're going to start lying about basic truths like the fate of Wilmore and Williams—and let's be real, the only purpose of this lie is to paint the Trump administration as saviors in comparison to the Biden administration—then space is not going to remain apolitical for all that long. And in the long run, that would be bad for NASA.

Let's also be clear that Musk and SpaceX are currently flying the only spacecraft in the Western world that is capable of reliably flying humans into orbit. Without Dragon, NASA would have been beholden to Russia for the last five years for human spaceflight. And when Boeing's Starliner had issues nine months ago en route to the International Space Station, NASA was fortunate to have the reliable Dragon program to turn to.

Yet perverting that good news story into some tawdry political gain cheapens SpaceX, NASA, and Wilmore and Williams. In this case, the truth was beautiful. When one American space company had a problem, another stepped in, and the heroic astronauts made it home safely with a perfect backdrop.

If only the story ended there."

Another link from the same source: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/nasa-officials-undermine-musks-claims-about-stranded-astronauts/

The truth is a camp-follower, loved but with few loyalists, who grows old and succeeds by attrition. A redacted account of the JFK assassination has just been released. But it is hateful to see this towering human achievement grasped and hoarded.

Lawfare

$1,599 is the median U.S. asking rent in January, down 0.1% from a year earlier, according to Redfin.

***

Total Estimated Cost of German driving license: €1,500–€3,000.

***

Many economists have argued that China could better rev up its economy by easing controls on its private sector, strengthening the country as it competes with the U.S., without many of the downsides of its state-led model.
Bad news. Rather than emerging out of a government lab, DeepSeek was built by a Chinese math geek who had founded a hedge fund.

***

Lawfare

Strassel has an informative article on the endless Trump litigation and the administration's response.

"The Donald Trump “resistance” is alive and well, though this time it’s centering nearly all its efforts on the legal system. Just three weeks into this administration, nonprofits and coalitions of Democratic state attorneys general have already filed nearly 60 lawsuits in federal court. Don’t think this litigation is ad hoc. Activists and attorneys general have been meeting since Trump won the nomination, debating his likely moves, hiring lawyers, strategizing legal responses and coordinating who would lead cases and where.

One result is that this resistance is on track to dwarf even the legal assault on Trump’s first term—which was itself unprecedented in size and scope. Just one stat: State attorneys general filed 160 multistate lawsuits against the federal government in Trump’s first term, compared with 80 over Barack Obama’s entire tenure."

These cases all have complex elements but it appears in her article that the administration is better prepared for the legal harassment.

Tariff

 

MSNBC is very suspicious about Trump's head wound. They want medical reports. I assume they believe Biden's Covid diagnosis.

***

At the remaining publicly listed department stores, credit cards — rather than retail sales — now generate a surprisingly large chunk of profits. Credit income accounted for about 47 per cent and 66 per cent, respectively, of Nordstrom’s and Kohl’s operating income last year, according to Bank of America Global Research. At Macy’s, the figure was about 55 per cent in 2022, said Citigroup.

***

Tariff

Some takes on Trump's tariff plan:

Trump’s tariff plan is “economically ignorant, geopolitically dangerous, and politically misguided,” says Scott Lincicome, head of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. He adds that Paul Winfree, Trump’s Domestic Policy Council deputy in 2017, has denounced the tariff proposal, saying it “would impose a massive tax on the folks who it intends to help.”

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Trump tariffs “would reduce after-tax incomes by about 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution,” and “would cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution at least $1,700 in increased taxes each year.”

The Center for American Progress reports that Trump’s tariffs “would amount to a roughly $1,500 annual tax increase for the typical household, including a $90 tax increase on food, a $90 tax increase on prescription drugs, and a $120 tax increase on oil and petroleum products.” .

Erica York, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, says Trump’s 10 percent tariff ring “would amount to a $300 billion annual tax hike, reducing the size of the US economy by 0.7 percent and eliminating 505,000 jobs.” That’s before we even consider foreign retaliation.

A Summary of Trump's Problems With the Press and the Powers

A  Summary of Trump's Problems With the Press and the Powers


 Hugh Hewitt wrote an article for FOX that serves as a nice summary of the problems Trump has had with the press and the government that many of his supporters feel are unfair. This is it.

"If you aren’t stunned by the $70 million+ in "small dollar" campaign contributions to the campaign of former President Donald Trump that were made in the first 72 hours after the verdicts in his Manhattan trial, then you don’t know much about politics, because nothing like this sort of fundraising weekend has ever happened before.

Skeptical about the relative scale of this Krakatoa of contributions? Don’t believe me. Believe the Democrats. Here’s the first paragraph from a March 2024 Washington Post report on the "three presidents" gala at Radio City Music Hall: "In a show of force his campaign is calling the ‘most successful political fundraiser in American history,’ President Biden raised more than $25 million during a New York event Thursday featuring former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton."

According to Eric Trump, who appeared this past weekend on "Sunday Morning Futures Maria Bartiromo," the record-setting flood of small-dollar donations was accompanied by big donations which, when included with the small donors, totaled over $200 million in donations to the Trump campaign in the three days following the verdicts.

What that mountain of new money tells us is that the verdicts constituted a "last straw" for hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters, old and new. Enormous numbers of ordinary Americans were disgusted enough with the verdicts to send Trump money to press forward with his campaign.

Why? There are as many motives as there are donors, but having spoken with a dozen contributors —mostly new donors— on my radio show Monday, their responses confirmed for me my hunch that the general feeling at large in at least half the country is that the New York trial and convictions were yet another abuse of power done in order to "get Trump." Another abuse of power in a long-running drama that became, for them, the proverbial "last straw."

Want a list of the previous straws? Forgive the shorthand, but a column has limits and most folks will instantly recall what these short notations mean. Paul Simon once recorded a hit song "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover." Here are 50 reasons why people may have reached a new level of disgust late Thursday afternoon through Sunday morning and contributed to the various campaign websites. Each of these "straws" brings consciously to mind a discrete abuse of power since Trump came down the escalator in 2015, and the eruption of the contributions volcano is evidence that the outrage is real and widespread:

1. Hillary’s private server, the rules it violated and the threat to national security it posed, and no prosecution for it.
2. Hillary’s lawyers’ deletion of half of her emails and no prosecution for that.
3. Hillary’s use of Bleach Bit and hammers and again no prosecution.
4. Former FBI Director James Comey’s "nothing to see here" conclusion on the Clinton emails on REP. Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
5. The Steele Dossier.
6. Marc Elias and his then law firm Perkins Coie and their roles in the 2016 campaign, which included retaining Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to "conduct the research" and create the Steele dossier.
7. The leak of the Steele dossier to Mother Jones and other media outlets
8. The meeting (ambush?) of President-elect Trump by then-CIA Director Brennan, then-FBI Director Comey and then-DNI Director Clapper at Trump Tower in January 2017, at the conclusion of which Comey briefed the president-elect on the most salacious parts of the dossier. (The news that Comey had done so almost immediately leaked.)
9. The recusal by Attorney General Jeff Sessions from any matter involving the Trump 2016 campaign.
10. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein naming Robert S. Mueller III to serve as Special Counsel to oversee the investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters.
11. The team of hyper-partisan prosecutors assembled by Mueller
12. The revelations from the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page messages about the corruption atop the FBI
13. The 22 months Mueller and his attack pack took to find…nothing.
14. The two thick volumes of "Mueller report" intended to cover the dry holes Team Mueller had drilled.
15. The refusal by Team Mueller to send to then-Attorney General William Barr a version of the report that Barr requested, a version redacted of classified information so that it could immediately be published, which the Mueller team did not do.
16. The smear of Barr that he was hiding the report and then the smear of Barr that his conclusion that there was no obstruction was somehow flawed.
17. The leak of the Trump phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky.
18. The manufacture of Impeachment One based on that call.
19. The lies of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., throughout the Mueller investigation and then throughout the impeachment.
20. The changes in voting rules because of COVID.
21. The "Zuckerbucks" and "Zuckerboxes."
22. The Commission on Presidential Debates 2020 selection of moderators and its unilateral decision to cancel one of the debates.
23. The Hunter Biden laptop and the censoring of most stories about it when the New York Post got the scoop.
24. The letter from "51 former senior intelligence officials" concluding that the emails on Biden’s laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
25. The lawlessness of the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd (and the refusal to call out that protestors were violating COVID guidelines even as churches, beaches and playgrounds were closed.)
26. The second impeachment after the 1/6 riot at the Capitol, an effort undertaken even as the transition to President Biden in two weeks would obviously prevent a timely proceeding with even minimal attention to the process due any official much less the outgoing president.
27. The set-up by the FBI of the meeting with Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (USA, ret.) and his subsequent prosecution.
28. The conduct not just of Comey, Page and Strzok but also of the Bureau’s Andrew McCabe and James Baker.
29. The manipulation of the membership of House Select Committee on 1/6 by then-Speaker Pelosi who vetoed future Indiana Senator Jim Banks from becoming the ranking minority member and proceeded to name two anti-Trump Republicans to the show trial "committee." The entire charade reflected this original breach of trust with voters, rigging the proceedings to run as they did.
30. The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
31. The appointment of Jack Smith as Special Counsel (despite the Supreme Court having tossed his prosecution and conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell).
32. The appointment of a different Special Counsel, Robert Hur, to President Biden’s classified documents case and the obviously different standard for prosecution applied to Biden than was applied to Trump.
33. The conduct of and civil case against Trump brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
34. The conduct of New York judge Arthur Engoron during that civil proceeding, and his outrageous setting of the bond.
35. The E. Jean Carroll proceedings and verdicts.
36. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg campaigning for office on the promise of getting Trump.
37. Bragg filing an indictment against Trump resurrecting time-barred misdemeanors but without specifying in the indictment the "second crime" that turned those time-barred misdemeanors into felonies ripe for prosecution.
38. Trial court judge Juan Merchan’s symbolic contributions to the 2020 Joe Biden campaign and two hard left causes —in contravention of black letter New York law governing judicial conduct— and Merchan’s refusal to recuse himself from the Trump trial.
39. Merchan’s anti-Trump rulings on many, many issues ranging from admitting plea bargains with Michael Cohen and David Pecker that the defense objected to, to refusing to allow former Federal Elections Commission Chair Professor Brad Smith testify to the extent of his knowledge, rulings which telegraphed the judge’s push for a conviction.
40. The blistering by Merchan of defense witness Robert Costello and the judge’s interference with Costello’s testimony.
41. The failure of the judge to clearly instruct on the state of mind "the second crime" would require.
42. The jury not declaring what the "second crime" was on the verdict paper.
43. The conduct of Judge Tanya Chutkan in attempting to rush a trial in federal district court in D.C.
44. The gag order on Trump issued by trial judge Engoron in the case brought by James.
45. The gag order on Trump issued by trial Judge Chutkin in the case brought by Smith in D.C.
46. The gag order on Trump issued by Merchan.
47. The four-days-a-week of trial in the spring of the election year, a schedule requiring Trump to be in a Manhattan court room for six weeks, thus interfering with the presidential campaign
48. The conduct of both Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fanni Willis and her lover and co-counsel Nathan Wade.
49. The refusal of all of these prosecutors and judges to wait on the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity from criminal proceedings based on acts taken while president.
50. Arizona’s Democratic State Attorney General Kris Mayes’ and her grand jury’s indictment of 18 people in an election interference case filed in late April.

There is much more, such as the Colorado and Maine efforts to toss Trump off the ballot, but the Supreme Court acted with dispatch and ruled correctly on those specific abuses of power, so while they are part of the mosaic of abuses of law and process, they have at least been resolved finally and fully (and in Trump’s favor).

To all of the above, add the legacy media’s deep and never-ending bias in coverage of each of the listed instances as an aggravating factor in the anger felt across the country. Various Americans have different bits and pieces of this litany of perceived abuses of power stored in their memory banks. When the jury quickly voted to convict, it appears various combinations of the concerns that have accumulated since 2015 unleashed an outpouring of support for the former president in the only way these contributors knew how to signal —in the same fashion Merchan signaled he was with Biden and against Trump: With a small indeed symbolic donation to the various campaign websites.

Everyone with a functioning brain should know what Merchan was signaling with his illegal contributions. Everyone who can figure that out can also figure out what this cash avalanche into Trump’s coffers means. And if Merchan sentences Trump to jail time —as I fully expect he will because I don’t think his case of Trump Derangement Syndrome has fully run its course yet— another tidal wave of tens and twenties and more will hit the Trump campaign bank accounts.

Why? Because America is a country committed in hundreds of ways to fair play. Every single game played on every field or on every card table is run by rules that don’t change, or it isn’t a fair game. We don’t like cheaters, and we despise people who abuse their authority, whether at the DMV counter or during a police stop or when pursuing, to the point of ridiculous, prosecution of a former (and now I think likely) future president."

Bananas

Pa. Gov. Shapiro is beginning to appear in those self-congratulatory state government ads. It is noticeable. Why would that be?

***


Bananas

The Trump decision is in. While it was not a surprise, it was--and will be--an earthquake. A political party is willing to manipulate and distort the judicial process for its own benefit despite the damage it does to the nation. This is more than simple incompetence. Or the result of fear like the Japanese internment. The questions were not beyond the poor citizens like the Simpson case. This case was a refined assault upon a citizen and political opponent by a cynical, ambitious political opponent.

The country looks ludicrous in the world but such a criticism alone is shortsighted. The basics of this country have always been assumed. The safety of the individual in the face of hereditary or simply grasping ambition has made this nation a beacon of hope in the corrupt, vicious world. Now that certainty has been undermined. Shamelessly.

America is no longer trustworthy. To her legal core.

Is that important? Ask Israel. Ask Ukraine. Ask Social Security recipients. This takes the Bork political outrage and makes it part of our national heritage.

It is said that this distortion will be overturned. Probably. But overturning this depends upon the integrity of the people in the government system. And those people have clearly been shown to be corruptable.

Which makes the very idea of this country much more fragile and vulnerable than any of us thought.

Barr's Vision for Democracy

 

In an interview Friday, the BBC called the White House 'cowardly.'

***

Barr's Vision for Democracy

The Trump candidacy--indeed his entire public nature--has suffered from the intense criticism he has received from his prior cabinet members who not only hate his policies but hold him personally in low regard.

Kelly, his longest serving Chief of Staff: "A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.There is nothing more that can be said,.God help us.”

Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: "It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against."

Mark Esper, Trump's former secretary of defense, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”

And, most damaging, Trump’s well-regarded former attorney general, Bill Barr, “He is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”

But there has been a shocking change. Barr has changed his mind and will vote for Trump. Why? Because, while Trump is playing 'Russian Roulette,' Biden's pathway is certainly 'suicidal,' and, with Trump, at least society has a chance.

The great and successful democracy has been reduced to the position where a personality disorder playing Russian Roulette is America's best chance.

Not the greatest compliment but...

Trump's Insiders

Under Trump, the federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion. He favors a 10% import tax across the board.

***

Trump's Insiders

There are so many problems facing the U.S.--and the free world--this election year. And the U.S. has so many advantages. We are food-independent, domestically sufficient in energy, and we have a large, isolated land mass with a growing population defended by the world's only global deep-water navy.

Yet our politics defy logic and reality. Our president is mentally impaired, our vice president is silly, our news is dominated by strange preoccupations with deference to the peripheral, and the electorate is furious. We are in wars, have ignored crime, have lost control of our border, are close to the tipping point in social program debt, and have evidence of a lack of social cohesion (encouraged by the government) with pockets of despair.

In short, we have tremendous international advantages powered by an extraordinary constitutional advantage yet we are suffering a myriad of self-inflicted wounds.

Yet...yet...the current president, head-to-head, has a voting advantage against his major opponent, Trump. It looks as if Biden will win and, as his decline continues, we will get Harris as president, Obama will get his fourth term and we will get more of the same incompetence.

It is easy to oppose the current administration but finding a standard-bearer who can win against it is not a slam-dunk. Image and a biased press make these elections difficult. So far it is not obvious that the well-founded opposition can coalesce around Trump.

I have collected a few comments on Trump from responsible men who have worked with him when he was president. These opinions seep into the public debate and will influence the discussion and the election.

John Kelly

John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump was interviewed by CNN.
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

Mark Milley

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley wrote a resignation letter--which he did not send, but appeared in a book.

"I regret to inform you that I intend to resign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thank you for the honor of appointing me as senior ranking officer. The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.

Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people. The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.

Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal. All men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans. That under these colors of red, white, and blue—the colors that my parents fought for in World War II—means something around the world. It’s obvious to me that you don’t think of those colors the same way I do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.

And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation."

(In fairness, instead of resigning, Milley reportedly decided to fight his battle from inside the government, allegedly saying, “If they want to court-martial me, or put me in prison, have at it. But I will fight from the inside.”)

Mark Esper

Trump's former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN in November 2022, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”


Bill Barr

Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS in June that “he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”

Trump and the Constitution

A shark was discovered on a riverbank in Idaho last week.

***

Some information that stimulates a question.

Division: 

late 14c., divisioun, "act of separating into parts, portions, or shares; a part separated or distinguished from Division is from  dis- "apart" (see dis-) + -videre "to separate," which, according to de Vaan, is from PIE *(d)uid- "to separate, distinguish" (source also of Sanskrit avidhat "allotted," Old Avestan vida- "to devote oneself to"). 

I thought it would be connected to "vision." which is actually from visionem (nominative visio) "act of seeing, sight, thing seen," noun of action from past participle stem of videre "to see," from PIE root *weid- "to see." 

So, to the point:

Trump and the Constitution

It is interesting, but understandable, that the Debate is getting little coverage on CNN and MSNBC and a lot on FOX. This is emblematic of the division in thought and expression that is characteristic of today's politics. 

That division is aided by the sequestering of information. Here is an article by Kurtz, written on December 6, 2022, on what Trump said about the 2020 election which has become internalized by the Left and seemingly deflected by the Right. (I italicized the article, did cut it, but did not correct.)

Billions of words have been devoted to analyzing, criticizing, demonizing and denouncing Donald Trump. 

In newspapers, magazines and books, on television and social media, unnamed advisers provide a barometer of his moods and methods, sometimes venting their own frustration about what he’s doing or refusing to do.

And yet for all the digging about what’s happening behind the scenes, it is often Trump’s own words – on display, out in the open, in the light of day – that cause him the greatest problems.

On cable news yesterday, there were lots of banners about something that exploded over the weekend: "TRUMP CALLS FOR CONSTITUTION TO BE TERMINATED."

When I first saw similar headlines online, I assumed it must be liberal spin, something taken out of context to make that accusation.

Uh, no. That’s what he posted on Truth Social.

The impetus for Trump’s demand was the Twitter Files, which Elon Musk released, through journalist Matt Taibbi, on the outrage of the social media site suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story at the end of the 2020 campaign. The files show Twitter executives scrambling to come up with a reason for the blockade and debating whether "hacked materials" would hold up as an excuse. (The laptop was not hacked, what the New York Post obtained was a hard drive that the Democratic nominee’s son had left with a Delaware repair shop, but that wasn’t clear at the time.)

The files also show that Twitter acted on its own, not in response to a request from the Biden campaign, which did later ask that tweets with pornographic images of Hunter Biden be removed. And while one official at the liberal company did raise the prospect that Trump could be elected, Taibbi flatly said there was no evidence of government involvement.

Still, Trump used this to advance his two-year-old crusade to show, without evidence, that the election was stolen from him.

Here’s the entire post:

"So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!" 

 

So, how does a true Conservative square his support for Trump with this obvious disregard for the Constitution?