D Day

Drunken driving deaths in the U.S. have risen to levels not seen in nearly two decades, federal data show, a major setback to long-running road safety efforts.
At the same time, arrests for driving under the influence have plummeted, as police grapple with challenges like hiring woes and heightened concern around traffic stops.

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The LSAT scores fall on a bell curve from 120 to 180. Ivy League scores average about 170-172. The average score on the LSAT varies vastly by race. Research by Aaron Taylor, Executive Director of AccessLex, a center for legal education excellence, shows that the average score for white and Asian test takers is 153, while the average for Black test takers is 142 and for Latinos is 146.

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This is Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. arguing, in a letter written about 80 years ago today, at age 57, and with unstable angina, that he should be on the first wave at Utah Beach on D-Day.

"The force and skill with which the first elements hit the beach and proceed may determine the ultimate success of the operation.... With troops engaged for the first time, the behavior pattern of all is apt to be set by those first engagements. [It is] considered that accurate information of the existing situation should be available for each succeeding element as it lands. You should have when you get to shore an overall picture in which you can place confidence. I believe I can contribute materially on all of the above by going in with the assault companies. Furthermore I personally know both officers and men of these advance units and believe that it will steady them to know that I am with them."
He died of a heart attack shortly after D-Day, and is buried at the Normandy Cemetery ( Colleville ) above Omaha Beach.
I believe Patton said that he was the bravest man he ever knew

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D-Day

156,000 Allied soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy by the end of the day, June 6, 1944. Despite their success, some 4,000 Allied troops were killed by German soldiers defending the beaches. At the time, the D-Day invasion was the largest naval, air, and land operation in history, and within a few days about 326,000 troops, more than 50,000 vehicles, and some 100,000 tons of equipment had landed.

Normandy changed the War.

Some perspective. July 1, 1916 was the first day of the Battle of the Somme, fought on the river Somme in France, early in the First World War, from July 1 to November 18. The estimate of British deaths on the first day of the battle, THE FIRST DAY, was 60,000. Sixty thousand men.

The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, made at the Chantilly Conference on 15 November 1916, was that the Germans suffered 630,000 casualties, exceeding the 485,000 suffered by the British and French. In 41/2 months.

British, French and German casualties
July–November 1916

Month	British	French	Sub- total	German	(% of Allied total)
July	158,786	49,859	208,645	103,000	49.4
August	58,085	18,806	76,891	68,000	88.4
September	101,313	76,147	177,460	140,000	78.9
October	57,722	37,626	95,348	78,500	82.3
November	39,784	20,129	59,913	45,000	75.0
Total	415,690	202,567	618,257	434,500	70.3

Underwriting Invasion

CBS--yes, CBS--did a story on 'dark money' inpolitics. It is hair-raising.
Here's a segment:
"Arabella is a dark money juggernaut. Through its constellation of nonprofits, it brought in close to $3 billion in dark money in the 2022 cycle. The behemoth in the Arabella network, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, raised nearly $380 million in that same cycle. In 2020 it steered $410 million to help defeat Donald Trump and win back the Senate for Democrats."

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New data from the National Institutes of Health reveals the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists.

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Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of the right-leaning Epoch Times, was indicted Monday on charges of allegedly participating in a massive money laundering scheme.

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Underwriting Invasion


The United Nations has been handing out debit cards and cash vouchers to aspiring illegal border crossers on their way north to the U.S. southern border.

The UN, with the helping hands of 248 named non-governmental organizations, is indeed giving debit cards to illegal migrants — funded, in large part, by US taxpayers.

'Despite the R4V plan title naming Venezuelans as recipients of this aid operation, the document’s fine print says the largesse goes to “all nationalities” and “multiple other nationalities.”
In a nutshell, the UN and its advocacy partners want to spread $372 million in “Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA),” and “Multipurpose Cash Assistance (MCA)” to 624,300 immigrants who in-transit to the United States during 2024.'

In-transit. A new verb.

That money is most often handed out, other UN documents show, as pre-paid, rechargeable debit cards but also hard “cash in envelopes,” bank transfers, and mobile transfers the U.S. border-bound travelers can use for whatever they want.

This is only one part of a much broader UN hemisphere-wide vision that aims to spend $1.59 billion assisting about three million people in 17 countries who emigrated from their home nations.

The U.N. is no bland, distant bureaucracy. It is an active participant in a mostly anti-Western attitude which it shamelessly pursues with Western dollars. Don't forget that at least 12 employees of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees participated in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, including kidnap and murder. U.N. personnel were kidnappers and murderers of U.N. members aided and abetted by non-members. It is America that is the bland, distant bureaucracy, a constant victim of foreign predators and domestic parasites.

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."

Vigilante Juries

WOD. Bellwether: noun: a wether or other male sheep that leads the flock, usually bearing a bell; a person or thing that assumes the leadership or forefront, as of a profession or industry: "Paris is a bellwether of the fashion industry."; person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend; index; a person who leads a mob, mutiny, conspiracy, or the like; ringleader. ety: Middle English belle 'bell' + wether 'castrated male sheep'

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There is a book out, Dark Money, about the Koch brothers. It is a strange topic. The Kochs are generally seen as the bankers of the "Radical Right." But they are pro-gay marriage. They favor liberal immigration policies. They are passionate non-interventionists when it comes to foreign policy. They are against the drug war and are spending a bundle on dismantling so-called “mass incarceration” policies. So, how are they the Radical Right? The answer is probably they are outspoken opponents of top-down government-mandated change, a real enemy of the powers-that-be. 

Let's call them "Elitist deniers."

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One popular and recurring concern is the fear that immoral people might get control of the government, might get their evil hands on the levers, and do egocentrically motivated damage to the rest of us. But isn't this a risk inherent to any government? And isn't the solution to limit the potential damage by limiting the government power in the first place, not counting on the random and unpredictable election of a good guy?

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A shooting at a bar in Penn Hills has left two people dead and seven others injured, police said Sunday.

And, one 27-year-old male was killed and 24 people were wounded by gunfire in an overnight shooting at a birthday party in Akron, Ohio, according to local police. Evidence is consistent with a drive-by shooting, and people at the party may have returned fire.

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Vigilante Juries

Regardless of one's politics, the Trump case raises at least debatable legal points. (Andrew McCarthy says there are 12 specific reasons for an appeal to overturn the decision.) And nothing in a culture is more dangerous than allowing the courts and the law to become a sword rather than a shield. Or to allow for that perception.

Jury nullification occurs when a jury believes a defendant is guilty but renders a “not guilty” verdict because it regards the relevant law as unjust.

John Adams said about jurors, “It is not only his right, but his duty … to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”

It has been said that such an attitude prevailed in the pre-Revolution period when English law was thwarted in the colonies because it was felt the individual was guilty of violating the law but that the law was wrong. Conscience is a difficult bellwether when the culture does not have common ground. How would someone advocating jihad vote on a matter of terrorism, for example?

States and cultures are organized on basic precepts. That is, basic assumptions. This unanimity among people's beliefs on the nature of life--or the organization of life, the state--is the state's DNA. Law and the courts are a culture's epicenter.

How much latitude can such a system tolerate?

 

Soul of America

A Chinese spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon,

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The U.S. offered a peace plan in the Middle East they pretended was Israel's, Israel sort of pretended it didn't outrage them, and everyone pretended they weren't laughing at American amateurism.

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Boeing's Starliner canceled again.

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Soul of America

An article on liberalism. progressivism, grade infltion, higher education and America's social ills appeared in the WSJ through an interview with Harvy Mansfield. This is pieced together out of it.

Harvey Mansfield is 92, and he taught at Harvard for well over half a century, retiring from the government department only last year. A scholar of Machiavelli and Tocqueville, he is a lifelong conservative. He says he leaves behind a department with only one professor “who isn’t a liberal or progressive.”

How does Mr. Mansfield define the difference between a progressive and a liberal? A progressive has a “loathing for his country. It goes beyond embarrassment to real dislike of America, and in a way, therefore, of themselves, because after all they’re Americans.” Theirs is a kind of “fanatical penitentialism.” The liberal, by contrast, believes America is imperfect but remediable “or even worthy of pride—in the things, for example, that have been done contrary to white supremacy, as they see it.”

...

He believes that any solution to the ideological mess in American universities will likely come from “dismayed liberals.” ...“Conservatives believe in propriety,” he says. “We don’t demonstrate in the streets and occupy campuses. There are no conservative tantrums.” (For that reason, he says, “Donald Trump is not a conservative. Propriety is something he violates, or seeks to impress people by violating.”)

...

In “America’s Constitutional Soul” (1991), he describes his countrymen as “a constitutional people,” and he insists that we are still that way “in practice, though our parties seem to differ over this.” The Republicans, he says, “are the party of the Constitution.” Since the Democrats “can’t reject the Constitution politically, they call it a living Constitution, which is a kind of rejection, but not in name. I call them the party of bathrooms and pronouns.” He complains that law schools “only teach the amendments. They don’t teach the actual structure of what makes the government work.”

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He sums up the problem as an inversion of authority: “The less wise, who are the students, rule over the more wise, the professors.” This leads to what he calls “the most nagging of my lost causes, which is grade inflation.”

He then talks about grade inflation which he thinks is very important. “...a professor is unable to pass judgment on a student. And what that turns into is a desire to be rid of judgment altogether and to pass judgment against those who pass judgment. The result is an aggressive relativism.”--The origin was the Vietnam War where students were supported by anti-war professors. and the rise of affirmative action admissions whose students were not going to be allowed to do poorly.-- “Three papers in a semester becomes two, the reading goes down, and students realize that they’ve got a lot of extra time. Suddenly, their lives become filled with extracurricular activities, which explains the present glut in activism.”--"The grade-inflated young embark on an intense search for “commitment, by which you embrace a position without reasoning your way to it.”

And this has a significant social impact, according to him. Ostensible success in school “doesn’t tell employers whether the graduates of college are good at something. It robs us of necessary information.”

That’s bad for democracy, Mr. Mansfield says, “because it makes society attempt something—or satisfy itself that it’s done something—that is impossible, which is to do away with human inequalities.”

SatStats

Honig, a legal commentator, wrote an article in New York that says 1. the judge should have recused himself, 2. there is no state jurisdiction over Federal election laws, 3. Trump and the defense did not know what he was charged and convicted of. As an aside, he thinks he will get jail time.

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SatStats


The total surface area of Earth is about 197 million square miles, of which roughly:
71% is covered by water. 
3% is glacier-covered land.
8% is desert or dry areas.
6% is mountains.
4% is cropland.
4% is pastureland.
2% is used for wood production.
5% (10 million square miles) is fit for human habitation and not used for the purposes above.


* If people were evenly distributed across the 10 million square miles of land available for human habitation, there would be 808 people per square mile, or 0.8 acres per person.


* People are not distributed evenly but tend to live in areas that are warm, have fertile soil, and are accessible to oceans.




The state of Texas contains 0.46% of the world’s total land area and has a population density of about 117 people per square mile. If everyone in the world moved to Texas, the population density would be 31,079 people per square mile. This is 3% below the population density of Brooklyn, New York (31,982 people per square mile)

[23]

* In 1998, the Census Bureau reported that 96% of the world’s population increase was occurring in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 2022, the United Nations projected that Africa would account for most population increases through 2050.

Bananas

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

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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.