Archives for February 2021

Tuesday February 28, 2021

Mitch McConnell delivered a speech on the Senate floor right after voting to acquit Satan that, as many have said, seemed to have been taken from the House Impeachment Managers’ desk. 

Shirking responsibility, while admitting that Satan committed all the things he was accused of, he then left it to others to clean up, claiming the Senate did not have the authority while days before voting that it did.

To say it was hypocritical would be correct. Cynical? You bet. 

McConnell said as much. What does he stand for? He told you. In a follow up statement he said he didn’t care what stripe a person in the party was, what he cared about was electability. Is there anything higher than that? Not in McConnell’s mind.

In postitive news the organization Run For Something has said that it will help anyone who wants to run against the 57 Republicans identified as being at the Insurrection. I wonder if they will extend that to the 43 Senators who voted to acquit Satan? 

Meanwhile, local Republican parties are busy censuring those Senators who voted to impeach the former president. We obviously have a long way to go.

There are also reports that many fear Trump and his supporters and the backlash that they may get for standing up for what’s right. In other words, witness tampering and intimidation. Hey, it’s worked for The Donald all his life why stop now? Let’s not forget destroying evidence, lying as a way of life, and creating false narratives.

The ice storm has passed. We are watching the remnants melt away. I understand much of the country is in the grip of this huge cold wave. We’ve never experienced anything like this before. Huh? Something must be changing. Wonder what it could be?

Oh, Stacey Plaskett was on Morning Joe and said she fears a return to Jim Crow style politics if we don’t hold these perpetrators accountable. I think she’s correct.

And did you see the Trump lawyer stealing the coaster from the Senate chamber? Yeah, they got it on tape. I wonder if the guy who stole the stationary from Nancy Pelosi’s office will hire that lawyer to defend him? Why not? What’s the defense? “Everybody does it.” Yeah, right on.

PS The Great Coaster Steal Caper*

• Credit Hank Murphy for the tip

Monday February 15, 2021

As we witnessed on the impeachment vote 43 Senators voted not to impeach. Most of them were from western states with small populations. The dog catcher of Los Angeles County probably gets more votes than all of them combined, and therein lies the problem. Bill Maher has repeatedly pointed out that within a decade the vast majority of the population will live in 16 states. That means the senators from states with very small populations will have undue influence over the country. Look at Montana, big place, big sky, two Senators, one Congressional representative. 

Combine this with the fact that most of the rural areas are staunchly not Democrat. I hesitate to say Republican because  of the transformation of that party. It’s not so much a transformation as a coming out of the closet. They were always pro-big business, anti little guy, Fascist, combined with a “Christian” ethos, whatever that means. It’s just that now it’s out in the open, as is their anti-gay (even though a lot are), anti-abortion (even though they don’t hesitate to get one), racist agendas.

Inflaming this situation is the fact that most of the rural TV and radio stations have been bought up by conservative media groups, which force their agenda onto the air waves. This radicalizes the already conservative outlook of that population.

And so we get the vote in the Senate on impeachment that we got. Interestingly, eleven of the 43 senators who voted against this impeachment voted for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. The Clinton impeachment was a political hit job. This was not. (Or perhaps you want to say they are opposed to blow jobs (even though they get them) but for insurrection and the downfall of democracy.

There is no mending our divide. Not unless some fundamental changes are made to our society which I doubt will happen. 

One) the media needs to be made more even handed, especially in rural areas. If you are spewing lies constantly you must be held to account. I don’t know how you do that.

Two) the Senate needs to reflect the population of the United States more evenly. I don’t know how you do that.

Three) We need to either free up representatives both in the House and Senate to be able to cross party lines, or we need to impose term limits to get the fools out.

Hopefully, those who brought about this insurrection will be hunted down and brought to justice. This includes those in the House and Senate who aided and abetted the insurrectionists. I like the idea of a truth commission. I’d like to hear from some of the insurrections who said they were there because Trump told them to be there. I’d like to hear how they feel now that he has thrown them under the bus and rolled over them with a steam roller?

Q’anon must be stamped out. How you do that I don’t know. 

As must many of the hate groups, militias, and other wacko organizations.

You can have your beliefs. You should not be permitted to express them on airwaves. I know this is radical. I’d like to see it applied to religions and I’d like to see church property taxed too. Nothing like having to pay to bring about change. Look at Fox, they all of a sudden decided a big mouth conspiracy spewing lying talk show host wasn’t worth having now that they are being sued for $2.7 billion.

I’m tired of it. Tired of the silliness of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and that idiot Q’Anon woman. Please, Mitch McConnell don’t lecture me about how the House managers didn’t do this or that and if only they had done X Y or Z – then what? You still wouldn’t have voted any other way. 

In other news, we got our power back after the ice storm which besieged us for two or three days. Doesn’t take much to reduce one to looking like a refuge.

Never Forget!

Forget what? Is the question.

I gotta go.

PS The look from the head of our road yesterday afternoon.

Saturday February 13, 2021

I have to credit most of what I am going to tell you in the first half of this screed to Rachel Maddow’s show last night. It isn’t often that Rachel is caught without something to say. That she is so stunned and embarrassed for someone or some group that she puts her head down for a moment to collect herself before speaking, but last night’s show did just that.

Before I go on let me share some definitions and explanations:

1. Ben Roethlisberger is a football player. He is quarterback for the Pittsburg Steelers.

2. Brad Raffensperger is the Secretary of State for Georgia.

3. Censure is an expression of strong disapproval by a parlimentary body.

4. Censor is a person who bans books and movies and stuff like that, or it is the act of doing so.

5. Censer is a vessel for burning incense. Typically, held on chains and swung to be able to enwrap people in the smoke from the burning incense. It is often used in religious ceremonies.

6. Cavalry are mounted soldiers on horseback. It is also used for tank corps as they were originally on horseback. The expression “The Cavalry is Coming!” means “help is on the way!”.

7. Calvary means an open air depiction of the crucifixion of Christ or an experience of intense mental suffering.

I can excuse the defense in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump to mis-speak and say the quarterback’s name instead of the Secretary of State’s name. I can wonder if they meant to swing a pot of burning incense at Satan or to issue a “No-no” proclamation.  But to stand up there and try to suggest that Trump or his supporters were going to show their devotion by erecting a depiction of Jesus Christ on the cross when they clearly meant they were coming to the rescue? Maybe, the noose for Mike Pence they put up was really an ill formed crucifixion scene? Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket.

Realizing I guess that the fix was in they went to insulting the intelligence of the men and women who are senators. I guess that was the ploy. 

Then they attacked the House Managers. That didn’t go so well. See the House Managers are real lawyers. By that I mean they know the law, which they carefully explained to the chamber and the defense over and over again when they got confused or didn’t seem to know it.

Ah me. Moving on. I watched a show called “Unearthed and Unexplained.” Two bros were trying to prove that the Mayans settled in Florida after their civilization collapsed. These guys wander from place to place talking to “experts” and hiring other experts to help them in their quest. As I sat their watching I’m wondering, “How big a budget do they have?” I mean not only do they hire Lidar and Sonar folks, they get shots of themselves from the air as they hack through jungle, ride on a boat, or travel on a highway by car. I’m wondering whose holding the camera while they are swinging machetes and worried about a gator getting them?

So the first guy they go see is named Jovan something or other. Jovan is said to be an expert on old Mayan documents. He pulls out a copy of the Dresden Codex and the two bros say it could be a map. Jovan says yes. See there’s a bird with blue water spilling out of his mouth? Yes, they see it. And there are dots in the water. Yes, they see the dots. The Mayan used dots for counting. Really? Wow. So the dots could be markers counting how far they went. Yes, it certainly could be! Could it be saying they traveled from the Yucatan to Florida. Yes, of course. Of course.

But that’s not all. Really? No. There’s flightless bird that is found only in the old Mayan area and in Florida. How did the bird get there unless the Mayan’s brought it there? Ah yes. How else?

And Christopher Columbus or was it his son? I forget. Whomever it was wrote that he ran into indians with long canoes loaded with cargo in Florida. So they could be Mayan? Yeah. Or they could be natives, not Mayan.

The bros go to a museum and meet an amateur historian who shows them the remains of a canoe. It’s old. It’s one piece of wood. The amateur historian says the wood was treated with wax. The kind of wax found only in Belize. Belize is where the Mayans were! That’s right. So this could be a Mayan canoe?!!! It could be. See the wood at the end turns up. Like a bow! Yes. And there are pictures in the old mayan books which show canoes with turned up ends, like bows. I’m no expert on boats and canoes but wouldn’t anyone who built a boat turn up the front end and make a bow?

Then they go to a State Park in Florida which is an archaeological site and it has a mound. The Mayans had mounds! They talk to a “Mayan expert” there at the site. I’m wondering, “Why haven’t I heard of this Mayan expert?” I mean I’ve been doing a lot of stuff related to the Mayans and after awhile you know many of the main players. If this guy is such an expert it seems odd that I’ve never run across his name. Wait, maybe I have? Wasn’t he on another one of these shows where someone claims that there were Mayan ruins in Georgia? It seemed more like the remains of stone walls on a hillside. Wasn’t he the Mayan expert that was pulled in on that show? Didn’t they go to a park in Florida and see a step pyramid? Yeah. Wasn’t that step pyramid a series of layers of a mound of shells? Lemme look this guy up. Oh, he wrote books like what can the Mayans tell us about the future, Mayan prophesies.

But they are also told by this expert that beside the mound there are stellae here on the site. The stellae line up with the mound and form a triangle. One side aligns with the summer solstice and one with the winter, just like the Maya! And don’t forget the Maya had stellae! OMG. They go look at the stellae. They are rocks in the ground. I didn’t see any carving on them or any reason to believe they had been dragged to their current positions. Maybe they had been dragged.

The boys continue. Wouldn’t there have to be a step pyramid around? Yes, most likely to the west. Right out there. The bros are excited. The Mayan expert is not seen again. Wouldn’t he want to stick around while they look for a Mayan pyramid?

Oh I forgot, earlier they searched around a lake and found an open area that could be a settlement. They hacked through jungle with alligators lurking near by. It was dangerous, hot, sweaty. I’m not sure if they got to the spot they saw with their little camera drone or not. They gave up. They decided to look in the water. They got a guy with a Sonar. They “dropped the fish in the water.” They find a long line on the computer screen. They jump in the water. It’s a long piece of wood. It might be a canoe, a Mayan canoe! There are alligators in the water. There’s a storm coming. They leave. 

What? You find what you claim is a Mayan canoe and you just leave it? WTF?

Okay, now we go to the search for the step pyramid. The Lidar guys find out to the west a square-ish mound and it’s got a protrusion in the center of one side which the Lidar guy says is a staircase. A Mayan pyramid! 

Hum. I decided to look for anything about the island on which the pyramid is located. There’s a article I found which looks at the show. First, the article points out that the bird they were told about is thought to have gotten to Florida during prehistoric times when the Gulf of Mexico was dry land and this bird was seen to habitat from the northern part of South America to the middle of Mexico all the way over to Florida. The birds in Florida are left over from that time. 

Also, there is an archaeological article which outlines an investigation of the mound that the bros found. It’s a shell mound, like lots of shell mounds in Florida. It has layers. It looks like steps, but it is steps of shells. There’s a ramp of shells in the middle of one side that leads down to an open area. It could look like a staircase from Lidar.

As to the canoe, it turns out there are a lot of canoes from prehistoric times found in Florida.

Now we get to the Jovan guy. I looked him up. There’s a guy I found with three names. The first name is Jovan. But this guy can’t be the guy, because he’s involved with claiming that he can show that votes in the 2020 election were flipped against Trump and for Biden. Additionally, this fellow is the inventor of The Cricket. A mouse that was declared one of the worst inventions of the year in which it was brought on the market. Then there’s a picture of Jovan with Rudy Giuliani. Rudy is smiling, but he looks uncomfortable while in the bear hug of Jovan, who is smiling widely, too widely I’d say.

But it is the guy. WTF? Jovan is claimed to be a Mayan expert, a techie on vote flipping, an inventor of a mouse declared to be the worst for the year.

He also sells a line of book about treasure hunting in various states and parts of the world.

While I was watching the show I had to wonder how much money these guys had to spend. I mean, wow. They got folks in to talk to them, they hired techies with equipment, they had overhead shots of them going from one place or another. Wow. 

The show ends and the bros are off on another adventure. To Egypt, To I forget where. No Mayan canoe, no stepped pyramid, no birds brought here by the Mayans, no evidence to speak of. And this, is what passes for research? Or evidence? Or adventure? OMG.

PS My picture of Big Foot in my backyard. 

Friday February 12, 2021

I am taking Bob Brier’s Great Course course on Egypt. It’s terrific. In lesson three he laid out the basis of Egyptian mythology, religion, and philosophy. Quite a feat in thirty minutes. In his explanation of mythical gods he talked about Seth. Seth is always causing trouble. He is evil. He is defeated by his nephew Horus. But Seth doesn’t die. Because, as Bob explained, “Evil Never Dies.”

And so here we are on what is probably the last day of the presentation phase of the trial. The defense will present. Yesterday, Jamie Raskin and the rest of the Impeachment Managers finished their presentation. It was well thought out, clear and masterful. 

Raskin pointed out that a failure to convict would leave this chamber subject to what happened on January 6^th. That he and his enablers would be emboldened to try again. He also pointed out that this will not end with Trump.

Hillary Clinton summed it up best in a tweet, “If Senate Republicans fail to convict Donald Trump, it won’t be because the facts were with him or his lawyers mounted a competent defense. It will be because the jury includes his co-conspirators.”

And so I learned that Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley huddled with the defense team yesterday for hours. The jury was huddling with the defense.

Well, shucks you say, “there was no way we could have known that the crowd was going to leave the area of Trump’s speech and march down to the Capitol.” Except Trump knew. The night before Eric and Donald, Jr along with Donnie’s fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle had a meeting at the Trump Hotel. At that meeting Kimberly called Ali Alexander who had been advocating a “Stop the Steal” march. She gave him the okay and he was escorted the next day by white house emissaries to a spot just beyond the rally with the express purpose of leading the march, which he did.

It was known. It was planned.

Evil never goes away.

Thursday February 11, 2021

We are just over three weeks into the new administration and the numbers are coming down in the pandemic. There are new variants that I am learning were festering in people that had limited immune responses. The new variants had time to develop new ways to more tightly bind to humans and hence are more apt to infect. This is no time to drop our guard! When will this stop? When a majority of the population is vaccinated and the virus can not find new hosts to replicate and mutate as quickly as it has. The race is on! 

Yesterday I watched much of the impeachment trial. It was riveting. I understand that Fox News cut away. Not surprising. Also, Senator Hawley was showing his open distain for the proceedings by sitting in the gallery and purposely not paying attention, doing paperwork instead.

The impeachment managers laid out a thorough and compelling, no damning, case against Satan. They showed new video. They showed a map of the Capitol building and where the mob was and where our elected officials were. The mob came damn close to grabbing some of them. Like fifty paces close. There were also the audio calls by Capitol police begging, screaming, for help. None came.

So? How will these Senators be remembered? Are we going to see Profiles in Courage or Benedict Arnolds? Maybe, Joe McCarthy? None of these are really apt comparisons. Hitler is better, or Mussolini – that is for Donald. For the Senators, maybe the fascists of the 1930s who backed Franco? Who later lied about their role in helping that dictator to power. I don’t know it’s hard to say. The evidence and causality is overwhelming. It depends on which media channel you watch as to whether you are getting everything. If you can just watch the trial, there is no contest.

Last night, after the trail recessed. One of the commentators said they thought the forty four Republican senators who have been unmoved so far might go or not in an all-or-nothing fashion. What will break the dam is hard to say.  Certainly, not their oath of office or loyalty to the Constitution. 

At the close of the trial yesterday Mike Lee tried a distraction move. He claimed that some things attributed to him were not true and he wanted them stricken from the record. The parliamentarian told the chair that he, Lee, didn’t have the ability to do this from a procedural point of view. It was a distraction. Then Jamie Raskin said okay we withdraw that evidence. Done.

The mangers didn’t need whatever it was. Don’t you love the sanctimoniousness of Lee?

Later Rand Paul made a slimy veiled accusation against Eric Swalwell. You’ll be surprised to learn that this is a main piece of reporting being pushed by Fox News. What is this all about? Well eight or now nine years ago a young Chinese woman, very pretty, volunteered on several campaigns. Swalwell’s was one of them. There’s a picture of him with her. There are pictures of her with others too. The FBI became suspicious and began following her activities. They caught her having sex with two midwestern mayors.  Swalwell was told that the FBI suspected her of being a spy for China and his association with her was immediately cut off. That seems to be it. All of a sudden the young woman said she had to return to China and hasn’t been heard from since.

Apparently, he wants to go there. Let’s go there. Last week there was an article saying the Russians had been grooming Donald Trump for forty years. Ivanka got special treatment from the Chinese government for trademarks as soon as daddy was elected President and she and her husband made hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign sources. Jared had been linked to giving MBS the impression, rightly so, that if a hit squad took out Khashoggi the U.S. Government would do nothing. 

So we are left with the question of will seventeen Republican seniors join to impeach the former president and if not how will they be regarded by history?

Stay tuned.

Or as the black Capitol policeman said as he lay on the floor in the Rotunda after fighting the mob for five hours. He said he had been called the N-word seventeen times. He asked, “Is this America?”

Is it?