Day 1117 – What A Week!

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Numerous things have transpired this week, it is hard to know where to start. Let us start in Michigan where a jury found the mother of the teenager who shot and killed four of his fellow classmates guilty of involuntary manslaughter of all four of the classmates he murdered. Why? I dunno. They, she and the husband who will go on trial later, gave the kid a gun even though they knew he was having mental problems. Just before he shot the four and others he was have delusions and she and her husband knew it. What did they do? Went out horseback riding and drinking. Whoopi. 

Pictures started circulating on social media of the murdered Kyle Ritenhouse suggesting that perhaps now his mom would face charges. Why her? Once again, I dunno. I mean all she did was drive sweet little Kyle dressed as the publicity graphic comic ad by the gun manufacturers’ suggested Kyle dress: JR15, cargo pants, T-shirt, and backwards baseball cap to a peacful demonstration where Kyle thought it would be cool to wave his gun around. When a guy with a skateboard tried to stop Kyle from threatening people he shot and killed the dude, and one other. He got off. He beat the rap. What a man. Then he pulled the Brett Kavenaough cry bit at his trial. 

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson was spotted in Moscow. What’s he doing there? We don’t know. Maybe, getting more marching orders to bring back to the pro-Putin faction in Congress? I dunno.

Now we get to “rubber meets the road” or the “fantasy meets reality” part of the week. Maybe, it’s truth versus fantasy? (BS?) Hard to know exactly what to call it.

But here we go. The newly minted Speaker of the House got a lesson in …in counting? When he and fellow Republicans tried to impeach the Homeland Security chief for doing his job. The vote failed. But they’ve vowed to try again! 

Also, the right wing Republicans have been yelling for, well, ever that they want to close the border and to fix the problem at the border. They got their chance when a bipartisan very tough conservative border bill was put before them. What did they do? They said that this wasn’t necessary and that Biden could do it all by executive order and by the way his Homeland Security guy needed to be impeached for doing his job. The weirdest thing was Ted Cruz’s comments. He called the bill a stinking pile of you know what, and he compared Biden to Hannibal Lecter. Interesting. Had he read the bill? No.

The bill also had aid to Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and other places. All of which the Republicans said they wanted, until they were given it. Then they didn’t. 

And then … and then … Fox Business … a panel of eigh of them, waiting … waiting for the jobs number. These are not people who are fans of Biden or his economic policies. They prefer the strategies of that conservative woman in the UK who was Prime Minister for five weeks. Remember they hailed her plan as true conservatism? That it would turn the economy of Britain around and things would be up up from there? Well, all they needed to do with that British economic hockey stick projection was take it off the easel and flip it 180 degrees so that the rosey upward projection pointed straight into the cellar. Okay. Okay, they are waiting for the jobs number. Estimates place it at 161,000 to 163,000 new jobs for the month. Here it comes. “What do ya got Pam?” Or whomever you are in the bottom right hand box on the TV. This is kind of like the old Hollywood Squares. “353,000.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Three Hundred and Fifty Three Thousand new jobs for the month.”

“That’s pretty good.” Ya think? Wow. Such insightful analysis. Biden blows away the jobs number, almost double the estimate and they think it’s pretty good? Okay, I’m not sure what they said. I do know they were stunned and actually admitted that it was a good number. And they so wanted it to be bad. Tough break.

Or as one of them said later, “If I had those kind of numbers I’d run on it too.”

Unemployment is below 4% and has been for months and months. Something the orange one tried to do and didn’t.

These economic numbers and others show Biden to have the best economic numbers of any President in modern history. This as opposed to Trump who had the worst numbers, except for Herbert Hoover. It’s kind of a neck and neck race for them to the bottom.

Yet, Trump is seen as being better for the economy. One has to ask why and the simple answer may be messaging. Republicans are willing to go negative and Democrats try to defend their record. Defense in politics doesn’t seem to work. Offense. And the more offensive the better. Sad but true.

And then there’s Citizen Trump. A three judge panel made up of a Republican appointed and two Democratically appointed judges struck down ever claim and argument made by Trump’s lawyer. Apparently, the President and a person who was President can be held accountable for crimes whty committed, while in office, before they were in office, and after they left office. Who knew? Well, everybody, but it was good to hear it spelled out explicitly. Now, what? Well, more happy horse dung from the lawyers of Citizen Trump, but there’s another case which is going to oral argument today in front of the folks who overturned Roe V Wade, who gutted the Voting Rights bill, and allowed big money to put in as much as they wanted to skew an election (okay, that was a bit earlier). 10 a.m. today, February 8th – oral arguments as to whether a person who directed an insurrection against the United States of America can be on a primary ballot in Colorado. Guess who brought the suit? A 91 year old lady.

Why is it always women who are holding Trump to account? Judges, Prosecutors, citizens … other than Alvin Bragg in New York it’s all women. I’ll tell you why. Because the body of mainly rich white males who could have done their duty and voted to convict Trump on impeachment were too scared to do it. They had two chances.

In other factoids it is estimated that 91,000 (or was it 61,000?) babies were born in 14 states that outlawed abortion due to rape. Yeah, that’s right. Thousands of babies were forced upon women that were raped.

Now some of the idiots that claim “sanctity of life” and all that garbage will no doubt clam the same thing when these babies come of age in 18 to 20 years? Right? Right? Hello? Those kids will either start to act out or be a burden on society because they will have been by and large neglected. The notion that a mother will naturally care for her child as an innate instinct has been refuted in a case study in Brazil. In a very poor, hard scrabble part of the country mothers don’t give a child much care until they reach the age of two? Why? In many cases the child won’t survive that long, so why expend the effort? Hard truth.

And 18 to 20 years after Roe was the law of the land, crime dropped. Malcolm Gladwell wrote it was due to all the unwanted pregnancies being terminated. Some have argued that isn’t true. Well, we get to see, if we live long enogh.

Remember the zero population growth movement? This was started based on a theory presented in 1798 by Robert Mathus, which said that any population will use all the resources it has unless it is contrained. This led to the ZPG or Zero Population Growth movement, which was doing quite nicely until Reagan cut a deal with the Pope and killed it.

Yeah. And now we have these whiners about “Every life is precious,” but to quote George Carlin, “Says who?” Certainly, not the people espousing those platitudes. 

Ah me. Set your radio dial to PBS or NPR or wherever for 10am to hear the oral arguments as to why a person who committed insurrection should not be allowed on the ballot to run for President.