We had another bout of heavy rain overnight. We only had minor street flooding but the folks in Baton Rouge and Lake Charles took it in the neck. I feel terrible for Lake Charles: they were slammed by Hurricane Laura … Continue reading Wicked Rain
Greetings!
So last year, 2020 in case you forgot, with nothing else to do because the pandemic had cancelled all my regular work and with a desire to do what small part I could to help our country, I agreed to work for the US Census Bureau as a Census Enumerator. That means I, like thousands of others across the country, would go out to the homes of people who had not sent back the Census form delivered to them in the mail or hadn’t gone online to the Census website to fill out the form and get the information needed.
From my experience I’ve got one thing to say about the results of the 2020 Census:
It’s wrong.
It’s wrong because there was no way this census, under these circumstances, could be right. The circumstances I mean were not just those emblematic of the pandemic but the ones that were deliberately installed in order to insure a miscounting of the American population.
And imagine that, the results come in and major blue states lost congressional seats while major red states gained seats. That is not the end result of migratory patterns of older citizens moving to warmer climes or younger ones moving to find new work opportunities. That is the end result of a deliberate misuse of the system by one political party in it’s never ending attempts to game the system in order to win elections and control the federal government.
The census should have been put off till the pandemic was over. Yes I know, the census is written into the Constitution and not doing it in 2020 might have brought on, well let’s call it a constitutional contretemps, I don’t think it would have qualified as a crisis. Here it is in black and white, figuratively and literally from Article One, Section Two:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting
of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight,
Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
If the timing would have been constitutionally suspect my reply would be that in the same paragraph enumerating the every ten years it also says to only count free persons, no Native Americans, and all other persons (in other words black slaves) as three fifths. The 14th amendment did away with the three fifths, but kept the no Native Americans. Yet we now count Native Americans because of a 1940 decision by the Census Bureau to include them. If the Bureau could do that in 1940 they certainly could have done away this one time with a dictate as to the count being every ten years.
I’d also point out that if we stuck to the one representative for every 30,000 people Congress would currently have nearly 11,000 members. Rhode Island and Providence Plantations alone would have 35 representatives.
Revenge Is Sour. Continue reading Palmetto State: Pick Your Poison
Morning, everyone! Let’s check in on the deputy Kraken, shall we?
Lin Wood: Trump has secret military backchannel to authorize nuclear strikes
droolindog.net ^ | May 12, 2021 | David EdwardsPosted on 5/13/2021, 12:00:19 AM by Eagle Forgotten
Election attorney Lin Wood claimed this week that former President Donald Trump maintains a secret backchannel to the U.S. military that allows him to order nuclear strikes.
Wood made the assertion during an event in Myrtle Beach, where he was campaigning to become the next South Carolina Republican Party chair. Video was later obtained by PatriotTakes.
“He won the election,” Wood said of Trump. “Donald J. Trump is still the guy the military will call for the code if they need a first strike. Joe Biden is not the president of the United States.”
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Apparently, a site called Patriot Takes got a video, the info was picked up by RawStory and then by DroolinDog. I know RawStory is hard left; I never heard of the other two sites.But, regardless of the source, there’s a video. It sure seems that Wood is making this wild assertion about the military chain of command. I can’t imagine that the military would actually bypass Biden and phone up Trump for orders. I also can’t imagine how, even if that were true, Lin Wood would know it.
Go ahead, dump on RawStory all you want, but I think Lin Wood has just totally lost it.
To: Eagle ForgottenLin Wood has just totally lost it.
Lin Wood is right on. 100%.
DJT signed the Insurrection Act on Jan 10 of this year. We all know the election was stolen, and Biden is, if anything, an illegitimate POTUS. Taking the oath of office is Treason. With the Insurrection Act, Civilian government is temporarily on hold. The military is in control. A covert operation is now engaged to restore the Constitutional Republic, from the current insurgency.
For details on the tasks that have been performed, are being performed, and will be performed to complete the transition and return to civilian control, see sections 11.3 and 11.4 of The DOD Law of War Manual:
ii FOREWORDThe law of war is of fundamental importance to the Armed Forces of the United States…
To: C210NUh, no. That is nonsense and disinformation. Trump isn’t secretly running the military. No cavalry will riding into restore anything anytime soon. Trump is a private citizen residing in Florida with as much control over the U.S. military as a guy bagging groceries at a Wal-Mart in Cedar Rapids…
When SDNY gets through with him, he’s going to WISH he was a guy bagging groceries at a Walmart.
which is to say, none.
25 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:27:21 AM by irishjuggler
Woody pecker does still have some fanboys in Freeperville :
To: C210NYep. You got it.
This appears as a facet of Eisenhower standing orders kept out of view in the background.
Since that era there are whispers of a generation to generation contingent ready to activate to save the Republic no matter what circumstances emerge.
The Mission is to ensure the United States will never be conquered.
Insiders report all that has been revealed had to happen for ordinary Americans to understand the consequences of an attack from within. It is asserted there is simply no other way for people to become aware other than to directly witness history unfold before their eyes.
Those accusing Lin Wood of being ‘crazy’ conveniently ignore the ‘crazy’ history of 2020. If ‘crazy’ connotes “insane”. “sociopathic”, ‘bizarre’, ‘out of mind’ and so on, then Lin Wood is a model of mental fitness compared to the events of 2020 and the behaviors of so-called ‘elites’.
To: Eagle Forgotten
To: Jonty30“Lin Wood has been a consistent Democrat donor all his life. He is purposefully throwing conservative concerns into disrepute in order to make it impossible to challenge the Democrats.”
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Yep, Lin Wood is a DemocRAT serving as a saboteur. I think no one on our side believes his silliness except for the low-IQers and the most gullible in our ranks.8 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:06:59 AM by House Atreides
To: Eagle Forgottenlin wood didn’t lose it. he never had it. if you followed him breathlessly during the election aftermath debacle, you’re a fool. if you still follow him breathlessly, you’re clinical.
12 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:10:02 AM by JohnBrowdie
To: AriaI paid attention to Lin Wood until he started telling people in GA not to vote GOP . . .
many people here on FR vociferously advocated the boycott, and defend their mindlessness to this day. the boycotters gave the senate to the democrats.
To: Eagle ForgottenLin Wood has lost his frikkin mind.
He had one to lose?
To: C210Nyou need counseling. lots of it. stat.
19 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:20:19 AM by JohnBrowdie
Continue reading “Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Morning Wood edition”
Context. I see a lot of embarrassment and attempts to hide (NOT “cancel”) movies, shows, even music from the past – just because it doesn’t jibe with modern sensibilities. When I watched “Birth Of A Nation” for the first time, I didn’t think “Wow – I want to go out and join the KKK!”. I thought “That approach was obviously acceptable back in 1915.” It was a window into the past. Not the past of 1865, but the past of 1915. After I read “Snow White”, I got the original version (I don’t think Mom and Dad knew exactly what … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with Random Ruminations – Context is everything
Ladies and gentlemen, the Quintessential Peggy Lee: Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Peggy Lee Live In 1984
The weather remains the leading topic of conversation in New Orleans. A tornado ripped through the city causing property damage but no serious injuries. It took place a mere two miles from Adrastos World HQ ,but I slept through it. I seem to be turning into a cat.
First Draft contributor Ryne Hancock came over to record his podcast with yours truly as his guest.
Brand new episode of @TheRyneShow: @Adrastosno joins me as we talk about being neighbors with the Nevilles, mayors, and #la02: https://t.co/JHO8rchZjr
— baseball fan ryne. (@TheRHancock19) May 13, 2021
Beatles month continues with this week’s theme song. It was written by Lennon and McCartney for 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. It’s mostly a Macca song but has a mordant aside written by John: “It can’t get no worse.”
We have four versions of Getting Better for your listening pleasure: the Beatles original, Cheap Trick, Peter Frampton & the Bee Gees, and Gomez.
Feeling better? Let’s jump to the break before it gets much worse.
Cole Porter month continues with You Do Something To Me. He wrote it in 1929 for the musical, Fifty Million Frenchmen. The song is best known for one line, “Do do that voodoo that you do so well.” I’ve used it myself more than a few times. I only steal from the best.
We begin with Marlene Dietrich emoting the song. She couldn’t really sing but, boy, could she emote.
Ella’s Cole Porter Song Book is the gold standard for all such records.
It’s not a civil war, it’s a purge. Continue reading Ride With The Devil
Today would have been my mother-in-law Ruth Freshour’s 94th birthday.
Ruth would be amazed at the world we live in. Not because she would have been amazed at all the wonderous gadgets we can play with. Not because she would be astounded at how technology permeates our lives. No, she would have been astounded because all of those gadgets and systems and technology are things she had a hidden hand in creating.
She grew up in Worcester Massachusetts, her mother a homemaker and her father, well you could say her father had a variety of ways of making money. Most of those ways involved some form of speculation. Speculation as to the turn of a card or the speed of a horse. He must have been pretty good at it since they lived as comfortably as could be expected during the Depression.
Ruth was a bright girl. Really bright. Smarter than her brother and sister. Smarter than a lot of the boys at school. Smart enough that she could apply to and get into Smith College, one of the “Seven Sisters” colleges, the equivalent in the pre-coed days to the Ivy League. Of course while her classmates had their tuitions paid for via the interest, never the principle, of their trust funds, Ruth’s tuitions were paid via crumpled up fives and tens adorned with cryptic notes about various horses’ pedigrees.
I’m sure the Bursar’s department at Smith must have loved that.
At Smith she studied mathematics, not only out of a cerebral love of math and a feeling of calling to the field but out of the prosaic desire to have a job that paid a decent salary, didn’t involve manual labor, and could put her in position to find a husband who she could feel was her intellectual equal. In 1949 she graduated Smith and began applying for jobs.
A degree in math usually meant a ticket to a teaching position, but teaching jobs were hard to come by. Returning WWII vets got first pick, then any other man, then the other guys, then back to the first guys to see if maybe the other job fell through, and then if desperate finally down to highly qualified women. But find a job she did, with the largest employer of mathematicians in the world at the time — the United States government.
First she was sent to Annapolis Maryland, to the Ballistics Research Lab of the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Aberdeen did the research that developed all types of new weapons. They needed a way to be able to test the theories about what those weapons could do before deciding if it was worthwhile making the weapons. For that you turn to math. Math and a giant room filling box of wires, diodes, and lights with the enigmatic name of Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.
Ruth spent three years programming the ENIAC though the term programming didn’t even exist back then. It was just math and the people who tamed the mechanical beast were mathematicians, not programmers. She must have been pretty good at it because eventually she got the call to the big leagues and headed off to the deserts of New Mexico, home to the Los Alamos Scientific Lab to work on the math for the second generation of atomic and thermonuclear weapons. Continue reading “The Hidden Figure of Ruth Freshour”
The new Netflix docuseries The Sons Of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness is a tale of obsession and manipulation. Journalist Maury Terry was so obsessed with his plausible alternate theory of the Son Of Sam case that he allowed himself … Continue reading The Sons Of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness
For some reason this cover gives me a headache. Continue reading Pulp Fiction Thursday: The Headless Lady
Starring Elise Stefanik as Eve & Liz Cheney as Margot. Continue reading All About Elise
Many (many) years ago, my then teen-aged brother was going to microwave himself a hot dog for lunch. A vigorous debate immediately ensued between one of my sisters and a visiting friend about how he should dress his hot dog. The discussion and the dog got a little heated (I come from a Polish-American family where everyone has an opinion on everything.). My other sister popped in to see what the rumpus was about, and after she’d been briefed, she asked my sister and her friend “Are you going to eat that hot dog?”. After they both answered no, she … Continue reading Why you got to gimme a fight?
Since it’s Cole Porter month at the Friday Cocktail Hour, I decided to make it Cole Porter week here. I think it’s also the longest album title ever to turn up on a Wednesday morning. I have never heard of … Continue reading Album Cover Art Wednesday: Mimi Benzell & Felix Knight Sing Cole Porter’s Can Can Kiss Me Kate
Blame it on Briscoe Cain. Continue reading Malaka Of The Week: Briscoe Cain
Cheating seems to be in vogue this spring.
As you might have heard, in a post race drug test the winner of the Kentucky Derby, Medina Spirit, tested positive for 21 picograms of betamethasone and if you know what that is and why it’s illegal than you probably hang around horseracing tracks a hell of a lot more than I do. All I know about horseracing is to bet the longshots on a muddy track.
To be clear, betamethasone is basically horse Advil. It alleviates pain in joints and it’s actually legal to administer it, but it has to be out of the horse’s system within two weeks of a race. That’s a stipulation Medina Spirits’ trainer, Bob Baffert, should be familiar with since Medina Spirit is the fifth horse of his in one year to have failed a post race drug test.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Baffert said.
Which is always the precursor to any new conspiracy theory.
“I know everybody is not out to get me, but there’s definitely something wrong. Why is it happening to me? You know, there’s problems in racing, but it’s not Bob Baffert.”
Yeah Bob, but if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. And Churchill Downs, home of the Derby, has decided Bob Baffert is part of the problem. They have suspended Baffert from the track which means the man who has trained more Kentucky Derby winners can not have a horse in any race there let alone the Derby.
What did Bob do? He went on OANN and said he was a victim of cancel culture. No you’re not Bob. You cheated, got caught, and now are being punished as you should be.
Look, cheating in sports is a time honored tradition. The line you will hear in any locker room is “if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin'”. Mostly that’s put away when you reach the pinnacle moment of any particular sport. Most Americans can’t name their local track but they can tell you when the Kentucky Derby is run. It’s the pinnacle for horseracing. You’re not supposed to cheat. It would be like a team using an elaborate system of surveillance and signals to spy on their World Series opponents so they could relay to their batters what the next pitch was.
Oops.
Meanwhile in New Hampshire a different angle on cheating is playing out. At Dartmouth’s prestigious Geisel Medical School allegations of cheating on internet based exams have thrown the campus into turmoil. It seems 38 students were supposedly caught using the campus software Canvas, which has all the course work on it, while taking tests. 21 cases were dismissed because their professor admitted he told them his was an open book test. However the other 17 students were punished anywhere from having to take the class over to being expelled from the school. In many cases students plead guilty only because they were told that to plead innocent would expose them to the most severe punishment.
Here’s where the gray area begins to emerge. It seems that the evidence of cheating was that the Canvas software pings in to the central computer whenever the software is running, leaving a record of who was active and at what time. That’s even if it’s not actually being used but rather just running in the background. Or on a second device. A second device the university demanded students have access to as a backup during the test.
Stop right there for a moment. How many programs are currently running on your phone or your tablet or any other device you might have lying around that’s not the one you’re reading this on? And how many of those programs can you name?
Now you understand the problem.
Most of these students had Canvas running on that second device because it’s ALWAYS running. In essence Canvas is a medical library available 24/7 to any student. The whole advantage of it is that it’s always there. Why turn it off, especially on a secondary device that you’re not taking the test on?
Oh and one other thing. Dartmouth failed to say to the test takers “make sure you are logged out of Canvas on all your devices before beginning the test”. As a matter of fact they never told students that Canvas had time, date, and location monitoring abilities built into it.
Oops.
But in the grand tradition of Ivy League Schools Dartmouth has made a decision and the decision stands. Now who is cheating? Especially when some of the punishments were having to retake an entire year of school over again. At a cost of $70,000 for another year of school.
26 years ago New Orleans had rainfall of Biblical proportions. The rain came on May 8, 1995 and the extent of the damage was unclear until May 10, 1995. It had rained up to 27 inches in some parts of … Continue reading Stormy Monday Blues
Well, we all know what social media mavens the Freeperati are, amirite? I mean, with such media giants as Parler, ONAN, and all?
The ones who actually have Facebook accounts, and don’t spend every other month in FB jail, were anxiously awaiting this outcome :
Facebook Board Readies For Its Biggest Decision Yet: Whether To Reinstate Trump
NPR ^ | 5/4/21 | Rachel martinPosted on 5/4/2021, 12:40:30 PM by 1Old Pro
Facebook created the Oversight Board a year ago to make final calls on the most difficult decisions the social network makes about what users can post. Each case is decided by 5 members of the 20-person board. They consider Facebook’s rules and international human rights principles and seek out the views of outside experts and members of the public. In the Trump case, the board received more than 9,000 public comments. The final decision must be approved by a majority of the full board, and Facebook has agreed to abide by its ruling.
The Trump case is the biggest test so far of the board’s legitimacy: whether it’s seen as independent from the company that created and funds it, or whether it’s seen as a cover to let Facebook duck responsibility.
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Break them up. There should be no “control” over free speech. Reasonable expectations perhaps, but no banning.
To: 1Old ProHow about reinstating Donald J. Trump to the Presidency. That’s where he belongs. MAGA!!!
19 posted on 5/4/2021, 12:57:38 PM by spincaster (i)
To: 1Old ProTechnically our Government cannot censor people . So how to get around this roadblock when it wants to bury annoying truths ? Simple, give certain companies special favors and allow them to become monopolies in return for said companies to do the censoring for them.
22 posted on 5/4/2021, 1:02:57 PM by Nateman (Keep Liberty Alive! Article V!)
To: 1Old Pro“Break them up. There should be no “control” over free speech. Reasonable expectations perhaps, but no banning.”
Should private companies be allowed to develop their own policies or not. Conservatives argue a bakery should be allowed to refuse to bake a gay wedding cake. It would be hypocritical to make that argument and at the same time declare Facebook shouldn’t be allowed to set the rules for use of its services.
Should a motel be required to allow pets in the rooms? Should an over 55 community in Florida be required to allow families with children to purchase and inhabit homes?
6 posted on 5/4/2021, 12:46:07 PM by Soul of the South (The past is gone and cannot be changed. Tomorrow can be a better day if we work on it.)
To: Soul of the SouthI agree with you. I think if the government seizes control over who Facebook and Twitter are allowed to censor and ban, what’s to stop them from forcing FreeRepublic to allow bad posts to go without being removed or to allow trolls and other undesirables to continue posting indefinitely?
I think if you don’t like the website, find another. I don’t like Facebook, so I left it. I never liked Twitter. I do like FreeRepublic. Not everyone does. They should find somewhere else; not get the government to force FR to let them be a problem here.
21 posted on 5/4/2021, 1:01:30 PM by 2aProtectsTheRest (The media is banging the fear drum enough. Don’t help them do it.)
BREAKING: Facebook Announces Decision NOT to Reinstate Donald Trump’s Account Conservative Brief ^ | 5/5 | Carmine Sabia Posted on 5/5/2021, 8:09:38 AM by TrumpianRepublican
The world’s preeminent social media site, Facebook, has made its decision on whether to allow Donald Trump back on its platform.
The answer came on Wednesday when the site’s Oversight Board ruled that Trump will stay banned from the platform.
Access to Facebook is seen by many as crucial to Trump’s chances of victory if he decides to campaign for president in 2024.
Continue reading “Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Face Bored edition”
There’s a lot of jibber-jabber from the right-wing about Tim (Look! We have a black friend, so we can’t be racist) Scott’s responding to President Biden’s first address to congress. Most of it centers around the “Uncle Tom” thing currently bouncing around in hashtag land. I’m a musician. And an engineer/producer. I’ve had (and still have) a number of black friends and associates. And yes, I’ve heard the “Uncle Tom” thing used. By them. I’ve never heard one white person call a black person an “Uncle Tom”. Not one. It’s a term exclusively used by black Americans to describe someone … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – Ants and Uncles edition
Here’s Nat King Cole wearing a skinny tie on the BBC in 1961. Nat even sat down at the piano for a few numbers. Enjoy. Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: An Evening With Nat King Cole
May is a month for themes at First Draft. Yesterday, I declared it Cole Porter month at the Friday Cocktail Hour. Today, I declare May to be Beatles month since Tell Me Why was last week’s theme song. I do declare. Stop me before I turn into Scarlet O’Hara. I’d look lousy in a hoop skirt…
President Biden visited New Orleans as part of his infrastructure push. He toured the Sewerage & Water Board plant in the Pigeon Town neighborhood. Our water system has been in bad shape forever. They’ve tried muddling through with what we have but what we need is money, money, money. The presidential visit is a good sign that it may be forthcoming. John Neely Kennedy insists that water plants aren’t infrastructure. I insist that he’s an asshole who can still go fuck himself.
This week’s theme song was written by Lennon and McCartney in 1965. Once again, it’s essentially a Lennon song. We’ll get to Macca next week. It was featured on three Beatles albums, Rubber Soul in the UK, Yesterday and Today in the US, and on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack worldwide. That was exhausting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We have three versions of Nowhere Man for your listening pleasure: the Beatles original, Randy Travis, and Paul Westerberg.
If you’re feeling stuck in Nowhere Land, there’s an easy fix: jump to the break.
I hereby declare May to be Cole Porter month at the Friday Cocktail Hour. Why May? Why the hell not?
Cole Porter wrote I Get A Kick Out Of You in 1934 for the Broadway musical Anything Goes, which starred Ethel Merman. Porter loved Merman’s brassy-n-hammy voice. I do not. She used to scare the beejesus out of me when she appeared on variety shows in my youth. I bear the musical scars to this very day.
Since I love the featured image of Louis and Oscar so much, we begin with their version, which always gives me a boot as well as a kick:
Perhaps the best known interpretation of the Porter classic comes from the Sinatra-Riddle team. Dig that crazy lamppost.
I have been reading a lot of really stupid stuff in the ether, and not because I deliberately sought it out. Now you have to, too. Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced. I thought something was up when I … Continue reading Hire a Clown, Expect a Circus
Recently there was a giant hubbub at the podcasting company Gimlet over attempts to create a workplace union. I don’t want to go into all the details but this Vulture report does a pretty good job of summing up the various positions and the backlash involved in it.
Suffice it to say, one side lost and one side won. That’s how things go in this world of ours.
What I am more interested in is the fact that at Gimlet those on the losing side felt they had to leave the company. I want to make it clear this is not a situation where the losers were people in control of policy or direction for the company. The two biggest names to leave, PJ Voight and Shruti Panamanian, were worker bees who had made the decision to oppose the unionization effort. Why they did was their own business and no one else’s. But they felt compelled to leave the company they had helped build because they had been on the losing side of the issue. Whether they jumped or were pushed is of no matter. The point is they left.
They shouldn’t have. They shouldn’t have been put in the position of having to make that decision.
Look if every time one of us loses an argument and feels they have to leave, there would be a whole helluva lot more divorced people living at the Motel 6. When did having a different opinion on something from your nearest and dearest or even just your fellow employees become equated to vacating the premises? Unless it’s a rental agreement we shouldn’t be packing our bags and heading down the highway just because we lost one simple disagreement. The Dodgers, in my humble opinion, suck. There I said it. Some of you might agree with that sentiment. Some of you I know don’t. That doesn’t mean I can’t be friends with you. I’ve got news for you, friends have disagreements all the time as all my Dodger loving friends will tell you about me.
Same goes for the workplace. Yeah, here it gets a little trickier because you do have to negotiate various levels of business hierarchy but I shouldn’t feel I have to leave my job just because you wanted a union, I didn’t, but the union won out. In fact I would argue that it’s more important that I stick around to keep the union on it’s toes or to make sure it really is working in the best interests of myself and my fellow employees.
Last year the Opinion Editor of the New York Times, James Bennet, agreed to publish an essay written, as much as we can believe a politician can write a clear and declarative essay, by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. In it he advocated for using the US military against BLM protesters in the wake of the George Floyd murder. I do not agree with that sentiment in the least. From what I can tell the New York Times and probably James Bennet himself do not agree with that sentiment. Nevertheless Bennet chose to publish it as an editorial about a matter of current affairs written by a serving member of the United States Senate. Some Times staff writers protested the essay should not have been run. Ultimately the uproar over that decision caused Bennet to lose his job. He shouldn’t have, just as the staff writers opposed to the publication shouldn’t have lost their jobs for speaking out, though none did. They made their feelings known, he obviously made his feelings known by running it in the first place and that should have been the end of that. Instead a well respected veteran of the newspaper industry had to be shown/head for the door because apparently unless we all speak as one we can not speak at all.
Which brings me to Liz Cheney.
The crazy, it burns. Continue reading The Bamboo Bamboozle
It’s still Merrick Garland’s time. Continue reading The Legal Docket: Bragging Rights
It’s Cannibal Clown day here at First Draft. Continue reading Pulp Fiction Thursday: The Better To Eat You