Tag: facts

A Dishonest Man, A Dishonest Speech

The GOP’s fall into a shithole party continues.

The RNC made it official and Trump accepted, both surprises to no one. The racist, lying felon is now their nominee for President of the United States in 2024.

As is standard, Trump gave an acceptance speech. As is standard, he regaled listeners with lies. As is standard, his supporters cheered. He and they need to tear others down and lie in order to make themselves look good because they are shitty leaders. History shows this.

Now, what comes to me is, does he and his supporters not really know reality? Is it possible, that they’re all living in a different reality than the rest of us?

My science fiction and speculative literature fed brain says, “Why, yes, it’s completely possible that some surreal quantum superpositioning between different realities are blending competing histories and outcomes.” On a more pragmatic level, my brain calls bullshit.

Listen to the analysis.

It comes down to values and facts. The fact is, the twenty-first century GOP values are mendacity, hypocrisy, and cynicism. We saw that on full display in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as those who warned against Trump and his character in the past, like J.D. Vance and Nikki Haley, turned around, smiled, and kissed his ass.

Voters who will embrace this GOP as their leaders are embracing mendacity, hypocrisy, and cynicism.

And if those are your chosen leaders, you should realize that the path being forged will be full of lies and hypocrisy, just as Trump’s speech is.

That’s hardly a shining example for the world as a bastion of freedom, prosperity, and democracy.

Vote Blue in 2024.

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Simple Facts Matter

CNN fact checks the Republican National Convention

The facts matter but the GOP can’t win if the facts are being used; facts are against them. So, just as Trump has lied and lied and lied, and his sycophants consistently lie, the RNC presented lie after lie after lie during their great gathering this year in Wisconsin.

It’s all the GOP can really do well any longer: lie.

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Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

Donald Trump is claiming that he doesn’t know anything about the medieval document known as Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise. And although the man is an unrepentant liar, known for lying almost every time he opens his mouth — especially if it’s being recorded — I believe he is telling the truth.

Yes, CNN and others have substantially documented the ties between Trump and the document’s authors. But first, we know that Trump doesn’t like to read. Second, he has demonstrated that he’s as dim as a burned-out light bulb.

I mean, come on, man. Remember his suggestions for treating COVID-19, like putting a light in your body?

Recall his history lesson about the American Revolutionary War when he noted, “Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.” (My emphasis added, to point out, the world didn’t have airports in the 1770s).

What about his claim as President that Americans need an ID to “buy a box of cereal”?

So, yes, I certainly believe that he knows nothing about Project 2025. And that — his consistent stupidity and deep-rooted idiocy — is the reason he should not be elected.

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The Basis for Law

A good friend of mine, Herb, is a retired Yale professor. Hailing from Louisiana, he also has a lifetime of passionate progressive activism behind him. As part of his next act, he’s trying to help establish an online local news, Ashland.news, working with a handful of others. In accordance with that activity, he also publishes opinion pieces.

This week, Herb took on his home state’s misguided efforts to post the ten commandments in every school classroom. Louisiana proponents of that effort claim that the ten commandments are the basis of law in the United States. Without saying, poppycock, Herb points out that isn’t so, focusing on the Supreme Court building to help establish his point. It’s not a long article and I invite you to read it, but these are the gist of Herb’s position.

I would welcome opposition to publicly sponsored display of the Ten Commandments on historical and moral as well as Constitutional grounds. I would (and now will) argue that as a code of justice the Ten Commandments are rudimentary, and they were not especially formative of U.S. law.

In a National Public Radio interview, Dodie Horton, who sponsored the mandatory display bill in the Louisiana senate, contended, “Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments. In fact, without them, a lot of our laws would not exist.” Which laws might she mean (the interviewer didn’t ask)? It needs no voice from a thundercloud to teach us not to murder, steal or bear false witness. No society can tolerate such actions because they destroy social cohesion.

Hebrew society wasn’t even the first to write down these prohibitions. The Code of Ur-Nammu antedates the Book of Exodus by at least a millennium. In it, murder, rape, robbery and adultery are capital crimes. A somewhat later and more famous Mesopotamian code, ascribed to Hammurabi, has 282 laws and regulations addressing a wide range of social and economic interactions. A portrait of Hammurabi in marble relief is included in the frieze on the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court chamber.

The figures in that frieze and its continuation on the north wall point to the many sources of our laws. Reading the south frieze left to right: Menis (from ancient Egypt), Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus (ancient Sparta), Solon and Draco (ancient Athens), Confucius and Augustus Caesar. Reading the north frieze from left to right: Justinian, Muhammed, Charlemagne, King John (because he signed the Magna Carta), Louis IX, Hugo Grotius, William Blackstone, John Marshall and Napoleon.

We don’t have legal documents from all these figures, but most of them represent legal developments that were formative for us. Pace Ms. Horton, were there no Ten Commandments, our laws would look no different than they are, but they are unimaginable without the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), the codification of Roman law under the auspices of the 6th century CE Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. An even more formative influence was William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England” of the 18th century. It’s the best-known description of the doctrines of the English common law, which developed separately from Roman law.

If Republicans were more interested in facts instead of myths, they would know the facts as Herb laid them out. Unfortunately, they’re too busy suborning the U.S. Constitution and its foundations and forcing their religion on everyone else to bother learning facts.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Dylany

Yeah, you know it’s the day after Monday and the day before Wednesday, and it’s January 16, 2024. Half of the year’s first month is already gone and it looks like the rest is going soon.

40 F and fog, with rain on the way, not much change, day on day. We’re looking forward to a 51 F high today.

Boy, howdy, I was enjoying so many pleasant dreams that I had no interest in awakening up and getting out of bed. Don’t know what triggered this stretch of positive night views but I’m not getting introspective with them. Just gonna take ’em as they come and accept.

Musically, The Neurons launched Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” from 1965 into the morning mental music stream (Trademark backdated). I enjoy the song’s lyrics and Dylan’s unique delivery. My favorite line, which is often cited as a fave by others, is, “I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes…you’d know what a drag it is to see you.” Which is the along the lines of the thinking I was doing, reading about why people were selecting Trump (and the hilarious comment by a NYTimes reporter that Iowa, where it’s like 87 % white, has a lot more diversity than people realize — sure). It’s the economy for them, stupid. And the border, which has got them scared. Or God. Or what/how we’re teaching their children to be a different gender or something. They often can’t intelligently articulate why, especially when facts are thrown back into their face. Trump’s lies, echoed by the right wing, is scoring points because these folks stay ensconced in a fact-free bubble. The NYT calls the bond Trump has with his besotted supporters “the most durable force in America.”

Here is the paragraph that made me almost spew: ‘“I know that he is picked by God for this hour,” said Patricia Lage, an Iowa caucusgoer who spoke in support of Mr. Trump on Monday night in Carlisle, outside Des Moines. “There are things that he has done in the past, but we all have pasts.”’

“Picked by God for this hour.” And what is the hour? The time to toss away democracy in America and accept a dictator? That’s a durable empty-headed bond, alright.

Anyway, that’s what triggered Dylan’s line on this fine Tuesday morning.

Stay positive, test negative, and carpes diem, which I will do after I carpes coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Just Get Over It

It’s another Trump moment.

Know Trump? I’m writing about Donald J., a guy who lost the popular vote in 2016 but won the Electoral College outcome, ending up as POTUS #45.

He’d been lying throughout his campaign and continued it during his term of office, demonstrating he had an exceedingly thin skin and was reality-warped. Like, take that whole thing about losing the popular vote. He claims he won it but cheating, you know, denied him the numbers.

And so it went for the next four years, until President Joe Biden decisively won the 2020 POTUS election, taking both the popular vote and Electoral College results. Trump had already been looking forward to losing and had declared that the election was rigged, and he’d been cheated of victory. Despite many challenges in court, no evidence showed up to support his claims. Yet, he and his misfit menagerie continue to push that claim and have convinced sufficient numbers of Republicans that he’s the nominee this year, even though he’s involved in four court cases for fraud, cheating, and lying, and was twice impeached.

Now he’s campaigning in Iowa. Perry, Iowa was the nation’s latest school shooting site, where a seventeen-year-old killed one child and injured four other children, and two adults. And what does Trump tell Iowa voters?

“It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.” h/t to MSN.com.

Isn’t that something? This conman who refuses to surrender to facts about his election loss, who has declared that if he wins, his term will be about revenge and retribution, is telling these grieving people, “But we have to get over it.”

The shooting happened two days ago.

His election loss was over three years ago and has mired the nation in hate, scorn, and lies.

Trump, please take your own advice. Get over it. Move on, so the nation can as well. We don’t need the shit you’re selling.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s a classic line: “Why don’t they do what they say, say what they mean?”

First, you have the POTUS backing the CDC, declaring people are supposed to wear masks (and his staff visiting with him are often required to wear masks, and have their temps taken every day), but then declares that he’s not wearing them. Mike Pence, one of the limpest Veeps in history, has been pilloried for not wearing masks when everyone else was wearing one, when told he should be wearing one, etc, while visiting places and making stops.

“Do what they say.”

Video revealings have people saying what they mean, turning on Blacks and other POC, screaming at them, “Go back where you came from, you don’t belong here,” calling them thugs, criminals, monkeys, and generally using the vilest language and deepest levels of hate that they can muster. When their words spread across the net (because we’re in the net age) and they’re ostracized and fired from jobs, they claim that’s not what they meant (they were just angry, afraid, blacked out, etc.). But it’s pretty clear that they mean what they say.

“One thing leads to another.”

And we certainly have seen that in evidence, haven’t we? Folks attend church, sporting events, bars, parties. Social distancing is shunned, masks are mocked, ridiculous claims are made (our air-conditioning filters will save you)…a few days later, people are in isolation, testing rona positive, and heading for hospitals.

Yet, we still have so many claiming that one thing doesn’t lead to another. They’re above the experts. Or, doesn’t matter. Business and the economy — making money — are more important. So the cases keep rising, and the deaths keep rising…

One thing leads to another.

Here’s the song by the Fixx, “One Thing Leads to Another”, from 1984.

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