Friday: Hili dialogue

April 26, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the end of the “work” week: Friday, April 26, 2024, and National Pretzel Day. I much prefer the big, soft, German-style pretzels, preferably served with mustard and a liter of beer (and a spiral-cut giant radish). In Poland, pretzels were traditionally sold by Jews, and here’s a modern-day emporium, labeled “A street vendor in Kraków, Poland, selling pretzels, as well as obwarzanki krakowskie and bagels”:

Stefan Källroos, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

It’s also Alien Day (celebrating when the film was released), Hug a Friend Day, Audubon Day (is it okay to mention this? He was born on this day in 1785), Hug an Australian Day, National Hairball Awareness Day,  National Help a Horse Day, National Arbor Day, and World Intellectual Property Day.

I passed my car emissions test! It’s always stressful—almost like taking a test in school.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Donald Trump is immune from charges that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 elections. The questions from the Court to the attorneys suggested that their decision could go either way:

The Supreme Court, hearing a last-ditch appeal from Donald Trump, appeared open Thursday to granting some level of immunity to protect former presidents from being prosecuted for alleged crimes committed while in office.

Over nearly three hours of oral argument, the court entertained Trump’s claim that he can’t be tried on charges of attempting to steal the 2020 election, on the grounds that he should enjoy absolute immunity for actions he took as president.

A majority of justices didn’t appear to embrace all of Trump’s arguments, and they spent little time discussing the specifics of his case. But the court did signal a clear interest in broadly protecting the presidency for the future. Any high court decision embracing that position could further delay Trump’s trial, if not end it completely.

“I’m not focused on the here and now” of the Trump allegations, said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a 2018 Trump appointee. “I’m focused on the future,” and how the court’s decision could impose limits on presidential discretion.

The court’s conservative majority expressed sympathy for Trump lawyer John Sauer’s argument that future presidents might be paralyzed into inaction by the potential of prosecution after leaving office for bold decisions they think are in the nation’s interest. While former presidents remain liable for crimes committed in their personal capacity, Sauer said that official acts that break the law couldn’t be subject to prosecution.

In response to questions from the court, Sauer said that ordering the military to stage a coup or assassinate a political opponent could be official acts for which a president couldn’t be criminally prosecuted. Other safeguards, such as congressional inquiry or public opinion, would restrain the president from wrongdoing, he said.

My prediction: the Court will rule against any kind of broad immunity under the principle of “equal justice under law.” To allow the President to break laws with impunity sets up two classes of citizens: the President and everyone else. That doesn’t seem fair.

*What? A New York appellate court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 guilty verdict for felony sex crimes. But that doesn’t mean he’s going free.

New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges, a staggering reversal in the foundational case of the #MeToo era.

In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals found that the trial judge who presided over Mr. Weinstein’s case, Justice James M. Burke, had made a crucial mistake, allowing prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.

Citing that decision and others it identified as errors, the appeals court determined that Mr. Weinstein, who as a movie producer had been one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, had not received a fair trial.

Maybe a lawyer can help me here, but isn’t the testimony of others important in establishing whether Weinstein had a pattern of predatory behavior? Why do they have to be plaintiffs? But there’s more:

The ruling does not mean Mr. Weinstein, 72, who is being held in semi-protective custody in an upstate New York prison, is a free man. He was also sentenced in 2022 to 16 years in prison in California after he was convicted of raping a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel, and could now be sent to California to continue his sentence on the convictions there, according to his spokesman.

. . . . In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said, “We will do everything in our power to retry this case and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault.”

No matter what happens with the new trial (if there is one), it’s very likely that this odious man is going to die in prison.

*As a reader mentioned in a comment this morning, some of the anti-Israel protestors in America are getting paid—by Soros and the Rockefellers, for crying out loud!

Since at least the Vietnam War, exasperated observers of student protests have rolled their eyes and thought: Get a job. In some cases today, activism is a job. Two of America’s largest philanthropic foundations are behind a group that has paid some of the anti-Israel activists for the kind of antics disrupting campuses across the country.

Consider Malak Afaneh, a law student at the University of California, Berkeley, and Craig Birckhead-Morton, a senior at Yale. Ms. Afaneh went viral this month for disrupting a dinner at Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s home. This week the Yale Daily News reported that Mr. Birckhead-Morton had been arrested for trespassing—and then re-emerged to address an anti-Israel crowd blocking an intersection in New Haven.

Ms. Afaneh and Mr. Birckhead-Morton have both been “youth fellows” of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, whose website identifies them by their first names. As of April 4, the campaign was soliciting applications for a new cohort, whose “campus-based fellows” would receive stipends of $2,880 to $3,360 for three-month terms of roughly eight hours of work a week. That “work” could include aiding campaigns that “demand federal or state politicians cut US military, financial, or diplomatic ties with Israel.”

The corporate entity behind these fellowships is Education for Just Peace in the Middle East. Where does it get its funding?

George and Alexander Soros’s Open Society Foundation has put $700,000 into Education for Just Peace in the Middle East since 2018, most recently with a two-year grant in 2022, according to the Open Society Foundation’s website. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has given Education for Just Peace in the Middle East $515,000 since 2019, most recently with a three-year grant for $225,000 awarded in August 2023.

While some policymakers have wondered whether activists receive money from overseas, it turns out that there’s a clear paper trail of funding at home. That ought to have policy implications. In considering whether to discipline students for rule violations, university administrators might more harshly punish activism done, at least in part, for pay.

I’m not so sure about the last sentence. In fact if there should be a pay differential for breaking rules (I don’t think there should be), shouldn’t those who aren’t paid to protest illegally get more punishment?

*Meanwhile at Princeton, the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment has finally opened for business, and after two protestors were immediately arrested, the protestors folded up their tents and slunk away.  And Princeton’s President, Christopher Eisgruber, issued the best Presidential statement yet. First, from The Daily Preincetonian:

About 100 undergraduate and graduate students began a sit-in on McCosh Courtyard early Thursday morning, joining a wave of pro-Palestinian sit-ins across the country. After student organizers first began to erect tents, Princeton Public Safety (PSAFE) issued its first warning to protesters. At least two student arrests have been made. After the initial arrests, students folded them away.

Students face arrest and being barred from campus if they refuse to stop after a warning, according to a campus-wide message on Wednesday morning from Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun.

“They said it was not possible here, and it is possible,” Aditi Rao GS told protesters in a speech.

“We’re gonna be here until the University divests,” Rao said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.

That’s going to be a long time. The two students who were arrested were barred from campus, and will now probably be suspended or expelled. That is ONE black mark these protestors cannot tolerate.  Eisgruber’s statement is also in the school paper, and I urge you to read it.  An excerpt:

Despite its breadth, Princeton’s free speech policy — again, like the First Amendment to the Constitution — contains exceptions. For example, it prohibits genuine threats and harassment. It also explicitly recognizes that “the University may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University.”

The University thus may, and indeed does, limit the times and places where protests can occur. It may, and indeed does, prohibit tactics, such as encampments or the occupation of buildings, that interfere with the scholarly and educational mission of the University or that increase safety risks to members of the University community.

These time, place, and manner regulations are viewpoint-neutral and content-neutral. They apply to any protest or event, regardless of which side they take or what issues they raise.

Time, place, and manner regulations are fully consistent with — indeed, they are necessary to — Princeton’s commitment to free speech. The purpose of our policy is “to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation,” not simply to maximize expression in all its forms, no matter how disruptive.

Dialogue, debate, and deliberation depend upon maintaining a campus that is free from intimidation, obstruction, risks to physical safety, or other impediments to the University’s scholarship, research, and teaching missions.

Princeton’s time, place, and manner regulations include a clear and explicit prohibition upon encampments. They provide that “camping in vehicles, tents, or other structures is not permitted on campus. Sleeping in outdoor space of any kind is prohibited.”

Encampments can obstruct others from moving freely or conducting University business. They can create health and safety risks. They require significant staff time to keep occupants and bystanders safe, thereby diverting people and resources from fulfilling their primary purpose. They can intimidate community members who must walk past them. There is no practical way to bar outsiders from joining the encampments.

It’s a wholly admirable statement, fully supportive of free speech but specifying what is necessary to allow freedom of speech on a college campus. We’re supposed to have one of these encampments on May 1, and we’ll see if our President follows Eisgruber.

*Finally, in a sad local event, Chicago’s recently-famous “rat hole,” a bit of sidewalk bearing the impression of a dead animal, has been removed–before I even got to see it! But it might go on display somewhere.

A Chicago sidewalk landmark some residents affectionately called the “rat hole” was removed Wednesday after city officials determined the section bearing the imprint of an animal was damaged and needed to be replaced, officials said.

The imprint has been a quirk of a residential block in Chicago’s North Side neighborhood of Roscoe Village for years, but it found fresh fame in January after a Chicago comedian shared a photo on the social platform X.

The attention, however, quickly grew old for neighbors who complained about visitors at all hours, sometimes leaving coins and other items scattered across the sidewalk. Plus, many in the neighborhood argue that the imprint was actually caused by a squirrel.

Erica Schroeder, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Transportation, said the square of sidewalk “containing the famous ‘Chicago rat hole’” is now in temporary storage.

She said that where the slab of sidewalk, which has an impression resembling the outline of a rat — claws, tail and all — will eventually end up is expected to be a “collaborative decision between the city departments and the mayor’s office.”

Here’s a video showing the rat hole:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are fed up. Malgorzata explains, “Hili is surprised that Andrzej left his work and went out. When he explains that he is tired of all the very bad news he is reading on the screen she says that she really understands his feelings. When she goes out to the garden she leaves her phone inside just to be cut off from all the bad news.”

Hili: You stopped working at the computer.
A: I can’t look at all of this any longer.
Hili: I totally understand you, I didn’t even bring my phone with me.
In Polish:
Hili: Oderwałeś się od komputera?
Ja: Nie mogę już patrzeć na to wszystko.
Hili: Doskonale cię rozumiem, ja nawet telefonu ze sobą nie zabieram.

*******************

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Stacy:

From Masih: a video showing graffiti criticizing the Iranian theocracy and its vehement objection to women showing their hair.

From Malgorzata. Do you really think that protestors who extol October 7 don’t know what “from the river to sea” means?

What a nice man!

From Malcolm, who notes, “The smile says it all.” Clearly the kid needed glasses badly!

Simon, who sent this, wants to know, “Did they increase the rum ration, too?”

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. First, do you have any explanation for this?:

From the Truth is Stranger than Fiction Department:

48 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

    1. David, excellent article, enjoyed the reading, amusing too, however not all our “ancients” did not know not to poo in their drinking water. The Romans were well advanced with plumbing, sewage disposal and the delivery of continuous fresh fresh water their bathhouses, drains and aqueducts are still extant in many places, my favourite Housesteads Fort on Hadrians Wall in Northumberland UK . I agree totally that once the Romans were gone the population mostly went back to ignorance and filth not at all unlike the Palestinians in Gaza who completely destroyed the advanced greenhouses left by the Israelis when they vacated in 2005. Some people never learn from theirs or anyones history.

      Reply

      1. Thanks Robert, that’s true. There were a few places and times that made that essential link between .. “fluids” – what to drink, where to poo, etc. But they were a minority.

        Glad you mentioned the Gaza greenhouses – their destruction was a “moment” in my understanding of the Pal cause. The departed, dragged out Jews left a ready-to-earn, profitable industry: all destroyed by the Pals. Out of spite.
        Horribly MOST people seem to think Israeli control over Gaza never ended!
        best,
        D.A.
        NYC

        Reply

  2. On this day:
    1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of birth is unknown). [Traditionally, Shakespeare’s birth has been marked on 23 April, which is also the date of his death.]

    1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L’Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist.

    1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia.

    1900 – Fires destroy Canadian cities Ottawa and Hull, reducing them to ashes in 12 hours. Twelve thousand people are left without a home.

    1903 – Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded.

    1915 – World War I: Italy secretly signs the Treaty of London pledging to join the Allied Powers.

    1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established by Hermann Göring.

    1933 – Nazi Germany issues the Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities limiting the number of Jewish students able to attend public schools and universities.

    1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by German Luftwaffe.

    1954 – The first clinical trials of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine begin in Fairfax County, Virginia.

    1962 – NASA’s Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.

    1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force.

    1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world’s first human open fetal surgery.

    1986 – The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

    1989 – People’s Daily publishes the April 26 Editorial which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests.

    1994 – South Africa begins its first multiracial election, which is won by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

    Births:
    121 – Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor (d. 180). [The namesake of our much missed stoic cat Marcus Clawrelius.]

    1774 – Christian Leopold von Buch, German geologist and paleontologist (d. 1853). [Remembered as one of the most important contributors to geology in the first half of the nineteenth century. His scientific interest was devoted to a broad spectrum of geological topics: volcanism, petrology, fossils, stratigraphy and mountain formation. His most remembered accomplishment is the scientific definition of the Jurassic system.]

    1785 – John James Audubon, French-American ornithologist and painter (d. 1851).

    1798 – Eugène Delacroix, French painter and lithographer (d. 1863).

    1822 – Frederick Law Olmsted, American journalist and designer, co-designed Central Park (d. 1903).

    1886 – Ma Rainey, American singer-songwriter (d. 1939). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1889 – Anita Loos, American author, playwright, and screenwriter (d. 1981). [In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette’s novella Gigi.]

    1889 – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-English philosopher and academic (d. 1951).

    1897 – Douglas Sirk, German-American director and screenwriter (d. 1987).

    1900 – Charles Francis Richter, American seismologist and physicist (d. 1985).

    1921 – Jimmy Giuffre, American clarinet player, saxophonist, and composer (d. 2008).

    1927 – Jack Douglas, English actor (d. 2008). [Best known for his roles in the Carry On… films.]

    1927 – Anne McLaren, British scientist (d. 2007).

    1932 – Michael Smith, English-Canadian biochemist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2000).

    1938 – Duane Eddy, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor.

    1942 – Sharon Carstairs, Canadian lawyer and politician, Leader of the Government in the Senate.

    1945 – Howard Davies, English director and producer (d. 2016).

    1960 – Roger Taylor, English drummer. (Duran Duran, not Queen!]

    1963 – Jet Li, Chinese-Singaporean martial artist, actor, and producer.

    1970 – Melania Trump, Slovene-American model; 47th First Lady of the United States. [And Ceiling Cat help us, not the 49th too…]

    1981 – Ms. Dynamite, English rapper and producer.

    1983 – Jessica Lynch, American soldier. [Captured by Iraqi soldiers in March 2003, her subsequent recovery by U.S. special operations forces on April 1, 2003, received considerable media coverage as it was the first successful rescue of an American prisoner of war since World War II and the first ever of a woman.]

    When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation. (Jorge Luis Borges):
    1558 – Jean Fernel, French physician (b. 1497). [Introduced the term “physiology” to describe the study of the body’s function. He was the first person to describe the spinal canal. The lunar crater Fernelius is named after him.]

    1940 – Carl Bosch, German chemist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1874).

    1944 – Violette Morris, French footballer, shot putter, and discus thrower (b. 1893). [Won two gold and one silver medal at the Women’s World Games in 1921–1922. She was later banned from competing for violating “moral standards”. She was invited to the 1936 Summer Olympics by Adolf Hitler and was an honored guest. During World War II, she collaborated with Nazis and the Vichy France regime. She became known as the “Hyena of the Gestapo” and was killed by the French Resistance.]

    1957 – Gichin Funakoshi, Japanese martial artist, founded Shotokan (b. 1868).

    1970 – Gypsy Rose Lee, American actress, striptease dancer, and writer (b. 1911).

    1976 – Sid James, South African-English actor (b. 1913). [He died on stage at the Sunderland Empire theatre.]

    1984 – Count Basie, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (b. 1904).

    1986 – Bessie Love, American actress (b. 1898). [I remember briefly meeting her at an RSC birthday party in Stratford upon Avon in the mid-’70s.]

    1989 – Lucille Ball, American model, actress, comedian, and producer (b. 1911).

    1999 – Jill Dando, English journalist and television personality (b. 1961). [A 2012 a cold case review named Serbian warlord Arkan as a suspect in her murder, although by this time he had died.]

    2003 – Rosemary Brown, Jamaican-Canadian academic and politician (b. 1930). [The first black woman elected to the provincial government of British Columbia.]

    2003 – Edward Max Nicholson, Irish environmentalist, co-founded the World Wide Fund for Nature (b. 1904).

    2005 – Elisabeth Domitien, Prime Minister of the Central African Republic (b. 1925).

    2005 – Maria Schell, Austrian-Swiss actress (b. 1926).

    2011 – Phoebe Snow, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1950).

    2013 – George Jones, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1931).

    2017 – Jonathan Demme, American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter (b. 1944).

    Reply

    1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from Wikipedia]

      Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (née Pridgett; born on this day in 1886 [JG: Actually, there’s some uncertainty about the exact date, and even year], died December 22, 1939) was an American blues singer and influential early-blues recording artist. Dubbed the “Mother of the Blues”, she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers. Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a “moaning” style of singing. Her qualities are present and most evident in her early recordings “Bo-Weevil Blues” and “Moonshine Blues”.

      Gertrude Pridgett began performing as a teenager and became known as “Ma” Rainey after her marriage to Will “Pa” Rainey in 1904. They toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and later formed their own group, Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. Her first recording was made in 1923. In the following five years, she made over 100 recordings, including “Bo-Weevil Blues” (1923), “Moonshine Blues” (1923), “See See Rider Blues” (1925), the blues standard “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (1927), and “Soon This Morning” (1927).

      Rainey also collaborated with Thomas Dorsey, Tampa Red, and Louis Armstrong, and toured and recorded with the Georgia Jazz Band. Touring until 1935, she then largely retired from performing and continued as a theater impresario in her hometown of Columbus, Georgia, until her death four years later. She has been posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, as well as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rainey has been portrayed in several films including the 2020 Academy Award-winning film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. In 2023, she was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

      She died of a heart attack in 1939.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Rainey

      Reply

    2. Ranger 4 crashed into moon: This was actually a good accomplishment in that it was the first of the U.S. series of spacecraft to reach the moon. The Ranger series was designed to navigate to the moon, transmit close-up pictures of the moon’s surface back to Earth scientists, and make a semi-controlled rough crash onto the lunar surface. It would be two more years before Ranger 7 sent good pictures back that showed the craters within craters within craters, etc lunar terrain character. Soon after the Ranger series, a set of Lunar Orbiters used the guidance and navigation information gained by them to achieve low lunar orbit and send back high resolution exploratory photos of much of the lunar surface as well as understand the gravitational characteristics of the moon, preparing the way for the very successful Surveyor soft landing series, and, finally Apollo 11 in the summer of 1969!

      Reply

    3. I remember well “Sid James” from those “Carry On” movies, what a laugh he had. I forgot he died so long ago.
      I always enjoy your “On this Day” Thanks for the effort everyday.

      Reply

      1. Showing our age. Sid James was a total class act. I miss the hilarity of the Carry Ons. Unlike, say, Benny Hill, they’ve aged well. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a re-boot of Benny Hill. 🙂
        D.A.
        NYC

        Reply

      2. Thanks, you’re very welcome.

        As a student, I stood on the stage within a few feet of where Sid died. Yes, his distinctive laugh is very memorable, whether as part of Hancock’s Half Hour or the Carry On series.

        Reply

  3. I can easily imagine an ambitious prosecutor in a red state charging Biden with murder because somebody died from a mandated Covid vaccine.

    I think presidents need immunity for official acts. Otherwise there will be chaos.

    Reply

    2. That’s a tricky affair. Obviously, presidents need the authority to make decisions that can cause people to die, but that authority must be based on laws that outline and place limits on what a president can order. If there’s good cause to suspect that a president has overstepped these limits, there must be a way to invoke a court to clarify the position and, if necessary, reverse the order. If that option didn’t exist, it would be a tyranny. If it does exist and works as intended, frivolous attempts to smear the president will be thrown iut quickly.

      Reply

    3. The court is supposed to decide whether or not existing law gives POTUS immunity or not. The court isn’t supposed to make new law. That task is supposed to be Congress’s alone.

      The answer to whether or not existing law gives POTUS immunity seems rather clear, and there is a very strong consensus among experts that it does not. There is nothing in the Constitution that grants POTUS immunity and there is no other legislation that does so either.

      We’ve made it 248 years so far without Presidential immunity and no disasters have occurred because of it. I really find it rather bizarre that people are seriously considering the idea that making it law that the president of a democratic republic be held immune from the law might be a good thing.

      Reply

        1. And the actions he took on Jan 6 were non official acts; he was campaigning for reelection/stopping the xfer of power via mob rule and other shenanigans. Campaigning is not “official,” it’s his personal choice. SCOTUS is simply doing Trump‘a bidding simple as that: a corrupt POTUS puts on the bench corrupt justices who joined the existing corrupt justices and here you have the result. A corrupt majority on the Supreme Court. It is pretty disgusting and obvious.

          Reply

          1. An alternate and valid interpretation is that he was meeting his obligations as President to assure free and fair elections.

            In that context he’s being prosecuted for trying to prevent corruption.

          2. IMO corruption… Surely if you don’t have a “gun” to your head, àh la Putin model, then I find it difficult to perceive (with reservation) that in the US (with the juggernaut of democracy behind it) you’d end up with a full bench of corrupt individuals.
            You have that now, corruption biases but are still accountable to the public by being called out and exposed.
            The Washington Post
            “Could Congress do anything?

            Theoretically, yes. The US Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach and remove a Supreme Court justice for bad conduct using the same process — charged by the House, tried by the Senate — that applies to US presidents.”
            Still with that said, in a democracy dumbkoft people can get into powerful offices, mores the pity on that.
            Democracy is not a fool proof system and we are seeing it at working double time here. Are we learning and error correcting, to me that is the point.

          3. Laingholm, this, “You have that now, corruption biases but are still accountable to the public by being called out and exposed.”
            Unfortunately, the US SCOTUS is immune to accountability (public, or otherwise) they are being called out and exposed presently, to no avail; they aren’t chosen by the public. That’s why their approval rating is the worst it’s ever been. They don’t care what the public thinks. Maybe a few do, yes, even Chief Roberts, but that doesn’t matter. There are 5 that have a radical agenda, corruption, YES!, popularity, accountability no issue with those 5. You see what’s happened here since they overturned Roe v. Wade? It’s a shit show, case in point. They are above the democratic process and SCOTUS has never been a democratic institution. Lifetime appointments obviates that notion.

        2. In that case I’d say our system already effectively provides that. But that isn’t what some people want. We know that’s not what Trump’s people want, at least for President Trump, because during the hearing when a SCJ asked the Trump lawyer “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?”, he responded “That could well be an official act.”

          And also from the hearing we know that 2 Supreme Court Justices “expressed their preference for blanket immunity for all presidential acts, including using the military to assassinate political rivals.”[Trump Legal News, Part I: Trump Bought Himself Some Time, Courtesy of SCOTUS]

          I think it could be reasonable to legally define some limited degree of immunity for POTUS. It is certainly reasonably to explore that. I think it is ludicrous to seriously consider the immunity that Trump and some of his supporters are claiming POTUS has / should have.

          Reply

          1. Since Trump’s people have effectively argued that Biden is within his rights to have Trump assassinated, they would have no cause for complaint if Biden did precisely that.

        3. Cedric, you’re in a cult, so any interpretation has a backdrop of absurdity. Keep being you though, I guess you like living there in an impenetrable bubble: Trumpopposite world. You have absolutely no proof (no one does, cause it doesn’t exist) that the 2020 election wasn’t free or fair. Trump trying to prevent corruption? Seriously, you post this shit on WEIT? You’re assumptions are absurd. Please feel free and cite all your legitimate proof that 2020 was stolen from poor wittle trumpy. You assert without evidence. Again, cult- I suppose you’re enjoying riding on the hate-wave! Until you actually back up any of you’re absurd assertions with reality and citations, I have no use for the likes of you.

          Reply

  4. A text from a friend last night:

    All we need is for one university president to say we won’t tolerate these protests and then all the other ones will plagiarize him.

    Reply

  6. If I were a Supreme Court Justice, I would be really really hesitant to follow Trump’s argumentation and give the US President carte blanche to shoot political opponents. You never know who’s first against the wall.

    Reply

    1. No worries, tRump’s lame wrists couldn’t handle the recoil of an air soft gun – let alone anything remotely powerful enough to do much damage.

      Reply

  7. If David Pecker planned a plot to pay a pornstar, where’s the plot to pay a pornstar David Pecker planned?

    Reply

  8. “Scientific method seeks to understand things as they are, while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, the primary objective of science is truth, – that of alchemy, operational success.”

    -George Soros – probably from Alchemy of Finance (still waiting for a copy)

    The operation in development right now – apparently exclusively on campuses in the United States… with nice weather…- is following the reflexive alchemy of Karl Popper student George Soros. Similar to dialectic, a chaotic/unstable condition is induced in a system, but its output is fed back in as input. Everyone on WEIT knows the examples from population dynamics. Soros writes his own differential equations for it in his book.

    Soros’ method seeks to first set up guideposts, then bring and hold a system far from equilibrium, release it, and hopefully it will follow the guideposts to a new, designed condition. The identities and operatives involved don’t matter – it could be another country with psychopathic leadership causing chaos – as long as it generates instability. However, the new state – sort of a Soros-brand economy he gets to control – is antagonistic to the essentially communist objectives of China, WEF, and the UN (not to mention the biggest impediment, the United States).

    Time will tell.

    Yes I learned this from a James Lindsay podcast on Soros’ material.

    Reply

  9. Those demonstrators in Ottawa and their like are about the moral equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan.

    And how do you do an eye exam on a kid that young who presumably can’t respond to exam questions? Can they make measurements of the lens and come up with a prescription just on that basis?

    Reply

    1. On at least one occasion, I have been in an optometrist office where they had me look into some lenses attached to a machine of some sort. The machine actively measured my visual acuity and came up with an approximate eyeglass prescription. I don’t think it was meant to be fully optimal, but it was approximate. It seemed unnecessary since this could be done the old fashioned way with me. But it suggests that the technology is there.

      Reply

    2. They can indeed. Most eye care centers these days have a machine that can measure the optical properties of your eyes and produce a prescription. Interestingly, the technology to do so came out of nuclear weapons research. Manipulation of the paths of EM radiation is key to nuclear weapons.

      The technology was first used in eye care in LASIK and similar procedures to determine the existing optical properties of the cornea and to map out where to zap the cornea in order to reshape it to correct vision.

      Reply

  10. Eisgruber’s statement at Princeton is pitch perfect. All other schools should plagiarize him. (h/t DrBrydon)

    Reply

  11. Definitely “National Hairball Day” one of our five left a beauty on the stairs overnight to “reward” the sleepy, plus the RN did not know that milk, particularly cows milk is not very good for most cats. Fresh clean water changed at least twice daily is much better. l remember my father telling me that many”lower deck” RN Sailors were really sad to see the rum ration disappear in I think 1970 particularly as the “Wardroom” could still enjoy their “pink gins”. I believe there was still a limited beer allowance but unlike the “ tot” it was not free.

    Reply

  12. Re Harvey Weinstein.
    The women who testified against him were witnesses for the prosecution, not for “plaintiffs”. [Edited to make that clearer.] It was a criminal trial. The task of the trial is to determine beyond a reasonable doubt if he raped the woman (singular) whom the state says he did. That other women say he raped them too is irrelevant. If the state wanted to use his prior record of sexual assault it would have to have proved those assaults actually occurred, by putting him on trial for each one and letting the jury decide about each one, which it didn’t. Generally speaking, if you are accused of a crime, your prior criminal record of even proved offences is not admissible as evidence. It will go toward your sentence probably, but even if you’ve raped 10 women in the past, it doesn’t mean the woman in the current case didn’t give full FRIES consent but only changed her mind afterward. (This is only common sense. Rapists don’t rape all the women they have sex with. The important thing is did he rape this woman?)

    Past accusations against him of rape have no bearing on his guilt in this case, especially since the accusations weren’t proved. That’s the whole point of #MeToo: you’re supposed to believe any unproven accusation that a woman makes against a man, especially a rich ugly man who couldn’t possibly have a woman just fall for him. His credibility as a witness is not an issue either, since defendants don’t have to testify (I don’t know if he actually did.)

    It’s not a good parallel but a nice excuse for schadenfreude. For decades, feminists have said a witness’s prior promiscuity or sex work or sleeping her way up the food chain can’t be used to undermine her credibility in a rape trial, nor can prior unfounded allegations she brought against other men. Now, a man’s prior accusers turn out to have no evidentiary value either.

    #MeToo is finally dead. Yay.

    Reply

    1. That’s the whole point of #MeToo: you’re supposed to believe any unproven accusation that a woman makes against a man

      No, the point of MeToo was for women dealing with sexual harassment or assault to see they were not alone, and for society at large to recognize that sexual abuse is something most (many? all?) women have experienced in one form or another.

      It was not intended as a forum for women to name individuals, nor was it intended to replace due process in a court of law.

      Anybody who thinks we should “believe all women” is an idiot. I’ve seen the sentiment expressed a few times, by very dogmatic types, but anybody with their head on their shoulders as opposed to inside their rectum knows that women are humans and humans don’t always tell the truth.

      Reply

      1. I hear you. #MeToo is more of an internal support mantra within the community of women, an affirmation of friendship and shared experience, not intended to tilt the scales of justice in an actual case. Fair enough. Which is why it’s good that the Appeal Court overturned the guilty verdict based on it.

        Reply

    2. I concur. WIth the 2nd order effects of the movement it has been a disaster for women. With no upside.
      D.A.
      NYC

      Reply

  13. It’s nice that today is both “Alien Day” and “Hug a Friend Day,” since the latter is what the facehugger was doing to John Hurt’s character in the former. (At least, initially.)

    Reply

  14. I thank Sandy for sending in that great shot of her/his “two brain cells”.
    The smile on the newly bespectacled little boy made my night.
    And, as always, I just cannot fathom the sickness behind The Holocaust. It stops and stuns me daily.

    Reply

    1. What stuns me as well as the murders is the total detachment showed by the perpetrators, the guards etc, how could they do this every day? It is beyond me.

      Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *