12/2/24

 Monday, December 2, 2024

D+27

1845 US President James K. Polk announced to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West, a widely held belief termed "manifest destiny"

1942 The World’s 1st self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occured in Chicago Pile-1 (the world's 1st nuclear reactor) at the University of Chicago, overseen by Enrico Fermi and Leó Szilárd

1954 US Senate censured Joeseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring Senate into dishonor & disrepute

1968 US President Richard Nixon named Henry Kissinger as security advisor

2014 Stephen Hawking claimed that Artificial Intelligence could be a "threat to mankind" and spell the end of the human race

2018 Israeli police recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife be charged with fraud and bribery

2020 US Attorney General William Barr said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, despite claims by President Donald Trump

In bed at 9:15, awake at 4:15, and up at 4:20.  Let Lilly out at  4:35, then the pacing. 

Prednisone, day 202, 7.5 mg., day 17.  Prednisone at 5:00.  Sore shoulders.   Meds at 12:15. 

Schadenfreude.  It's so petty, I know, but he's such a jerk.  Aaron Rodgers had another terrible performance yesterday in the New York Jets' loss to Seattle.  They lost a game they should have won and Rodgers was a big part of the loss, throwing a pick 6, missing his wide-open receiver in the end zone, etc.  The big question now is whether the million-dollar superstar needs to be benched.  Lo, how the mighty have fallen.  Sic transit gloria mundi.  Mr. I've been immunized.  

Joe pardoned Hunter.  Did anyone doubt that he would?  Did anyone believe the repeated assertions that he wouldn't were anything other than a deception meant to help him get reelected?  This is not to say that the pardon was necessarily wrong.  There can't be much doubt that Hunter was persecuted by Republican forces using the persecution as a political weapon against Joe.  My point is that Joe's lying about his intention to pardon his son, is just one of so many lies Joe has uttered in his long political life.

On a related matter, Trump has announced that he will appoint Charles Kushner, Jaren's father, New York real estate developer, and disbarred attorney, as ambassador to France.  Trump pardoned Kushner pere at the end of his first term.  Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of falsifying tax returns, retaliating against a witness, and making false statements about campaign contributions to the Federal Election Commission.  What kind of a man is our new ambassador to France?  He hired a prostitute to seduce his sister's husband, who was cooperating in a federal investigation against him and then sent her a videotape of the encounter to his sister.  He was sentenced to two years in federal prison and served 14 months before being transferred to a halfway house for 6 months and then released.  Chris Christie, who prosecuted Kushner has said "“It’s one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney.”  That is our new ambassador to France.

We oughtn't to forget Bill Clinton's pardon of the international fugitive Marc Rich, whose former wife was a big donor to the DNC, the Clinton Presidential Library, and to Hilary's New York Senate campaign.  And his pardon of Susan McDougal, his former Whitewater partner, who was held in contempt of court for refusing to testify about Clinton's own role in that land deal.  Clinton had many other questionable pardons during his terms in office.  Considering his history, perhaps I can be forgiven for my doubts about his relationship with Susan McDougal.

Back to Biden.  Jonathan Chait has a piece in the current The Atlantic online titled "Biden’s Unpardonable Hypocrisy.  Excerpts:

"When President Joe Biden was running for a second term as president, he repeatedly ruled out granting a pardon to his son Hunter, who has pleaded guilty to tax fraud and lying on a form to purchase a gun. “He was very clear, very up-front, obviously very definitive,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of one of his many promises to this effect.

Biden professed a willingness to abide by the results of the justice system as a matter of principle. But in breaking his promise, and issuing a sweeping pardon of his son for any crimes he may have committed over an 11-year period, Biden has revealed his pledge to have been merely instrumental.

. . .

What the president fails to note in his self-pitying statement is that Hunter Biden for years engaged in legal but wildly inappropriate behavior by running a business based on selling the perception of access to his father. The only commodity Hunter had to offer oligarchs in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere was the belief, or hope, that he could put in a good word for them with his dad. 

 It would be tempting, but unfair, to draw a simple equation between Joe Biden’s situational ethics and that of his successor. A willingness to evade the rule of law is the foundation of Donald Trump’s entire career in business and politics, not a nepotistic exception. Still, principles become much harder to defend when their most famous defenders have compromised them flagrantly. With the pardon decision, like his stubborn insistence on running for a second term he couldn’t win, Biden chose to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of his country.

There is plenty of evidence to support the opinion is Hunter Biden is a bum, a nasty, self-centered guy.  I have written elsewhere in this journal of my hunch that Papa Joe played a role in Hunter's unfortunate character development by his favoring of son Beau over son Hunter.  I don't know whether my hunch is accurate or not and in any case, Hunter turned out to be the adult he is and has been.  Now his slate is wiped clean of any and all federal offenses he may have committed over an 11-year period, thanks to Dad, the crumb bum, no-account saved by the big hypocrite. 

"Genocide Joe" Chris van Hollan has an op-ed in this morning's WaPo " History will judge Biden harshly on Gaza."  Excerpts:

Nothing will haunt President Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy as much as his failed policies in the Middle East. His ineffective approach, coupled with Donald Trump’s election, now sets the stage for an unprecedented deterioration in our efforts to secure a two-state solution and address the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Time and again, the Netanyahu government has ignored President Biden’s calls — including those for increased humanitarian assistance for starving Palestinian civilians, stronger precautions to mitigate civilian casualties, a cessation of illegal settlement activities on the West Bank, a meaningful commitment to reach a cease-fire and the return of the hostages, and a plan for the “day after.” It is in this pattern of repeated brush-offs from Netanyahu — coupled with the continued Biden blank check of bombs and other offensive weapons — that we see the president’s failure to use our leverage to ensure that our taxpayer dollars are being used in line with our interests and values.

Now, with President-elect Trump coming back into office, the Netanyahu government will be further emboldened to achieve its messianic vision of a “Greater Israel,” denying the Palestinian people access to their land and closing the door to a two-state solution. We’ve already seen Netanyahu announce the appointment of Yechiel Leiter — an avowed proponent of West Bank annexation and a former member of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, deemed a terrorist organization by the FBI — as the next Israeli ambassador to the United States. What’s more, Smotrich recently declared that Trump’s presidency presents an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samara.”

For too long, President Biden has been unwilling to uphold our values and enforce our interests in the Middle East. And without taking a stand, the United States is fated to remain mired in this conflict for generations to come.

Is there any way to look at Biden's policies in the Middle East as anything other than a huge failure, making the United States knowingly complicit in Netanyahu's genocidal actions in Gaza, a co-conspirator?  How are we and the rest of the world, outside of Israel, to understand and forgive this?  We have blood on our hands from Vietnam and, having learned nothing from that bloodbath, we got more blood on our hands in Iraq.  Now Gaza.  Hitler had Speer and the Krupps.  Netanyahu, ben Gvir, and Smotrich had Biden and the U.S.

LTMW this morning I take note of what I'm not seeing: the birdies.  It makes me think a predator is hanging around, a kestrel or Cooper's hawk, perhaps a falcon.  By 10 a.m., the temperature is up to 22° with a wind chill of 10° and I would expect to see many visitors to our feeding station, but not this morning.   By 11:30, it's business as usual with beaucoup birdies and two white-tail across County Line Road.

Packrat Clutterbug.  I have become especially conscious of my neurotic holding on to things.  It is obvious in its most neurotic form in my clinging to containers of all sorts, from ordinary cardboard boxes of all sizes ('What a great box! You know how much this would cost st UHaul?), to the styrofoam boxes in which my refrigerated Trulicity injection pens are shipped, ("We could use this for something"), to shoeboxes, and even glass jars of all sorts that I hold on to for painting projects.  I have a collection of heavy Kirkland cognac bottles and would have more if I hadn't stopped drinking alcohol a year ago.  I also hold on to clothes neurotically.  "I will use this again if I put weight back on" and "I will use this again if I lose weight."  I hold on to medications long after I have stopped taking them for some malady.  So it's no surprise that my bedroom has become a repository for all sorts of stuff that serves no purpose other than collecting dust and taking up space in my closets (I have 2) and dressers (I have 2.).  Today I started sorting: one pile for Repairers of the Breach homeless shelter, another for St. Vincent de Paul or the House of Peace, another pile for stuff I'm going to keep (for now at least), and finally a construction-strength garbage bag for stuff to discard,  I'm embarrassed and a bit ashamed of myself for letting so much stuff accumulate because of my neuroses and neglect.  😰

Some anniversaries thoughts.  I have a fuzzy memory of learning about America's "Manifest Destiny" at St. Leo Grammar School.  It was as if all those White, EuroAmericans had no choice but to go to war with Mexico in 184 and to settle and exploit all the continent west of the Mississippi River after the middle of the 19th century and especially after the Civil War.  It was almost as if God or Fate had decreed that the superior White people must round up, segregate, and dominate the less 'developed" people occupying the Frontier.  In a way, it was true.  Given human nature, it was inevitable that the richer, stronger, better-armed Whites would take control of all the land between the two great oceans.  The concept of "Manifest Destiny" let them do it with less guilt than they might otherwise feel if it weren't for 'Manifest Destiny."  We didn't want to do it, but it was our Destiny.  A form of Flip Wilson's Geraldine protesting "The devil made me do it."

The first sustained nuclear chain reaction occurred under Amos Alonzo Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.  I remember walking past a marker on the outside of the stadium in 1958 or 1959 referring to the accomplishment when I was sent to the U of C libraries on research paper assignments by Brother Coogan.  He also sent us to the great private Newberry Library at "Bughouse Square" off Clark Street downtown.

Joe McCarthy, a graduate of MULS, another "Marquette Lawyer."

Nixon and Kissinger, a murderous psychopathic combo.

Steven Hawkings was right.

Netanyahu, a psychopathic criminal, just like his sometimes buddy, Donald Trump.

William Barr, based only on real evidence, refuted the Big Lie.  Millions still believe it.  So it goes.