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My blog is on holidays

https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=61483
Created
Mon, 25/12/2023 - 11:56
My blog is on holidays until Monday, January 8, 2024. Here are two photos from the local coast this morning. The day started with a special Xmas day Parkrun in very stormy conditions. On the way back to my house, I stopped at one of my favourite locations nearby on the South Coast of Victoria…

A little Christmas present for you

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/24/a-little-christmas-present-for-you/
Created
Mon, 25/12/2023 - 10:00
No, Trump isn’t invulnerable A rare article that discusses Donald Trump’s overall vulnerability going into 2024. We all know this, of course, but it’s good to see the media discussing this instead of focusing on him as some sort of juggernaut. He may have a full-blown cult behind him but they do not make up a majority. A significant number of Republicans are leery of him too. He’ll win the nomination easily but all that will do is give him permission to really let his freak flag fly. As Trump and his rivals enter the 2024 election, there are at least three signs of trouble for the front-running former president. Here are some of the things that can and will happen to Trump as he pursues the presidency again. Adverse court rulings The potential of legal trouble is all around Trump, and could pop up any time. This past Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court stunned the political world by ruling Trump is ineligible for public office because of the insurrection by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Important Fact Check

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/24/important-fact-check/
Created
Mon, 25/12/2023 - 08:30
If your Trumper uncle starts going on about how terrorists, convicts and insane people are flooding into the country, you might want to tell him to take a look at this. Trump’s on record saying that he’ll continue to say that immigrants from shithole countries are “poisoning the blood of America” and it’s worth taking a closer look at his specific claims. Not that there’s any truth in that statement whatsoever. But what exactly is he referring to? The NY Times did a fact check which is characteristically too euphemistic and polite but it does show that Trump’s lies are worse than ever. WHAT WAS SAID “I read an article recently in a paper … about a man who runs a mental institution in South America, and by the way they’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia, all over, but this happened to be in South America. And he was sitting, the picture was — sitting, reading a newspaper, sort of leisurely, and they were asking him, what are you doing? He goes, I was very busy all my life. I was very proud. I worked 24 hours a day. I was so busy all the time.

The Treaty of Paris Was Rigged!

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/24/the-treaty-of-paris-was-rigged/
Created
Mon, 25/12/2023 - 02:30
George III wrote love letters Heather Cox Richardson remembered Saturday as the date in 1783 when General George Washington stood before the Confederation Congress, meeting in the senate chamber of the Maryland State House, and resigned his wartime commission. “Negotiators had signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War on September 3, 1783.” The defeated British had pulled their final troops from New York City. Most likely Richardson relied on fake news accounts. Important details are missing. It was in fact “the largest audience to ever witness a general’s address, period, both in person and around the globe,” a Washington aide later insisted. But lefty historians transcribed mainstream media accounts of the speech: “The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place; I have now the honor of offering my sincere Congratulations to Congress and of presenting myself before them to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the Service of my Country,” he told the members of Congress. Fake News! Washington never resigned.

They’re Extra Special When High

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/24/theyre-extra-special-when-high/
Created
Mon, 25/12/2023 - 01:00
“Utterly bizarre” Is this a joke? Clarence Thomas: The Best and Most Incorruptible Supreme Court Justice in U.S. History This Friday encomium to Clarence Thomas, is it Steven Calabresi’s or The Volokh Conspiracy’s idea of a joke? Justice Thomas’s brilliance, and commitment to originalism shine through in all of his opinions. He is more consistent, steady, and reliable than any other justice on the Supreme Court. He almost never follows precedent, but he always follows the original public meaning of the text of the Constitution. He is the very best justice out of 116 to have ever served on the U.S. Supreme Court better even than my old boss Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Thomas not only talks about the importance of being an originalist; he practices originalism in every majority opinion, concurrence, or dissent that he writes. That’s some bad-ass weed.

Operation Paperclip (and other crimes)

https://zeldman.com/2023/12/24/operation-paperclip-and-other-crimes/
Created
Mon, 25/12/2023 - 00:40

Evil is rarely a solo project. Horrors and atrocities of the past may provide context for the horrors and atrocities happening right now in Gaza and the Congo. United States war crimes: Gosh, where to begin? Widespread rape by U.S. servicemen of Japanese, German, and French women; human experiments on non-white U.S. enlisted men “to […]

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