Sunday, February 08, 2026

Innocent Until Proven Guilty, And Even Then It’s A Matter Of Opinion

In Norway, one prominent diplomat has already been suspended and a police investigation has been opened into a former prime minister. In the U.K., the former ambassador to the U.S. has been fired; on Tuesday, he resigned from the House of Lords. Police are reviewing reports he shared market-sensitive information with Epstein.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, was stripped of his royal titles and residence. A charity founded by his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, will shut down indefinitely following the release of emails where she called Epstein a “legend” and “the brother I have always wished for.”
In the U.S., politics means you never have to say you’re sorry:
In the U.K., former ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson — who has said he was wrong to believe Epstein following his conviction and to continue his association with him afterwards — has emerged as a millstone around British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s neck. While Starmer never actually met Epstein, some are calling for his resignation over his appointment of Mandelson. The prime minister publicly apologized Thursday to Epstein’s victims.

“I am sorry,” Starmer said. “Sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you, sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him and sorry that even now you’re forced to watch this story unfold in public once again.”
Sadly, this pretty much sums up the American attitude towards political scandal. In a national scale, anyway.
“What matters is not release of some subset of the Epstein files, but rather the prosecution of those who committed heinous crimes with Epstein,” Musk wrote on X. “When there is at least one arrest, some justice will have been done. If not, this is all performative. Nothing but a distraction.”
This is where I point out Trump is a convicted felon; but that didn’t hurt him at the ballot box in 2024.

And LBJ was accused of stuffing ballot boxes with votes by dead people in Texas. JFK learned from his father to fuck anything in a skirt, marriage vows be damned. Bill Clinton followed Kennedy’s lead. Gingrich discarded wives like Kleenex. GHWBudh pardoned his way out of Iran/Contra and nobody seems to even remember it. Cheney and Rumsfeld ran a master class on how to use the government to punish your enemies, a lesson Bill Barr learned. What fallout did anyone in W.’s administration earn? Some Congresscritters fell over scandals, some did not. But we have to fairly admit the way was paved for Presidents before Trump decided to run. And as I say, I knew a lot of adults in the ‘ 70’s who thought Watergate was a put up job. Scandal has always been a partisan matter than not on this side of the Pond.
“We as Americans need to be looking at ourselves in the mirror. Why are we not having that same reaction [as Europe]?” said Rufus Gifford, a former Obama-appointed ambassador to Denmark. “Without a doubt how Trump has acted has filtered down to broader society. But I think the question that we have to ask is whether or not this existed before Trump, and Trump is just a symptom of that larger problem.”
The answer is: “Yes.” And the follow-up question is: “Where the fuck is that mirror?”

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You can lead a horse to a mirror, but you can’t control what he sees in it.
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