Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Ending the Year as It Began


Now that he's dead, we know he was "crazy" and shouldn't have had a gun, right?

We knew that before:

The suspect who killed two at a Texas church on Sunday reportedly received help from the church before the attack, but would get angry when officials refused to give him cash. Minister Britt Farmer told The Christian Chronicle that he recognized the suspect, 43-year-old Keith Thomas Kinnunen, after seeing a photo of him wearing a disguise that included a fake beard, a wig, a long coat, and hat. According to Farmer, the congregation helped Kinnunen out with food on “several occasions.” “He gets mad when we won’t give him cash. He’s been here on multiple occasions,” Farmer said. The Associated Press reports that Kinnunen had an extensive criminal record that should have prevented him from legally buying a shotgun, which he used to kill two worshippers at West Freeway Church of Christ. A 71-year-old deacon of security at the church shot Kinnunen in the head during the incident, killing him. Authorities say Kinnunen’s motive is still under investigation, and they declined to say how he was able to obtain the firearm.

A distinctly illegal firearm, I'd warrant:
The gunman, identified by authorities as Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43, slipped into the Sunday service wearing a long black wig, a fake beard and a bulky jacket, witnesses said.

During the Lord’s Supper, Kinnunen pulled out a modified, 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip, Farmer told The Christian Chronicle.
Maybe because guns in this country are as common as grass and as easy to obtain as a pack of gum?


So which is the good thing?  That he's dead?  Or that he only killed 2 people?
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Shit?



Or go blind?
Let me reiterate:  questions like this go to Chief Justice John Roberts first.

While a majority of the Senate could vote to overturn the Chief Justice’s ruling, any evidentiary/privilege ruling by him would have a presumption that it was correct. As a political matter, it would be difficult for many Republican senators to vote to overturn an evidentiary ruling by the Chief that is based on the law. (That is different than a motion to dismiss because the evidence is insufficient, where it is the senators’ role to evaluate the weight of the evidence.) Only a handful of Republican senators would have to vote to uphold the Chief Justice’s ruling for a majority to sustain the ruling that testimony or documents should be compelled.
The difference with a Motion to Dismiss is that it has to be made AFTER the evidence is presented, not before.  So the case can't be "disbursed without the necessity of a trial" (He means dismissed.  A good lawyer Blakeman is not.)  If the evidence is insufficient, it has to be presented first in order to be determined to be insufficient.  That leads us back to the other role Roberts will play as Presiding Officer.

The rules provide that the House managers can issue subpoenas to anyone, presumably including Bolton and Mulvaney. A senator could object that the testimony is irrelevant or covered by privilege. Rule VII provides that a ruling on such questions will usually be made by the Presiding Officer – the Chief Justice, unless he refers the decision to the full Senate. The Chief Justice would likely decide, in the first instance, claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege. He would also likely decide questions such as the crime/fraud exception and the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule, as well as questions of waiver of any privilege. Finally, he would rule on subpoenas for the production of documents. 
Trump is going to get his trial whether he wants it or not.

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Question: Answer


(How else is he going to end the year?)
(Still seven days until January 6 [Senate returns for business]; and there's a good argument circulating for Pelosi waiting until February 5 to deliver the articles to the Senate.  Which would be after Trump's scheduled SOTU.  Besides, there's the NYT story Trump is completely ignoring, even though he allegedly reads the NYT religiously.)
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New Year's Eve 2019



Time is told by death, who doubts it?  But time is always halved--for all we know, it is halved--by the eye-blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present.  Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting them, is eternal.  The time of the past is there, somewhat, but only somewhat, to be remembered and examined.  We believe that the future is there too, for it keeps arriving, though we know nothing about it.  But try to stop the present for your patient scrutiny, or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer.  It exists, so far as I can tell, only as a leak in time, through which, if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us and makes its claim.  And here I am, an old man, traveling as a child among the dead.

We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births.  For time is told also by life.  As some depart, others come.  The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome.  I, who once had grandparents and parents, now have children and grandchildren.  Like the flowing river that is yet always present, time that is always going is always coming.  And time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, which is always present.  Time, then, is told by love's losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost.  It is folded and enfolded and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which the dead are alive and the unborn welcomed into the womb.  The great question for the old and the dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful enough for love received and given, however much.  No one who has gratitude is the onliest one.  Let us pray to be grateful to the last.


--Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett:  Early Travels
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Offered Without Further Comment



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Those People Died

 
...to prove more people should carry guns!
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2019 Goes Out With A Whimper








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I'm old enough to remember

...when this kind of shooting was unthinkable, and we credited the laws with making it so. Apparently the only solution is to arm still more Americans
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Monday, December 30, 2019

Surely the base liked it!

He seems nice.
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And still he's leading in the polls

Coders make as much as miners, right?

That's a helluva lot if malarkey.
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That would be...

...this guy:
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Although this is what everyone is talking about



MSNBC wants to be sure we don't neglect the horse race.
Meanwhile, a reminder that January 6 is still 7 days away. And Nancy Pelosi is better at this than anyone in D.C.
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December 30


The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart’s blood stop
Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?

--W.B. Yeats
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Sunday, December 29, 2019

GOP's Fear of Its Base

...could be a problem. And this could be true as well:
The full thread there is worth reading.
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Capitalism is Great!


Gee, whatever could make the kids think Communism was worth a try?
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Enemies List



I understand he is appealing to his"base," and using that base to scare Republicans. (The weird concern for the homeless is especially bizarre.) But that's not going to save him or incumbent Republicans in 2020.
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The Problem Is....

...commentary like this is rather blithely ignorant that the people scaring them now, have been around since 1776. And have been on somebody's radar screen (the FBI and the KKK; the SPLC) for a long time.

And when these fringe groups fade from public notice again after Trump loses in 2020, so will commentary like this, which so boldly predicts a future that is not coming. They will go back to pronouncing how the earth is flat and trade is the salvation of civilization, and racism is no more.

We have a name for "fair weather patriots." We need one for pundits who think the world is only the part they live in or read about in the NYT.

Besides, I'm old enough to remember that, before he was canonized in death as a secular American saint, Dr. King was a dangerous "agitator" deserving of the disdain of all who represented a "decline in our public discourse, politics, and civics." One has only to read his famous letter from Birmingham jail to see he was taken that way in his lifetime. From a jail cell, an accused criminal, he writes to justify his "direct action" that so many whites saw as uncivil and even damaging to the national fabric. There was just as much hand-wringing then, fearful of a future which is now our past.
Anti-semitism is on the rise, and we are right to oppose it. We would be wrong to fear it meant we were one step away from Nazi Germany, however. Fear will paralyze us. Opposition to evil that is here now, is what will move us to action
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It's Cute He Thinks

...she's paying attention to this.

Just ask her out already!
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December 29



Because you are God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with heartfelt mercy, with kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another; forgive whatever grievances you have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.  Over all these virtues put on love, which binds the rest together and makes them perfect.  Christ's peace must reign in your hearts, since s members of the one body you have been called to that peace.  Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.  Let the word of Christ, rich as it is, dwell in you, in wisdom made perfect, instruct and admonish one another.  Sing gratefully to God from your heart, in psalms, hymns, and inspired songs.  Whatever you do, whether in speech or in action, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Give thanks to God the Father through him.

--Colossians 3:12-1
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Saturday, December 28, 2019

What is the difference between acting...

...and being?
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