Col. Gail Halvorsen (profiled here), the pilot who famously dropped candy to children during the Berlin Airlift, died on Wednesday, February 16, 2022, at age 101 (read story here). “Halvorsen was beloved and venerated in Berlin,” the U.K. tabloid Daily Mail said. “Halvorsen’s[...]
Archive for February, 2022
February 20th, 2022 - 12:37 am § in Politics
B.S. Alert: Ottawa police horse didn’t trample elderly woman
In the 1999 cult film “Fight Club,” a character named Robert Paulson was shot by police (details here). On Jan. 6, 2021, a rumor circulated on Twitter that a woman named Roberta Paulsen had been shot at the U.S. Capitol. While the incident was true (and widely covered by media), the Capi[...]
Are Democrats safe in GOP country?
“The Democratic Party’s brand is so toxic in some parts of rural America that liberals are removing bumper stickers and refusing to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly,” blares an Associated Press headline (see story here). Seems backwards to me. If you’re not safe i[...]
February 19th, 2022 - 1:22 am § in Misc.
Vincent van Woof (video)
Return to The-Ave.US Home Page[...]
February 18th, 2022 - 11:21 pm § in Misc.
Windy landings (video)
British airports were quite a spectator show on Friday, February 18, 2022, as gusty winds raked the British Isles and pilots showed off their stuff. Read story here. Return to The-Ave.US Home Page[...]
February 18th, 2022 - 8:14 pm § in Health
Do Canada’s stricter Covid-19 rules make a difference?
“Canada’s provinces have generally employed strict Covid-19 measures such as school mask mandates and vaccine passports … [that] have enjoyed broad public support in doing so; even the strictest restrictions are less controversial in Canada than in the US,” Vox says (here). ̶[...]
February 18th, 2022 - 8:06 pm § in Donald Trump, Politics
How Trump incites violence and gets away with it
Last week, Trump issued the following statement: “The latest pleading from Special Counsel Robert Durham provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to[...]
February 18th, 2022 - 2:09 pm § in Law and Courts
Two years for a life; is it enough?
“Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who mistakenly drew a gun instead of a Taser and fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop, was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison,” and she’ll have to serve 16 months behind bars, then 8 months of supervised release, [...]
Conservative blogger dies; will anyone miss him?
Jim Hagedorn (bio here), 59, a Republican functionary from Minnesota who was finally elected to Congress in 2018 after several previous failed attempts, died of either liver cancer or Covid-19 (he had both) on Thursday, February 17, 2022 (see story here). Hagedorn was a loyal Trumper; he voted again[...]
Predicting wars is hard
The First World War, it is often said, was a war that no one wanted but just happened, unforeseeably triggered by an assassination of an unimportant royal in the periphery of Europe. (One of the best books on this subject is Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August.”) Is it possible t[...]