Trump is trying to make himself look popular. Recently he’s been caught several times waving at fictitious crowds. There was this incident, staged in a parking lot behind a stadium, and also the stunt in the video below. In addition, political operatives lie about his crowd size (as here), or [...]
Archive for June, 2024
June 5th, 2024 - 9:31 pm § in Law and Courts
Bremerton “swatter” gets 3 years in prison
Ashton Connor Garcia, 21, of Bremerton, Washington, was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, for a multistate series of “swatting” hoaxes. Dubbed a “cyberterrorist,” which he thought was funny, Garcia eventually confessed to “20 false repor[...]
Tomorrow marks D-Day, and we’ve learned nothing
June 6, 2024, marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. We’re now four generations removed from that fateful day, and only a handful of its veterans are still alive to remind us of the lessons America should learn from that war. Before World War 2, America was isolationist, and caught [...]
Does Baraboo have a race problem?
Baraboo is a picturesque town of about 12,500 people in central Wisconsin. It’s a famous circus town. It’s the birthplace of the Ringling Brothers Circus, and home of the Circus World Museum. The town is 88% white, about 6% Hispanic, and only 1.3% black, but isn’t known for racism.[...]
June 5th, 2024 - 4:15 am § in Russia
Full-length movie: Lenin: The Train (1988). In English
In his 1964 biography, The Life and Death of Lenin, Robert Payne described Lenin as a “specter” whose impact on history “haunts the world.” The Bolshevik revolution was made possible by the German government’s decision in 1917 to smuggle Lenin across Germany in a sealed[...]
Trump complains because jury didn’t smile at him
Donald Trump, who famously adores being adored, says his felony conviction is unfair because the jurors never smiled at him (story here). But that doesn’t prove the jury was biased against him. It probably just means they took jury duty seriously, which is what you want them to do. Or maybe th[...]
June 5th, 2024 - 1:40 am § in Misc.
GOP complaint against NY judge fizzles like a wet firecracker
Republicans in Congress have been attacking judges recently. For example, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY; profile here), often mentioned as a possible 2024 Trump veep pick, filed an ethics complaint (read it here) against Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump’s civil fraud trial, and his la[...]
Scam Alert: Mexican cartel preys on timeshare sellers
Technically, a “timeshare” is merely a legal structure of shared ownership (or lease rights). As a concept, it can be legitimate; it’s used to sell access to luxuries to consumers who can’t otherwise afford them. For example, you can buy timeshares (aka “fractional owne[...]
June 4th, 2024 - 7:13 pm § in Politics, Republicans
This isn’t your grandmother’s Republican Party
Political parties change over time. For example, in the 1950s, southern segregationists were Democrats and people associated the word “Republican” with small businessmen, Chambers of Commerce, and respectability. Today, the Republican Party nominates candidates like Michele Morrow, who&#[...]
June 4th, 2024 - 1:19 pm § in Russia
PHOTOGRAPHY: Soviet housing
Isn’t communism *wonderful*?? Of course, this photo isn’t representative of all Soviet housing; there also were Gulag barracks and leaders’ dachas. But under communist-style equality, where the masses are equally poor, most Russians lived in drab concrete warrens like the one below[...]