Last post of 2017
New Year's is my least favorite holiday what with the noise, the stray bullets, and the freezing temperatures. In parts of Iowa this year, we could see low temps for the New Year's Eve revelers not recorded in any of the last 130 years.
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America's not a police state or anything, but a man can
effectively take out a hit against another man by calling a local police department, pretending to be the other man, making physical threats against others, and the SWAT team will show up shooting to kill, no questions asked. At this time, we are not doing a particularly good job of making America great again for your old-fashioned private hit men that work on contract. Can we achieve some police reform if we promote the free market angle?
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President Trump is praising the tens of thousands of anti-government protestors taking to the streets in Iran, the largest such protests in that country in almost a decade. He announced-- in a tweet naturally-- that "the USA is watching very closely for human rights violations."
Good for him. I would have done five things differently.
1. Mention that the U.S. is also going to be more mindful of its own behavior in-- to borrow language of the day-- "swatting" down protests here at home.
2. Remind the world of the C.I.A's role in the 1953 coup of Iran's democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, that eventually led to the disastrous blowback of the Iranian Revolution in '79.
3. Assert that the U.S. will not be engaged again in "regime change"in a sovereign country despite our support for the rights of the protestors and our concern for the people of Iran.
4. Point out the retroactive wisdom of Trump's predecessor, President Obama, having lifted sanctions on Iran two years ago. For years, many Iranians believed that these sanctions were causing their economy to suffer. That has led directly to these protests as the people of Iran now recognize that the stagnation continues and that they were being lied to.
And 5. Lift the travel ban he put in place for these same protesting Iranians he now claims to support.
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In a conversation with a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Willie McCovey
defends Barry Bonds against historical revisionists already enshrined in the Hall of Fame: “Guys took things ever since baseball existed. It may not have been steroids, but guys took things like those greenies and stuff so they could play the next day. You’re telling me everybody is clean as a whistle? You played against guys who were doing the same thing he was doing, so what the heck?”
In 1889, future Hall-of-Famer "Pud" Galvin, then of the Pittsburgh Alleghanys, whose pitching repertoire was said to make hitters "look like pudding," used the Brown-Sequard mixture, containing monkey testosterone, before a game and newspapers at the time took note of it with neither criticism nor controversy.
My question, though: Does monkey testosterone clear up frostbite?
Announcing Moeller TV Festival 16
Got those post-Christmas blahs? I thought maybe. I'm pleased then to tell you that Moeller Television Festival XVI will be arriving on Saturday, January 27th. My festival partner, Aaron Moeller, will be hosting it at his casa in Cedar Rapids, and the screening of our favorite TV shows will commence at roughly noon.
This year's itinerary features at least five series we've never shown before. Can you believe there's never been a
Night Court episode? Not in 15 years. Until now. We have almost never shot for a theme, but one sort of morphed into shape for this year-- funny cops. I won't reveal those shows here, but I'll give you some hints-- Fred Gwynne, Leslie Nielsen, Rashida Jones.
As always, food and drink is provided, including the alcohol. If you want to come, RSVP me at christophermmoeller@gmail.com.
Green Party interference in democracy
In an attempt to intimidate third party activism and to distract the country from the collective failures of the Democratic and Republican parties, the Senate Intelligence Committee has called on Jill Stein to formally "cooperate" with their investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election, and to produce all applicable party documents on the topic. Several months before the election, the Green Party presidential candidate traveled to Russia on her own dime and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a national media gala there. Because Stein and the Green Party believe in open government, Stein says she will cooperate fully with the inquiry and would be "happy to do so" if also called to testify before the Senate.
It's certainly ironic though. The DNC rigs the Democratic primary in favor of Hillary Clinton, who took millions of dollars from Wall Street in exchange for speeches whose transcripts we aren't allowed to see. And the Clinton Foundation accepts millions of dollars from Russian business interests before, during, and after the time Clinton serves as head of the State Department. And her husband pockets half a million dollars for a single speech delivered in front of executives of a Russia-based bank while he also accepts a financial gift of a million dollars from the Kingdom of Qatar because it's his birthday while his wife is State Secretary and she neglects to notify the State Department of the gift until after WikiLeaks exposes it. And the former president is also identified by flight logs (and Gawker.com) as having taken 26 junkets in three years on the private plane of financier and Clinton Foundation backer Jeffrey Epstein, which reportedly trafficked underage girls to passengers to rape-- the so-called "Lolita Express." And it's Jill Stein that we may be about to see testifying before Congress.
How to Win Elections and Influence Hypocrites
The Democrats have once again set themselves up for electoral defeat. It's easy enough to follow their train of thought. Sacrifice John Conyers in the House and Al Franken in the Senate, both at the feet of sexual impropriety, and you're painting a contrast for the voters that your party cares about the issues of sexual harassment and assault as the Republicans drown under the weight of President Trump and Judge Roy Moore. But here's what you've actually done if you're the Democrats. You've rushed to action in a publicly-recognized panic and skipped the part where Congress investigates the claims of the accusers and the ethics of the accused. A majority of Franken's accusers haven't even been publicly named and now presumably won't be.
You think you've rid yourself of a pair of predators, and everybody will appreciate that you took the action that Republicans refuse to take, but mark my words, there will be more Democrats accused in the coming weeks and months because the Republicans, who never need to be encouraged to fight dirty, know now that there will be no congressional investigations into the claims. Moore will be elected to the U.S. Senate by Alabamans, and that result will have no negative impact whatsoever on the GOP nationally because swing voters, independents, and non-partisans, which is the overwhelming majority of us, vote for candidates, not parties. Republicans won't shun other Republicans just because Roy Moore dates high school sophomores, just as Democrats won't abandon other Democrats because Franken grabs women's butts. Any good will the party thinks it's built up on the issue of sexual assault by kicking Conyers and Franken to the curb will be erased anyway when the Democrats' delegates, superdelegates, and extra special superdelegates arrive at their convention in the summer of 2020 and enjoy former president Bill Clinton addressing a national television audience in prime-time.
Multiple women accused Trump of sexual assault late in the game in 2016. Then he faced the voters and won anyway. Moore will soon face the voters and he will win as well. Franken and Conyers will not face the voters at all. They were dismissed by their party-- even though Conyers, as a member of the House of Representatives, was scheduled to be on the ballot again, in one of our many one-party districts, within 12 months. In fact, my gut tells me the party hacks are actually dismissing Conyers because his attempt at re-election next year could expose one of their most popular, but unsubstantiated claims-- that they hold their candidates to accountability while Republicans (see: Judge Moore) do not. It's not at all unfeasible that Conyers would have been re-elected next year by his district and then it wouldn't be as easy as it is right now to cast stones at the state of Alabama.
Am I the only person that believes it's a massively troubling issue, one that requires the utmost scrutiny,
any time party officials attempt to undo what has been done by the people? What do the people of Minnesota, and of Michigan's 13th district, have to say about it? Why are they being deprived of their chance to speak on this issue at the ballot box? And if the Democrats don't even support due process for one of their own, what does it say about their support for due process for the rest of us?
