Friday News and Stupid Commentary

Good afternoon from my Hunker-Bunker overlooking the Puget Sound in Seattle.  It’s been raining, it’s raining now, and will be raining for the foreseeable future.  It’s kind of our thang.  Endless rain.

It’s a Friday, and the day that is typically reserved for the most stinky  news.  The stuff that gets dumped after 11 PM EST on a Friday night after the main media has left for the weekend, leaving the weekend crew made up mostly of the new-hires and minor-leaguers to deal with.  It’s the weekend, nobody’s paying attention to the fucking news.  If you are, you probably need to get a life.

Until then, we have, 

Headlines That Caught My Eye This Morning

Item 1:  Top U.N. court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, but not to stop fighting

It’s kind of a split-sheet ruling.  On the one hand, the Court isn’t coming out and saying Israel is guilty of committing genocide, or other war crimes yet, and are refusing to dismiss the complaint.  They are not ordering Israel to stop fighting, instead telling them to be careful not to step over the line. They also want detailed assurances that Israel is complying.

Well, at least the US doesn’t have to veto it in the Security Council.

This is all nothing more than performative theater.  Israel will stop when they want to.  They’re kinda stubborn that way.  There’s no reason for anyone to get all emotional about any of this.  There isn’t anything that any of us are going to do that will change anything.  It’s like getting mad at the weather.  It doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Item 2:  The Media Is Melting Down, and Neither Billionaires Nor Journalists Can Seem to Stop It

Video Killed the Radio Star.  As new technology overtakes the old, the old becomes irrelevant.  Kindles do away with books.  Podcasts do away with radio. Social media kills newspapers and streaming services do away with cable and broadcast stations.

Do you get the newspaper delivered to your door every morning and/or evening?  Do paperboys still exist?  Did you have a paper route as a kid?  The Internet pretty much did away with that great childhood experience.  My refrigerator is connected to the internet, for fuck’s sake.  So are all my lights, my thermostats, my garage door.  My “smart home” allows me to be dumb as fuck now.  AI is just around the corner, and pretty soon we will all be vegetables.   Did you know that WordPress has an AI now?  Just imagine, waking up one morning, coming here and telling the AI to “Post something snarky”, and then hit the publish button.  I’d have to find something to do with the two hours it takes for me to fit this in with whatever else I am doing…

The point is, the media is dying because people are getting their information from other sources now.  Remember the Tower of Babel?   Why did God destroy the tower, scramble the languages, and scatter the people?  God literally created diversity.  Chaos.

Item 3:  RNC Moving to Declare Trump Its Presumptive Nominee

So it’s over already?  Everyone has decided based on the outcome of under a million votes in two small states?    I don’t accept Joe Biden as being the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.  The man could stroke out this afternoon, before Super Tuesday barnstorming campaigning has started.  The Media, for fuck’s sake.  Think of all the lost revenue for The Media!  All those panels of the chattering classes all being paid a stipend to be on-air for a ten-minute spot.  Do you wonder why you see the same people on your screen every day or so?  It’s because they get paid about $1500 for their ‘expert’ opinions on-air.  They will sit in little booths in front of a camera for hours waiting to appear on someone’s network show.  What about them?  This is their bread and butter!  This is their season to shine, and suddenly it’s over before it began?

Oh, I get it.  Trump’s going to be busy for a few months, and he can’t spend all of his campaign money actually campaigning for the nomination.  He has legal fees and court appearances to deal with. Give the guy a break.  Let’s just accept Trump as the Republican nominee, and forgo the RNC Convention too.  Come November, Trump will win.  Just go with it.

Item 4:  First death row inmate executed by nitrogen gas suffered ‘horrific’ death

Twenty-two minutes of literally suffocating.  Not sure what it’s doing to the blood stream.  Then there is the level of consciousness and pain…

They could have drowned his ass with less pain and hassle.  I mean, think about it.  They could have this large aquarium, where the witnesses could sit there and watch the guy strapped to a chair behind the glass as the aquarium fills with water.  Drowning is fairly quick and I hear, mesmerizing.  The body would already be washed and ready to dry off and released in less than five minutes.  If you really want him to not feel any pain, gas him with a bit of carbon monoxide first, to put him to sleep, then drown his ass.

The point is there is a natural way to kill someone pretty damn fast without making him writhe in pain for twenty-two minutes on his SECOND botched execution.

Item 5:  Donald Trump testifies for less than 3 minutes in defamation trial and is rebuked by judge

No competent attorney would allow their client to testify, knowing that a client was going to lie under oath, and/or become belligerent and defiant with the Court.  I mean, that’s basic trial lawyering.  You don’t want your client to break the rule(s) set down by the Court and/or the law.  It’s also VERY bad lawyering, because you lose SO many potential issues in appeals.  And that’s before mentioning the fact that it’s probably adding a zero or two to the amount Trump will be ordered to pay.  A simple majority vote in the jury in a civil trial. One more than half.

Item 6:  Trump threatens to blow up border talks to blame Biden

“We don’t want to do anything to undermine” Trump, Punchbowl News quoted McConnell as saying.

Translation:  We can’t take an issue away from Trump to run on.

Oh fer fuck’s sake.  IF Trump wins, he may never have a Congress willing or capable of getting even close to the same concessions that the Democratic majority is giving up right now, in this moment.  And if you ask me, what there is right now isn’t even close to what it’s going to take to stop the problem at the SOURCE.  We could build a 100 foot tall wall, with a moat,  and a mine field, and there would still be tens of thousands of migrants at the border figuring out a way to overcome that obstacle.  If there ‘s a will, there’s always a way.  Humans are clever.  There are always low-tech solutions to high-tech problems.   None of that stops the problem of tens of thousands of human beings swarming towards our Southern Border seeking asylum.

It’s much cheaper and more effective for us to spend some cash at the source of the problem, not wait for it to ooze its way up here.  A sort of a “mini-Marshal Plan” for Central America.  Pay them to stay, basically.  Build up their economic base from the ground up.  Make a deal with Mexico to provide temporary security services to rid the gangs that threaten a more stable government.  Make it more of a regional thing, and once things improve, we can taper off our financial support.  We’d even start reversing the flow of migrants from these regions.

The United States has always spent money on foreign aid to the “shitholes” of the world to further our American interests and “National Security”.  The carrot and stick approach, or as Teddy Roosevelt said, walk softly, but carry a big stick.  The “walk” was always the money and economic support, while the “big stick” was pretty self explanatory.  Ask Saddam Hussein.  He was our brutal dictator — until he wasn’t.  He “fucked around and found out”, as the kids would say now.  Far out.

Spend some money up front or spend a shitload on the backend.  It’s a formula that always worked until we stopped it.  Want to Make America Great Again?  Start there.

Item 7:  Trump urges states to surge National Guard to Texas as Abbott standoff with Biden accelerates

This will end well.

Item 8:  Exclusive: China presses Iran to rein in Houthi attacks in Red Sea, sources say

Iran will listen to China.  China has a major interest in keeping that shipping lane open.  Don’t think it isn’t closely related to Biden’s recent statements on Taiwan following the elections there.  Everything is connected if you know where to pull the strings.  Biden still knows where most of those strings are, apparently.  Or at least someone does.  We just found out yesterday that the US warned Iran of the ISIS attack they recently suffered.  It becomes an avenue for dialog on security matters.

What In The Hell Did I Just Watch?

Kübra – Netflix

When a suburban Turkish man receives messages that seem to predict the future, he develops a following – and powerful enemies.

Music I found on the Rott Server

Today’s selection brought to you by 

“Blindly picking from 835 different titles until I got Twenty“

If you want to see a particular playlist here, just tell me.

Memes From the Meme Box

I receive dozens of memes in my Meme Box on a daily basis from people all over the landscape.  Some are political, some topical, but most are just everyday events with a little fun inserted.  My absolute favorite are just photos that will speak those thousand words clearly.

Who remembers Bill The Cat?

This is pretty much social media in a nutshell.

They’ll get back to us…

True.

Pretty much my wife, when I am trying to sit in peace.