***Dave | ***Dave Does the Blog

Catering to the torches and pitchforks encourages more torches and pitchforks

And weakening the rule of law out of fear doesn’t make anyone any safer

Timothy Snyder has a good piece here on the dangers involved in the “commentariat” pushing SCOTUS to a “pitchfork” ruling on Colorado ‘s pushing Trump off the ballot. By saying Colorado Supreme Court should be overruled because its ruling is “divisive” or will “inflame” the January 6th folk who were carrying around virtual torches and pitchforks, the politicos and pundits on both sides of the aisle would fundamentally weaken the rule of law … and simply encourage the folk waving pitchforks to wave them more, knowing they will get their way.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-pitchfork-ruling

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The Pro-Active Pardon

Haley and DeSantis belittle the rule of law by preemptively declaring they would pardon Trump were they elected President

Is it must me, or is there something deeply unserious about both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis pledging they would, of course, pardon Trump of any federal convictions. Regardless of any further evidence. Regardless of what judges and/or juries decide.

Sure, DeSantis insists it’s just akin of Ford pardoning Nixon to help “re-unite a divided country.” Except, pardoning Trump wouldn’t reunite anything. For Trump opponents it would be seen as complete and utter politics. For Trump, and his mob, it would be taken as an exoneration. And Trump would be stirring up the next insurrection, unabashed and emboldened.

Ford could barely get away with pardoning Nixon — and, in fact, it sank his chances of a second term — because he was respected and liked going into the job, and wasn’t seen as being part of Nixon’s corrupt coterie. He was deeply criticized for poor judgment in pardoning Nixon, but it wasn’t seen as as partisan corruption. That would hardly apply to either Haley or DeSantis doing the same thing for Trump — especially, in the circumstances they describe, he would already be convicted, something Nixon never was.

Do I really think that Haley and DeSantis think Trump shouldn’t be punished for what he did, or that they are seeking some sort of cleansing national unity? Of course not. At the most obvious, they are hoping to garner presidential votes by appealing to the Trumpist mob. More likely, they simply want to tee themselves up as being part of the MAGA movement that, however the election in November turns out, will propel them to future power.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/31/desantis-haley-pledge-pardon-trump-if-hes-convicted/

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kim Jong Un

“People aren’t paying attention to me? How rude! Better make some new threats!

Sounds like Kim is feeling a bit neglected. Like his favorite former US President, he hates it when people aren’t paying him attention.

To be fair, he doesn’t sound much different from … Ron DeSantis?

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Lindsey folds. Again.

Lindsey Graham deserves to either be remembered forever, or forgotten forever.

As Lindsey Graham takes the last, squishy bits of spine he had left, carefully places it in Ziplok bag, and leaves it in the back of Trump ‘s fridge, somewhere between 2003 KFC leftovers and a container of Putin’s favorite borscht.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4383307-graham-backtracks-on-earlier-jan-6-criticism-of-trump-it-depends-on-what-the-conduct-is/

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TV Review: Doctor Who Holiday Special 2023

A nice, neat, fun, high-budget intro to the new Doctor

Finally watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special, Holiday Special, or Special No. 4 (depending on which advert you see for it).

I think the Fifteenth Doctor is going to be a lot of fun, full of compassion and whimsy. Not gotten a solid coherent read off of Ruby yet, but we’ll see.

The plot it self was moderately intricate, left some bits dangling for RTD to come back to, and, if a bit fantasy-heavy … well, Doctor Who has always been fantasy with most the numbers filed off.

Good stuff.

Trump just likes being mean to people

Trump’s rule: If you don’t have something nice to say about someone, say it even louder.

I find it difficult to believe that Trump has particular feelings, one way or the other, over care and treatment of transgender kids, except that it makes a convenient cudgel for him to rile up the troops.

“DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left. No wonder he gets loudly booed in Ohio every time I introduce him at Rallies, but I won’t be introducing him any more. I’m finished with this ‘stiff.’ What was he thinking.”

I mean, DeWine is about as reliably Right as you can find. But after taking the time to look at what the Ohio lege’s gender-affirming health care ban would do, he took a principled stand and said, “No, this is going to hurt people.”

Which just teed him up for Trump’s criticism because, hey, hurting people is what Donald is all about.

https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4382804-trump-hits-ohio-governor-over-veto-on-proposed-gender-affirming-health-care-ban/

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Nikki Haley tries to dance around Slavery and the Civil War

Because the only acceptable answer in the GOP is that the Civil War was about Big Government!

It makes little difference what Nikki Haley actually believes. She simply cannot be trusted. She has shown herself adept at saying things that sound relatively sane one sentence, and then making appeals to the MAGA Right with the next.

She is either a fanatic herself, or (my belief) disingenuously willing to glibly court the fanatics.

And she is still arguably the least-worst of the folk at-all-possibly-getting-the-GOP-nomination-for-President .

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/27/haley-slavery-cause-of-civil-war-00133254

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UPDATE:

Aaaand … Nikki Haley backtracks, admits that, yeah, slavery was the cause of the Civil War … which will doubtless draw more criticism from both sides.

She then deflects and says the person who asked the original question was a “Democratic plant” … which is altogether possible, but doesn’t address her inability to give the answer she knows is true in the first place.

So Haley is willing to tell the truth about the Civil War when forced to, but not when she isn’t. Got it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/12/28/nikki-haley-backtracks-on-civil-war-comments-says-of-course-slavery-was-the-cause/?sh=41062d6c622a

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Boebert bails on her Congressional District

If you can win in your own district … move to another!

So, scared (and rightfully so) that she will lose next year if she stays in her own CO-3 district, given how much folk have grown to dislike her shenanigans there, Lauren Boebert is carpet-bagging over to CO-4, where old school reactionary Ken Buck is retiring from.

That makes the Dem running again in CO-3 less likely to win that solid-red district… but I doubt the CO-4 GOP are going to be any more tolerant of Boebert’s bad behavior.

https://www.9news.com/article/news/politics/lauren-boebert-colorado-fourth-district/73-2a351d4e-54df-4d84-8c08-af71b62467ef

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Florida’s school book bans go beyond sex, gender, and race

Florida’s race to get rid of Evil Sex Books has swept up a number of Jewish authors

But, hey, let’s talk about how “liberals” are anti-Semitic.

“Florida district pulls many Jewish and Holocaust books from classroom libraries”

A global bestseller by a Jewish Holocaust victim; a novel by a beloved and politically conservative Jewish American writer; a memoir of growing up mixed-race and Jewish; and a contemporary novel about a high-achieving Jewish family are among the nearly 700 books a Florida school district removed from classroom libraries this year in fear of violating state laws on sexual content in schools.
The purge of books from Orange County Public Schools, in Orlando, over the course of the past semester is the latest consequence of a conservative movement across the country — and strongest in Florida — to rid public and school libraries of materials deemed offensive. While the vast majority of such challenged and removed books involve race, gender and sexuality, several Jewish books have previously been caught in the dragnet.
The Orange County case is unusual for the sheer volume of books removed — 699 including some duplicates, according to documents the district provided — and for the unusually large number of books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity included among them.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/florida-district-pulls-many-jewish-and-holocaust-books-from-classroom-libraries/

“Presidential Immunity for me but not for thee”

Trump says that if he doesn’t get full immunity, he’ll prosecute Biden without it. “Merry Christmas”

Short Trump: “Presidents get total immunity. But only me. Biden I will totally prosecute for shit.”

What an asshole.

“Trump rails against special counsel Jack Smith in Christmas Eve posts”

The former president said Biden would be prosecuted without presidential immunity for the way he handled the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and his handling of the U.S. southern border.
Trump said in another post that Smith is one of Biden’s “misfits and thugs” who are going after him “at levels of persecution never seen before in our country.”
“It’s called election interference. Merry Christmas!” Trump said.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4376510-trump-rails-against-special-counsel-jack-smith-in-christmas-eve-posts/

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So here's something Donald Trump HASN'T tweeted about

I would wager a large sum of money that if someone threw an explosive into the pastor's office of a Baptist church in Minnesota while worshipers were elsewhere in the building, the President of the United States would be all over Twitter speculating about anti-Christian violence and who might be responsible and why that fits in with his immigration narrative and all that.

But since it was just a mosque, it's apparently not important enough to tweet about.

I mean, heck, even Fox News has mentioned it [1]. Isn't that what usually gets Trump tweeting?

Not that I have any doubt that the FBI, et al., aren't participating fully in the investigation, but the President's silence speaks volumes.

——

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=minnesota+mosque

Trump still has not condemned the Minnesota mosque bombing. Muslim leaders are waiting.
On Saturday, a makeshift bomb detonated inside the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn. Nobody was injured, but the community remains unsettled.

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RIP, Glen Campbell

"Well, it's knowin' that your door is always open
And your path is free to walk …"
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Glen Campbell!

Yeah, we watched Campbell's music show when I was a kid, and I enjoyed his "Wichita Lineman" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix". He wasn't the greatest musical talent or original creator of all time, but he had a pleasant voice and friendly personality, and I enjoyed his work.

Thank you, sir, for all the hours of musical entertainment.

Glen Campbell, ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ Singer, Dead at 81
Glen Campbell, the country-pop singer-guitarist known for songs like “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Wichita Lineman,” has died at 81.

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The Horrifying, Terrifying, Completely Inappropriate Power of … ART!

Apparently some folk are up in arms over a painting made by a student for the Congressional Art Competition. It came in second for a congressman's distrcit, so instead of hanging in the Capitol in DC, it's hanging in the representative's office.

But the idea of the Statue of Liberty as a woman wearing a hijab is way too offensive or controversial for some folk, who interpret it as "All Syrian Refugees Are Welcome" (I kid you not), or claim with crocodile tears that it violates the separation of Church and State for a congressional representative to have it hanging on his wall.

Honestly? That it it has engendered such dire response tells me it's exactly the sort of artwork we need in these times.

A painting of Lady Liberty in hijab hangs in congressman’s office. Despite protests, he says it’ll stay.
The painting was created by a California high school student for the Congressional Art Competition.

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Could I immigrate to the United States under the RAISE Act?

Based on the proposed Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act, I don't quite sufficiently score as being a worthwhile future citizen of the US — largely because I'm older, I'm not planning on multi-million dollar investments, I don't have a Nobel Prize or Olympic Medal, and my prospective job is not incredibly lucrative.

http://time.com/4887574/trump-raise-act-immigration/

On the bright side, I speak English fluently, so I will be able to write many pleading letters to the immigration authorities.

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RIP, Haruo Nakajima

He played ~~Gojira~~ Godzilla in 12 films in the 1950s-70s, including the monster's premiere film. He was also in The Seven Samurai (as a bandit) and The Hidden Fortress.

Thanks, sir, for all the hours of entertainment.

Rest in Peace: Haruo Nakajima, the Original Godzilla Actor, Passes Away – Dread Central
Rest in Peace: Haruo Nakajima, the Original Godzilla Actor, Passes Away

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Password guidelines get a major upgrade

The current advice? Stringing words together to make something very long is a lot easier to remember — and harder to crack, than Ft5!r@lwv3. And because it's easier to remember, you won't take the same shortcuts in making it, or updating it.

The new guidelines also do away with the change-ever-90-days rule, though that on to my mind has more rationale. People still give away passwords to each other ("Hey, just sign onto my account; it has all the right access"), which means that when someone leaves the company, they theoretically leave with all those passwords. And while 99.9% of folk will never abuse that …

The challenge now is that, even with the change in NIST standards, it will take another several years for websites to change their rules. By which time, the changing computing landscape will lead to some other set of advice.

The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d! – WSJ
Bill Burr’s 2003 report recommended using numbers, obscure characters and capital letters and updating regularly. As his advice is overturned, he feels regretful.

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From the Earth to the Moon: a Lunar Origin Story

I guess it's a sign I'm old. When I was a wee tot, growing up and obsessed with planetary science (as one is), everyone "knew' that the Moon (Luna) formed the same way other Solar System moons formed, bits of the planetary accretion disks left over and drawing together into a body. Only crazy people thought that it might have been caused by a collision [1].

Then moon rocks brought back from the 1960s NASA landings on the Moon suddenly made the collision theory seem much more likely — so much so that it's been the accepted theory for nearly forty years, no matter what explanation I grew up with.

Well, okay, I can go along with changing theories.

Except … now new studies of those rocks are beginning to cause problems with that theory, and spawn new ones.

Which, of course, is the way science is supposed to go. It's just a bit daunting when such big ticket things get reworked multiple times in one's lifetime.

——

[1] Or even a "Crack in the World"! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGXVBW82GnY]

The Moon’s Origin Story Is in Crisis – The Atlantic
After decades of what seemed to be settled science, there’s new, conflicting evidence for how the moon might have formed.

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Trapped in Paradise

Having my own Hawaiian Flight Nightmare story, I have to say this one trumps that one handily.

And while I can easily believe that, being in Hawaii, bringing in replacement equipment was a non-trivial effort, all the rest of this represented a massive process failure on United's part, from not being able to adequately accommodate people, to being unwilling to book them on alternative airlines or even cancel the freaking flight so that people could be refunded and book elsewhere.

If the senior manager on site for United's services at the Maui airport isn't canned for this, United deserves all the bad press they get.

A Day Of Delays Strands United Passengers At Hawaii Airport For Nearly 24 Hours
It’s one thing to be trapped in paradise, it’s another to be trapped in paradise’s airport. Yet, that’s what some United Airlines passengers say happened over the weekend when the…

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Now CBS is … embracing fan-made Star Trek films?

This is … not expected. I'm immediately deeply suspicious, but it might also simply be both saner heads prevailing and coming up with a way to straddle the line between fan creativity and intellectual property protection.

Post-Axanar, CBS unveils first official fan filmmaking initiative in Trek history
Star Trek Film Academy grants fan filmmakers access to training, New Voyages facilities.

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Cosplay … with musical accompaniment

This could easily become a huge mess if everyone did it, but I love the idea of this gal playing appropriate character themes around cosplayers at cons.

Melodica Player Follows Random Cosplayers and Plays Their Characters’ Themes | Nerdist
It’s not unusual to see a large number of cosplayers at conventions. The percentage of attendees wearing costumes only seems to increase each con season. One con-goer at July’s Indy PopCon treated those in disguise to a surprise by using her melodica, a free-reed and portable instrument kind of like a harmonica, to play bits of themes inspired by the characters the cosplayers were dressed as. YouTuber Lily Pichu said she was “trolling cosplayers”…

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