monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Inside Liberty University’s ‘culture of fear’
How Jerry Falwell Jr. silences students and professors who reject his pro-Trump politics.

I was/am really disgusted by much of the media coverage of the Mueller hearing...

They didn't sail into a war zone

you know-nothing slacker,

it was a ground war and the Israelis knew we were there.....Since our wonderful partner didn't want us to know what was up, and since they knew we would report back to DC, they decided a better action was to kill American sailors. Yes, the country you think we would side with even if they attacked a US territory made the decision to obliterate American sailors instead of warning the US or the ships.

Those who care about the US military would not just shrug their shoulders,

but some people have never read a history book, or done any research.

Tom Nichols, a national security professor at the Naval War College, expressed related concerns in a USA Today op-ed yesterday. Reflecting on Mueller’s testimony, Nichols wrote, “The Republicans once prided themselves on being the toughest opponents of America’s enemies. They have now been reduced to inane babbling about conspiracy theories, excusing the Russians, whitewashing the hostile foreign intelligence service called WikiLeaks, and attacking a man of indisputable honor and probity – a fellow Republican, no less – all in the name of covering Trump’s tracks.”

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg isn’t here to take down her conservative colleagues.

During an event hosted by Duke Law Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Ginsburg had nothing but nice things to say about the more conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

“I can say that my two newest colleagues are very decent and very smart individuals,” Ginsburg said, according to CNN.

BillRM wrote:

I wonder how many of those Americans that always side with Israel know of the attack on a US spy ship flying a very large American flag at the time killing 34 sailors.

All of us.

BillRM wrote:

Israeli like any other nation on earth will do whatever it feel is best for itself including attacking an ally ship so always being on one side or the other in other nations conflicts is stupid in my opinion.

They thought it was an Egyptian ship. It was collateral damage. It was pretty dumb of the US Navy to sail it into a war zone like that.

BillRM wrote:

Also in my opinion there been any numbers of times we not only hurt our self but Israeli by giving them a total free hand instead of lowering the boom when it was call for.

"Lowering the boom" has never been called for. Our friendship with Israel has never harmed either us or Israel.

It once more was a large large large flag they way flying an unless the pilots of the jets and the torpedo boats crews was blind they knew damn well who they was attacking.

Our friends was willing to knowingly kill Americans sailors

at the same time we was shipping them war supplies to aid in the fighting.
Friends indeed..........

You know why the Liberty was attacked? It was because it was witnessing Israeli war crimes.

BillRM wrote:

It once more was a large large large flag they way flying an unless the pilots of the jets and the torpedo boats crews was blind they knew damn well who they was attacking.

That's just silly. There was no guarantee that the flag would be noticed, and in fact it wasn't noticed.

But even if the flag had actually been noticed, simply because a vessel is flying an American flag, that is no guarantee that it is not an Egyptian warship.

BillRM wrote:

Our friends was willing to knowingly kill Americans sailors

Wrong. Israel did not knowingly kill American sailors.

BillRM wrote:

at the same time we was shipping them war supplies to aid in the fighting.
Friends indeed..........

Yes. Israel is a good friend.

Did Al Franken’s fellow Senate Democrats judge him too quickly and harshly?

Jane Mayer has written a deeply reported piece in the current New Yorker arguing strongly (if implicitly) that the answer is yes. And the case against Franken — for sexual harassment — looks weaker once Mayer has finished examining it. Still, this isn’t an easy case to evaluate, and I encourage you to read the piece.

Here were my main takeaways:

Franken’s original accuser, Leeann Tweeden, is not very credible. She has told demonstrable falsehoods and as a conservative radio host and friend of Sean Hannity’s, she had a political motive for damaging Franken. This much is clear: Franken and Tweeden appeared in a ribald skit together, and Franken posed in an inappropriate picture referring to the skit. Many of the other things Tweeden has said about the tour, including her description of the skit, don’t seem to be true.

Franken had a pattern of touching women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable (such as kissing them on the mouth as a social greeting). Not all the allegations are clear cut. Taken together, though, they suggest that Franken behaved inappropriately.

The Senate shouldn’t have rushed to judgment. Mayer quotes seven different Democrats in the Senate at the time who now regret pushing for Franken’s resignation. And I agree: The fair response would have been a hearing — without delay — to air the allegations against him, as both he and Tweeden favored. A hearing could have helped clarify whether his behavior was merely inappropriate or closer to predatory. Either way, he may have had to resign, because serving in Congress is a privilege not a right, but the complexities of his case would have come out much sooner.

Wherever you stand on his case, I think it is worth thinking through. As the country finally begins to grapple with sexual harassment in a serious way, there are no doubt going to be other hard cases, too.

Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast: “Democrats did not only him but themselves and liberal values serious harm by forcing Franken out without him getting his due process, and this is all going to come back on them, and those values, and quite possibly the #MeToo movement, in ways we can’t really anticipate.”

“Due process exists in criminal proceedings precisely because the stakes are so high,” the lawyer Jill Filipovic writes for CNN. “We must also insist on a fair process when leveraging social and professional, but not criminal, penalties.”

Lili Loofbourow acknowledges the holes Mayer pokes in Tweeden’s story but voices skepticism of Franken’s claims of having been “oblivious” to his conduct. “A consummate politician and performer with an ax to grind has done a formidable job of coming across as a clownish but well-meaning oaf,” she writes in Slate. “The question is: Should we buy the portrayal?”

None of Franken’s other accusers “are right-wing operatives,” Amanda Marcotte says. “Most of them are clearly involved in Democratic politics and seem to have nothing to gain from lying about Franken,” she writes in Salon. “While a couple of the stories are relatively minor, several — such as the allegations of groping and the allegation of a proposition — are clear-cut examples of sexual harassment of the sort that Mayer has, in the past, put her talents toward exposing.”

Vox’s Matthew Yglesias argues that Franken did the right thing, morally and politically, by resigning, and has tarnished that decision by expressing regrets: “Insisting that he is the real victim in all this becomes the opposite of atonement and ultimately makes the public rehabilitation he clearly craves impossible.”

And Mayer discussed the article on “Fresh Air,” with Terry Gross.

You just can't help yourself can you? Suez was wrong, but it was nothing next to the shitstorm that happened in Vietnam.