Today's Pix

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Anniversary

Two years ago yesterday, these assholes came to my hometown. They beat one of my neighbors bloody, killed one other named Heather Heyer, and injured dozens more.

There is no forgiving and no forgetting.

Raw Story:

It’s been two years since neo-Nazis marched with Tiki torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a new report from the Anti-Defamation League has found that many of the marchers have not fared well since that fateful weekend in August 2017.

The ADL this week published a “Where Are They Now?” guide to the 2017 Charlottesville demonstrators and found that a good deal of them suffered from various repercussions for their actions, including “imprisonment, job loss, de-platforming — or banning users who violate their terms of service — on social media platforms, travel bans and rejection by friends and family.”

Among those who saw their lives ruined by their participation in the rally are three former active-duty Marines who were discharged by the Marine Corps after they were discovered marching in Charlottesville.

The report also found that more than a dozen “Unite the Right” marchers have since been imprisoned for various crimes, most notable Ohio resident James Alex Fields, Jr., who was convicted of murdering counter-protester Heather Heyer after he plowed his car into a group of people.

But he’s far from the only neo-Nazi in jail, the ADL reports.

“Also sentenced to substantial time in prison: three of four men found guilty of ‘malicious wounding’ for their roles in the parking deck assault of an African American man during Unite the Right,” the ADL says. “Daniel Patrick Borden of Ohio was sentenced to three years and 10 months, Jacob Scott Goodwin of Arkansas received an eight-year sentence, and Alex Michael Ramos of Georgia received six years. A fourth man, Tyler Watkins Davis, is scheduled for sentencing later this month.”

And even Unite the Right organizers who are not in legal jeopardy have found themselves getting hounded by civil lawsuits at both the state and local level accusing them of conspiring to promote violence.

Hang 'Em All

I don't care when or where you worked in government, and I don't care who was in the oval office. I care about trying to get back to a time when there was a lot less shitty dishonorable behavior in government.

And yes, I know there's never been a time when there weren't assholes trying to grease the skids for someone in exchange for a nice fat paycheck. But there was in fact a time when more people than not were capable of maintaining some semblance of honor, and having a little respect for the public part of public service.

If this Craig guy was peddling influence to Ukranians, then there was somebody in the federal government who was willing to have his influence peddled for him - basically by a broker of sorts - like Mr Craig.

There's no such thing as a one-sided transaction.

WaPo:

Former Obama White House counsel Gregory B. Craig faces trial Monday for allegedly lying to the Justice Department in a prosecution that has shaken up the capital’s billion-dollar foreign influence industry.

In charging Craig — one of Washington’s most prominent attorneys, in connection with his work for the Ukraine government at a leading law firm — the Justice Department signaled a new era for the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a once nearly dormant law that since 2017 has been invoked in more than 20 federal prosecutions aimed at combating foreign interference in U.S. politics.

Craig has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Washington. The charge against him stems from alleged public relations work, rather than lobbying, while with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He is accused not of failing to register as a foreign agent under the law, but with lying and withholding information from Justice officials seeking to determine whether he was required to register.

Think A Little

Let's say you live in a place where there're mass-casualty/mass-fatality shootings on a regular basis. Then let's say if you get shot but survive, you're prob'ly going to be bankrupted by the medical bills while your esteemed elected representatives get paid by the gun manufacturers and the health insurance industry not to do jack shit about any of it.

Does that mean you're living in a shit-hole country?

I'm Out For A Few Days

Hangin' with my boys on a Colorado fishin' trip.

I'll try to put up few tidbits from time to time. 

Above Georgetown

Guanella Pass

Leaving our palatial rented estate, heading out for Montgomery Reservoir and the the hike up Wheeler Lake and beyond.

Today's Today

August 9, 1945 - three days after dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the US drops another one on Nagasaki Japan.

A Japanese kid is pictured here with his dead brother strapped to his back, waiting at the crematorium.

Nobody knows for sure, but estimates on the death toll for these two "attacks"(*) are between 129,000 and 226,000 - including 12 American POWs.

(*): These "attacks" were later informally acknowledged by Curtis Lemay (US Bomber Command - Asia) as War Crimes.

This country carries a lot of baggage.

Don't Do This

Rabbit Run

There's always that one internet moment that kinda saves everything.

I love you, intertubes - today.

Today's Tweet

So, I was going to wait for a while before I posted my proposal for solving America's gun problem, cuz it just seemed like I should.

But then this:

OK Twitter, help us out here. Can anyone remember anything like this when Obama was President? I mean really. This is just bizarre. Who does this? pic.twitter.com/HlaMoAq7p6

— Mo Latno Bill Phelan (@MoBill) August 7, 2019

So here it is:

Oh, Those Crazy Old Greeks

The ship of fools is an allegory, originating from Book VI of Plato's Republic, about a ship with a dysfunctional crew:

Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better.

The sailors are quarreling with one another about the steering––every one is of the opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary.

They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them.

Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not––the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling.

Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?

The past would be prologue if it was indeed the past.