I just like this dude ...

 

Will Dowd.  On Substack, naturally.  https://substack.com/home/post/p-146854311

Things that catch my fancy

A silver lining of a disrupted sleep cycle is that I am occasionally gifted with an unexpected slice of peace and quiet during which to peruse my incoming email at a more leisurely pace and spot some little gem I might otherwise have missed.

Such is the case this morning, with a piece last night by Will Dowd on Substack regarding Snow Micromoon 2024.

Things that set me off

 
I am only a very casual follower of PoliticusUSA's The Daily, but occasionally it catches my eye, as it did tonight, with a piece entitled "Be Angry At Special Counsel Robert Hur's Smear of Joe Biden," by Sarah Jones and Jason Easley.

Their piece took exception to Special Counsel Hur's characterization of President Biden and his memory, in the Special Counsel's report, which essentially cleared the President of any wrongdoing regarding classified documents found to still be in his possession after he left the Vice Presidency in January 2017. Apparently Mr. Hur passed several judgments on President Biden and his cognitive health and well-being that he (Mr. Hur) and all other non-behavioral and cognitive health professionals have no qualification to make -- and in Mr. Hur's case, no business whatsoever to include in his Special Counsel report in any case.

Jones and Easley suggested we should all be very angry about this, and I wholeheartedly agree.

They wrote (in part);

One of the reasons why Republicans were able to get away with the Hillary Clinton email scandal in 2016 was that the left never got really angry. Sure, the scandal was dry and a bit dull, but it was also not true, and a lot of people sat back and let it happen.

Maybe they did it because Clinton is a woman, which is my hunch, or maybe they thought that it didn’t matter because Hillary Clinton would win anyway. There was a lot of that going around in 2016, too, as people just assumed that America could possibly elect a sexually assaulting pile of angry orange sherbet to the White House, but they were wrong.

For some reason tonight this set me off.  So I left a comment:

I, too, am angry about Special Counsel Hur's slur regarding President Biden's memory.  But I do not intend to give it any additional oxygen.

I am, however, also angry about your slur in comparing orange sherbet -- "a sexually assaulting pile of angry orange sherbet" -- to He Who Shall Not Be Named (aka POTUS 45). Never have I known orange sherbet to (a) engage in any non-consensual sexual activity, (b) have piles, or (c) be angry.  You should be ashamed of yourselves for impugning orange sherbet's sterling reputation.

On a more serious note, I do take serious exception to your contention "the [Clinton email scandal in 2016] was dry and a bit dull, but it was also not true."

The scandal may not have been what POTUS 45 tried to portray it as, but it was a scandal nonetheless. Hillary Clinton's use of non-governmental email accounts and a private email server for sending and receiving email regarding government business was at the very least highly inappropriate and operationally insecure, and arguably illegal. The colossal error in judgment was egregious enough, but the egocentrism and hypocrisy of violating United States Government (and her own Department of State) email regulations and thus placing herself above the law for her own "convenience" was an affront to all rule-abiding Americans. It may have seemed "dry and a bit dull" or even inconsequential to a lay audience, but to information technology email and cybersecurity professionals, it was true and anything but inconsequential.

And yes, it made me feel better.  Especially about an hour later when Jones and Easley "liked" my comment.

Looking up

I saw something today I've never seen before: five airplanes flying west to east in close, tight formation ... skywriting.  I happened to be sitting outside on a bench in the courtyard of the MarMain Arms for no particular reason other than it was a lovely morning of blue sky, sunshine, cool temperature and low humidity.  I don't know why I looked up when I did.  There was no sound from the sky.  I don't know the altitude of the planes.  The perfection of the formation and the elegant precision of the smoke bursts held me.  I couldn't see the entire message -- from where I sat, the letters were upside down and backwards, and the first and last words were obscured by the west and east wings of the building.  I heard later it was actually an advertisement for Geico.  To the best of my knowledge no geckos were harmed in the making of the aerial commercial.

Appreciating simple things

Visits to the neurologist treating my late-onset Multiple Sclerosis routinely include a short series of questions to assess my memory and baseline cognition:  what day and date is it, who is the President of the United States, who was the previous President, who was the one before that.  On television such questions can appear so obvious and simple as to invite amusement or derision.  The first time one has to stop and think about each answer, it is a sobering, humbling and somewhat embarrassing experience.  I was more or less on my game this morning and managed to answer all four questions without conducting a quick, silent, self-double-check.  (I nearly referred to POTUS 44 as Barack Hussein Osama but caught myself before the errant consonant passed my lips.  I knew who I meant, and had not needed to give it any thought, so I was happy.)

Replaying the visit in my mind this evening, I realized that, if asked, I could have recited the Presidents' full names from Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., back through Dwight David Eisenhower, who was serving his second term when I was born.  As recently as eight years ago (when my first physical symptoms of MS appeared) or even just three years ago (when my diagnosis was finally made and I began to notice the beginning of mild cognitive symptoms), I would have considered the ability to perform such recitation of trivia to be ... well ... trivial.  No more.

Once more unto the breach

This blog, like so many of mine before it, is founded with my best intentions of recording things of possible interest to others.  It is also intended to serve as a parking space for bits and pieces of information I want to retain for future reference -- items I like to think of as eclectic but which others may view as trivial.  Be that as it may, here goes.