Pettiness Redefined

Politics gets sillier all the time. Elizabeth Warren is now declaring victory over Donald Trump because she got a DNA test which suggests she has a maximum of 1/64 American Indian blood. She believes this proves she’s an Indian. She is demanding Trump give a million dollars to the charity of her choice.

Is this really happening?

A long time ago, Trump said he wanted to give Warren a DNA test and have it processed. He said he would donate a million dollars to the charity of her choice if it proved she was an Indian.

Here are the problems with Warren’s claim to the money. Trump said he would give her a DNA test kit if she showed up for a 2020 presidential debate, and he wanted to provide a kit. He also said he would pay “if it show’s you’re an Indian.”

Warren cherry-picked an academic from Stanford test her. He’s an academic, he’s Hispanic, and he lives near San Francisco. What are the odds he has a bias? He said he had to use genetic markers from South American Indians to check Warren, so we don’t even know if the test means anything in a case where a woman claims to be part Cherokee.

The test didn’t show Warren was an Indian. It showed the opposite. It showed that she probably has somewhere between 1/64 and 1/1024 American Indian blood. That doesn’t make you an Indian. It puts her at less than 1.6%. At the low end, she may have 0.001% Indian blood. That’s not going to get you into the sweat lodge.

The Genetic Literacy Project (whatever that is) claims an average American of European extraction has 0.18% American Indian blood, which means an awful lot of us are just as “Indian” as Senator Warren.

Warren pretended to have so much Indian blood she deserved special recognition for it. That simply is not true, even if we assume the best and say she’s at 1.6%. When one out of 64 of your ancestors is of a certain race, and the rest are not, it has zero impact on your experience as an American.

Some people claim “one drop” of black blood makes you black, for racists. That’s not true. How would they know? If you had one black ancestor out of 64, you would be white. I guarantee you, there are white racists with more than 1/64 black blood. There have to be. Very few people know who all of their ancestors are, when you go that far back.

Why did she even bring it up? We already knew her claim was bogus. This makes her look even worse. For all I know, I have more Indian blood than she has. After my grandfather died, my grandmother married an Indian named Smitty. Do I qualify for affirmative action?

There are stories in my mother’s family, asserting that my great-great-grandfather married an Indian. This story is based on the following science: my grandfather and his siblings had black hair and big noses. Unfortunately for the family members who buy the story, records show that my great-great-grandmother was a lady named Murphy.

When I was a kid, I was told that my great-great-grandfather was a huge man who lived to be 104 years old. In reality, he was a skinny old dude who made it to about 85. I don’t know where the weird stories came from.

Americans love pretending their ancestors were Indians. I don’t know why. Frankly, Indians have not accomplished much. White people were doing calculus in the 1600’s, and Indians were still illiterate and unable to figure out the wheel. Not to be harsh, but that’s history.

Indians excelled in one area. They had more style than anyone. Look at the old photos. They look fantastic. When it comes to style, no one can touch the Indians of North America. Other than that, their culture was pretty bad. War as recreation, torture, slavery, cannibalism…it didn’t have a lot to offer.

If you want to brag about your ancestors, pretend you’re Jewish. Moses, Solomon, Jesus, Einstein…highest average IQ…most Nobel Prizes per capita…who else comes close? Just make sure you don’t mention athletic records.

We’re so childish now. It’s shocking that someone who thinks of herself as presidential timber would pull a stunt like this. She should have admitted guilt and moved on. And Trump…well, he’s Trump. He is not known for his mature demeanor.

Leftists are getting behind Warren, as if there was any doubt that they would. They are claiming, in complete seriousness, that the test is a vindication. Unbelievable. Just let it go. Say you know she fibbed, but you’re willing to forget it.

I’ll bet I have no non-European blood. I’ll bet my DNA is as boring as it gets.

Trump should get himself tested. It would be hilarious if he had more Indian blood than Warren.

Trump doesn’t owe Warren’s charity a penny. She needs to move on.

Don’t Hold Your Breath

I don’t read blogs any more. Can’t make myself do it. As far as I know, the Blogosphere has been dead for a long time, and my interests have changed, so I have less in common with people I used to exchange links with.

Today I made an exception. I checked sites on my blogroll to see if I should continue linking to them. Anyone still blogging in 2018 makes the list. If you are dead, you probably make the list. Other than that, it’s a case-by-case thing.

By the way, Steven den Beste died in 2016. Just found that out. Sad. He was always nice to me.

I took a look at Ed Bonderenka’s blog, where I saw a humorous meme about Ruth Ginsburg’s decline, and I got to wondering if people understand something: it does not matter if RBG loses her mind.

Believe it or not, a federal judge doesn’t need to be mentally competent to remain in office. If you can breathe, walk, and sit up straight, and you don’t throw fits or anything, you can be a Supreme Court justice.

Judges of all types are very lazy, and many are also overburdened. As a result, we have a system in which the taxpayers support squads of lawyers who do the actual work. These people are known as clerks.

It’s a big honor to clerk for a federal judge, and the pay is okay, although the big draw is the career boost, not the money. A friend of mine pulled $50K down, with federal benefits and short, short federal hours, right out of law school. That was at the district court, or lowest, level. She offered to recommend me for the job when she quit, but I was not interested. I think it would have been fun, because working as a judge is like doing crossword puzzles all day. It’s stimulating mental exercise, by law standards. Also, a court clerk has zero responsibility compared to a real attorney. You can’t be sued for malpractice when you clerk. That’s nice. But I was a real lawyer, and I expected to continue building a lucrative career. I couldn’t see settling for $50K per year for several years, while abandoning the juicy job I had, working with my own father and his partners.

I have never been interested in glory. I went to law school so I could make money. I didn’t give a crap about the law review, the silly honor societies, clerkships, or awards. I still think that stuff is for insecure people who have a grossly inflated notion of the nobility of what is actually a fairly grubby profession. If you were an Eagle Scout or a participant in Junior Achievement, or if your dad was a janitor and you can’t believe you have a real college diploma, a clerkship is for you.

I can’t find it in myself to be impressed by lawyers. When I was in grad school, I rode elevators in the math and physics building with Nobelists and near-Nobelists. After that, I went to law school, where anyone who chases ambulances successfully is treated like a god. Once your IQ hits maybe 145, you have reached a point where you can do an excellent job with any task the law offers. If your IQ is 180, it won’t make you a better lawyer. You will just be a very good lawyer who is bored.

I worked hard during my first semester, and a nutty professor killed my shot at being invited to join the law review. After that, I resolved not to work. I used to tell people you can work 80 hours a week and get A’s, or you can work for three days at the end of the semester and get a B.

When I was an undergrad, I took mostly math and physics courses. Homework for my liberal arts courses took a couple of hours per week to knock off. My math work, which most people probably would have considered very hard, probably took six hours per week. I would guess physics took four hours per day, minimum. If you got a liberal arts degree, and then you went to law school, you may think you accomplished something. I’m sorry to tell you, but you were always in the shallow end with the toddlers.

When I was in law school, I eventually quit taking notes. I sat in class and wrote a few things in order to look like I was doing something, but basically, I quit…taking…notes. It wasn’t necessary. I used to play video games in class. I wore out my laptop, playing a Beavis and Butt-head game in Ethics, and I got an A.

The game was very silly. Toilets would fly through the air, and I would hit keys in order to shoot them down. I’m not kidding. This is what I did.

Sorry, lawyers. Your job just isn’t that challenging.

The people who graduate first in their law school classes, and the people who end up on the Supreme Court, are not geniuses. They are just good students. There’s a difference. My dad was third in his class, and he was a phenomenal lawyer, and I’ve always been a lot smarter than he is.

Anyway, clerking was not for me.

When a federal judge gets a case, he turns his clerks loose on it. They read the things attorneys file. They do the judge’s legal research for him. They even write opinions. Of course, this isn’t 100% true. I’m sure some judges do more than read and stamp the work of clerks, but if you think a judge’s name at the end of an opinion means he wrote it or is even highly familiar with the case, you’re dreaming. He may have done the work, and he may not.

Federal judges, often, are neither bright nor competent. They are probably, on average, not as sharp as their clerks, who have to demonstrate their ability in order to get their jobs. Federal judges get their appointments for political reasons. It’s not about merit. They don’t read filings. They don’t understand the law. They don’t understand the facts. When they rule correctly, it’s always somewhat surprising, and often it’s for the wrong reasons.

I guess the last paragraph was tangential. I get frustrated when I think of the things I’ve seen judges do. I’m not just complaining about the times I lost, either. I got a case dismissed by judges who let me pull the wool over their eyes. I made arguments I knew were vulnerable to attack, and the judges and opposing counsel were too dumb to do their homework, so I won.

So sorry. Better luck next time. I’m not going to help a judge who’s not intelligent enough to see why he should rule for my opponent. Unlike a judgeship, the lawyering business is a meritocracy, and the fittest win.

If I had been the judge or my opponent, things would have turned out differently. They disgraced themselves and proved their incompetence by letting me win.

I knew how to get the case dismissed. I knew how to prevent it from being dismissed. I knew how to win it, if I were in my opponent’s shoes. Fortunately, I was the only one who knew these things.

This is how you tell good lawyers from bad. Take the same case. Give it to two lawyers. See who wins. Turn it around and make them argue the other sides. Who wins now? Same guy; trust me. Unless one side is completely hopeless.

Now you know why O.J. Simpson was acquitted.

My dad used to say this to me: “Don’t complain about other people’s incompetence. That’s your competition.”

If you think lawyers are generally smart, you have been fooled. Most are only fit for simple fields like criminal and family law. Maybe they can write wills and deeds. If you made them litigate, they would drown immediately. I believe a lot of people end up working as judges because they can’t make it as litigators.

That’s also where law professors come from, but for a different reason. They have no guts. If you got A’s in law school, but the thought of appearing at a hearing or wondering where you’ll get your next paycheck makes you vomit blood, you’re probably going to be a professor some day. Professors want to nestle in their cribs and be taken care of.

Here’s something judges will hate reading: a big part of a lawyer’s job is to tell a judge what to think and say. The judge rolls in at 11 a.m., looks at filings he can’t understand, scratches his head, and wonders what to do. You take advantage of that by spelling out the law very, very clearly. You convince the judge that all he has to do is repeat what you say and rule in your favor. That’s really what lawyers do. We even draft orders for judges and include them with our filings. Sign it, stamp it, and you’re off to lunch, and no one realizes you have no idea what you’re doing.

I’ll tell you a funny true story. My uncle was a judge. He was not a great judge, but he was a great guy. He went to a judge conference. There was a seminar about ruling on objections. One of the judges admitted he used a deck of cards. He drew cards. Red card…sustained. Black card…overruled. The other judges were aghast.

During the seminar, they saw how this guy ruled when he actually tried to apply the law.

They told him to keep using the cards.

Not my story. My uncle’s.

Stuffy lawyers who perpetuate the myth of the nobility of the law can’t stand reading things like that. “HARUMPH! HARUMPH! You, sir, are no officer of the court! You have no respect for our august chambers!” These are the same guys who get drunk every Friday at 4 p.m. and hit on their paralegals. Same guys who make fools of themselves in bars every weekend. It’s all a sham. I wonder how many lines of coke have been done prior to hearings in courthouse bathrooms, by phonies who loved to talk about the dignity of the law.

Back to the topic. RBG doesn’t have to do much. She can assign things to clerks and wait for the results. I don’t know, but it’s reasonable to think she can even assign the task of assigning tasks to clerks…to clerks. She has to show up for work, sit in hearings, and basically, not expire.

Some conservatives are itching to see her step down because of incompetence. They say chemotherapy wrecked her brain, which may well be true. It does that. I’ve seen it. Doesn’t matter. Her leftist clerks will sleep in her house, feed her, bathe her, dress her, and carry her to work in a shopping bag, if that’s what it takes to prevent Donald Trump from nominating a third justice. If Scalia had become demented under Obama, his clerks would have done the same thing for him.

A justice isn’t an individual. A justice is an association. RBG consists of one elderly woman and a crew of underlings. The head doesn’t have to be completely functional in order for the body to go on living.

In order for RBG to go away based on disability, she will have to be such a mess there is no way to prevent her continued employment from turning into the theater of the absurd. She will have to say crazy things in front of the public, or she will have to be so demented she can’t be managed. Short of things like that, she will be on the bench as long as she can fog a mirror.

New Client Has Baggage

Interesting developments in the bizarre case of Julie Swetnick. This is the woman who claims she went to more than one party at which young men used alcohol (something you drink voluntarily) or drugs in order to get sexual access. She claims she was raped at such a party, and she says she saw men lining up to rape women, although she chose not to inform the police at the time.

She would have the Senate Judiciary Committee kill Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination based on the fact that he was “present” at these parties. She doesn’t say he participated in sexual abuse. Just that he was present. So he was somewhere on the premises when other people did bad things.

She doesn’t explain why she went to more than one such party. Most people wouldn’t make a habit of going to parties where rape was a likely outcome. But I digress.

Her ex-boyfriend, a Democrat named Richard Vinneccy, says he had to get a restraining order against Swetnick. He claims she threatened his child, who was a baby at the time. He says she is not trustworthy. Again, this is a Democrat talking.

Sure, he’s an ex-boyfriend, and I have criticized the credibility of ex-girlfriends. But let’s be honest. Men handle rejection better. Generally, we’re not the ones who vandalize our ex’s cars and call their offices 500 times a day. For the most part, men move on. We don’t have biological clocks, so it’s not that bad if we get dumped in our thirties or forties, and we don’t see girlfriends as salvation from poverty or retirement plans.

It appears that Vinneccy moved on. He married another woman and had a baby, and it appears he still needed to get a restraining order to protect him from Swetnick.

Her lawyer, of course, is Michael Avenatti, the obnoxious and aggressive man who represents aging stripper Stormy Daniels in her quest to extort more money from Donald Trump.

What does Avenatti say now? He says he “knows nothing” about a restraining order.

Here’s the thing: I’m a lawyer, too. Unlike journalists, who know little and do even less, I am aware that restraining orders are documented on court websites. As it happens, Ms. Swetnick had her domestic problems in Dade County, Florida, where I used to work. I use that county’s court website all the time, even though I no longer practice, because so many people I know are or were in trouble.

Avenatti knows he can take three minutes and look the restraining order up. He chose not to, so he could say he knew nothing about it.

I know about it, and now so does everyone who reads this blog. And we’re not even being paid.

I can’t get a picture of the order online, but I can produce pictures of the docket page and other information. The pictures show that Vinneccy was the one who complained and Swetnick was the respondent. It also shows that all this took place in family court, under the heading of DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.

It’s not possible to get complete images of the documents in the case. Some are not in the system, and some are partial. Nonetheless, AVENATTI COULD HAVE LOOKED THIS UP IN THREE MINUTES, as I did.

Whatever Swetnick did, it appears it was sufficient to convince a judge he needed to issue an order keeping her away from her ex-boyfriend and a helpless infant.

You’re welcome. Maybe there is a real journalist out there who will send someone to the family courthouse tomorrow and get the documents.

Even Weathermen Lie to Support the Left

Today’s global warming news: The Weather Channel’s Mike Seidel was so determined to make us understand how bad hurricanes are, he pretended to have trouble standing up during Hurricane Florence…while unconcerned passersby strolled easily in the background of the same frame.

Why is this a global warming story? Because The Weather Channel is firmly behind the climate change hysteria. They are convinced that gases that make up roughly 1/1000 of our atmosphere are creating a natural catastrophe (which has not materialized), and that human beings caused the problem by burning things.

The Weather Channel just lied to us about the strength of the wind. Why should we expect them to tell us the truth about the climate?

It’s not a small matter. Burning things and creating gases that contain carbon is very important to civilization and progress. Ultimately, the creation of these gases is linked to things like prosperity, food production, and medical care. Discouraging the production of these gases threatens the standard of living of human beings all over the world, and it should not be done unless we are certain we have no choice.

Take a look at this hilarious video. Mike Seidel stands in a windy place, bracing and squirming as though he were having trouble standing. Behind him, people walk completely normally.

Here is The Weather Channel’s disgraceful, dishonest coverup statement:

It’s important to note that the two individuals in the background are walking on concrete, and Mike Seidel is trying to maintain his footing on wet grass, after reporting on-air until 1:00 a.m. ET this morning and is undoubtedly exhausted.

This is what we lawyers call “a lie.” Seidel is not trying to maintain his footing. He’s acting, badly. The video proves TWC employees deceive us on camera. The statement proves the organization lies to cover the deception.

In spite of this, we are required to believe them when they tell us a miniscule increase in carbon dioxide (an unavoidable symptom of progress) will kill us all in the near future.

Fermentation of corn for ethanol production produces a huge amount of carbon dioxide, yet greenies are all for it. I have never seen this issue mentioned on the news. It’s strange how they never talk about it. Have engineers fixed the problem? We don’t even know.

One of the funniest things about the video is that Seidel is leaning the wrong way. To stand up in a high wind, you have to lean into the wind. In the video, the wind is coming from the right. Seidel is leaning to the left! Give it up, man. You are BUSTED.

Excuses are coming from the left. Internet warriors are saying things like, “Mike Seidel is 61.” Apparently, when you hit 61, you become unable to tell which way the wind is blowing.

I wonder how John Kerry manages to windsurf without getting lost.

Here’s a similar video from the past. NBC reporter Michelle Kosinski uses a canoe to show how badly a street has flooded, and during the video, two people walk by…in water about 5 inches deep.

You can tell it’s an old video, because Matt Lauer is one of the anchors.

Kosinski later claimed her team originally tried to shoot in an area where the water was deeper, but they couldn’t get the lighting right, so they moved. First of all, I don’t believe liars. Second, if her story was true, the correct thing to do, as a journalist, was to get out of the canoe and do the story on foot. She tried to deceive viewers, regardless of how she ended up paddling in 5 inches of water.

Dan Rather could weigh in here.

All these videos need are shots of CGI polar bears drowning in seas that only exist inside computers. Why wait for news? If the truth doesn’t cooperate with you and give you the story you want to push, just make it up.

Seidel’s intentional deception is not the big story here. The big story is that his network and others are defending him. That’s the scary part. They’re not upset with him for lying. They’re upset because he got caught. Obviously, most of the time, lying journalists don’t get caught. Seidel’s experience suggests what we already know: leftist journalists treat us like suckers at sideshow games. They don’t care about the truth. They just want to make us believe what they want, so they can herd us like cattle.

Journalists are supposed to inform, not herd. There is no longer any distinction between journalists, publicists, and propagandists. I suppose there never was.

Mike Seidel is a liar, and he should be fired. So should Michelle Kosinski. They should have to go sit in a penalty box with Dan Rather and Brian Williams.

When Your Mind Goes AWOL, Your Body Will Still Have a Home

I looked at a third assisted living/memory care facility today. I don’t have anything negative to say about it, so I won’t try to prevent people from figuring out which one it was. The company that runs it is called Elan, and it’s part of The Villages.

The Villages is like Westworld for old people. It’s a big retirement complex south of Ocala. I have not been into the Magic Kingdom, or whatever the main complex is called. All I saw was an assisted living place which is associated with it.

The places I visited yesterday were one-story buildings, and they were not particularly elegant. The windows didn’t let a lot of light in, and a lot of the carpeting was entering the home stretch of its existence. The Elan facility was different. It’s several stories high. The construction appears to be fairly new. There is a lot of tile on the floors. There are a lot of big windows, and everything is very clean.

I didn’t smell anything while I was there. That sets this place apart from the others. I didn’t know it was possible to have an old folks home without potty smells, but these people have pulled it off.

Like many other facilities, this one had areas for people with memory issues and people who were simply old. I looked at both. The memory care side didn’t look too bad. They had a big room with a kitchen and a lot of tables, and people were hanging out there playing games. A staffer was doing dishes. There were slices of cake on dishes, waiting for anyone who wanted one.

The rooms were a little depressing, but that’s not because there was anything wrong with them. They’re depressing because once the door to one’s room shuts, the patient knows how alone he is and what his situation is. When the door closes, you’re in what is clearly an impersonal environment designed by the same kind of people who design Holiday Inn rooms. Your wife didn’t pick the counter in the kitchen area. You didn’t choose the paint or the carpeting. You’re not independent any more, so strangers who are very busy have to put your living space together, and you get what everyone else gets. If you walk into the next room over by mistake, you’ll feel right at home, because it will look just like yours.

There isn’t much that can be done to make these places feel more like homes. The company hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s the nature of the business. People who can’t take care of themselves don’t sit down with architects and designers and take charge of their environments.

It must be like a hotel stay that never ends.

He would have to change doctors again if he moved to this place. They drive people to appointments, but they don’t drive far enough to take him to the doctors he’s seeing now. That’s not a big deal. He’s not attached to them, and it doesn’t take a genius to handle my dad’s boring health problems. You give him the same 8 pills every day and wait for new issues to develop.

If he moved in today, he would be looking at around $60,000 per year. The VA would pay about $22,000. My dad didn’t buy insurance to pay for long-term care. Instead, he opted to live forever without health problems. I’m glad the VA money is available. I didn’t know about it until this week.

Shelling out $38K per year is not the end of the world, but the lady who explained the costs to me failed to mention the obvious concern: whatever they charge him the day he walks in will be the lowest rate of his entire stay. It can only go up after that, because he is going to deteriorate, and he will probably deteriorate significantly this year. The more help he needs, the more they charge. If I understand things correctly, the maximum will be in the high 40’s.

The place I visited today is the best option I’ve seen.

I’m not sure what to do. I can get someone to come here for 20 hours a week, considerably cheaper. He would not have to leave me or his home. I don’t know how much she could do to take burdens off of me, though.

Is the benefit of being around other old people worth the trouble of moving? He probably won’t make friends in any real sense, because he’ll forget new people from day to day.

I don’t know what life is like for people in memory care. They walk out of their rooms every day and see the same folks, but do they know who they are? Do they have to introduce themselves to each other over and over?

The more I get into this, the more I realize that most causes of death cause less suffering than dementia. My mother died 8 months after her cancer diagnosis. She knew who we were, she was able to read and talk and use the phone, and she made some preparations. I talked her out of disinheriting my sister, unfortunately, but she did do a few things. Anyway, 8 months into it, she passed, and then we moved on and got over it. We didn’t have to put her in a facility. We didn’t have to explain what we were doing for her over and over. She never got paranoid. She didn’t get agitated at night or in the morning. She understood what was happening. That’s better than 4 or 5 years of taking the same ground repeatedly.

I was not close to my dad’s late sister, so I never knew she was ill until she died, but I know a little bit about what happened to her. Her dementia progressed very quickly and then killed her. She stopped speaking English. She spoke gibberish, and she was convinced she was speaking normally. She talked to the family members who were looking after her, and I suppose she could not comprehend their confusion. I’m glad my mother didn’t go like that.

We didn’t visit my aunt while she was ill. My dad didn’t suggest it, and I would have been very uncomfortable going alone. My relatives would have been shocked to see me. Says a lot about how close we are.

When dad’s mother died, I skipped the funeral. Two of my first cousins died young. I didn’t go to their funerals, either. I didn’t know them, because my aunts and my grandmother had very little to do with us. I can only guess that my aunts were very glad when my dad left home, because after that, they made almost no effort to stay in touch. They told my mother he was impossible to get along with.

I don’t know what I would do if I had vascular dementia. I have a strong prayer life, I’m not obese, I don’t drink heavily, and God heals me of things, so I don’t expect to go that way, but what if I did? Would I tell my doctors to stop treating me so my dementia would get worse and I would die sooner? If I did that, the problems I was hoping to escape would intensify quicker. I wouldn’t be able to avoid them. I would only be able to make it all happen faster. That would be unpleasant to face.

I would have to create some kind of directive to prevent people from keeping me alive too long. That much is certain.

Cancer is better. Heart attacks and fatal strokes are better. Car accidents are better. The body should die before the mind, and money shouldn’t be wasted on empty machinery that refuses to quit running. I don’t have any kids, but I know people I would like to leave money to. I would rather see it go to them than a company that runs a home.

Some of the people I have seen in memory care seemed happy. I don’t think my dad could be happy. He can’t accept his status now, so I don’t expect him to adjust well when he is surrounded by invalids and realizes he is one of them.

I’m done looking at these places for a while. Now I’m going to look into nursing attendants. Maybe my dad’s condition will change before I make a decision, and that will force me to choose an option.

Don’t lose your mind if you can help it. You are better off falling off a cliff.

Health Food Breakthrough

I don’t really cook any more. I lost my interest, and I was tired of cooking for people who showed up late, left early, and didn’t shop, help cook, or clean. I still have to cook for myself, though, so once in a while, I turn on the stove.

I make what must be the worst pancakes on earth. Or at least I used to. It was frustrating, because my waffles were perfect. I make them with bacon grease instead of butter. My pancakes came out heavy and rubbery. They would keep a man going all day because it took so long for the stomach to break them down.

Yesterday I tried again. I looked up a New York Times recipe and went to work. Result: rubber pancakes. I know why it happened. I used the wrong spoon to measure the baking powder.

Today I used the correct spoon, and I made some adjustments of my own. I have a tentative recipe to post. The pancakes were light and tasty.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup biscuit flour (not self-rising)
1 cup milk
1 tbsp melted butter
1 egg
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. sugar

I warmed the milk up to room temperature before using it.

You separate the egg and beat the white until it’s stiff. After that, put the mixer away. You don’t want it near the batter. Mixers seem to make pancakes gluey. Maybe that’s my imagination, though.

Mix the remaining ingredients with a spoon, but hold back 1/4 cup of milk. Fold in the egg white. Stir in enough of the remaining milk to make the batter flow the way it should.

When you fry your pancakes, put a little butter on top of each one as it hits the plate. To be really decadent, sprinkle it with salt.

I heat my syrup in the microwave, and I add butter to it. Cold syrup and hard butter ruin pancakes.

That’s about it. It takes a little longer than using a box. I can’t say it’s worth it because I don’t have a box to compare it to.

I think they would taste better with a whole teaspoon of salt in the batter, but I was too chicken to try it today.

I use a Griswold cast iron griddle for pancakes. It’s wonderful. They brown very quickly, and they never stick. Best thing I’ve ever seen for pancakes. Much better than a skillet. With a skillet, the walls get in the way when you try to flip your pancakes.

I use grade B syrup because it has more flavor than grade A. I buy a brand called Anderson’s, from Amazon. I keep maple syrup in the fridge or freezer to prevent mold.

I need to learn to make blueberry pancakes. I’m not sure you can throw blueberries into batter without additional steps. They might be too sour and raw. The syrup is easy. You heat blueberries with a little sugar and water. You can add starch to bulk it up, and you might consider a small amount of lemon juice. Make sure the syrup boils. Starch has to boil.

Buckwheat pancakes would be great. I’m sure I can find buckwheat flour on the Internet. I think buckwheat pancakes are the best pancakes possible.

I’ll post a photo of today’s pancakes. I am open to suggestions.

Never Mind

My dinner took place under unusual circumstances tonight.

I went to get a much-needed haircut, and while I was out, I bought groceries. Ordinarily, my dad goes with me when I get groceries, and I don’t like to cut him out of the experience, but I put in a lot of time dealing with him and his problems today, and I needed some relief.

I am never going to take him to my barber shop. I enjoy the barber shop, and he would ruin it for me. I have never told him its name or where it is. He tried to pin me down once, and I was evasive. He will never see the inside of that place. If he wants a barber, I’ll take him to the Mexican place on Highway 484.

When I got back, he started trying to get me to take him out for food. The kitchen was full of newly bought food, so he didn’t need anything. He was just bored. That’s understandable, but it’s not justification for adding to my burdens.

My dad pesters me when he’s bored. He comes up with strange projects, or he brings me trivial problems. These things are pretexts for disturbing me. He finds it entertaining to deal with these things in partnership with me. The problem with this is that he comes up with many of these things every day, and almost all of them are a waste of time, not to mention somewhat stressful for me.

He would like to go out for food at least twice a day, and that will never happen, because I would not be able to stand it. He will have to settle for three times a week.

Today he started telling me we should eat meals together. No, no, no, NO. Not possible. His table manners are unbelievable. I have to be careful where I look. If there is no music playing, I have to listen to a lot of mouth sounds. That’s bad, and worse spectacles are not out of the question. Also, conversation can be a problem. He says things he knows annoys me, which is not great for my digestion.

It’s a job, not a meal.

I had to tell him I need a certain amount of time to myself. I had to let him know that whenever I’m with him, I’m working. If he’s present, I’m not relaxing. I’m taking care of him. I can’t do it 24 hours a day.

He said I didn’t take care of him. He said he looked after himself, and he asked me what I do for him, so I gave him a list. I clean his house. I change his bed. I launder his clothes. I take care of his business and his taxes. I take care of his health problems, including going to the doctor with him. I mentioned a lot of things. I didn’t do it in an angry way. I said it with patience.

He said I benefited from all these things, because I would inherit everything he has. I told him changing his sheets didn’t benefit me, and I listed other tasks that don’t benefit me, either. It really doesn’t matter whether what I do benefits me. It’s still burdensome.

Then he said, “Is it all right if I just kill myself?”

This is how his personality works. My sister is the same way. They try to put you on the defensive. When it doesn’t work, if they have to accept any responsibility or blame, they go off the deep end and accuse you of attacking them.

In his mind, by saying I did a lot for him and needed time off, I was saying he was a worthless, selfish piece of two-legged excrement who ought to be executed.

He said I was complaining. Complaining would be 100% justified, but my motive was not to complain. It was to make him understand why I can’t spend more time with him. I told him having to do things for him was just part of life.

I haven’t done anything wrong. Not one thing. I know better than to pay attention to the emotionalism and histrionics.

I went to my private lair to eat, and a few minutes later, he called up the stairs. He said he wanted to have a talk with me. I told him I was eating. He asked if we could talk when I was finished, and I agreed.

He wanted to correct me. He wanted to sit me down and badger me and demand answers until I admitted I was wrong to not enjoy spending every waking moment with him. That sounds like a joke, but it’s exactly what he wanted to do. He also wanted to cross-examine me until I admitted he didn’t have dementia. He tries that a lot.

I finished eating maybe 20 minutes ago. I’ve been relaxing with Youtube. I have no intention at all of talking with him. I never did. I’m waiting for him to forget.

It’s the smart move. Talking to a demented person with unfounded grievances is a complete waste of time and an emotional drain. There is no possibility whatsoever that I’m going to agree to spend more time with him; if anything, I will have to spend less and less time with him in order to preserve my sanity and get things done. Even if I lost my mind and agreed with him, it wouldn’t matter, because later today, he would forget all about it.

I’m not sure why I treat him with so much respect. It’s just a habit, I suppose. People who deal with demented individuals and mental patients generally patronize and say whatever helps at the moment, no matter how fanciful it may be. I don’t do that. I usually talk to him as though he were of sound mind, and I try to help him understand things. Sometimes it’s not possible to treat him like an adult, but when it is, I indulge myself. When I told him spending time with him was taxing, I was treating him like a rational person.

He has to come to understand that he has a terminal illness and serious mental problems that are going to get worse. Even a demented person needs to know what’s happening to him. I suppose that isn’t true of profoundly demented people, but my dad is still capable of understanding what’s going on with him. He refuses to come to terms with it because his style, all his life, has been to get emotional and angry and deny his problems.

It’s disappointing.

When my mother found out she had given herself lung cancer, she didn’t lash out. She didn’t deny it was true. She never blamed anyone else. She didn’t cry and scream and curse God for picking on her. I suppose this is the long way of saying she didn’t act the way my sister acted when she got her own lung cancer diagnosis.

My sister lost her mind. The universe, which was created solely for the purpose of displaying her magnificence to a supporting cast of billions, was about to end with her demise. She went into denial. She burdened other people. She felt wronged, even though she had smoked a hundred pack/years of cigarettes and had not bothered to get medical insurance. She borrowed money for treatment and never offered to repay it. She openly demanded pampering and special privileges. My dad isn’t that bad, but he’s not exactly taking it like John Wayne.

It would be nice if everyone took misfortune in a way that increased your respect for them. My mother proves it can be done. Lots of people handle fatal diseases well. I would love to be able to tell people how tough my dad is. That must be nice.

Last night, my friend Mike told me things about hospice care. He has his own medical staffing company, and he is starting a hospice. I learned some surprising things.

I thought a hospice was a sort of bed and breakfast where you go to die. That’s true, but hospice care is more than that. If you’re a mess, and like my dad, you’re going to get worse and die, you can be evaluated and found eligible for in-home hospice care. They will send people to your home several times a week to bathe you and so on, and they will free up your caregivers. Medicare and insurance will cover it.

Hearing the word “hospice” was a little sobering. It was the first time anyone had mentioned it with respect to my dad.

My dad is dying. His heart keeps pumping, and he looks surprisingly good for his age, but his brain is coming to pieces, and at a certain point, it will no longer be able to keep his body going. I tend to think of my dad as a senile person who has to be managed, but in reality, he’s in the same boat as people like John McCain and Charles Krauthammer. He has a fatal disease.

I tend to think in terms of maintenance instead of preparing for death. Maybe that’s because maintenance is so challenging and time-consuming. If I had more time to think about it, I suppose I would be trying to plan more. I know how to look after the man my dad is today, but what about the man he will be next month? That person may not be able to use the toilet or get out of bed. What will I do?

I’ve been thinking about moving him to assisted living in the future, but that’s probably wrong. Assisted living is for people with physical problems. If your brain is fine but you can’t get out of bed without help, assisted living is for you. I don’t think it’s right for someone who is losing his mind rapidly. I’m told there are “memory centers” for people with memory issues. I don’t know if they’re for people who are sinking quickly or just relatively stable people who aren’t as sharp as they used to be.

A few days ago, I took him to lunch, and he got a doggie bag. As he walked out into the parking lot, he blew his nose without a handkerchief. He held the bag of food in his cane hand as he applied a finger to his nostril. A thick glob of snot about 4 inches long swung out of his nose and onto the bag and his hand. It would have filled a shot glass halfway. He didn’t care who was watching. He didn’t remember the many times I’ve cautioned him not to do what he was doing. The worse his mind gets, the less he’ll fit in with able people. He’ll have to be isolated from them in order to avoid making them suffer.

I am not a fan of people who inflict their disabled relatives on the public. If you have an autistic son who screams over and over, you don’t take him into a movie theater. It’s that simple. If your wife has an illness or disability that makes her revolting to watch, you don’t take her to Ruth’s Chris and put her in a prominent seat where other diners have to see her. You have to have consideration for other people. I’m not going to ask waitresses to clean up urine or mucus. I’m not going to ruin people’s meals just so my dad can enjoy a night out. When things get really bad, he will have to have a change in environment.

This will make him unhappy, and there will be nothing anyone can do about that.

Some people have to be unhappy. Welcome to Earth.

It’s a shame he has been so defiant and spiteful about bad manners all his life, because now he is stuck with habits that will shorten the time he can spend among able people. He needs to be around other human beings, and his young self has fixed things so his helpless older self will get less contact.

When he was a powerful lawyer, he could force people to put up with whatever he did. He could call younger attorneys things like “fart sack” in front of other employees. Things are not the same now. No one has to put up with a dementia sufferer with a durable power of attorney. He can’t adjust to having to show consideration. When his extraordinary behavior offends other people, he gets angry and thinks they’re wrong.

I’m going to go down and see what he remembers.

I’m back. He’s fine. Happy as a lark. I gave him some clean shirts and socks, and he’s putting them away. He doesn’t remember wanting to have an argument with me.

I wish he had been able to let things go this quickly when I was a kid. He never forgot or forgave anything, and he could yell at a person about the same thing until dawn.

I am engaged in the weirdest experience in my life. No one can prepare you for this.

In Defense of the Burn Pile

I am waiting for the truck from Habitat for Humanity.

I was stupid when I decided what to take to the new house. I should have left everything except my bed in Miami and given it away. Instead I saved some things that were heavy, expensive to move, and destined to be discarded. I paid to move things 300 miles so I could throw them out.

My dad has a Thomasville entertainment center from maybe 2005. See if you can guess why I’m getting rid of it. Yes, that is correct. It was made when a 30-inch TV was considered enormous, so it will not hold a typical 2018 TV. It’s about 5 feet tall, with two big doors in front. The living room TV, which is only 42″, is on top of it. I never, ever watch TV in that room. My dad spends most of his time there, and he has to look up to see the screen.

I also have a huge pair of dresser things. They form a complex that looks like the Petronas Towers. There are two tall dressers joined by a suspended desk in the middle. My mother bought them from an estate liquidation shop.

The truck interrupted me while I was writing this. The junk is now gone. I could have sold it on consignment and gotten a couple of hundred bucks, but I just did not want to see it any more.

The reason I started to write is this: I wanted to talk about how hard it is to give things away.

Ocala has Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Goodwill won’t pick up furniture. That may sound incredible, but it’s true. I shouldn’t have to point out that picking up free furniture is profitable. If you don’t think you can sell it, you turn it down. If it looks good, you sell it and make money. For some reason, Goodwill Industries can’t make it work, even though other charities can.

The Salvation Army makes it work, or at least they claim to. They have a truck that picks up furniture, but you can’t get them to show up. They take phone messages. They say they’ll get back to you. Then they vanish.

Someone mentioned Habitat for Humanity, and I jumped on it. I was sick of the furniture. I would have given it to Annoying Vegans for Mandatory Nudity on Mass Transit, had such an organization offered to take it.

Habitat for Humanity gave me a date about ten days off. That was the best they could do.

They were supposed to come today between 2:30 and 4:30. At 12:15, I got in the car to take my dad to a notary public, thinking I had time. The Habitat people called and said they were on the way over.

Unbelievable.

They wanted me to meet them in half an hour, or about 12:45. I told them about the original appointment, and I said I couldn’t be there until 1:00. So 15 extra minutes. The driver started telling me he didn’t know if that would work. He said he would have to call the shop.

I pictured myself using the tractor to put Thomasville furniture on the burn pile.

I called their shop myself, and they apologized and worked it out for me. Under the new agreement, the truck was supposed to be here at 1:00. They arrived 10 minutes later. So 1:00 was too late, but 1:10 was fine.

Call me cynical, but my assumption is that the driver really, really wanted to get to lunch early. People had canceled appointments, and he had visions of a short day, followed by a trip to Sonic, dancing in his head.

Maybe I’m wrong.

I had to move a desk into the entertainment center’s place to hold up the TV and keep my dad happy until the new TV thing arrives. While I was doing this, I found a huge grey smudge on the wall, around an imperfection in the paint. I know what caused it. I can guess. My dad has been rubbing spit into the wall ever since we got here, trying to rub out a place where the paint has been gouged.

He does things like that. Spit won’t make new paint magically appear, but he tries, and telling him to knock it off is pointless. Rubbing spit on things is a compulsion for him.

I didn’t know spit could make a dark shadow on a wall.

I told him not to rub the spot any more, and he denied that he had. Par for the course.

I got some paper towels and so on and cleaned the hand-sized spit varnish area off the wall, and then I got a Post-It and a marker. I put up a little sign reading, “Do Not Rub This Spot.”

The house is full of signs. “Do not wash dishes by hand.” “Stay off porch.” “No underwear in trash.” It looks pretty odd, but there is no other way to help him avoid causing problems.

I have several notes in his closet, telling him to put his dirty clothes in the hamper instead of hanging them up, and he hangs them up anyway. He doesn’t realize his clothes smell bad. He has no sense of smell. He thinks we are somehow losing money when we wash dirty clothes, just as he thinks it’s more expensive to wash 20 things in the dishwasher than 10.

I have other things to get rid of. I’m going to get rid of my aunt Jean’s living room chairs. My mother took them after Jean died from lung cancer in 1994. They are horrible chairs, and my mother chose a very loud paisley fabric for them. I almost threw them out before we left Miami, but I knew my dad would need something to sit on.

I want to get rid of my parents’ double bed and dresser. These were the first pieces of furniture they bought after they married. My dad has consistently refused to get rid of them, even though no one uses double beds now. Now that I’m in charge, they’re going. I used to sleep on that bed when I was a kid, during the worst years of my life, and I used the dresser. I don’t want to think of those days.

I’m going to get rid of my dad’s books. He has some quality stuff, but I wouldn’t want to touch his books. I don’t want to think about urine and mucus when I hold a book. Every time I read one of those books, I would think about the hygiene problems that caused my family so much suffering and made us all feel violated. Also, a lot of his books are about history. I’m never going to read that. Even if I change my mind, I won’t want his books. If I want to read history, I’ll buy my own books.

My dad used to have a book rack on top of his toilet. Enough said about that.

I’m out of here. I’m off to the barber shop, AKA the Testosterone Lounge. Hopefully everyone will be comparing carry pieces and talking smack about Hillary Clinton.

Leftists Choose Criminals Over Victims

Interesting news: Michael Drejka has been charged with manslaughter.

This is not a surprise to me. I predicted it a while ago.

Michael Drejka is a Florida man with a disabled parking permit. He was brutally attacked by a younger, larger, and stronger man, Markeis McGlockton. Drejka shot McGlockton, who then died.

Drejka is white. McGlockton was black.

Drejka has a history of arguing with people who park in handicapped spaces without permits. He saw McGlockton’s girlfriend parked in a handicapped spot by a convenience store, and he scolded her about it, peacefully. While the conversation was going on, McGlockton rushed at him from the side and shoved him down on the pavement.

While Drejka was on the ground, unable to flee, he pulled a pistol and fired. Before he fired, McGlockton–a coward and a bully–saw the gun and turned away. He was brave enough to attack a smaller, weaker man without provocation or warning, but when he realized his victim could defend himself, he went yellow and became a pacifist. Too late.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri refused to arrest Drejka, claiming Florida’s “stand your ground” law (“SYG” for convenience) barred prosecution.

Our SYG law says that when you’re in a situation calling for deadly force, you don’t have to flee. You can go ahead and defend yourself. It’s an excellent common sense law. Unfortunately for Mr. Drejka, it does not appear to apply in his case. People in the press want it to apply, because the shooting looks bad on video, and they want to get SYG repealed. Ignorant journalists are citing SYG with regard to the case, but they’re wrong, just as they were wrong when they said it applied to the Zimmerman railroading.

SYG says you don’t have a duty to flee. The law may kick in when you’re standing up and you have a path away from your assailant. It does not kick in when you can’t get away. George Zimmerman could not get away, because Trayvon Martin, a larger, stronger, younger person who was in good condition because of his status as a high school football player, was sitting on his chest, beating his head on a concrete sidewalk. Michael Drejka could not flee, because he was on his knees with an angry criminal standing nearby.

No escape route, no stand your ground case. It’s that simple.

The Zimmerman case was a textbook case of self-defense. The law applying to that case comes straight from England. It has been the law for centuries. If you REASONABLY fear DEATH or SERIOUS BODILY HARM, you may use deadly force. When someone is sitting on you, beating your head on concrete, you can shoot them. There is no need to think about SYG, because it’s not involved. You’re doing something you were allowed to do before SYG existed.

This is not rocket science.

Even in messed-up jurisdictions where there is a duty to flee if possible, Zimmerman would have been within his rights. You can’t flee when someone is sitting on you.

The Drejka case is different. Drejka could not flee, but the criminal who attacked him chickened out when he saw the gun. By the time Drejka fired, it appears that brave McGlockton was cowering. Drejka did not have a duty to flee, but he did have a duty to refrain from harming a criminal who was no longer a threat. Once McGlockton’s knees turned to water, Drejka was obligated to hold his fire.

You can shoot a thousand people in a day, if they’re coming at you. You can’t shoot people who are running away, no matter what they’ve done. The only exception would be a case in which you had a reasonable belief that your assailant was going to resume his attack. We don’t see that in the Drejka case. McGlockton’s cowardice was on full display. He probably would have licked Drejka’s shoes had he been asked.

It appears that the shooting was a crime of revenge. Drejka probably knew he was safe when McGlockton started cringing. He shot anyway, and the best explanation is a desire to punish. The law doesn’t allow that.

If it seems like I’m angry with the deceased, well, I am. He behaved like a savage. He was a bully. He would never have gone near his victim, had Drejka been as big and strong as he was. He had no justification for touching Drejka, let alone for attacking him viciously. A person like that deserves to get shot, even if the shooting is illegal. He could have killed Drejka with that hard landing on asphalt. The fact that Drejka didn’t sustain a fatal head injury is a testament to McGlockton’s luck, not his good intentions.

I’m disgusted by McGlockton’s attack, and I have no sympathy at all for him, but I think Drejka is a murderer, and I believe he should be prosecuted. The charge is manslaughter, but the shooting looks like second-degree murder to me. It was not premeditated, so it can’t be murder one, but it appears to have been a deliberate killing evincing a lack of regard for human life. That’s second-degree murder. I don’t know why he was charged with manslaughter. Maybe the state’s attorney knows most jurors will agree that McGlockton got what he deserved. It may be easier to get a conviction for manslaughter because the penalties are not as harsh.

One wonders what the state will do. In the Zimmerman case, Governor Scott became afraid of bad publicity that would follow a refusal to indict, so he got prosecutor Angela Corey and her underlings to perjure themselves in order to get Zimmerman charged. Right now, journalists are trying to gin up a new publicity threat surrounding SYG. Will our elected officials put politics above the truth again? Prosecutors should charge Drejka, but our legislature should leave SYG alone. It’s a beneficial law that only hurts criminals. Like most laws, it will be abused from time to time, but that doesn’t justify doing away with it.

Imagine a world without SYG. Picture an angry, dangerous criminal attacking you on the street. If there was any possibility of escape, you would have to run away and hope he didn’t pursue you. If he followed you, you would have to keep running until the police arrived. That’s unreasonable and impractical, and that’s why we have SYG. Without it, criminals could chase us around at will and drive us out of public places.

Anyone who persists in trying to harm you needs to be incapacitated quickly, by whatever means you choose. You shouldn’t have to play hide and seek with criminals, or die or be raped, in order to avoid a prison sentence.

Journalists want us to believe that SYG is a quirky law passed by nutty Florida extremists. In reality, it’s the law in most states. Most of the states where the doctrine doesn’t exist are in the northeast. Even California, which doesn’t have an SYG law, applies the doctrine in practice.

Journalists also want to get rid of the castle doctrine, which says you don’t have to retreat in your home or any other legally occupied place. Imagine that. A group of criminals rush into your living room, and you have to leave! No civilized society would hold innocent victims to that standard.

Our journalists are pro-criminal extremists. Maybe they’re trying to disarm us because they know most violent crime in America is committed by black people. Blacks commit most violent crime, and Hispanics are much more likely to commit violent crime than whites. The sad consequence is that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to die in self-defense shootings, but the answer to that problem isn’t to let criminals hurt the innocent. It should be noted that blacks are much more likely to be crime victims than whites, and when we disarm the innocent, we put innocent black lives in danger.

To sum up, McGlockton was a violent criminal who would have been jailed had he not been shot, Drejka appears to be a murderer and should be prosecuted, and SYG is a good doctrine that needs to be preserved. It’s sad to see so many people standing up for bullies.

McGahn’s Weird Ethical Boundaries

Today I read that Don McGahn, our White House Counsel, is attracting spitballs for talking to Grand Inquisitor Mueller. At first, I didn’t understand the fuss. After all, White House Counsel is a government job, and from the title, one would think he was the attorney for the White House, not the president. If that’s true, then he shouldn’t be worrying about Donald Trump’s personal accountability or the accountability of any of his underlings. Those people would not be his clients.

I checked the all-knowing (!) Wikipedia, however, and I found that the WHC’s job (“White House Counsel” is so hard to type) is to “advise the President on all legal issues concerning the President and his Administration.” That’s very broad. It would appear to encompass efforts to impeach or prosecute the president or anyone who works for him.

Wikipedia also says the WHC is not supposed to get involved in the president’s “personal” legal affairs.

I’ll just say it. I don’t care if other lawyers say I’m stupid. I believe it is impossible for the WHC to “advise the President on all legal issues concerning the President and his Administration” without getting involved in the president’s personal legal affairs. It will not always be possible to disentangle them.

What if the president is indicted or threatened with indictment by a partisan prosecutor, based on things the president did in the course of his duties? Is the WHC supposed to sit on his hands with a sock in his mouth? I don’t think a good lawyer would be able to stand that. A threat to the president that may result in impeachment or conviction in court is certainly a threat to the administration itself and to the institutions of the White House and executive branch.

If Barack Obama had molested a 12-year-old, the WHC could have stayed out of it with no qualms. But what if one of his male aides had sued him personally for sexual harassment on the job? Hmm. That would be tied very tightly to the safety of the entire administration, and it could raise constitutional issues. It could be an attempt at voter nullification (like the frivolous attacks that drove Sarah Palin to quit), and the power to vote is a pillar of our political system. Is that purely personal?

Here’s what I think will happen. We will find out more about what Don McGahn said to Mueller’s flying monkeys, and it will turn out that McGahn did his best to walk a thin line between representing Donald Trump the president, plus his administration and the executive branch, and Donald Trump the man. Prosecutors being what they are, it will turn out that Mueller’s goons asked a lot of improper questions that were relevant only to things that were not closely tied to Trump’s presidential activities, and it will also turn out that McGahn refused to divulge anything.

I don’t know, but I’ll bet Trump would not want a government lawyer representing him with regard to personal problems. Government lawyers tend to be mediocre (judges in particular are notorious for their stupidity), and Trump can afford the best. On the other hand, he did pick Michael Cohen, and he is also relying on Rudy Giuliani, who seems to have forgotten how to practice law.

Place your bets, and we’ll see how good a fortune-teller I am.

More

Looks like I am not alone in wondering about the obligations of the government lawyers surrounding the president. Chris Christie has opined.

Chris Christie may be annoying, but he is also extremely sharp, and he was a federal prosecutor. That means he knows what Mueller is trying to do, because he used to do it to people, himself. Christie says Trump’s legal team is “C-level.”

Christie says Ty Cobb and John Dowd, who handled things early on, waived privilege unnecessarily. That’s malpractice, people. It’s a major thing. Christie thinks McGahn is now obligated to reveal things he could otherwise have kept to himself.

Alan Dershowitz also piped up. He is more gentle than Christie, saying Trump’s lawyers made “a tough call” that didn’t work out.

Dershowitz may be a legal genius (if such a thing exists), but Christie is no lightweight (oops), and unlike Dershowitz, he was a career attorney, not a professor who occasionally appeared in court.

Interesting stuff.

Well. Interesting for legal matters. That’s like saying “more interesting than a test pattern.”

You Can’t Debate With Dementia

I had an interesting conversation today.

I left The Compound without letting my dad know. I wanted some time to myself. I had an enjoyable time at Home Depot, and then I returned. When I got back, my dad said he wanted to discuss “our situation.” He didn’t say so, but he was angry because I went somewhere without him.

A few days ago, he said he wanted information on vascular dementia, so I wrote up a little report consisting of information from the web plus things from his own history. Then he read it, accepted the truth, and thanked me for my help. After that, elves and fairies flew out of my ears and sang the national anthem.

Be serious. Here is what he actually did: he demanded a second copy so he could make notes on it in order to prepare his defense. I am not kidding. He scribbled a bunch of stuff on it, and today he wanted to discuss it.

He was also upset because I was out of his line of sight for an hour. This is something new. He now feels I must be available all the time so I can respond to his summons within seconds. He says he could fall down and die in a ditch, and I wouldn’t know.

He is correct, to an extent. If he went on a walk and fell down in a ditch, I might not know for a while, but I would figure it out pretty soon, because I can track him on my cell phone. I have told him this dozens of times, but he always forgets. It goes like this:

Me: I’ll know if you have a problem because I track you on my cell phone.

Him: What?

Me: I’ll know if you have a problem because I track you on my cell phone.

Him: Did you say on your phone?

Me: Yes.

Him: How do you track someone on a phone? [his way of deriding me for not knowing what a phone does]

Me: It’s complicated, but trust me. It tells me where you are.

He doesn’t like it when I say things are complicated, because it means I know he can’t understand them.

Him: A phone? You use a phone to talk to people.

Me: I track you on my phone.

Him: What if I need to call you?

Me: You have a phone, but because of your dementia, you can’t remember how to use it, so you have to rely on me.

Him: I don’t have a phone.

Me: You have a phone. It’s on your belt.

Him: You mean this? The Samsung?

Me: That’s it.

Him: That’s not a phone. That’s a device for contacting people.

Me: It’s a phone.

Him: How do I use it?

Me: You don’t need to use it. Just carry it with you.

Him: Write me some instructions so I can use it.

I’m not falling into that trap. He will never be competent with a cell phone again.

Me: You have a manual you carry with you.

Him: Where?

Me: You keep it in your pockets.

Him: Where?

Me: I don’t know.

Him: I don’t have it.

Me: You must have lost it.

Him: Where is it?

Me: I don’t know. I didn’t have it.

Him: Can you get me a new one?

Me: I may be able to download it, but it will be bulky because it will be on typing paper.

Him: Jesus Christ! Can’t you get me a new one that’s the same size?

Me: I don’t know. I can find out.

Him: I’m asking you for something, and you’re giving me an argument!

Me: I’m not arguing. You asked if I could get you a new manual, and I told you the truth. I don’t know.

Him: That’s arguing!

Me: It’s not arguing.

Him: You’re still arguing!

By this time, he has sort of a point. I am now arguing that I’m not arguing. But I was right before he went in this interesting direction.

Me: I’m really not.

Him: Can you show me how to work the phone?

Here’s the thing: he will never be able to use the phone. On a good day, he might be able to read the manual and manage to call me, but most of the time, even with a manual, there is no hope, because he won’t realize he has the phone in the first place. He will never learn how to use the phone and remember it. If he could do that, he’d know how to use it now.

We had the argument about the manual maybe 6 times, and every time he asked the same questions, he behaved as though he had no idea he had just asked them minutes or seconds earlier.

Am I wrong to let him out of my sight for brief periods? No. I can’t sit and stare at him all day because I’m a human being with limitations. There is only so much I can do without losing my mind, and I have other things to do. He might fall down and die, but then he might do that right here in his own bathroom, 50 feet from me. Life will always be dangerous. You can’t make it perfectly safe. You decide what you can do with a reasonable effort, and you hope for the best.

He could fall down and die in a nursing home. It happens every day. The only way to keep him safe is to strap him to a bed.

After we talked about the phone, we had a long, pointless talk about the dementia report. He went through the list of causes of vascular dementia, and he asserted that he couldn’t have it because he didn’t have diabetes and didn’t smoke. He believed it was not possible for a person to have vascular dementia without every risk factor present.

I spent about 20 minutes repeating myself, explaining that he didn’t have to have every risk factor. Lawyer that he is, he focused on the word “your.” The article mentioned factors that increase “your” risk, and he concluded that “your” referred to him personally. He thought the article said he had all the factors. Since he didn’t have every factor, he believed he couldn’t have dementia.

He also denied he had other risk factors, such as high blood pressure, obesity, and high cholesterol. He takes several blood pressure pills every day, he’s nearly 50 pounds above his army weight (he used to be heavier), and he’s on a statin. He seemed to believe that as long as he took pills, the illnesses didn’t exist, and he said he wasn’t fat. While wearing a size 40 belt.

He kept misstating the definition of dementia. He insisted it meant he was “crazy.” That’s absolutely true, if you want to put it in the harshest terms possible, but most people wouldn’t see a dementia patient as crazy. They are forgetful. They sometimes have mild delusions. They can be combative and paranoid. But they don’t run up and down the streets naked, claiming to be Napoleon. Until things get really bad, they can speak and interact with others fairly well. When my aunt finally lost it, she started speaking gibberish and expecting people to understand it, but my dad isn’t there yet.

Most of us think “dementia” means “insanity” until we have to deal with demented relatives. My dad still holds onto the popular definition. “Demented” simply means “afflicted with a reduction in mental faculties.”

He kept insisting we couldn’t have the conversation we were having if he had dementia. I had to let him know that it wasn’t much of a conversation. I told him he kept asking the same questions over and over and forgetting the answers. I said we were talking about things we had talked about many times in the past.

I was very direct, because he needs to accept his diagnosis. If I go overboard unintentionally and hurt his feelings unnecessarily, it’s okay, because he’ll forget it later, and I can adjust my behavior next time. I’ll tell you something incredible. I could put on a chicken suit and walk around the room clucking and flapping my arms, and a week from now, it wouldn’t mean a thing.

The end of the document was a list of his recent hospitalizations. It was fairly long. He said he remembered two of them, but I know that’s not true, because he usually says he doesn’t remember them. He didn’t remember battling the staff at a nearby hospital at 5 a.m. and having to be restrained by security. I remember that just fine, because I had to drive over and try to help.

We have all heard of the 5 stages of grief: 1. denial, 2. anger, 3. bargaining, 4. depression, and 5. acceptance. It appears that dementia screws them up. How can you progress from one stage to another if you keep forgetting what’s wrong with you?

My dad is the kind of person who is generally angry, so #2 is a given. Beyond that, he seems to be stuck on #1. He’s trapped in an eddy, and from time to time, I get sucked into it with him. He decides I’m crazy because I say he has dementia, and then he expects me to defend myself, as though I were the one who diagnosed him and coined the term “dementia.”

My hope is that writing things down will reduce the time I spend going in circles. I want to be able to hand him a document when I see we’re in line for the same ride again. I know it will have some effect. The little notes I put up around the house work, and they’re documents. If, “Stay off the porch,” works, maybe the dementia report will work, too.

There is another strategy, and that’s walking away and telling him I don’t care if he wants to talk (i.e. argue), because we are going in circles and it’s a waste of my time. It works, but I try not to use it unless I have to.

His belligerence is a problem in more ways than one. It wastes my time and tires me out, but it also cancels out any possibility that I could spend time doing something enjoyable with him. If I’ve spent two hours cajoling and being bickered with, I’m not going to suggest we go for a drive. I’m going to go off to my sanctuary for the rest of the day. You only get a certain amount of my time per day, and how you use it is up to you. Once it’s gone, you can’t get it back and do something else with it.

Yesterday we spent two or three hours with a physical therapist. When she left, my dad wanted to go have lunch. No way! I was done. My daily quota had been used up. I had to recharge. To him, her visit was a good time. He got to talk to a younger woman, about himself. They did exercises together, and she taught him things. He was the center of attention. That’s fine, but to me, it was work, so when it was over, I was ready for some recreation.

He doesn’t understand that being with him is work. Every minute of it. There are no exceptions. If we have lunch, it’s work. If we drive to Home Depot, it’s work. If I’m working on the tractor and he wants to stand there and ask questions, it’s work. Work, work, work.

You can’t relax and enjoy life around a dementia patient. They ask questions and make demands nonstop. I can’t even order at a restaurant without problems. He demands that I tell him all about the menu, which he holds in his own hands. I say vague things like, “I’m sure it’s all good,” so I’ll get a few seconds here and there to look at the menu for myself. He likes to have me choose his food for him, so I pick things that won’t cause a problem. I have dishes memorized so I can toss them out without thinking.

I never say, “Gee, it would be nice to do something with my dad.” If I saw him once a week, I would look forward to doing things with him, but I’m always doing laundry, changing sheets, sitting in waiting rooms, being argued with about the same old things, and cleaning up filth which is extremely abundant even by demented-person-house standards. My dad’s hygiene habits were established long before he got dementia, and they are very bad, so they make him a more trying patient.

He has talked about traveling to Eastern Kentucky, for a final visit to the place where he grew up. Can’t do it. You can’t imagine what it’s like to travel with a demented person. He will never travel again, although I don’t tell him that. If I had three siblings to help, maybe.

When the therapist was leaving, I made her spend a few minutes with me alone. I made sure she understood how things were. I told her what unpleasant things to expect from him.

I said he would forget at least 80% of what she had told him (turned out to be 100%), and I said he might forget the whole visit (he did). I told her what he would be like when the company manners wore off. I told her what to expect simply because she was female. I also asked if I could leave them alone together. She understood completely. She said it was important for me to get away.

If she had told me I needed to supervise them, there would have been problems. He may end up having two therapists visit him every week. I can’t take care of him, haul him everywhere, and then sit at home and watch him get therapy. Too much. I would have had to choose between an intolerable new imposition or depriving him of helpful treatment, and I would have chosen myself, because without me, the ship sinks.

One of my challenges is to find a balance between letting an incompetent person run my life and treating another human being like an object. Some days I go too far one way, and other days, I go too far the other way.

It sounds horrible, but it’s not. The more control I get, the smoother things run. Most days, I manage to get enough time to myself to make life pleasant. My dad isn’t happy, but he never has been, and you can’t really be happy when you’re too demented to do anything but still competent enough to wish you could. He will feel better when he comes to accept his situation.

If you’re caring for a demented person, take my advice. Look out for yourself first. If you don’t function, nothing functions, and besides, you still have a life to lead. The person you’re caring for is really just a shell. He has no future, but you do. Your job isn’t to fix him or make his life perfect. It’s to mitigate his suffering until he dies. That’s it.

My dad will be gone soon, but I will not. I put myself first, because in my dad’s case, there is no longer anything there to invest in.

Demented people are like kids that get weaker and less intelligent instead of bigger and smarter, and at the end, they die. I have to keep living and working to improve my future. Sounds harsh, but it’s just reality.

The Only Trump Critic the MSM Won’t Touch

Someone help me understand why Donald Trump hired Omarosa Manigault-Newman.

I keep turning it over in my head. He knew she was…eccentric. That’s a nice word. He had no reason to think she could accomplish anything. She had no skills. There was no evidence that she was bright.

The most likely reason he chose her was her viability as a diversity scarecrow. He could point to her, along with people like Katrina Pierson and Ben Carson, and he could say, “I gave black people important positions.” Omarosa was exceptional, however, because she wasn’t really able to do anything.

Dr. Carson is a celebrated surgeon who has separated Siamese twins; as far as we know, none of them have grown back together. Pierson had her issues during the campaign, and she screwed up, but she did her job, and she was considered sufficiently competent to be rehired.

Omarosa had no track record. She was not an achiever. She became the “director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison,” which is sort of a nothing position, and during her time there, people say nothing is what she got done.

I suspect that “director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison” is sort of like “executive producer.” In Hollywood, “executive producer” means “person someone important slept with” or “relative of someone important.” It’s a job moviemakers give to people who aren’t expected to do anything. The White House has a press secretary, and that person is the President’s face before the public, so one wonders whether Omarosa’s title meant anything at all.

Maybe Omarosa’s hiring was Trump tossing her an affirmative action bone. On the other hand, maybe he was keeping an enemy close. Maybe she knew things he didn’t want to see revealed, and he figured giving her a high-paying, do-nothing job would shut her up.

Maybe Trump really did use the dreaded N-word. Or maybe he simply said things that were, as Penn Jillette puts it, “racially insensitive.” Maybe Trump gave Omarosa a job because he couldn’t have her dumped in the Potomac.

I don’t think Trump used that word, unless he was doing something silly like quoting a rap song or jokingly calling someone “my nigga.” Trump is a loose cannon, but he’s not a moron. Also, he says someone from The Apprentice has backed him up, saying no recordings of the radioactive word exists.

I think he gave this woman a job because he felt like it. She was someone he knew, and he likes working with his contacts. It looked good, giving a black woman with no qualifications a big title. I don’t think there is anything more to it.

It was a mistake to hire her, obviously. If she didn’t have dirt on him before she was hired, she certainly has it now, even if it’s imaginary dirt. Because she worked for him for a good while, she can make nutty claims about him, and they can’t be dismissed instantly. They have to be researched and debunked, and even if they’re disproven, many people will choose to believe the worst. There are millions of people who think Bush II dynamited the levees in Louisiana. No lie is too stupid to take hold in the minds of certain people.

One of the problems with keeping a vindictive, dishonest person close is that you give that person new opportunities to gather ammunition, and when you finally fire that person, her poisonous merchandise may be worth a lot more than it was when you hired her. Trump bought Omarosa’s loyalty for $180,000 per year, but she surely got paid more than that to write…I mean “dictate”…her book. It is said that she was offered a new job when she was fired, but the pay wasn’t substantially higher than what she got at the White House, so it’s no wonder she went for a book deal instead.

I’m not too impressed with Penn Jillette. He says he, himself, may not be a reliable source. If I were to paraphrase his remarks, I would put it like this: “Trump either said the N-word or other things that were highly racist, and I heard him, but you can’t believe me because I might not tell the truth, so I won’t say exactly what he said. But I feel sufficiently confident in what I’m saying to issue this bizarre indictment of my own credibility.”

Does he have Alzheimer’s now?

If you’re not sure what Trump said, you keep your mouth shut, don’t you? Or you say, “I’m not sure what he said.” You don’t say, “I heard him say really bad things, but don’t trust me.” That’s ridiculous. Either you know or you don’t. If you don’t want us to rely on you, what is the purpose of opening your mouth?

What is “racially insensitive”? It’s nothing. It’s a weasel’s way of saying, “Anything ranging from, ‘All blacks should be executed’, to, ‘I think classical music is better than jazz.'” It means nothing at all.

Ross Perot caught hell for using the phrase “you people” to address blacks. Maybe Trump said, “you people.” Maybe he said, “I think forced busing was a bad idea.” What does “racially insensitive” mean, in the absence of the actual words? It means Penn Jillette wanted to say something bad about Trump, but he wasn’t willing to be specific or be pinned down so Trump could defend himself.”

These days, “insensitive” is a useless phrase. The threshold of sensitivity has been lowered to the point where nearly any remark can be construed as insensitive. Also, our self-anointed liberal bellwethers have decided that all insensitivity is bad. It’s always wrong, and it’s almost always a firing, career-ending offense. That’s crazy. Sometimes insensitivity is just what the doctor ordered. Jesus said a lot of insensitive things, deliberately.

Sometimes, when a person is offended, it means that person is a jerk. Your state of offense is just as likely to highlight your own failings as those of the person who offended you. Being offended doesn’t speak well of you. It says nothing, without context.

The worst people I know are offended all the time. They use offense to control other people. They get furious over things the rest of us would barely notice. They cry like babies with diaper rash until they get their way. More often than not, the people who offended them are in the right.

Wife-beaters and child abusers are people who are easily offended. Bullies of all types are easily offended. We ought to quit using offense as a measure of a person’s moral rectitude.

When Penn Jillette says Trump said “racially insensitive” things, it means absolutely nothing to me. What were the things he said? Who considered them insensitive? All we know is that Penn Jillette felt like commenting.

Whether intentionally or not, Jillette is teasing us. Do you have something? If so, you should spill it or shut up.

I wonder if Jillette has financial troubles. Nearly all of the people who appeared on Trump’s reality show had career problems. We never saw George Clooney or Mark Zuckerberg on the show. Jillette has made a ton of money in his life, but a lot of entertainers have made fortunes and died broke.

Maybe he made some dumb investments. Maybe he needs free PR now. He hasn’t had a lot of big-time projects in the last 10 years. He does a lot of reality TV. He’s a giant among magicians, but they don’t seem to do all that well compared to actors and musicians. They have to keep clawing for work and coming up with gimmicks in order to hold our attention.

There has to be some explanation for his appearance on the show and his weird remarks.

This thing will play out eventually. Either the N-word will be confirmed, or it won’t. The one thing I feel safe in predicting is that Omarosa will have a very hard time finding work from now on. She’s getting a dead-cat bounce from her firing and book, but she is clearly poison to employers and coworkers, and she has nothing to offer to counterbalance the potential for trouble. She’s so crazy and unreliable, even left-wing news outlets are refusing to back her up.

Maybe she can become Jillette’s assistant. I know Donald Trump would love to see someone saw her in half.

…Every Time Two Fools Collide?

Florida has another “stand your ground” case. Or does it? And does “another” even make sense in this context?

I am tired of typing “stand your ground,” so from now on, it’s “SYG.”

Florida’s first controversial SYG case was that of George Zimmerman, who shot a violent criminal in self-defense and was then railroaded by prosecutors who went so far as to perjure themselves to get him indicted. Problem: SYG was not involved. The SYG doctrine says you are allowed to use deadly force against an assailant, without trying to flee. Trayvon Martin, the deceased, sat on his victim and beat his head on a concrete sidewalk. Zimmerman was not able to flee, so SYG was not triggered. If you can’t flee, you don’t need SYG to save you. You’re stuck, so you do what you have to.

Zimmerman appears to have lost his mind after his acquittal, and it’s easy to understand why. Franz Kafka could have written his story. The government, which is the entity one ordinarily goes to for justice, tried to nail him to a political cross. Liberals drove his parents out of their home. A second man tried to murder him and went to prison. Now he’s probably as crazy as liberals tried to make him seem during the trial.

The Zimmerman case did not involve SYG, but people who are dishonest or ignorant keep saying it did. Human nature is really something.

The new case involves a man who was attacked at a convenience store. Michael Drejka, a white Florida man with some sort of handicap, saw a black woman parked in a handicapped space. Mr. Drejka has a history of yelling at people who steal these spaces. While he was peacefully arguing his case with the lady, her boyfriend, Markeis (you see where we’re headed) McGlockton, came out of the store and attacked Drejka physically. He shoved him to the asphalt and stood over him.

From his position on the ground, Drejka pulled a pistol and shot McGlockton, who then died. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri (who supposedly has a law degree) declined to press charges, citing the SYG doctrine. He mealy-mouthed in his announcement, suggesting he didn’t agree with the law.

I will now point out the two issues with this case.

1. Mr. Drejka could not flee. He was on the ground in a heap, with a powerful man standing over him a few feet away. When you can’t escape, SYG is not a factor. This is not an SYG case.

2. When Mr. McGlockton saw Drejka’s gun, he backed up and appeared to be intimidated. It was pretty cowardly. He was brave as he could be when he ran out and attacked a handicapped man for no reason, but when he saw that he himself might take some punishment, he danced a different dance. Coward though he was, it appears that his shooting was not justified. Once an assailant gives up, you’re not allowed to shoot. It kills the right to self-defense.

It may be that Drejka was right to shoot. For all we know, McGlockton said something like, “Put that gun away, or I’ll take out my piece and blow your brains out.” Maybe he said, “You scared me, but I’m about to give you a beating anyway.” We don’t know everything that happened. The most likely explanation is that Drejka got mad and shot McGlockton for pushing him. That would be second-degree murder.

The decision not to prosecute is mystifying. The sheriff didn’t cite any facts explaining why it was okay for Drejka to shoot a man who was backing off.

Journalists hate the right to self-defense, and they really hate SYG, so they are playing up Gualtieri’s law degree. Their unspoken thesis is that a lawyer said it’s an SYG case, so that’s what it is, and now a man is dead because SYG legalizes murder. Journalists are fairly stupid, as we all know.

Here’s the problem with relying on Gualtieri’s law degree: he may be a bad lawyer. When a thousand people graduate from law school, the one with the worst grades is allowed to take the bar exam. When a thousand people take a bar exam, the person with the lowest passing grade is given a law license. Mr. Gualtieri is a bar member, so he must have passed the exam, but that’s not a powerful endorsement.

People with good prospects for jobs as attorneys generally do not become cops. It has probably happened, but it’s not normal. Police work–forgive me, police–is not intellectually demanding. Departments reject applicants for scoring too high on intelligence tests because they know smart people will get bored after a year of rousting bums and arresting the same wife-beaters over and over. I don’t know Mr. Gualtieri, but if he were a good lawyer, he probably would not be a sheriff.

In any case, he appears to be wrong about the McGlockton case, and it’s strange that prosecutors haven’t stepped in to change things.

If he’s restraining himself because he hates cowardly, violent people like McGlockton, I certainly understand. McGlockton deserved prison time and maybe a beating which Drejka could not supply. But the law is the law. You can’t kill an assailant who chickens out.

I don’t feel sorry for McGlockton. He got what was coming to him, whether the law says so or not. I don’t like violent criminals. If you’re going to go around attacking smaller people, don’t cry injustice when you get shot. He didn’t feel bad about the injustice he himself perpetrated.

I don’t feel sorry for Drejka, either. He could have waited for brave McGlockton to run away, and then he could have called the cops. It’s not that hard to refrain from shooting a person.

It’s unfortunate to see nearly everyone involved in this case get it wrong, but it’s something anyone who has been on earth for more than 15 years should expect. People are not that smart, and they are very biased. It’s a wonder we get so many things right.

On the Internet, I have seen some people defend McGlockton’s actions. “Get in my woman’s face, and I will put you down,” and so on. There are some cultures in which any verbal friction or refusal to submit is considered to be an excuse for a beating or killing. I have seen this attitude a lot among black people. For example, some believe you have to beat any non-back who says “nigger” or “nigga.” It’s not exactly uncommon among white southerners, Italians, and Hispanics, either. In come cultures, you’re supposed to use your fists every time someone makes you feel bad.

This is not how life works. It’s not a sustainable lifestyle. It’s how you keep yourself and your family on the bottom, and society is not going to accommodate your misconceptions. It can’t afford to.

Going back to the English common law, it has always been clear that mere words, short of threats of immediate violence, never justify physical attacks. If they did, weak people would essentially be gagged in their daily dealings. Big people would be punching folks in the mouth all the time, without redress. Life does not work that way. It’s intolerable, so we don’t tolerate it.

SYG is an excellent doctrine. The idea that we should have to try to escape from stronger or better-armed people is ridiculous. It compromises our ability to respond. While you’re trying to get away, you’re not going to be able to focus on fighting back, and it may cost you your life. I shouldn’t have to prove I can’t get away from a larger, younger, stronger man, or one who is better-armed, when I didn’t cause the problem. The burden should always be on the criminal. If you don’t want to get shot, obey the law like everyone else.

SYG promotes civility and lawful behavior. If you’re a criminal, and you see a weaker person with a fanny pack or a bulge in his pocket, you know you better obey the law. That’s a positive result. It’s better for criminals to die than it is for innocent people to be injured, raped, or killed. An innocent person shouldn’t have to sustain brain damage or a broken arm just to protect you from yourself. It’s more just for you to be shot, even if you die.

It’s too bad journalists keep trying to change the law. I suspect it’s because they know most violent crime in America is committed by minorities. A lot of minority criminals get hurt by people defending themselves. That’s sad, but who chose that paradigm? Not the innocent. Rewarding criminals and punishing victims will only make crime worse.

My prediction: Drejka will face a jury. Either that, or new facts will come to light. Notice I don’t say he will do time. There are jurors who would refuse to convict him, and he might get lucky so he can go off and shoot more people in parking lots. Prosecutors have to obey the law, so I think an indictment is coming, but jurors can do anything they want. Remember O.J.

It will be a nice experience for prosecutors this time. They won’t have to make anything up.

More

Looks like I’m not alone in my take on this. Here’s a Politico story which says even the NRA’s Marion Hammer disagrees with Gualtieri.

Gualtieri apparently thinks he was legally barred from making an arrest, and Hammer says he is wrong, as long as he had probable cause.

Ben Crump, the scavenger lawyer who helped Trayvon Martin’s family profit from his death, comments in the story: “This was a cold-blooded murder. This is not self defense. And communities of color, the black community, are very emotional about this issue with these stand-your-ground cases.”

What a crock.

Crump may not be smart, or he may be misrepresenting things deliberately because he hopes to cash in (or both), but he got it wrong. “Cold-blooded murder” describes crimes committed by people who are not angry. For example, if you shoot a stranger for money, it’s cold-blooded murder. If you’re mad because a criminal just shoved you onto the hard pavement of a parking lot, you can’t be a cold-blooded killer. Second-degree murder laws were written for the specific purpose of prosecuting people who don’t kill in cold blood.

Why does he say SYG is a special concern for blacks? It applies to everyone. It’s very much like ordinary self-defense: if you’re where you’re supposed to be, and you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re in no danger. If you’re in someone else’s house holding a crowbar, you have a problem. And you should.

As long as minorities commit the majority of violent crimes, they will form the majority of people killed in self-defense. That’s just how it is, and it will still be true even if SYG is done away with. Trayvon Martin would have been killed with or without SYG. His victim had no choice, and Martin made it happen.

This week we saw a remarkable BLM reaction to a completely justified killing. A chronic Minnesota criminal named Thurman Blevins was sitting around with an illegal gun hanging out of his pants. The cops told him to stop and put his hands on top of his head, and they warned that they would shoot. He ran, and while he was running, he pulled the gun on them. Guess what happened.

Still, the BLMsters are up in arms. They seriously believe shooting criminals who pull guns on cops is wrong. We can’t pay any attention to the excuse-makers. They are against ALL minority killings, except in the cases of minority Trump supporters, and they don’t care about the facts or the danger to innocent people.

Thurman Blevins ran from the police after they accosted him with probable cause to believe he was committing a felony. That obligated them to chase him. He pulled a gun on them during the chase and refused to drop it. That justified the shooting. It’s not a puzzle. In half a second, he could have turned and killed one of them. But BLM people are creating self-righteous memes calling for “Justice for Thurman Blevins.” Unbelievable.

Disaster is Better Than Catastrophe

It sort of looks like Trump attorney Michael Cohen has chosen disbarment over the threat of prison.

I call him “Trump attorney” and not “former Trump attorney” because he still has a duty of loyalty to his client. The duty of loyalty generally survives the client/attorney relationship, and it is not a trifle or merely a custom. It’s codified in ethical rules for attorneys.

Michael Cohen recorded conversations with Donald Trump, and he didn’t get consent. In Florida, this would be a crime. In New York, it appears to be legal. No matter where you are, it’s unethical.

A lawyer has a duty to put his client’s interests first. When the lawyer and the client have conflicting interests, the client wins. There is no conceivable reason for taping a conversation surreptitiously, except to put the other party at a disadvantage relative to yourself. Simply by making the recording, Cohen betrayed his client.

I wonder why almost no one is talking about this. Well…I don’t wonder. I know. Leftist journalists are so happy the recordings exist, they don’t care how they were created. We have seen this before. Someone committed a crime by stealing part of a Trump tax return and giving it to the press, and journalists could not have cared less. Democrats taped Newt Gingrich illegally and released the recording, and journalists were thrilled.

Mind you, these are the people who would call for impreachment and prison time if Donald Trump double-parked.

Cohen his turning on Trump, and he wants immunity from prosecution. I haven’t read that he wants immunity, but it’s obvious. Problem for Cohen: there is no such thing as immunity from bar discipline. A prosecutor or trial judge can’t order a bar association to ignore ethical violations. They don’t have jurisdiction. Even if Cohen is never charged with a crime, his proud, continuing violations of the rules of ethics are going to bring consequences.

Why does he fear prosecution? Dinesh D’Souza. Mr. D’Souza was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions. If Cohen paid an aging stripper off in order to help Trump get elected, he may have violated campaign finance laws. Because he did it for a Republican, if convicted in New York, he would probably get prison time. This is a place where you can get a slap on the wrist for armed robbery, but they take it very seriously when conservatives break the law.

Cohen may be playing it smart. If he catches a felony conviction, he will, at the very least, be suspended from practice. He will also go to prison. If he merely turns on Trump, suspension or disbarment is all he has to worry about. Better to lose your career than to lose your career and your liberty.

Even if the bar were to leave Cohen alone, who would hire him now? Only a moron. His other clients must be calling him, demanding that he destroy his recordings of them. They are surely dropping him and hiring new people. Who would hire a lawyer who turns on former clients?

He may be panicking. It may be that Mueller’s case against him is weak, and Cohen may not know it. It could be that a good lawyer would have figured this out for Cohen by now. It seems like Mueller gave Cohen a little squeeze, and Cohen burst like a pimple instead of considering his options. Maybe he’s a dream snitch.

I don’t know what kind of legal advice he’s getting. If I were him, I would hire a top criminal lawyer and go into seclusion. That’s what intelligent defendants do. Everything he says that hurts his defense can be used against him in court. All of his eccentric actions can be brought up. He’s not just his own attorney; he’s a future witness, via an exception to the hearsay rule (declarations against interest). He should hire a good lawyer and let him do the talking.

Cohen hired Lanny Davis, a former Clinton apologist who loves cameras. I have never seen any reason to believe Davis is a great legal light. Lately I’ve seen a lot of evidence that he’s a fool. He’s letting Cohen destroy himself. He should make a DVD called “Clients Gone Wild.”

Cohen went to the nation’s worst law school. He may not be the greatest lawyer on earth. You can be fairly dumb and get rich practicing law, if you have a ton of brass and you stay away from anything intellectually demanding. Maybe Cohen has no idea what he’s doing.

I should retract that. He definitely has no idea what he’s doing. If he knew what he was doing, he would not have paid off a stripper during a campaign. He would have researched the law and found out he was inviting prosecution. Oddly, his lack of foresight may have insulated Trump from prosecution while landing himself on the griddle. His rash payoff may put him in prison, and his slimy recordings may keep Trump in the clear. With the worst intentions, he may have done what a lawyer is supposed to do. He may have fallen on his sword for a client.

People are ridiculing Trump (of course) for criticizing Cohen’s underhanded recording practices. If they couldn’t criticize Trump for that, they would criticize him for breathing. Trump is absolutely right. There are times when a lawyer has to take steps to protect himself from a client, but you don’t do it by surveilling him without permission. There is no way to make that fly in front of a bar committee.

It’s okay for lawyers to protect themselves from attacks from clients. Lawyers have to think about malpractice a lot. It’s normal to document things you tell clients. It’s normal to document their consent when you do things for them. What Cohen did is different. He tried to set a client up for blackmail and prosecution.

A lawyer may oppose a former client in court, under certain conditions. He can’t go after a former client in the same open matter in which he represented him. Cohen is doing that now.

In order for Trump to get in trouble, Cohen will have to show that Trump knew in advance that Cohen was going to do something illegal for him, or he will have to show that Trump found out later and did something illegal to cover it up. It doesn’t look like that will happen. If not, there will be a lot of suffering in newsrooms.

Liberal journalists are like dogs forced to balance juicy Trump-shaped dog biscuits on their quivering noses. They may look all they want. They may smell the prize. Slobber may run down their cheeks. But they never get to taste. I don’t think they ever will.

I took a course in ethics, and I’ve had to consume a whole lot of continuing legal education materials related to ethics. I’m wondering what that was all about. Was I supposed to take it seriously? Maybe the joke is on me. Look how prominent lawyers act.

The Clintons are lawyers. Cohen is a lawyer. Michael Avenatti is a lawyer. They’re revolting. No sane person would trust any of them. Even Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor and prosecutor, is acting strangely. He practices in front of TV cameras, and he makes legal and factual claims he has clearly not researched.

You’re not really supposed to practice in front of cameras. Even when it’s within the rules of ethics, it stinks. If you’re determined to do it, you should be 100% sure you’re helping your client and avoiding provoking your judge.

Seems like Alan Dershowitz is the only attorney who even glances at the law before he talks on TV. I’m okay with his appearances, because he’s not involved in the cases he discusses. Why is he doing better work than the people who have the most at stake?

People are disappointing. My mom and Lex Luthor said, “People are no damn good.” I’ll just say they’re disappointing. This is not what the practice of law should look like. There are many lawyers all over the country, doing it right. It doesn’t have to be a TV circus. TV doesn’t make you a good lawyer. It may make you a rich lawyer, but if you’re on TV regularly, chances are, you’re a hack and a disgrace to the profession.

Relief Gives Way to New Problems

I appreciate all the helpful comments I received after writing about my dad’s fall.

It looks like he didn’t injure himself seriously. He’s home, and he will be seeing his primary care physician soon for a follow-up.

I am still researching ramps and so on.

I now think a ramp is a bad idea. Ramps are great for wheelchairs, but they aren’t a good solution for people who can still walk. It’s easier to walk up a few steps than it is to shuffle up a 10-foot ramp.

Right now, I’m looking into handrails. If he had handrails, he would be able to use the steps more safely. Also, nice handrails would be an improvement to the house. That’s saying something, because this is some kind of house. It’s very nice.

I have checked into tools for getting him off the ground. I’m very disappointed. The main thing that disappoints me is the price. Companies are selling $300 products for $4000, just because insurance pays for them. Human nature is really something. The other thing that’s disappointing is that they are generally made to lift people off beds. They generally won’t work for people who have fallen.

My initial solution to the problem was an air mattress. You stick it under the patient, which isn’t hard, and you turn it on. It blows itself up, lifting the patient to a convenient sitting height. I can plug it into his car’s AC outlet or a portable generator if he’s outside. I might do it. A good twin mattress would be light and handy.

I had another idea: a tubular A-frame with a manual lever hoist on it. Put it over him and crank the lever. Four pieces of aluminum tubing, a crossmember, a hoist, and a belt. It would work considerably better than a $4000 hoist, and it would be lighter and cheaper.

I believe the hospital made his condition worse. They wouldn’t let him move around. When you’re 86, the last thing you need is to lie in bed for two days. He seems stiff, and he has a harder time standing up. I didn’t see this coming. One more curve ball, courtesy of old age.

He now has trouble getting out of bed. I am hoping that’s temporary. Otherwise, I have to look at assisted living and attendants. There may be a good respite care place near me. That’s temporary assisted living, for people who are injured or ill. If so, that will be plan B, after keeping him here and hiring a part-time attendant.

I got him up, and I am having him walk and do his exercises. Hopefully, that will fix the problem for now.