(Obama appointee Susan Rice’s CYA e-mail)
Judge Emmet Sullivan has hired … well-known Washington DC criminal defense attorney Beth Wilkinson [and wife of CNN’s David Gregory] to “represent” him in connection with the Circuit Court order [that he show cause why he shouldn’t dismissed charges against Matthew Flynn, as demanded by the prosecution].
It remains an open question whether the Circuit Court will accept or hear anything from Wilkinson on Judge Sullivan’s behalf. Their order was specific as to him, he’s not a “party” represented by counsel.
If Judge Sullivan is not capable of answering a question about the application of a Rule of Criminal Procedure, the Appeals Court might want to take up the question of Judge Sullivan’s fitness to serve as a district court judge.
Source: “Curiously Odd Decision by Judge Sullivan to Hire Beth Wilkinson.”
A goodly rain Saturday preceded today’s sunshine and temperatures in the 80s F. (05-24-2020)! We thank the WI State Journal for heckling Dane County’s paranoid coronavirus lockdown.
Dane County is now an island of strict regulation. … [It] appears to open the economy slower than what the Democratic governor would have allowed. And it provides less clarity and hope for a return to something approaching normal. … We understand the need for caution to prevent a sharp increase in cases. But that concern must be weighed against the livelihoods of small business people and the larger economy.
⇒ OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: The head groundskeeper here at Blaska Policy Werkes hereby declares the Experimental Work Farm (and Penal Colony) open for business! (Face masks optional.)
Back in the fields from their unpaid furlough, quarantine, and lockdown, the unlettered field hands — blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight — worked the verdant lawns surrounding the Stately Manor. As they toiled, the field hands sang their old-timey, call & response hymns (from the Steely Dan catalog):
They were implementing Blaska’s grand experiment. The chief agronomist is re-introducing white clover to the lawn. (You heard us right!!!) The learned agriculturist was gob-smacked by the natural beauty of the lawn across the street, the small white blossoms poking their heads above the green grass of that home.
Once upon a time (before the music died), all lawn seed contained white clover (Trifolium repens) as a matter of course. The widespread adaptation of selective herbicides in the 1950s doomed clover. Blaska wants it back. White clover is a good symbiotic best buddy to lawn grass.
Shown with already growing, volunteer Dutch white clover
We’re not Mr. (Totally) Natural, Flakey Foont. We spot-sprayed Bonide Weed Beater Ultra (available at Jung’s) on the mats of invasive chickweed and let it do its grim work. Followed that two days later with an over-seeder rented from Home Depot ($69 for four hours). The gas-powered machine scratches the soil like a de-thatcher but don’t bother using its seed bin. White clover seed is just too tiny. Didn’t work the entire lawn; clover migrates.
“As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.” — Chance the Gardener.
We planted “micro-clover” — said to grow half as high as normal “Dutch” white clover — 2 to 3 inches as opposed to 4 to 6 inches, once it’s “trained” by mowing. But it’s also more expensive. The heartless overseer of the Work Farm procured two one-pound bags of mini-clover (v. Pipolina) via mail order at $26 each (versus $15 for the regular white clover). Comes coated in inoculant to give it a good start. Good luck finding micro-clover in area garden centers. Mail order sources we could find are:
The field hands manually sprinkled the tiny seeds over the worked-over lawn, then allowed Saturday’s heavy rain to implant the seed in the shallow earth. (Can’t be planted more than one-quarter inch deep.) The chief agronomist timed planting just right; spring or early summer around here. Grows in zones 3 to 10 (Madison WI is zone 4). Should germinate in 7 to 15 days if kept moist. Weatherman looks like he’ll help.
Must admit, a similar attempt on the more wooded, north-facing front lawn a few years ago failed. Clover grew but didn’t come back the next year. Clover needs full sun or, at minimum, partial shade.
Because it makes its own, we intend to fertilize with low-nitrogen amendments, probably Milorganite, which adds tilth to the soil, as well. We also keep our lawns at least 2 inches high (no scalping!); shades the roots. Helps lawns survive Wisconsin’s torrid summers. Cool-season grass like ours appreciates cool feet, which is why Ireland is so green.
More knowledgeable sources than than moi:
Blaska’s Memorial Day weekend Bottom Line: We trace our love of the soil and growing things to father, who survived the Great Depression, fought in the Second World War, farmed the land, served in the state legislature, raised a family and a considerable amount of hell.
If we have flogged one issue in this blogge, it is the threat to the Republic posed by identity politics. More so than any virus, novel or not.
Uncle Joe Biden recently spoke the argot of identity politics when he responded to a question from an African-American interviewer this way:
Don’t you just love the use of the colloquialism, “ain’t.” Let’s think about that, for a moment. A white man is race carding a black man for being insufficiently … what? Authentically black? Woke? How is that not racist? Class? Buehler?
In the furor that resulted, Biden did some serious A-kissing to black business leaders, saying he does not take black voters for granted.
“No one should have to vote for any party based on their race
or religion or background.”
Now he tells us! Stick that on your Prius bumper, Madison WI! At least, it’s a start — the first step in any 12-step program to recovery from the progressivism preoccupation with identity politics. Next step would be to rescind his pledge to name a woman as his vice presidential running mate.
The Left is obsessed with which woman checks how many boxes. Extra points for abundant melanin, non-traditional sexuality, and disability. Notice how no one is talking about political philosophy, geography, or (ahem) leadership.
THIS JUST IN: Stacey Abrams promises to step down as governor of Georgia if selected as Biden’s vice presidential running mate. — Babylon Bee
“You ain’t black” is just another price the Left must pay for worshiping at the altar of identity politics.
It is beginning to dawn, one suspects, that our … acquaintances realize this kind of merde is electing Trump!
Columbia humanities professor Mark Lilla (quoted here) writes that:
Identity politics on the left was at first about large classes of people . . . seeking to redress major historical wrongs by mobilizing and then working through our political institutions to secure their rights.
But by the 1980s, it had given way to a pseudo-politics of self-regard and increasingly narrow, and exclusionary self-definition that is now cultivated in our colleges and universities. The main result has been to turn people back onto themselves, rather than turning them outward towards the wider world they share with others.
It has left them unprepared to think about the common good in non-identity terms and what must be done practically to secure it —especially the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort.
By these signs shall ye be known. To the list of liberal-progressive-socialist giveaways, we need to add Trait #6, Fear mongering and Trait #7, Condescension and Trait #8, the Race card.
From The Nation (John Nichols’ day job) the same publication that hero-worships the cerebral AOC:
‘The very people howling the loudest about reopening
— and running around maskless —
are the ones making it too dangerous to reopen’Small groups of largely white confederates [Trait #8] who have attended anti-lockdown protests spread themselves across hundreds of miles, even into neighboring states, within 48 hours of attending one of their Covid parties. [Trait #7] And, of course, the people most likely to congregate in large groups without wearing a mask are also the people most likely to show up at your local grocery store or Costco without wearing a mask, sneeze on your potential purchases [Trait #6], and then amble off in search of more “freedom” [Trait #7] while leaving sickness and death in their wake. [Trait #6]
A can-do American unselfishly empties his Shiner bock beer.
Clever, that, the supposedly generic but heavily freighted use of the word “confederates” — lower case — in conjunction with “white.” Light them tiki torches! Now for The Nation’s dose of condescension:
We can’t have these nice things because we have too many selfish people spoiling it for everybody else. We can’t manage the crisis, because too many people have decided to be unmanageable.
“I sneeze on your potential purchases.”
Wasn’t that the Daniel Day-Lewis line in the movie There Will Be Blood?
What did we say about our … acquaintances’ use of the word “selfish”? (It’s Trait #5.)
Blaska’s Bottom Line: As its article shows, The Nation proves that one actually CAN mask stupid.
The white lab coats here at the Policy Werkes have identified five traits shared by our liberal-progressive-socialist acquaintances, illuminated by the waning (not that Rachel Maddow would admit it) coronavirus pandemic.
Rule by expert is the concrete foundation of Progressivism. Which is why they utter idiocies like, “Education, the Environment, _________ (fill in the blank) is too important to be left to the politicians. We must listen to the experts.” Voters be damned.
So they condemn Trump for not wearing full surgical garb. Result is this bizarre headline from CNN:
“Trump’s plan to win a second term unmasked: the President gave every impression of battling for his political life during a visit to Michigan.”
CNN gives every impression of desperation. The head groundskeeper at the Policy Werkes is old enough to remember when the experts said face masks cause more harm than good.
… and Epstein didn’t kill himself
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is a hero for trying to shutdown the state for another couple of years because the virus is still out there. Our progressive acquaintances (for they ARE our …) want that to shut down businesses employing a thousand workers if just one pico-curie of contamination is detected. Award millions in civil tort damages to the idiot who spilled hot coffee on her lap.
Too many of our liberal-et cetera acquaintances seem to think that “flattening the curve” means erasing the graph entirely. When its purpose was more modest: don’t overwhelm the hospitals so that people die on gurneys in hallways. National Review editor Rich Lowry writing for the indispensable (that word again) New York Post:
We are on the other side of the curve. There are encouraging signs all over the country — and no early indications of a reopening debacle. The question now is whether the media and political system can absorb good news on the virus, which is often ignored, if it isn’t buried under misleading storylines.
Because the purpose is to defeat Trump. Now Rachel Maddow & Co. are upping the ante. Our Chicken Littles won’t be satisfied until every human and their dog gets vaccinated. Also called “moving the goal post.”
It’s the Rahm Emanuel rule. More rationale for another Great Society big bad New Deal. The pandemic, then, is a godsend (as if God really existed). Because government is the answer! (Except when it’s Donald Trump.)
But Trump didn’t order people sickened from a strange new disease to be housed with vulnerable elderly folks in nursing homes, like Andrew Cuomo in New York and Minnesota’s Gov. Walz. As the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported:
Deaths from COVID-19 continue to be concentrated among the elderly and residents of long-term care facilities, with 13 of 17 newly reported fatalities on Tuesday involving residents of these facilities. The pandemic has now been associated with 748 deaths in Minnesota, including 608 long-term care residents.
Everyone, they believe, is a victim in need of the tender ministrations of Big Gummint. They’ve long laid claim to racial minorities, who won’t be healed until America pays reparations for past misdeeds, abolishes academic testing, and empties prisons. #MeToo, ladies (except you, Tara). Students at publicly subsidized universities are victims, somehow.
Now even the cisgendered white male can join the sisterhood of victimization, thanks to novel coronavirus. And if they’re not victims today, they are (at least) potential victims!
“As states lift their lockdowns, businesses are trying to reopen,” the Wall Street Journal observes. But Pelosi’s Democrats forced through higher unemployment benefits. Now many employers …
… are struggling to rehire workers because they can’t compete with enhanced jobless benefits. 38.6 million have applied for unemployment insurance in the last nine weeks. [But] 68% of laid-off workers are now making more unemployed.
Not enough to be “good.” Your neighbors must KNOW you’re good. The ubiquitous bumper stickers demanding COEXIST! (Serenity Now!) The yard signs that Believe in Science and welcome everyone as neighbors, in Spanish and Hmong. Now, the face mask — as good as a McGovern button.
⇒ Observation: Went to Jung’s garden store on Nesbit Road and everyone was wearing a mask. Next stop at the Harley Davidson dealer. No one wore a mask. Two Americas.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Instead of spinning our own cotton, as in Gandhi’s India, colossus America is making face masks. (Surely, the Smithsonian one day will stage a showing.) And liberals are wearing them bicycling toute seule through the UW Arboretum. Anyone who doesn’t is SELFISH!
Today in biased journalism:CNN headline:
“Rush”? There’s a “rush” to reopen church?
— not fake news at The Federalist.
Centers for Disease Control
The Vicki McKenna Show
City of Madison, Wisconsin Police Incident Reports
Babylon Bee
