Isn’t it always this way?

Guy rides to the top on little more than his charisma and confidence, and what happens? All his unpleasantness bubbles to the top.

The pastor of one of the country’s largest churches—and who Donald Trump once named as a spiritual adviser—has admitted to “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a woman who says he sexually abused her when she was just 12 years old.

On Friday, Cindy Clemishire told The Wartburg Watch, a religious watchdog blog, that Robert Morris, the pastor of Texas’ Gateway Church, asked her to come into his room when he stayed with her family for Christmas in 1982. She was 12 and he was 20 at the time. She said Morris molested her and then ordered her not to say anything about his behavior “because it will ruin everything.” The abuse continued for years before Clemishire confided in a close friend, prompting Morris’ wife to find out and Morris to step down from the ministry, according to the report.

When he made the standard tearful confession of guilt to his congregation, begging for forgiveness for this poor sinner, he admitted that he was guilty of “inappropriate sexual behavior,” he didn’t mention that his victim was 12 years old.

Elders at Gateway Church also told The Christian Post that Morris disclosed a “moral failure” and had since been absolved. He has not been criminally charged, but Texas’ statute of limitations does not cover sexual offenses committed against a child.

“Pastor Robert has been open and forthright about a moral failure he had over 35 years ago when he was in his twenties and prior to him starting Gateway Church. He has shared publicly from the pulpit the proper biblical steps he took in his lengthy restoration process,” they said, according to the Post.

“moral failure”. She was 12 years old. Jesus, these people. But he’s been absolved.

Atheists have their own examples of “moral failure” — Dave Silverman comes to mind — but at least we don’t pretend to “absolve” them.

🤮🤮🤮

My sympathies to this woman’s recent struggles, but I am reminded why I despise royalty.

“On cue, the sun broke through the showers to shine on her — and the whole world said in unison…it’s lovely to see you too, Kate”

Nope, I didn’t say that at all. It was more like muttering under my breath at the annoying overdose of saccharine and non-news in the news. Fuck off, Kate, and take your annoying kids with you.

Rupert can stop simpering over this one family, too.

(It’s nothing personal, I just get so annoyed at empty propaganda and the excesses of tabloid “journalism”.)

Black Widows: the most boring pet ever?

I didn’t expect it, but wow, black widows are incredibly lazy. They find a corner and park their large butts there and don’t move at all, all day long. I know they wander about at night stringing silk all over the place, but otherwise, they’re like sulking teenagers who don’t wanna do nothin’ whenever you look at them. Boring!

Or are they?

I think maybe I haven’t been feeding them right. Yesterday, I caught a small grasshopper in our garden, and I tossed it into the black widow container. It bounced off a couple of strands of silk, and the effect was electric: the widow leapt out of her corner and stood poised in the center, suspended on its web, looking extraordinarily alert. She wasn’t looking directly at the hopper, but was delicately touching multiple lines — you could tell she was poised to sense any motion in her trap.

The moment was tense and dramatic.

The hopper moved. The widow instantly charged at it, tried to use her hind legs to tangle it up, and failed, so she retreated back to her central lookout. The hopper was terrified, and remained motionless for at least 5 minutes, while the spider was also motionless, but alert.

Finally, the hopper took a small step, and the widow surged forward and snared it with more silk. The hopper was kicking frantically, trying to leap away, but was hampered by the strong sticky silk, and every leap tangled it further in all that silk. So much silk. Finally, the black widow gave it one little kiss, and the hopper was almost instantly dead. Then she dragged her prey up to her calm quiet corner and ate.

I’ve been feeding her mealworms all this time. Maybe it’s not the spider that’s boring, but the food I’ve been giving her. The next feeding day is Tuesday, I think I’m going to have to buy a box of crickets.

A brilliant approach

While we’re at it, can we ban these? (Minneapolitans know what I mean)

I love this idea out of any country other than the US.

Last month this Scottish city — filled with medieval spires and shadowed by the looming castle on the hill said to have inspired the Harry Potter books — made a startlingly modern decision. Edinburgh’s city council voted to ban fossil fuel advertisements on city property, undermining the ability of not only oil companies, but also car manufacturers, airlines and cruise ships, to promote their products. The ban targeted arms manufacturers as well.

Edinburgh is not alone. Amsterdam and Sydney have cracked down on advertisements for fossil fuels and high-emissions products. France also limited the promotion of coal, gas and hydrogen made from fossil fuels. Even the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, has joined in, endorsing a ban on fossil fuel ads this month in a speech in New York this month: “Stop the Mad Men from fueling the madness.”

A fantastically potent tactic, I think. It’s not just that the general public will lose a source of misinformation and propaganda for practices that harm the world, but that media will lose an incentive to peddle petroleum products. What would the news be like if mass media were no longer motivated to downplay ideas, like climate change, because big corporations were no longer sensitive to specific kinds of advertisers?

Here in the US I’d also like to see a ban on advertising pharmaceuticals. I don’t watch broadcast television much at all anymore, but one of the reasons is the infuriatingly stupid ads for drugs. Killing car commercials and Ozempic ads would have interesting side effects on the commentary out of the news room.

First bike!

Next week, we’re driving all the way to Madison to see my daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter, and we’re bringing a present: her first bike. I got it all assembled today, although I’m going to suggest that Kyle & Skatje give it a once-over and make sure I didn’t forget something.

I remember my first bike, and really, my only bike. We were poor, so we had to take whatever we could get, and my father was quite proud to have gotten this used bike from a friend. I was 7 or 8, and he gave me this monstrous adult bike (I’d grow into it), dark red, with the words “English Racer” written on the frame (I later learned that it wasn’t really a racing bike, but a Raleigh Sports bike.) It was very light and stripped down, only 3 speeds — high, higher, and so high you’ll rupture yourself trying to turn that crank — and no fenders, which was not a great option in the Pacific Northwest, where I’d spend most of my adolescence with a muddy stripe up my back. It had these tires that were about as thick as my index finger, so no, this wasn’t for riding on the back roads.

Also, no training wheels, of course.

So my dad taught me how to ride by putting me on this razor thin rail on wheels, where I couldn’t simultaneously sit on the seat and reach the pedals, and pushed me off down the driveway. I had to learn to balance or die.

As you can see, I didn’t die. That was my bike all through grade school, and I think my parents didn’t junk it until I went off to college — at least, it disappeared then, and I don’t think it flew away. It was a great bike. Meanwhile, my brother would get a 10-speed with fat tires — I felt sorry for him that he was driving such an inferior vehicle. My bike was a beast to get rolling from a stationary start, but once you got moving, I could easily outrace my brother and all of my friends. As long as there was no turning involved. Or braking. Or going uphill. Downhill on the straightaway, it was glorious.

I don’t think Iliana’s bike will have the staying power of my old Red Racer, but it’s a much more practical and safer way to start bicycling. Maybe when she gets older she can get a skinny death machine and terrorize everyone going down hills.

Maybe crime is spread through the drinking water?

Royce White is a former professional basketball player who really, really wants to replace our Democratic Senator, Amy Klobuchar. Say what you want about Klobuchar, I don’t think she’s going to be sweating over this race.

White posted a map of the “out-of-control crime” in Minneapolis and said we need to refund the police.

One problem.

White, a 33-year-old retired NBA player who was recently accused of dropping $1,200 of campaign funds at a Miami strip club, appeared to have ripped the graphic from another account on X who had shared it sarcastically. It showed dozens of green dots, which indicated working fountains, and a handful of red and yellow dots, which signified those broken and being repaired across Minneapolis.

Hey, you never know. Maybe he’s like John Snow and the Broad Street Pump — he’s discovered a previously unknown vector for the spread of crime, not cholera, in the city. Unfortunately for that hypothesis, he quickly deleted his tweet, and is now really angry at the people who exposed his foolishness (not to mention his abuse of campaign funds at a strip club.)

You’re a cuck. We’re leaving the plantation, White tweeted at a Minnesota-based reporter, Christopher Ingraham, who pointed out the error. You and your weird liberal buddies read it and weep.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, he’s running for office as a Republican.

If only they hadn’t made that last comment

Honestly, I could have ignored this. It’s nothing but familiar anti-trans stupidity, inventing sharp distinctions out of blurry ones, pretending overlaps in morphology don’t exist. There’s just so much of it that I don’t have the will to address it all. But that last bit…I saw red.

Male skeletons literally have more ribs than female skeletons and many other differences. Did you go to an online college?

That is simply not true. Did you go to a bible college?

“There’s something to be said for Minnesota nice”

I read a horrific story about road rage. A 35 year old man was so outraged about getting honked at that he followed the honker to her home, spun donuts in her parking lot, punched her in the face, and chased and ran over her boyfriend killing him. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

That’s just one ugly story. What was interesting is that the article ranked states for road rage, and number one at the top was Arizona.

A recent study from FINN put Arizona’s road rage score at 8 out of 10, the highest in the U.S. The state also came out on top for confrontational drivers.

“A huge 81% of drivers in Arizona have been yelled at, insulted or threatened when driving,” according to the report. “As well as this, a shocking 22.5% of drivers in the state have been forced off the road.”

Arizona ranked ahead of Montana, South Carolina, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama for road rage.

Where’s Pennsylvania? Once upon a time I had a daily commute on the Schuylkill Expressway, and that was mildly terrifying. I once saw a truck cut off a guy on the freeway entrance, and the guy pulled out a pistol and started peppering the truck. You do not want to be on the Schuylkill at rush hour.

But then…a nice surprise.

The best state to avoid road rage? Finn said Minnesota, where drivers encounter the least aggressive driving in the country. There’s something to be said for Minnesota nice, apparently.

As usual, the author doesn’t understand “Minnesota nice,” a phrase referring to the extremes of passive-aggressive behavior here. But sure, come to Minnesota, where we probably won’t force you off the road and murder your boyfriend. Probably.