Giuliani really is a crackpot lawyer

During the efforts by serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) to overturn the results of the last election, three lawyers stood out for the absurdity of their efforts: Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and John Eastman, part of what Mike Pence memorably labeled as a ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’. If we ever needed any further evidence that Giuliani is truly an outstanding member of that exclusive club, we now have a ruling against him by a federal judge.

You may recall how Giuliani in public forums claimed that how two Georgia election workers Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman had illegally manipulated thousands of votes and were seen surreptitiously “passing around USB ports like they were vials of heroin or cocaine.” (He presumably meant USB drives, not ports.) They are actually passing ginger mints to each other. As a result, the two women suffered severe harassment and death threats from the MAGA cultists.
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Women and endurance running

It was not that long ago that women were considered such fragile creatures that they were not allowed to compete in endurance track events, with ‘endurance’ being 800m and over.

The BBC has a nice article on the topic. It appears that there was a woman who competed in the very first Olympic marathon event in 1896 but little is known about her. That was not all.

The day after the men’s marathon event at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, Stamata Revithi, a 30-year-old mother from Piraeus, ran the same course unofficially in five and half hours. external-link
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Thirty years later, in 1926, an English woman, Violet Piercy, ran the London Marathon course unofficially in 3:40:22 and completed two official marathons in 1933 and 1936. The Sunday Mirror quoted her as saying her 1936 race was to “prove that women could stick the distance.”

It was clear to all with their eyes open that women could run 26.2 miles, but cynical attitudes lingered based on imaginary evidence and often outright lies.

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Bizarre coda to Rubiales controversy

Over the next few days, there will be little or no blog posts as I will be a little busy with other things.

However, I had to say something about the bizarre coda to the controversy about the Spanish soccer chief Luis Rubiales and his forcible kissing of a player on the World Cup winning Spanish soccer team.

It appears that his mother is vowing to go on a hunger strike to protest the way her son is being treated.

In a desperate move, the mother of Spain’s football chief has locked herself in a church in southern Spain and declared a hunger strike, as prosecutors open an investigation into his conduct.

A week after Luis Rubiales, the president of the Spanish Football Federation, kissed Spain’s Jenni Hermoso at the Women’s World Cup awards ceremony, his reputation is in tatters and his future hangs in the balance.

In a desperate attempt to defend her son, Ángeles Béjar, Rubiales’ mother, locked herself in the Divina Pastora church in Motril, southern Spain, and declared a hunger strike.

She won’t stop, she says, until the authorities find a solution to the “inhuman and bloody hunt they are conducting against my son with something he doesn’t deserve”.
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Rubiales’s mother told the Spanish news agency EFE that she would remain in the church “day and night” and on strike “indefinitely” until justice is done for her son.

The woman remained in the parish church with her sister after the priest left.

Luis Rubiales’ mother has asked Jenni Hermoso to “tell the truth” and “maintain the version she had at the beginning of the incident”.

One has to admire the devotion of a mother to her son but a hunger strike? Really? These are usually done to highlight a grave injustice and provoke widespread anger. But the plight of a beleaguered highly entitled sports bureaucrat is hardly the thing that spurs mass sympathy. And is her son going to let his mother fall ill and even die just so that he can keep his job?

I think that she is only making herself and her son look ridiculous.

Just go already!

I have been watching with astonishment the dogged efforts by Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s football federation (RFEF), to stay on in his position despite calls from all sides for him to leave. This has been a major news story for several days.

It all began after the Spanish women’s team won the World Cup for this first time in its history. In the jubilation that followed, as the players went in a line after the final game to be congratulated by Rubiales and others, he grabbed forward Jenni Hermoso’s head and kissed her full on the lips. In the uproar that followed, he claimed that the kiss had been consensual, which Hermoso denied.

To add insult to injury, Rubiales had later ordered the coaching staff to attend a speech given by him at an extraordinary meeting of the RFEF where he defended his actions and blasted “false feminism” and a “social assassination” of his character and vowed not to resign. That was not all the offensive things he did.
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Indictments are not good for Trump

We know the routine by now. Whatever awful thing that happens to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is portrayed by him and his supporters as being good for him and making him more popular. That has become an article of faith and I have to give him credit for using this face-saving tactic to turn what are political disasters into fund-raising opportunities and to raise the spirits of his cult followers.

But as with all things involving SSAT, much of this bravado is all smoke and mirrors and his support has been steadily declining as his legal troubles mount and he becomes increasingly unhinged in his comments.
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An astonishing high school football scam

It is quite astonishing the kinds of scams that are successfully pulled off, even for a short time. Take this scam about an entirely fake faith-based high school named Bishop Sycamore that was created seemingly just to have a football team. That scam is now the subject of a new documentary titled BS High.

In August 2021, two high school football teams met in the Pro Football Hall of Fame stadium in Canton, Ohio, for a much-hyped matchup shown live on ESPN. When it quickly became a 58-0 blowout, suspicion descended most heavily on the losing side – an outfit called Bishop Sycamore purporting to be a faith-based school that actually turned out to be fake.
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The ‘big’ question to be answered today

Eight of the candidates for the Republican nomination for president had their first debate yesterday. Fox News decided to not allow any of the other streaming services to show it so I did not watch it. I have only had time to briefly read some reviews (here’s one and here’s another) but they were all over the map afterwards with no one having a breakout performance or a ‘viral moment’ as the kids say these days. The views expressed seemed to be entirely predictable, with the only variation lying between extremist and utterly nuts. But one consensus was that Florida governor did not do anything to stop his slide in the polls.

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) did not take part despite desperate pleading from the Republican National Committee organizers of the debate. He has been angry with Fox News for whatever reason and he gave them the middle finger by having his interview with Tucker Carlson released at the same time as the first hour of the debate. The rambling interview seemed to be the same old whining and ranting.

Today SSAT will turn himself in to the Fulton County jail for processing and that will include a mug shot and other things that he was spared in his previous three occasions. There has apparently been keen interest in the betting markets on what his weight and height will be. There had been speculation that the numbers given by his White House physician had been shaded so that his BMI index would be just below the obese marker. That weight had been given as 244 lb but the betting over/under line today is 278.5 lb. There has also been speculation that SSAT uses lifts in his shoes to make him look taller and whether his height will be measured today without shoes, which would also increase his BMI.

So there may be at least one ‘big’ question answered today, unlike in yesterday’s debate or interview.

When thieves fall out, the prosecution wins

One of the tactics that prosecutors use against defendants is to try and pressure lpeople to testify against their bosses. If that fails, then they charge them with offenses and use that to pressure them to turn against one another in exchange for a favorable plea deal. This works particularly well against low-level people who may not have the resources to pay for expensive attorney and for whom the prospect of any jail time would be alarming. They may well wonder why they should take the fall for doing the bidding of others.

The Georgia case with its 18 defendants in addition to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) provides plenty of opportunities for such negotiations and it looks like the process the process has already started.
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Two-tier health care in a post-Roe US

When the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent, we knew that it would result in the red states proceeding to ban abortion in almost all instances, even in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is in danger from the pregnancy. What may not have been anticipated is how wide ranging the ripple effects might be. We seem to be moving into a situation where we have two health care systems, one for the blue states and one for the red states, where the red states do not just not have access to abortion but also lose other services as well as lose people who can afford to move to other states.

Idaho is a good example of what is happening where small towns in red states are in danger of losing all obstetrics and gynecological services since physicians are worried that by providing medical care for problematic pregnancies, they may be laying themselves open to criminal prosecutions.
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The NFT racket

I was skeptical about cryptocurrency and was utterly baffled by the appeal of NFTs. The former seemed risky and the latter felt very much like a speculative bubble driven by hype in which the underlying entity being bought and sold had no intrinsic value. So I was not surprised by the collapse of various cryptocurrency endeavors like FTX and even less surprised by the recent lawsuit filed against Sotheby’s auction house, accusing them of fraud in inflating the value of the ugly Bored Ape BFT and using celebrities to hype it.
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