The curious Cuba-China-Russia conspiracy theory promoted by the New York Times

Readers may recall my post from back in February about the mysterious sounds that were causing headaches (literally) to US embassy personnel in Cuba. It led to all manner of speculations about the Cubans themselves unleashing, or allowing some other nation to unleash, some high tech Cold War-type sonar devices on them. The fact that the evidence produced was highly vague and that the Cubans had no motive for doing such things did not stop the wild speculations.
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Miss America drops the swimsuit

Lost in the fuss over the G7 and Singapore summits was the other big news of the week, that the Miss America pageant had decided to eliminate that portion of the competition that had the contestants posing in swimsuits, which apparently now consists exclusively of skimpy bikinis. This has given media the chance to run photographs of women in bikinis with double-entendre headlines like the one above. So I thought, why not me too?


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The imperial mindset on display

I have been reading the reactions to the Singapore summit meetings and have been bemused by the hostile reactions to it almost across the board. What struck me was that many of them were extremely irate about one particular aspect, that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un were shown as equals, in that they had equal numbers of flags of the two nations, stood and sat side by side, and in every other way the two leaders were treated as if they were of equal standing.
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Give the religious an inch and they’ll try to take a mile

The US Supreme Court frequently takes up cases involving the Establishment Clause about the extent to which religious elements can be introduced into the public sphere. Rather than unequivocally declare that it should never be allowed and thus ending the debate once and for all, a decision that would likely result in them having to face the wrath of the religious in America, they have instead tried to rule very narrowly, inserting intricate conditions on when such things can be allowed. They have done this with prayers, religious displays, and the like.
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The US-North Korea summit agreement

The full text of the agreement signed by Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump in Singapore. It is not long.

Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit.

President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a first, historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.

President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new U.S.-DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
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This man really, really hates this Honda CR-V

What surprises m is that the police are really chill about the whole thing and let him, after he had rammed the vehicle several times, keep jumping on the car for a long time, only moving in when he falls off. I am glad that they waited for him to calm down since there was no one in the other car and it was a wreck already. But as always, I wonder how things might have turned out if he had been black …

There’s more on the incident here.

The US president is not the commander-in-chief of all Americans

A segment on the radio recently discussed Donald Trump’s decision to invite people this year to celebrate iftar, the name given to the breaking of the daily fast by Muslims during Ramadan. This was an annual practice started some years ago but Trump did not have one last year when he was at the height of his anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions. During an interview on the program The World, the question was asked as to who might be invited and what Muslims would agree to go. The person being interviewed, who worked for president George W. Bush on Muslim outreach, repeatedly kept referring to Trump as the “commander in chief for all Americans”, as if this means that we were obliged to accept an invitation from him to come to the White House.
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