How article about Jack Smith reconvening grand jury sent me a mystical message about justice's jigsaw puzzle

 How article about Jack Smith reconvening grand jury sent me a mystical message about justice's jigsaw puzzle

By Hal Brown

I read through this article (shown above):

NBC News: Grand jury in Trump classified documents case expected to meet this coming week after hiatus

A grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the case against former President Donald Trump is expected to meet this coming week in Washington after a lull.

It lays out in great detail how Trump is likely to be charged in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and what his various defense tactics could be. You can read the article above or a summary here:

'Fasten your seat belts': Indictment rumors swirl amid report that Jack Smith’s grand jury is reconvening - RawStory and Altenet

After I read the NBC News article I scrolled through the names of the five reporters who are credited with the scoop.

(On halbrown.org and most platforms this is published on you can click the following images to enlarge them.)

 and came to the following:

It often happens that I open advertising websites accidentally because the trackpad on my laptop is very sensitive. If I touch it lightly when the cursor is over and ad the ad opens. By mistake I clicked on the animated ad from CRAFTHUB for jigsaw puzzles on the left above. This took me here:

Sometimes ads pop up in the middle of articles that seem to be there because some artificial intelligence was playing a joke or making a snark comment in reaction to the text surrounding the ad. In this case were the cybergods saying making a commentary about the evidence and aspects of the legal morass in this particular case, and even about all of the literal trials and testicle twisting tribulations facing Donald Trump.

Full Disclosure: I write the following as a secular Jew who doesn't believe in God and considers the Bible to be book of fables mixed with accounts of actual events.

There are lots of pieces to the judicial jigsaw puzzle, or puzzles, involving Trump, but eventually the American judicial system may have its come to Jesus moment.* Despite in significant instances from the ironically named Supreme Court to lesser courts having followed the Fallen Angel into his domain, it will have a  redemption of near Biblical proportions.

It is a sickly icky irony that the far right member of these courts wear the cloaks of Christianity while making rulings that if there was to be a Second Coming Jesus would be having a serious sit-down with them to enlighten them about the errors of their ways. Of course considering that John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are Catholic they don't have to wait until the End of Times. They could confess their transgressions to their priest.

* Fun fact: The first time the phrase "come to Jesus moment" was used it was in a secular sense and was in 1999. From what I can tell from a quick web search it was coined by an unnamed pastor but he was not literally referring to Jesus. 

Related article:

Trump's own voice on the documents tape will be 'devastating' in a courtroom: legal analyst

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Anti-woke annals of absurdity are crazy times crazy, consider two stories in today's news

 By Hal Brown

Background public domain, Popeye's fried chicken on Wikipedia by Evan-Omas CC0

This story is as delicious as the best southern fried chicken, crisp and spicy on the outside and tender and flavorful on the inside:

'No longer the Lord's chicken': 'Christian woman' says she's 'grieving' over 'woke' Chick-fil-A

This story was reported in the United States on Raw Story but over in the United Kingdom Brits have to be relieved that they lost the Revolutionary War when they read articles like this from the BBC:

Utah primary schools ban Bible for 'vulgarity and violence

Click to read article.

Above is how HUFFPOST covered the story on the top of their website this morning.

There are two sides of the anti-woke movement. One is fascistic and no joking matter. The policies being promoted and in an alarming number of states enshrined in law will harm people. They will lead to, among other things, women being forced to have babies they don't want to children being denied medical care gender affirming care to a rise in hate crimes. 

The other rises to a level so far beyond absurdity it is difficult to mock by rational people yet those who believe in them do so with passion and conviction.

There is irony in the fast-food chicken story because the woman who is boycotting one chain store is now going to a competing chain store which is far more LGBTQ+ friendly than the one she believes serves chickens from Hell.

Whoever decided to push for a ban on the Bible was doing this to make a valid point about book bans and must be pleased that their success made not only national but international news. 

There are other instances of this fevered lunacy. For example this story from Florida:

This demonstrates that even a high school yearbook can share something in common with the Bible and highly regarded works of literature.

We even have the account of how students in an Indiana high school raised $84,000 to put on a play called gender-bending in another location when the school forbade them to perform it in the school. 

While rational democracy loving people will find these skirmishes or battles absurd there is nothing remotely amusing about these aspects of what has been called a culture war. They represent an gangrene  infection in the body of the populace so dangerous that it should be amputated like a frost-bit toe or a severely infected diabetic foot.

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Related:

How Fox News is boosting a “coordinated planned attack on the LGBTQ+ community” during Pride month

"This is just one side of this extremist playbook," Human Rights Campaign advocate warns

Trump appointed judge works to keep drag shows lawful in Tennessee

Late Friday, Judge Thomas L. Parker ruled anti-drag laws unconstitutional after a two-day trial

Addendum:

I am lucky enough to live in the Portland, Oregon suburbs where we are celebrating Pride Month. 

Click above to read story and view interview

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The unemployed TV personality who could beat Trump

 By Hal Brown

DonkeyHotey, InPixio

On February 26th I wrote "Tucker Carlson might be Trump's best pick to run with him for VP" when he still had a job.

This was what the main page of Salon looked like this morning:

Talk about clickbait, how could anyone not take a look at the story to find out who Ron DeSantis should fear?

Of course I took the bait and clicked:

Click above to read

The answer is in the subtitle (enlarged above) but you don't find an explanation until you read Chauncey DeVega's contention until the middle of the article:

But also because he is the only candidate in the field that will have the name ID enough to look viable to win the nomination that MAGA can accept once it becomes clear that Trump has too much indictment baggage. My expectations are that by late fall Trump will be facing multiple indictments and will begin to be seen as too risky to nomination. At this time, DeSantis is by far their most likely landing pad. The rest of the field as it currently exists is too obscure. Now, if a different MAGA flamethrower with very high name ID like Tucker Carlson was to emerge, THEN DeSantis would be in trouble.

While I still think it is possible, as I wrote back in February, that Trump could decide that Carlson would be his best choice for a VP running mate. He could announce this choice well before the GOP convention and knock out DeSantis and anyone else daring to declare against him.

The next question is what would running to be second banana to Trump give Tucker. During the campaign of course it would give him a job, albeit unsalaried. It would keep him in the limelight, hell, he'd have klieg lights on him that would be at least as bright as he had when he was at Fox News.

If he was asked to run by Trump he'd have a difficult decision to make. He'd have to consider Trump's chances of winning. He'd be looking at polls which included him as a candidate in the GOP primary and then at polls which had him running against President Biden.

If it looked like he stood a reasonable chance of beating Trump in the primary and polls showed that Biden was very likely to win the general election against him, Carlson might decide running as a probable loser wasn't worth his time and effort. 

If polls showed he could beat Trump and, crucially, stood a reasonable chance of beating Biden, my expectation is that he would run.

Assuming he became president there's no way to determine how he would govern because only he knows what he really believes today although his history dating back to college shows he was a die-in-the-wool bigot even back then. In addition to being a member of The Christian Fellowship he was involved with The Jesse Helms Foundation (Helms was an outspoken opponent of gay rights) and The Dan White Society which was named for the man who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone known for his diverse hiring, and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. 

Trinity College yearbook

Here is some of what the GLADD Accountably Project says about him.

• He called trans children grotesque.
• He claimed that transgender women “put every woman and girl at risk of male violence.”
• He refused to apologize for using an anti-gay slur on air.
• He's criticized having women in the military.

It appears what while Trump and DeSantis promote so-called anti-woke policies which discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community, Carlson's distain and disgust against them is deeply rooted and goes back at least to high school when it has been reported he once beat up a gay man in a public bathroom.

While Carlson has said he has no plans to run for president and made a legal threat against a PAC which is urging him to run, this doesn't mean he actually wouldn't run if he thought he stood a chance of winning. 

Newsweek published "What a Tucker Carlson Presidency Would Look Like" last month. Here are the main points:

• The TV host would be "hard to dismiss" as a presidential candidate, according to some academics. 
• His appeal could indicate the American right is "radicalizing even beyond Trump," and seeking "a new charismatic leader."
• But others told Newsweek a Carlson presidency would be "devastating for race relations.

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Related: 

This is what Rick Wilson of The Lincoln Project thinks about Carlson running for president:

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