Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Monday, April 8, 2024

HAPPY SOLAR ECLIPSE DAY

 

Protect your eyes.









18 comments:

skudrunner said...

It is a national day of remembrance for all things stupid. Like the massive earthquake non event in NJ spending all of the resources to follow the sun seems like not a bright idea pun intended. We are watching the populous at their dumbest point.

Shaw Kenawe said...

No. Voting to put a rapist and insurrectionist back in the WH would be the dumbest point in our history. Every intelligent person 🧍 know understands this. This country is not spending “all of the resources” to watch this event. Where are you getting your information from?

Dave Miller said...

Skud, I'd love to see a total eclipse. Their just aren't many chances to do so. Am I going to spend tons of $$$ to do it? Not at all, but others? Their money, their choice.

And if our media wants to cover it? Well, they'll only do so if that's what the ppl want.

possumlady said...

Here in the DC area, we are getting 87-89% eclipse. Good enough for me! I'll be walking two doors down to my neighbor's house for a watch party.

Mike said...

Skudrunner is getting his info from MTG. You would think a pilot would be smarter than that.

skudrunner said...

Trump was never convicted of rape. (AP, Despite Carroll's claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense.) The same people that believe that someone can be raped in a dressing room 30 years ago are the same that believe that believe biden didn't sell his influence for his son to profit.

I never said the country is spending resources but people are traveling hundreds of miles, staying in hotels and spending thousands of dollars to see an event that will last a few minutes. The news media is all over it just like they were all over the non event of the NJ earthquake. Guess they have to have something else to do than totally focus on the evil one.

Shaw Kenawe said...

skudrunner Trump was never convicted of rape. (AP, Despite Carroll's claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense.)

You. Are. Wrong. You're choosing to read Trump-friendly reports, not what the court stated. And the judge in the case IS THE COURT -- THE COURT OF LAW:

Judge says E Jean Carroll allegation Trump raped her is ‘substantially true’ in court dismissal

Judge Kaplan had already outlined why it was not defamation for Carroll to say Trump raped her.

“As the court explained in its recent decision denying Mr Trump’s motion for a new trial on damages and other relief [in the New York case] … based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury’s verdict as a whole, the jury’s finding that Mr Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is understood."



skud: "The same people that believe that someone can be raped in a dressing room 30 years ago are the same that believe that believe biden didn't sell his influence for his son to profit."

S.K.: To remind you and other Trump apologists: A court of law determined that Donald Trump sexually assaulted/raped E. Jean Carroll -- that jury heard the evidence; that jury made the determination that Trump committed rape, AND THE JUDGE CLARIFIED THAT INDEED TRUMP RAPED E. JEAN CARROLL. PERIOD. FULL STOP.

No judge or jury has indicted or President Biden for any crime, nor has President Biden been found guilty of any crime. TRUMP HAS been found guilty by a judge and jury. PERIOD. You believe Biden is guilty of something based on your prejudice against him, not on facts. It's an opinion you hold that's not based on the truth.

By your words, you don't believe in American justice when it finds people you sympathize with guilty of heinous crimes. You don't know what the judge and jury heard in Trump's civil trial. You were not there, you didn't hear what went on in the trial, you know absolutely NOTHING about the details or THE LAW concerning digital rape, but you do have opinions. And that's all your words are. Your opinions. Not the law.

skudrunner said...

Actually Ms Shaw I do believe in the law which means he needs to be found guilty by a jury of rape which they did not do. As you stared THE JUDGE CLARIFIED THAT INDEED TRUMP RAPED E. JEAN CARROLL. PERIOD. The judge said it but not the jury. My question is why wait 34 years to bring this forth. Could it have been she was enticed to do that when he decided to run again. I have never asserted that he was innocent it is just odd that she waited so long to bring charges.

You are one of the believers that joey b has done nothing wrong because he has avoided indictments. Hopefully for the good of the country that remains the case.

Mike, I got that info from the right wing Politico. MTG is beyond sane as are many politicians. We should do better.

Shaw Kenawe said...

skudrunner "As you stared THE JUDGE CLARIFIED THAT INDEED TRUMP RAPED E. JEAN CARROLL. PERIOD. The judge said it but not the jury.

"District Judge Lewis Kaplan has said it multiple times: Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in 1996. Kaplan wrote it in May 2023, when he presided over one of the trials against Trump. And he reminded jurors of the rape during the latest proceedings of the multi-layered, rape and defamation cases brought against Trump by Carroll.


In New York, someone can only be convicted of rape if they can prove vaginal penetration by a penis. In Carroll’s testimony, which mirrored what she had described privately for decades and publicly for the first time in 2019, she said Trump used both his fingers and his penis in the assault. But during the trial, the jury had only concluded that Trump had “deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm,” Kaplan’s decision reads.

That the jurors did not find that Carroll had proven rape, Kaplan explained, “does not mean that she failed to prove that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” “Indeed,” he continued, “as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Federally, rape is defined as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” This broader explanation, while still dependent on penetration, would include assaults using fingers.

Even though Carroll’s case has taken place in the national spotlight, it exists within the confines of civil law. The reason Donald Trump was not found to have raped E. Jean Carroll has less to do with the events detailed in her story, and more to do with the fine print of the state’s legal code.

Across the country, states’ criminal and civil legal systems vary quite a bit in how they define rape and other charges of sexual violence. Some, like Idaho, explicitly require penile penetration to be present for a rape charge, while others like Maine and Maryland have a more expansive definition of sexual violence that encompasses non-penetrative acts. Several states don’t have any “rape” charge at all, but opt for language like “criminal sexual assault” or “sexual battery.” Similarly, the phrase “sexual intercourse” takes on different meanings depending on the legal text.

In short, the same person could commit precisely the same crime and be charged with entirely different things based on the court room’s address."


skud, you're arguing a difference without a distinction. The TRUTH is that rape IS sexual assault, and Trump sexually assaulted/raped E. Jean Carroll.

The Republican Party is fine with having a sexual assaulter/rapist as their nominee for the presidency of the United States. Something no American ever DREAMED to see in his or her lifetime.

Les Carpenter said...

The sewer to hell... the republican party.

Shaw Kenawe said...

skudrunner: "My question is why wait 34 years to bring this forth. Could it have been she was enticed to do that when he decided to run again. I have never asserted that he was innocent it is just odd that she waited so long to bring charges."

Because of the #MeToo campaign which gave girls and women the courage to come forth and tell their stories.

It's sad to think you have no knowledge of how the courts and lawyers often handled rape accusations: The burden of proof was always on the girl or woman, and unscrupulous lawyers for the defense often blamed the victims for their rapes: "she was dressed sexy; she drank; she flirted; she was asking for it."

In the early '80s, I served on a jury for a rape trial in Boston. I remember the defense lawyer in talking about the night it happened to the victim, telling the jury that the victim, a 19 year old, had had an argument with her husband and left their apartment after quickly dressing. The lawyer then stated that the victim had hurriedly dressed (it was midnight and she'd gone to bed) and when she left the house in anger, she did not have underpants on under her jeans!

This was brought out during the trial. So, therefore, the man who raped her (a married man cruising around in his car that night) couldn't be blamed. The victim had no underpants on UNDER HER JEANS! Yes! that was presented to the jury as proof that "she asked for it."

Every woman on that jury, including me, was shocked to hear such a blatant attempt to blame the victim for the brutal rape the defendant perpetrated. He was found guilty, and after the trial we, the jury, found out that he had been accused of rape another time, but there wasn't enough evidence to bring him to trial.

Before the #MeToo era, it was normal practice to blame the rape victim for the crime of rape. What girl or woman would set herself up for that sort of humiliation.

Plus, Donald Trump was a powerful, so-called billionaire with dozens of lawyers to litigate anything forever.

That's why E. Jean Carroll waited.

Shaw Kenawe said...

skudrunner: "You are one of the believers that joey b has done nothing wrong because he has avoided indictments."

Yes. Sane people do NOT believe someone has committed a crime UNLESS THAT PERSON WAS INDICTED BY A GRAND JURY AND BROUGHT TO TRIAL TO FACE CHARGES OF COMMITTING A CRIME, and then is FOUND GUILTY.

I assume you yourself have avoided indictments. Does that mean you've committed a crime? Do you have something you're hiding from us?

You sound angry because there are no indictments against President Biden.

Don't you know that if there were any evidence of criminal activity by President Biden the Trumpublicans in the House would have impeached Biden by now?

Why do you suppose they haven't? They have all sorts of resources to find out any crime that Joe Biden may have committed. Lots and lots of resources, and they've come up with NOTHING.

To you, that means Biden is guilty?

You haven't been indicted for a crime (as far as we know). Should we understand that you've committed a crime because you haven't been indicted?

That's EXACTLY what you're suggesting, and it's nuts.

Dave Miller said...

Let's give Skud some grace. Both sides in the Trump rape case are "technically" correct. The judge found Trump civilly liable for sexual assualt, as opposed to criminally guilty, calling it essentially rape.

Granted, it was Trump's puny fingers, but no matter how you look at this, the judge did call it rape.

Skud, there may be a difference in your mind, but it's a distinction without a difference and I bet if Carroll was your wife or daughter, you'd be singing a different tune.

Far be it from me though to argue the difference with a woman. And Skud, you should know better. If a person sodomizes someone with a stick, is it really sodomy?

That's the argument you're making, standing on the exactness of the word.

It's a bad look.

Anonymous said...

That we’re even talking about Trump the Rapist as a possible next president says the U.S. is a failed democracy.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Dave M. Well done, Dave.

It's a mystery to me on why skudrunner is so assiduous in his defense of Trump's "sexual assault vs. rape" case.

We've pointed out that, yes, the jury could not legally call it "rape" because of the local jurisdiction in which the civil case was tried. But skud stubbornly ignores what the judge, WHO KNOWS THE LAW, said:

"That the jurors did not find that Carroll had proven rape," Kaplan explained, “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

“Indeed,” he continued, “as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”


That should end any further discussion, since both the jury and judge have spoken.

Anonymous We're still a democracy, but I'm ashamed to admit that many of my fellow Americans wish to see that end and will hasten that end by electing a demonstrably anti-democratic politician, Donald Trump.

Dave Dubya said...

Watching the eclipse is "not a bright idea" and indicates "the populous at their dumbest point" is an example of a stupid statement by an incurious luddite. Sorry, Skud. I won't take it personally if you don't.

First, don't knock it 'til you try it. It's an amazing and spectacular light show from nature. That alone makes it worthwhile. Then there's that suspicious untrustworthy thing called "science" that intrudes into your safe space of indifference to the universe and our planet.

The total solar eclipse is special because it gives a direct view of the sun's corona, which helps us understand solar flares and coronal mass ejections that send plasma on the solar wind to Earth. This is how we get the auroras, also spectacular displays of Mother Nature's light. We need to pay attention and learn about solar flares because just ONE powerful flare can end civilization as we know it.

Don't believe me?

In 1853 astronomer Richard Carrington first discovered sun spots and solar storms. In 1859 he observed a very large solar flare. When it hit Earth it sent powerful electrical charges down telegraph wires that shocked operators unconscious. The charged particles emblazoned an aurora over the entire planet.

If this happened today the electrical grid would collapse and you'd have no idea what I'm telling you. No TV. No radio. No internet. No power generation. Nada.

Of course stupid people don't bother learning this kind of information, do they? They even look at an eclipse without eye protection, like Trump.

Anti-science people can be a real drag on the rest of humanity.

Dave Dubya said...

Um, it was not a "bright idea" of mine to not proofread my previous comment. I was at my "dumbest point", as Skud kindly observed.

I left out a few details.

Carrington saw the first solar flare ever detected in 1859, but not the electrically charged plasma blast from the simultaneous coronal mass ejection. It was too massive for the Earth's magnetic field to deflect, so telegraph operators were zapped and a global aurora flashed over the planet.

So, yeah. That could happen again, and it could send us all into the 19th Century faster than a second Trump term.

What can we do about it? Gather and examine data from the sun's corona during eclipse and from NASA's Parker Solar Probe for a start. Then we need find ways to shield our electrical grid and infrastructure from severe solar storms.

Not to worry. Maybe Yellowstone's super volcano will blow first, or Putin goes nuclear. Fun times.

Les Carpenter said...

Whatever we choose to do, and wharever happens, remember, ultimately the universe is in charge and has control. We have never possessed the control we humans think we have.