Prickly City by Scott Stantis for June 23, 2020

An epoch that has its beginning

at an ending…

…and ends at a beginning.

Maybe we can start by getting rid of the Messiah, who hates testing:

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“Frankly I think we’re way ahead of ourselves if you want to know the truth. We’ve done too good a job, because every time we go out with 25 million tests, you’re going to find more people so then they say ‘oh, we have more cases in the United States.’ The reason we have more cases [is] because we do more testing than any other country by far.”

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Do all the Disciples believe this? Or just the ones who went to the rally?

Still a few details to work out before we can get to a “new beginning”, Carmen.

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U.S. Army Soldier Charged With Terrorism Offenses For Planning Deadly Ambush On Service Members In His Unit.

U.S. Army Private Ethan Melzer Sent Sensitive U.S. Military Information to Members of a Neo-Nazi Group in an Attempt to Facilitate a “Mass Casualty” Attack on Melzer’s Army Unit.

(SDNY) announced today the unsealing of an indictment charging ETHAN MELZER for allegedly planning an attack on his U.S. Army unit by sending sensitive details about the unit…

– including information about its location, movements, and security – to members of an extremist organization named Order of the Nine Angles (“O9A”),

…an occult-based neo-Nazi and racially motivated violent extremist group.

MELZER is charged with conspiring and attempting to murder U.S. nationals, conspiring and attempting to murder military service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and conspiring to murder and maim in a foreign country.

The FBI and the U.S. Army thwarted MELZER’s plot in late-May 2020, and the FBI arrested MELZER on June 10, 2020. The case is assigned to United States District Judge Gregory H. Woods.

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https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-army-soldier-charged-terrorism-offenses-planning-deadly-ambush-service-members-his

We learned quite a lot from President Trump’s appearance in Tulsa:

He may not care about or understand the importance of testing; his campaign’s advance work stinks; even Trump voters are not keen in piling into a crowded arena without masks or social distancing;

Trump’s material is stale; and he is terrified of looking weak, which he increasingly does.

However, the most important takeaway may be that the Democratic primary voters picked precisely the right nominee.

There was little evidence Trump’s campaign has a message, a strategy or even a realistic map (campaigning in Oklahoma, really?).

Other than the vague and ineffective nickname (“Sleepy Joe”), which does not work if the incumbent is himself looking long in the tooth, Trump has not told us why voting for former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is a bad idea.

He tried to create a scandal in Ukraine out of thin air. That bombed and got him impeached.

He tried to make Biden out to be a softy on China, but Trump’s own fawning over President Xi Jinping coupled with former national security adviser John Bolton’s allegations suggest it is Trump who is the patsy for Beijing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/22/most-important-thing-we-learned-tulsa/

Wow, Don Diego disappeared from yesterday’s comments. After getting fed up with Jbm.

Kind of an oblique reference to “end of the beginning”?

Today is the first day of the rest of our troubles.

In Seattle ther is a 16 ft bronze statue of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Why is it there? Why is it still there?

Buy it, and then move it, gift it (museum perhaps?), tear it down, or otherwise do what you want with it!

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It was created in Slovakia by artist Emil Venkov between 1978 and 1988, when it was installed in the city of Poprad, not far from the Polish border. A year later, as the Soviet Union broke apart, the statue was taken down.

It was discovered in a junkyard by Lewis Carpenter, an American visiting from Washington state, who was said to be so enamored with its artistry that he leveraged his mortgage to finance the purchase and ship it home to Issaquah, 20 miles east of the Seattle.

It was moved to Fremont after Carpenter’s death in 1994 (Venkov died in June) and now occupies a small parcel maintained by the local business community.

Carpenter’s family still owns the statue and, according to the Seattle Times, has been hoping to sell it for many years. The asking price is $250,000.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/19/in-seattle-people-are-protesting-monuments-to-the-confederacy-and-communism/

“Okay, let’s go punch the time clock now.”

Wish I were a better man, but I can’t say I miss Jbm’s daily dose of Fox fantasy.