Hi everyone,
I am going to retire this blog.  It hasn't taken off like the group DM has.  People seem to prefer the random, freewheeling style there.  I am a bit disappointed, but that's ok.  I still like interacting with each of you and feel blessed to "know" you.

Shall we shut this forum down?

It seems that despite multiple available avenues, the BOTW refugees are gravitating towards Twitter and choosing to converse via the DM.  Unless there is a significant uptick in activity here, I will take Jude's cue and shut this puppy down.

Those of you that have authoring privileges - please start authoring :-)

Best,
Melly

Finally! 

Now that I'm able to post . . . I'm speechless.

Cheers,
Dennis

Been Awhile - Need y'all's help

Hello fellow BOTWebbers!

Or BOTWannans

Or BOTW Refugees

Or BOTW Ark Residents


phew

It has been a month of Mondays, let me tell you.  Hard to believe I haven't killed anyone.  I'm only half joking ;-)  Between work being nuts, end of school year drama, including my step-daughter's emergency appendectomy just before her final exams (she has one left, poor kid), traveling half way around the world and back, and trying to keep all of the obligatory balls in the air - my poor family is lucky (or cursed?) that I haven't checked myself into the loony bin.

The one thing I truly need your help with is herding the denizens of our various platforms to one location.  I am happy to perform the role of administrator, but I need each of you to voice your preference and help drive folks out of the Twitter DM to one of the more usable locations.  There isn't any one place that will make everyone happy unless BOTW returns to its former glory.  We all know that won't happen.  So, help me. Please.  If you have a strong preference, please let me know.

That's all the energy I have this evening.  I will be posting this same message on all our gathering places.

All my best regards,
Melly

Testing anon Michele Schiesser

Testing first post. Why am I anonymous?

BOTW Refugee Options

Hi everyone,

I hope you all have enjoyed the brief hiatus of me not posting :-)

I'm back and the work project I am on, while still in full swing, is no longer consuming ALL of my time.

I'd really appreciate all authors' support here.  As we post and comment, it will become easier for others to join.  If you'd rather use the more private forum, let me know so I won't waste time here.

An aside - a bunch of folks I interact with on Twitter (not just Besties) are setting up accounts on Parler.com (there's an app, too) in anticipation of increased shadow-banning of conservatives as the 2020 election season heats up.  I have changed my avatar (avi) to my actual face.  Horrifying, I know.  I recommend checking out Parler and see what you think.  People pronounce it Par-Ler vs. Par-Lay, so get confused on the spelling.

Our options today:
1. Stay @ WSJ and muddle through
2. This blog
3. http://botw-ark.freeforums.net/
4. Group DM on Twitter

any others I missed?

Best,
Melly

Memorial Day

Hello all -

As I watch the coverage of the ceremony at Arlington, I think of all those with whom I served and all of those who paid the ultimate price. 


"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15:13


Closing with Taps, gets me every time.


May you all have a blessed Memorial Day.


Melly

Flint, Michigan: Where your tax dollars go to die

Even with a map and a hydrovac and a low bid, city officials could not find the lead pipes.

And why should they? They steered the contract to an outfit that digs by hand, and is already into huge cost overruns.

Meanwhile, meet just one of Flint's elected officials, Mr. Eric Mays. I covered him as a reporter, and he is every bit the corrupt loon depicted. I know the cop in the video. How he keeps his temper, I have no idea. This was his regular job — babysitting city council, while crime ran rampant in the streets.

Mr. Mays, by the way, pawned his city hall laptop. As a council member. You just can't make this stuff up.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/05/flint-lead-pipe-replacement/?fbclid=IwAR1VTl3ib9pVxD7MhozqwClw4yQ-atqso_geBM1YrZFt8IK6SETVNhlGSa8

How to tell when a blog is a sinking ship

There is such a thing as patience, and then there is reality, the hard cold facts.

Fact 1:  I created the blog in hopes that it would provide BOTW Refugees with a platform for conversation similar to what we used to know at the vaunted broadsheet.

Fact 2:  I do not have the charisma or skills to persuade refugees to come to the blog.

Fact 3:  I am stretched thin by other responsibilities, and my efforts at trying to persuade refugees to come to the blog are frankly futile.

Fact 4:  My appeals for handing the administration of the blog to someone with greater charisma and better skills have met with dead silence.  No one wants to be the administrator.

Fact 5:  Where one door closes, another door opens, if it is meant to be.  This blog is not the open door to anything of merit.

The blog will be scuttled at noon on Thursday, the ninth of May.

It was nice while it lasted.

The right to speak my mind out, that's America to me

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is all for free speech, she says.  Too bad the vaunted newspaper that's "elevating discourse" does not agree.  Too bad Facebook and other social media do not agree.  Leftist hypocrisy much?

Posting Tips

When writing an article, if you aren't composing within the Post window but are instead composing offline and pasting into the Post window, be sure no metadata overwrites your headline.  In the list of articles on the right side of the blog's home-page, a metadata overwrite will conceal your intended headline.  Fortunately, an overwrite can be undone by editing the published post.

I'm not sure what causes metadata to overwrite a headline, but my guess is that composing an article in a word processor, and pasting from the word processor into the Post window, retains the metadata at the top of the copy, and the metadata becomes the headline.

Perhaps the metadata can be purged by first pasting into Word Counter, then pasting from Word Counter to the Post window.  I have not proven this for the blog, but I use Word Counter in my work to strip out metadata, so am assuming this function holds true for the blog as well.

Formatting Your Post

For your heading, select your main headline text, then click Heading in the drop-down list.

To format the text, Normal is the default, but you can change the font and the font size if you don't like the default.  Bold, italics, underscore and strike-through are also available for emphasis and effect.  Text color and background color are available if you like.

To link to an article, use the Link option.  An example of this is the link to Word Counter above.  First, make sure the web-page you want to link to is open. Click the Link button to open the Link dialog box.  Copy-and-paste the web-page's URL into the Web address window in the Link dialog box.  Also click 'Open in new window' in the dialog box so when your readers have finished reading or using the linked web-page and close it, they don't simultaneously close your article.

You can insert an image, a video, special characters or a jump-head break (for continuations if your article is long, presumably).

Explore other formatting options to see what they do.  You can click Preview at top right to see what your formatting choices have created, and if you don't like them, go back to the Post window and make changes until you get the post to look the way you want it.

You can also edit your post after it was published, especially to fix formatting issues or to correct typos. 

What does the Future Hold for those that abused their power in pursuit of Trump?

The ongoing investigations by AG Barr and the release of more internal info by IG Horowitz will be enlightening. Undoubtedly, it will point to the abuse of power by many in the Obama administration, from the elite echelon down to minions doing their bidding. 

But what punishment awaits them? Recall the saying (multiple sources);

From Emerson’s journal in September 1843: “Never strike a king unless you are sure you shall kill him.” 

Drawing and quartering may be appropriate but is unlikely to happen. So what can be done? I am no lawyer but there exist a potential legal remedy. 

18 U.S. Code § 2384. Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, § 1, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

<italics added>

This law hinges on the use of force. So what is the definition of force? Is it limited to physical force, I.e. armed insurrection, mobs, use of the military, etc.? Or can force be expanded to include the use of the existing legal system to undermine the President, the use of false documents paid for by the political opposition, the relentless attacks in the media by government officials, etc. Is widespread propaganda and disinformation the use of force? Are the tactics of intimidation and harassment constitute force? 

I suspect that many of those involved had serious discussions with attorneys at the outset. It will be interesting to watch and see what charges can be brought.

Happy World Press Freedom Day

Please express your views on that freedom.  Do we still have a free press?

Another way to say "Your five minutes are up."

Barr dismembers DaNang Dick.

https://youtu.be/kfTTrImpKlM

Trump chose Rosenstein

In "Rod Rosenstein: Hero" in the 1 May 2019 edition of The Epoch Times, Brian Cates @drawandstrike has penned a thought-provoking opinion piece which I would like to bring to the blog.

The salient point in the opinion is this:

Far from being a key Spygate plotter trying to cover up the attempted coup, I believe Rosenstein is going to play a key role as a witness in prosecuting the plotters. It’s why he has to exit the DOJ now, before the prosecution phase begins, as I detailed in this earlier column, “Trump Continues to Prepare the Battlefield.”

Recall an earlier blog post on Rosenstein's recent speech to the Armenian Bar Association's Public Servants Dinner in New York on 25 April which hinted at his upcoming role.  He said:

"A republic that endures is not governed by the news cycle. Some of the nonsense that passes for breaking news today would not be worth the paper [it] was printed on, if anybody bothered to print it. It quickly fades away. The principles are what abide."

Like me, Brian Cates got put in Twitter Jail.  Somehow he was able to break out, again and again.  I respect his opinion.  I just hope to God he's right in his view that Rosenstein is going to help prosecute the Spygate plotters.  I'll be getting the popcorn ready in anticipation.

Double Negatives

As if all of the hysterical, breathless reporting isn't enough, let's create confusing headlines:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/brett-baier-mueller-admitted-that-ag-barrs-conclusions-werent-inaccurate

I like how Senator Graham opened up with his remarks.  The Dems want SO BADLY for our President to have been a Russian Spy.  Why can't they see how bad that is for our country?  Playing right into Putin's manipulating hands.

Mueller the whiny little b----

Two years.
$30 million.
And Mueller is crying about how his boss summarized his 400-page opus (subsequently and expeditiously released) that found NO collusion, but smeared the political peanut butter of coulda-woulda-shoulda heavy and thick?

Seriously?

More proof that our elites are a bunch of thin-skinned, low-competence whiny little b------.

Oh, and bonus — RIGHT before his old boss goes to testify before a hostile Democrat congress.

What a Boy Scout. What an honorable man. What a "non-leaker."

What a joke.

If Mueller and Comey are the best the FBI can offer, shutter the place, burn it down, plow the earth and salt the dirt.

Cool

Encouraging news from Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group

The greatest scientific fraud of the century will be laid bare, along with its corrupt enablers in government, academia, industry and the media

A few grafs from the article:

... No one paying attention can have any doubt that the governmental global warming enterprise has been a fraud. It’s been lies from the start, starting with the very mandate of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which astonishingly ruled out factors like the sun as being worthy of investigation ...

Likewise, a much heralded claim that 97 per cent of scientists believed the planet was overheating came from a 2008 master’s thesis by a student at the University of Illinois who obtained her results by conducting a survey of 10,257 earth scientists, then discarding the views of all but 77 of them. Of those 77 scientists, 75 thought humans contributed to climate change.  The ratio 75/77 produced the 97-per-cent figure that global warming activists then touted.

In fact, major surveys show that scientists in the tens of thousands do not believe that global warming represents a threat. With the departure of president Obama and his administration, which had blocked independent investigations from being pursued, whistleblowers in greater numbers will now dare to come forward, knowing they will no longer be silenced ...

The blizzard of lies from NOAA and other corrupted agencies will soon be outed in excruciating detail. The greatest scientific fraud of the century will thus be laid bare, along with its craven and corrupt enablers in government, academia, industry and the media.

_____

If you're on Twitter, follow Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow.  He was a founder of Greenpeace but left when they started viewing people as enemies of the earth.  He tweeted a link to this article, which might not otherwise have come to the attention of BOTW Refugees.

It was on fire when I found it

Byron York tweeted the following extract from "Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein Delivers Remarks at the Armenian Bar Association’s Public Servants Dinner, New York, NY ~ Thursday, April 25, 2019"

At my confirmation hearing in March 2017, a Republican Senator asked me to make a commitment. He said: “You’re going to be in charge of this [Russia] investigation. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you’ll do it right, that you’ll take it to its conclusion and you’ll report [your results] to the American people.”

I did pledge to do it right and take it to the appropriate conclusion. I did not promise to report all results to the public, because grand jury investigations are ex parte proceedings. It is not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges.

Some critical decisions about the Russia investigation were made before I got there. The previous Administration chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls, and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America. The FBI disclosed classified evidence about the investigation to ranking legislators and their staffers. Someone selectively leaked details to the news media. The FBI Director announced at a congressional hearing that there was a counterintelligence investigation that might result in criminal charges. Then the former FBI Director alleged that the President pressured him to close the investigation, and the President denied that the conversation occurred.

So that happened.

Blue cities = needles, poop and homicide victims

Henninger's column today on the Dems current "fitness for office" talking point is pure brilliance.

Money quote:

Governance matters. Success at governance—running a country, state or city—should indeed be a measure of political fitness. If so, fitness to govern looks to be in short supply in potholed New York City, homicidal Chicago, needle-park San Francisco and Baltimore, with its five police chiefs in the past five years.

All these cities, protectorates of Democratic governance, are filled with upscale progressives convinced Donald Trump is morally unfit to govern, even as they step around and over the mentally ill homeless lying abandoned on their sidewalks.