The Matter of Milley

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“I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES, PURSUANT TO MY POWERS UNDER ARTICLE II, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 1, OF THE CONSTITUTION, HAVE GRANTED UNTO GENERAL MARK A. MILLEY A FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON FOR ANY OFFENSES against the United States, including but not limited to any offenses under the United States Code or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January l, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

A lot of ink has been spilled already about Biden’s pardons from a few weeks ago of Mark Milley and the rest. I saw this from John Lucas the other day regarding Mark Milley’s calling the Commander-in-Chief a fascist, which is something I had forgotten about. Big no-no.

Even with all the hubbub there has been one question that’s been nagging me for the past several years. Why didn’t Milley resign after the events of January, 2021?

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Wes Isn’t Moore

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We may be less than a week into the second Trump administration, but there are already folks out there testing the water for a presidential run in 2028. Over the next two years, they will be packaging a track record that can be sold to donors and supporters and testing whether they have a viable lane to run in.

The problem is that nobody has a clue what the political landscape is going to look like in 2027-28. We might only be a week in, but Genghis Trump and the Orange MAGA Horde are already running rampant through the Democratic heartland. They have put DEI to the sack, are in the process of doing the same to illegal immigration, and are laying siege to the Deep State.

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Random Thoughts (9): Talking About “Football”

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One

The future belongs to the young and by now my view of college football is as antiquated as those sports fans who wistfully remember the Brooklyn Dodgers.

So the College Football Playoff National Championship was played this Monday, did you catch it? An average of 22.1 million viewers did. That sounds like a lot, but it represented a 12% decline from a year ago, and when compared to the top shows for 2024 would rank 54th, just behind Week 17 Sunday Night Football.

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They Accuse!

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The ridiculousness about Elon Musk’s hand gesture reminded me of something: In his memoir of Spain before and during their civil war, Arturo Barea said that on one occasion, he was showing a friend how tall a child was–“like this,” he said, holding up his hand to indicate the height. He was accused of giving the Fascist salute, and was saved from the firing squad only by the intervention of credible friends.

Rare and Fine Books

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(A break today from matters political.)

Some time ago – as things are counted in internet time, which is sort of like dog years in that before the turn of this last century was pre-history, 2000 was kind of like AD 1, making the first decade analogous to the Roman Era. Anyway, along about the early Dark Ages-Internet Time, I became a partner in a Teeny Publishing Bidness, run by a woman who was the hardest-driving editor in the local literary arts community. We used to joke that Alice G. had been married three times, twice to mere mortal men, and once to the Chicago Manual of Style. She was also enduringly faithful to observing the Oxford Comma. Because of her serious night owl habit, she preferred self-employment, mainly as a freelance editor and owner/proprietor of the Teeny Publishing Bidness.

A mutual friend who saw to her basic computer needs, was also my sometime employer. In a mad stroke of business/matchmaking genius, he believed Alice and I would be an excellent professional fit … and so, it turned out to be. Among other things, our clients could contact us directly, any time of the day or night. Alice took me on as a junior partner, we shared the work, split the profits and got along very well in that partnership for five or six years. Alice had connections among the mildly well-to do and artistic in San Antonio and for almost thirty years had done quite well out of doing bespoke and high-quality books for businesses, institutions, and for local writers who had sufficient income to support an extensive print run through a lithographic press.

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