Friday - Group & Clint & Trump as Sore Loser & Other Stuff To Finish Off The Week!

 Well, it is Saturday morning, let us see if I can finish this post.

My job has lost its charm. I feel cross-wise with my boss. Then, too, everyone there is stressed by not having lost workers. I do not like losing three hours a week on Fridays for the group therapy sessions; that does not help the stress at work.

I got through the second group therapy session. So far, it seems to have a purpose that was lacking with Kari Byrd. There is no feeling that the counselor is looking to force an outcome or has any other agenda. It may actually have a pedagogical/therapeutic purpose.

Afterward, I paid rent. I made a point about what still needs fixing here.

Then I came back here to find my new phone had arrived.

I ate a little and started working on researching state constitutional rights. That took several hours. I managed to get through Alaska (lots of privacy cases), Arkansas, and California. I started a page as an appendix to analogs to Indiana's Article I, Section 1. When I ended, I had a stiff shoulder.

After that, I went to work on the email and on posts. 

These are the items I did not use for individual posts.

I am going to play devil's advocate here with Prosecutors Got Trump — But They Contorted the Law by Elie Honig. No, the trial was fair. Trump's whining, aside. You cannot defend by saying everyone but you are lying, you need to tell a story. He lost at trial, and he may win on trial. If he wins it will be on the felony versus misdemeanor issue.

I cannot resist passing along ADAM KINZINGER: Trump Convicted: A Just, Sad Day for America.

Clint Eastwood is 30 years older than me; The Guardian published Happy 94th birthday Clint Eastwood: his best films – ranked! I love lists. I think I would have gotten Coogan's Bluff on my list. Probably instead of Space Cowboys. 

Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives by Dean Keith Simonton is from 2006. Probably no big surprise with #1, but I am surprised at numbers 2 and 3. The dumbest two are not a shock, but I am not so sure I agree with Grant. As I said, lists are fun.

From The Hedgehog Review: Creativity in the Age of Crush. Creativity as marketing cover for tech dominance? Creativity as in persisting regardless of our tech overlords? Not sure about much that without creativity we lose our humanity. That is the voice experience speaking there.

I quit after 11 when Chrome locked up on me. My eyes were blurry.

I also set up the new phone.

Not finishing last night let me add Biden hits back at Trump’s ‘dangerous’ claim hush-money trial was rigged. I still do not understand the attraction of Donald J. Trump to so many of my fellow Americans. He is

1. A whiner, and
2. A sore loser

Used to be conservatives railed about people taking personal responsibility; I guess that applies only to the poor, not to billionaires.

The war of words came a day after Trump was found guilty of all 34 charges he had faced. On Friday morning, the ex-president painted himself as a victim of injustice in a rambling and often incoherent appearance at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, at which he labelled his opponents “fascists” and blamed his legal plight on Joe Biden.

Biden does not whinge about how people do not like him, or the personal attacks on him and his family, but just gets on about his job.

The US president said: “It is reckless, it is dangerous, it is irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict. The US justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and is literally a cornerstone of America.”

He added that the system and the justice it produced should be respected.

“And we should never allow anyone to tear it down, simple as that, that’s America,” Biden said.

Over at Orthodox Times, two articles caught my attention.

Russian Church severs communion with certain Hierarchs of Bulgarian Patriarchate 

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church has decided to sever communion with specific hierarchs of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. This decision follows the recent co-liturgy of Bulgarian hierarchs with Ukrainian Metropolitans in Constantinople.

Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk presented a detailed report on this matter, highlighting the participation of Bulgarian hierarchs in a co-liturgy with the Ecumenical Patriarch and Metropolitans of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine at the Patriarchal and Stavropegic Monastery of Valoukli. The event was initially reported in an exclusive article by orthodoxtimes.com, emphasizing the arrival and significance of the Bulgarian and Ukrainian hierarchs’ co-liturgy.

Memory of Martyr Justin the Philosopher because he is one I did not know.

During the reign of Antoninus Pius, Justin traveled to Rome and handed to the emperor an apology, in which he set out the basic teachings of Christianity and presented the fallacy of idolatry, using arguments from the Holy Scriptures, both the Old and New Testament.

Thanks to this, he was also called the Apologist of the Orthodox Faith.

Justin’s courageous action infuriated the pagans, as well as his reference to the evidence from the true word of God in the texts of ancient Greek authors and philosophers.

Yes, there is a history to the Church not known in the West, certainly ignored by the Protestants.

 There I will leave you for now. I have breakfasted, research calls, and so does grocery shopping. The clock is ticking.

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