Tuesday, December 12, 2023

December 9, 2023 Ridley's Believe It Or Not

 

© December 9, 2023  Ridley’s Believe It Or Not
              On the college antisemitism front cheers were being heard, Penn President Liz Magill realizing how her statements on context of genocide were so absurd and no apology could still the growing clamor of the resignation herd resigned today. Representative Stefanik stated “1 down and 2 to go” but probably understated the bias big time and should have stated “1 down and 50 or so more to go.” Not sure how much of her resignation was due to big donors lining up to their donations withdraw or her looking in the mirror and realizing the inanity of what on TV people would hear. She was not alone as the Chairman of Penn’s Board of Trustees Scott Bok resigned also.
             In Houston, in a special election to elect Houston’s next mayor 2 Blues were running against each other Rep Shelia Jackson and Texas State Senator John Whitmore with House Republicans hoping Jackson would win to create an open seat  given their slender House Majority, but Whitmore a strong proponent of law and order won and Jackson will be running in 2024 to retain her seat.
             
Teenager Ethan Crumbley was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for gunning down 4 classmates and wounding six others and a teacher at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021. The sentencing Judge Kwamé Rowe noted that the “defendant in his own words” told the court “this is nobody’s fault but his own.”  
              On the good news in the medical front, the FDA approved 2 gene-based treatments for sickle cell disease, including the first therapy that uses the gene-editing technique CRRISP, opening a new era of treatments for genetic conditions.
              On the Scrooge Front, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, Iran, has just been awarded Scrooge of the Century Award as it blocked the family of Masha Amini from traveling to Paris to accept in her name the European Union’s top award for the support of human rights by confiscating their passports. Trump’s economic sanctions that were bringing Iran to its knees and its protestors against the mullahs’ rule into the streets under Biden’s relaxing now just a things were better then memory.
              December 9, 2023  Michael P. Ridley aka The Alaskanpoet 
               Noted Holidays: National Opal Apple Day: Created by First Fruits Farms, an nonprofit Christian farm establishing in Northern Baltimore County in 1998 to use volunteers to plant and distribute fresh produce to those in need and in this case to celebrated the Opal Apple, a golden crispy apple with a great taste.
              Word of the Day: The word of the day as we continue with words starting with “b” is “blattoid” which mean of or pertaining to cockroaches which are words a homeowner never wants to hear from an extermination in describing one’s insect infestation.   
             Song of the Day: Leaving the number 1 songs  on this day in 1940’s to come back to the number song in 2016 in the U.S.A.  was  “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd feat. Gucci Mane on a run of 6 weeks to share number 1 status with 11 other songs, while 14 acts reached number one status while 12 9 acts, including Rae Sremmurd  and Gucci Mane 1st number 1 single. Here is a recording with lyrics of Rae Sremmurd feat. Gucci Mane performing “Black Beatles”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8m9zhNAgKs
             December 9 Birthdays: “In the College Admission Wars, $15,000 Pocket Change to Boost SAT scores”:
celebrating the birth on this day in 1962 in Bedford, New York of Felicity Huffman, a noted actress best known for her starring role of Lynette Scavo in “Desperate Housewives” and her playing a transgender woman in “TransAmerica but also one of the many celebrities caught up in the cheating scandal to stack the deck to improve a child’s chance to get into an elite as she paid someone $15,000 to improve her daughter’s PSAT when she took the PSAT. She served 11 of the 14 day sentence, 250 community hours of service, a year of probation and paid a fine of $30,000. Revealing the pressures parents feel to get their kids into an elite school she admitted in an interview in November 2023 with KABC on the admissions scandal that "It felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn't do it.
            December 9, Historical Events in Rhyme
            1.      On this day in 2021 once again we saw evidence of how deadly the Illlegals’ trek to El Norte can be/Outrageous fees paid to cartel members far from a safe passage the payment guarantees/Some 200 illegals crammed into a semitruck trailer near the town of Chilipas like a load of 2 legged sardines/Too much weight and probably too much speed and the trailer in to a pedestrian bridge careened/Then flipped over killing 55 and injuring a hundred in a deadly bloody scene/Money paid but the cartel members did not hang around to hear the painful cries and screams.
            2.      On this day in 2016 proof that in Nigeria under Boko Haram girl students that reading, writing and arithmetic do not learn/Rather how to detonate suicide vests in a market to into a massive killing and wounding ground turn/One hopes the door to the bombers to Paradise was locked/If the mullahs preached there is no Paradise by suicide to innocents kill the inanity of explosions would be blocked.
            3.      On this day in 2008 the Blue Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich was arrested by the FBI/For trying to sell Obama’s Senate Seat to be vacated on January 20, 2002 to anyone who would pay the most to it buy/He was quickly impeached and found guilty and from running for any political office denied/In federal court ultimately convicted for his attempt to Obama’s Senate Seat sell/While in federal prison formed a prison band that for the cons played well/Until Trump commuted his sentence to release him from purgatory Hell/Yet today he is still trying to end to running in Illinois again to sell.    
             4.      On this day in 1996 an Ontario Court of Appeals ended Gwen Jacobs over 5 years of legal pain/That began on July 19,1991 when this U of Guelph student on a blistering hot day in Guelph removed her shirt to begin 15 minutes initially of fame/Fined $75 for exposing her breasts while in public walking/Since men had the right to remove their shirts a double standard of behavior she was mocking/The court threw out her convictions not on Constitutional grounds but on the community tolerance test/Found that for most people men and women walking shirtless and braless to minimize the heat would pass the community tolerance test.
             5.      On this day in 1979 one the deadliest and most disfiguring diseases to infect mankind was certified to have been eradicated/No longer would smallpox scar the faces of the lucky survivors or large portions of the population like Native Americans have decimated/In June of 2011 smallpox was no longer the only disease to have been wiped off the Earth’s face/Rinderpest known as the “cattle plague” was finally erased.
              Quote on smallpox from : William H. McNeill, 1977
Plagues and Peoples “
..on the night when the Aztecs drove Cortez and his men out of Mexico City, killing many of them, an epidemic of smallpox was raging in the city. The man who had organized the assault on the Spaniards was among those who died on that 'noche trista', as the Spaniards later called it. The paralyzing effect of a lethal epidemic goes far to explain why the Aztecs did not pursue the defeated and demoralized Spaniards, giving them time and opportunity to rest and regroup, gather Indian allies and set siege to the city, and so achieve their eventual victory.
           Moreover, it is worth considering the psychological implications of a disease that killed only Indians and left Spaniards unharmed. Such partiality could only be explained supernaturally, and there could be no doubt about which side of the struggle enjoyed divine favor. The religions, priesthoods, and way of life built around the old Indian gods could not survive such a demonstration of the superior power of the God the Spaniards worshiped. Little wonder, then, that the Indians accepted Christianity and submitted to Spanish control so meekly. God had shown Himself on their side, and each new outbreak of infectious imported from Europe (and soon from Africa as well) renewed the lesson.
           
© December 9, 2023 Ridley’s Believe It Or Not
               www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com
               Poems on Events of the Day
                Unique Commissioned Poems for Special Events

No comments:

Post a Comment