High Ground

Commentary said awhile back that the GOP left the moral high ground when they fell in love with Donald Trump. Yesterday, Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s background with an outright racist lie and it was met with a collective yawn by GOP leaders. No outrage whatsoever.

If the GOP decides it ever wants to get back near the moral high ground, it is going to be a long road to get there. For now, they must enjoy being corrupt and racist. Sad and pitiful.

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Speaking of, I am thinking Trump isn’t going to handle well the following breaking news:

The Biden administration has secured the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian prisons as part of a prisoner swap, which wipes away one of Donald Trump’s baffling campaign promises.

The men had been jailed on espionage charges they both deny, ad the U.S. State Department has designated them as wrongly detained, and the Kremlin may also release Russian-British dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was convicted of treason for criticizing the Ukraine invasion, as part of the swap.

Trump had raised eyebrows by suggesting multiple times that he had a deal in place with Vladimir Putin to release the journalist from detention if he’s re-elected, saying the Russian president “will do that for me, and I don’t believe he’ll do it for anyone else,” but president Joe Biden beat him to the punch and got the pair released.

Trump and some GOPers will trash the deal.

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The featured photo is about the following.  See the Chron online headline:

Houston police reports at least two murders in dropped cases scandal in ‘systemic failure’

Here is from the Chron story:

Two murder investigations were sent to the wrong division and then suspended, acting chief Larry Satterwhite said during a Wednesday report to City Council on the department’s internal investigation into 264,000 dropped cases.  

Satterwhite called the ongoing scandal over the suspended cases citing a lack of personnel, which led to the ouster of former Chief Troy Finner, a systemic failure of leadership and the department, while unveiling a long-awaited report to the City Council. A report, he said, was unlikely to lead to many disciplinary measures, explaining that the officers involved were operating under proper procedures at the time. The procedures were the problem, he said.

And this:

“The biggest mistake I’ve been able to see is a failure to recognize what’s going on and a failure to go in and truly try to correct it,” Satterwhite said. “It was a failure of leadership and a systematic failure of our department. And we all own that, from supervisors in the divisional level all the way up to the chief level.”

Here is the entire read: Houston police say dropped cases scandal included at least 2 murders (houstonchronicle.com).

I guess this “systematic failure” wasn’t a crime. The Acting Chief should have thrown in that there is a “systematic failure” on how we hold folks accountable at HPD since we only got resignations and demotions. Oh, well.

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Every now and then, I will think of this fella below.  I started paying attention to current events during the Vietnam War. I always opposed the war. I remember when this first came to light. See this that came out yesterday:

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — William Laws Calley Jr., who as an Army lieutenant led the U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern American military history, has died. He was 80.

Calley died on April 28, according to his Florida death record, which said he had been living in an apartment in Gainesville. His death was first reported by The Washington Post on Monday, citing his death certificate.

Calley had lived in obscurity in the decades since he was court-martialed and convicted in 1971, the only one of 25 men originally charged to be found guilty in the massacre that helped turn American opinion against the war in Vietnam.

On March 16, 1968, Calley led American soldiers of the Charlie Company on a mission to confront a crack outfit of Vietcong enemies. Instead, over several hours, the soldiers killed 504 unresisting civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men, in My Lai and a neighboring community.

And this:

Calley was convicted in 1971 for the murders of 22 people during the rampage. He was sentenced to life in prison but served only three days because President Richard Nixon ordered his sentence reduced. He served three years of house arrest.

Without apologizing, much less admitting guilt, Calley mused about the massacre’s legacy in an exclusive Associated Press interview as he waited for the verdict.

“I can’t say I’m proud of ever being in My Lai or ever participating in war. But I would be extremely proud if My Lai shows the world what war is and that the world needs to do something about stopping wars,” he said. “I hope My Lai isn’t a tragedy but an eye opener … My Lai has happened in every war. It’s not an isolated incident, even in Vietnam.”

After his release, Calley got married, settled into a job at his father-in-law’s jewelry store in Columbus, Georgia, and had a son. He later got divorced and moved to Atlanta, where he avoided publicity and routinely turned down journalists’ requests for interviews.

Calley broke his silence in 2009, at the urging of a friend, when he spoke to the Kiwanis Club in Columbus near Fort Benning, where he had been court-martialed.

Here is the entire interesting read: William Calley, who led the My Lai massacre that shamed US military in Vietnam, has died (msn.com).

I will leave it at that.

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We won last night and are once again tied for first place in the AL West.