Random News and Notes 20 June
On this date in 1782, The Continental Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States. The front of the seal depicts a bald eagle clutching an olive branch in its right talon and arrows in its left. On its breast appears a shield marked with 13 vertical red and white stripes topped by a bar of blue. The eagle’s beak clutches a banner inscribed, E pluribus unum, a Latin phrase meaning “Out of Many One.” Above the eagle’s head, golden rays burst forth, encircling 13 stars.
It took 6 years of discussion to land on the design we all know.
On this day in 1863, West By God Virginia is admitted into the Union as the 35th U.S. state, or the 24th state if the secession of the 11 Southern states were taken into account. The same day, Arthur Boreman was inaugurated as West Virginia’s first state governor.
When Virginia voted to secede after the outbreak of the Civil War, the majority of West Virginians opposed the secession. Delegates met at Wheeling, and on June 11, 1861, nullified the Virginian ordinance of secession and proclaimed “The Restored Government of Virginia,” headed by Francis Pierpont. Confederate forces occupied a portion of West Virginia during the war, but West Virginian statehood was nonetheless approved in a referendum and a state constitution drawn up.
On this date in 1975, the movie Jaws was released. With a budget of $12 million, Jaws made countless viewers afraid to go into the water. It put now-famed director Steven Spielberg on the Hollywood map.
You go inside the cage? Cage goes in the water? You go in the water? Shark’s in the water… our shark... Farewell and adieu you fair Spanish ladies, farewell and adieu you ladies of Spain. For we’ve received orders to sail back to Boston, and for nevermore shall we see you again.
We start the news with a couple of stories involving politicians being sex pests of the worst kind.
First, in my neck ‘o the woods, a school board VP was arrested and charged with sexual misconduct against children. On June 18, the state police charged Travis J. Longo, 46, of Cazenovia, with four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor offense. The police said that Longo engaged in a pattern of sexually explicit communications with a child under the age of 12. Specific details about the nature of the communications were not announced.
Longo was also the founder of the local homo pride organization. That organization disbanded the minute the news broke that their leader was engaged in pedophillic behavior.
Cazenovia is about an hour’s drive from where this is being written and this editor has been to the jail where Longo is being held – not as an inmate but to bail out a buddy who had been charged with DUI and resisting arrest – and it is a grim place. I don’t doubt the farm hands, meth heads and wife beaters that populate it will be very kind to a sex pest.
The next sex pest story is out of New Hampshire where the state’s first transgender elected Rep., Stacie Barry Laughton (D) has been sentenced to 33 years in prison after pleading guilty to child sex abuse. It encouraged its partner, Lindsay Groves, to take explicit photos of children as young as three at a Massachusetts daycare from May 2022 to June 2023. Forensic analysis of their phones revealed over 10,000 text messages with graphic discussions and images.
The judge imposed 33 years and four months, far exceeding her defense’s request of 17 years, while prosecutors described her as the driving force. Groves received nearly 22 years in June for similar charges.
The giant architectural turd that is the Obama Presidential library opened in Chiraq the other day. It’s so fugly it makes mid-century Soviet brutalist architecture look good. It gets worse though. It is being reported that the foundation behind the monstrosity has left dozens of contractors holding the bag. The unpaid bills are in the tens of millions of dollars and the lack of payment has put the squeeze on black owned businesses.
. . . connected to the project. At the same time, President Obama declined to support a Community Benefits Agreement that many residents believed could have helped protect longtime Black families from displacement and rising housing costs.
The South Side deserved development that created wealth and stability for the people who stayed through decades of disinvestment. Instead, too many Black contractors are still fighting to get paid, and too many Black residents are being pushed out of the very neighborhood this project was supposed to uplift. Progress should be measured by how the community benefits not by the size of the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Very on-brand for the Obamas.
On Friday, District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied President Joe Biden’s bid to block The Justice Department from releasing 70 hours of audio recordings related to his classified documents investigation. The Heritage Foundation requested the 70 hours of audio, captured during interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer for Biden’s 2017 memoir, as part of special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into classified documents handling. Biden’s legal team argued releasing the tapes constitutes an “unwarranted invasion of privacy,” but Friedrich wrote the edited materials “contain no mention of highly sensitive topics like illness or death,” ruling public interest outweighs privacy claims.
These recordings became significant after Hur’s 2024 report characterized Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” prompting Republicans to demand the audio to evaluate his cognitive state and recollection of events.
A few weeks ago a burning cross was found in Chicago’s Grant Park. Information on the perp was scarce until the other day, when the retard gave a TV interview about it. Since that interview, Chicago police charged 21-year-old Merlin Lu with multiple felonies, including hate crime and arson charges, after authorities say he burned a cross in Grant Park on June 9.
He is facing the following charges:
- One felony count of criminal damage to state-supported property by fire causing more than $500 but less than $10,000 in damage.
- One felony count of arson involving real or personal property valued at more than $150.
- Two felony counts of committing a hate crime at a park or community center.
- One misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct for breach of the peace.
- One misdemeanor count of reckless conduct.
- One misdemeanor count of criminal damage to property involving less than $500 in damage.
- One misdemeanor count of cross burning with intent to intimidate
Another hate crime hoax, but you wouldn’t know that if you paid attention to the MSM.
Little Man is going places.