On Thursday the Mars Rover Perseverance landed on Mars.
We live tweeted the last minutes of the landing @justicebuilding. You should check it out. This is a big deal. Our exploration of Mars is going to lead to humans landing on Mars, which is going to lead to colonization of Mars.
"2BR Capsule, Mawrth Vallis, in the Neil Armstrong development, Recently redone with new water reclamation and next-gen O2. Buy for 690 or rent at 3950 per Mars/month, food resupply pod every six months included"
As the planet heats up, people call global warming a hoax. When the planet got sick with Covid, people attacked social distancing and masks. When the FACDL listserv self-immolated this week, after the dust settled and all the lawyers finished attacking each other, they did next what comes natural- they attacked US!
*"Rumpole posts all our emails!"; "Yeah, none of this would have happened if Rumpole didn't run the blog"; "Get him!" someone shouted. 'Hang him!" someone else screamed. That guy who stormed the Capitol wearing fur and Vikings horns chimed in, looking for a large flag pole to swing at us.
It was a blood bath. We were pummeled. and no one came to our defense. It is like we were the Americans in our favourite Gordon Sinclair recording.
The attack was the height of calumny. Here we were minding our own business, writing a motion to dismiss, when our email in-box started receiving emails with captions like "You cannot believe what these idiots are saying about you!"
It was Outrageous. Salacious. Faceless. Shameless. And not in the least, Mendacious. If we could find more adjectives that rhyme, we would keep going.
Lost in all the attacks we endured was the original problem. Apparently David Ovalle of the Miami Herald sniffed out our post on the PVH/Covid controversy. Some lawyers spoke to the intrepid Herald scribe and gave him some FACDL emails which he put in the story. Now mind you, we posted ONE email after our Capitan spoke with the author and received permission to do so. No good deed goes unpunished. The furor rose. One member called for others to resign. Aspersions were cast. Invectives were hurled. Unfounded accusations that would make a Broward Prosecutor smile were made.
And when the dust settled and everyone was licking their self-infected wounds and there was no one else to attack, someone had the bright idea to blame your humble blogger. It was like lighting a flame to a can of gasoline in Texas so you can melt the ice in your bathtub to flush your toilet while your senator is in Cabo. In other words...WHOOSH! The mob turned, and in moments we were electronically tarred and feathered. "He posts every email we send" they whined. "Been doin it for years" someone grumbled. "Has no respect for us" someone else chimed in.
In other words, in that famous poem by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller decrying the rise of Nazis "First they came for..." , the prediction of the poem came true: "Then they came for me."
It was not pretty.
We are still being trashed. (sniffle 😥).