The 1926 Miami Hurricane would result in the deaths of over 500 people.
It was a Saturday.
The Saturday Evening Post featured a couple of Leyendecker illustrations in honor of the the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of one of Leyendecker's major clients.
The company survived until 1997 when it was sold to The Men's Warehouse.
Famous cartoon artist Joe Kubert was born in what was then part of Poland and now part of Ukraine to Jewish parents. He grew up in Brooklyn. He was an artist from an early age, and served in the Second World War in which the Army assigned him as a sign painter. His most famous cartoon is Sgt. Rock.
Back when the Rocky Mountain News was still a thing, they used to run columns by Charley Reese. I didn't always agree with them by any means, Reese was a dyed in wool Confederate Gray Southerner, but they were often quite interesting. I can recall his final column when he noted he was going to retire. On the timing he said something like "when you know, you know".
I'm at that point.
My wife, however, definitely isn't at that point for me, an ongoing source of conflict.
In Wyoming, and maybe in most places, lawyers are admitted to the bar in August for the most part. A second, smaller crops, is admitted in March or so. I was admitted in August, 36 years ago.
Back in September 2025 I started a thread about having passed the 35 year mark but never published it. I was angry about something at the time, pretty clearly, and it was a very bitter posts. I thought better of it and didn't post it, but I didn't wipe it out until recently. I reread it and then did so, even though much of what I wrote in it is still true.
All careers are individual, of course which is what makes career advice so dangerous. I've known people, for instance, who served in the military and absolutely hated it. The entire film M*A*S*H and the television series is, in no small part, based on a hatred of military service, although the book's author, a conservative, ironically did not hate his. The same is true, for what it's worth, of Catch 22. Heller actually admired the military he lampooned. Both books were hugely successful, however, as they not only tapped into the oddities of military life, but also into a hatred of it in some quarters.
In contrast, I've known people who loved it, and I myself liked it.
I note that as I suppose that the law is the same way, maybe all careers are.
That aside, the law is unique and is well known for being so.
The law has an alcoholism and alcohol abuse rate that's far higher than other professions. That isn't the only abusive trait in it, however. It's estimated that something like 60% of lawyers have had in the office sexual infidelities and while I haven't tried to add up percentages, and that percentage seems high, there are indeed a lot of them. The law also has some really screwball personalities in it, although I'm at the point where I now wonder if those personalities became that way due to the law, or entered the law because of it. In my current Gen. Jones stage of life, I'm amazed by the number of burnt out husks of people who won't retire from the law as that's all they have.
I'm not the only one who's noticed that, and a recent conversation is part of what brought me back to this thread. In speaking to an opposing lawyer I've known a long time by phone, on a holiday, he brought up the very things I've noted, this included. Indeed, he noted that for a lot of people, they'd become lawyers, that's what they now were as part of their personality. That's all that's left.
That should never happen, but the law is an all consuming job.
He was actually a bit angry about it. I'm not angry, but I don't want to become one of those people. My friend noted that what he "is", is a hunter and mountain climber. What he "does" is be a lawyer. That's pretty much true for me as well, although I'd substitute outdoorsmen for climber.
He also had the observation that after working years at the law, late nights, early days, weekends, that he and his wife did things together rarely. The pressure of work brought that about. That's pretty much the same story in my own life. Another lawyer I know just had his wife of about 30 years just up and leave him, leaving him wondering why. It seems a "therapist" suggested that, and frankly I have a dim view of most therapist or counsellors, but what I suspect is that the same thing was at work. That fellow had told me not all that long, before the disaster came, that he was never going to retire, because he enjoyed the fellowship of the lawyers.
Well, nothing that we do at work is something "enjoyed" by our spouses, except for perhaps the money. If the lawyer is really one of those ones who enjoys the courtroom combat, or the intellectual challenge, the spouses don't participate in that at all.
Money can matter, however. Yet another lawyer I know, about my same age, is trying to retire but is upset as his wife just can't grasp that the funding burn rate has to stop. I think a lot of lawyers who keep on keeping on face that with a family member or perhaps themselves. From the outside, you know they'd be fine. But to them, or a loved one, the fear of no further income will just drive them into the grave, working. Fears of that type, and not my own, have kept me working for the past four years.
The law is not only an all consuming occupation, it's one that's soul destroying. Many "plaintiffs' lawyers" have really lost their humanity. Not all by any means, but quite a few. They really don't care about the people they represent in many instances. It's one of the thing that makes practicing law so dispiriting and damaging to your own soul. Most of the propaganda that lawyers and law firms of a certain type being there to help people is pure crap. They don't mean it, and everyone inside the law knows that. Simply practicing law, at some point, or perhaps more accurately being in litigation, is participating on a fraud on the public.
I'm told I'm really good at the law. If that's true it's proof you can be good at something that you really don't love. I'm beyond the point of not loving it anymore.
I entered the profession for the same reasons a lot of people do. My earlier career had not worked out and I didn't seem to have any other place to go. I had started off obtaining a very difficult science degree only to graduate into an economy where I was unemployable. This is, I'd note, more common than a person might suppose. There was no family business to step into. What I really wanted to do, and still do, wasn't open to me. Even at that, I hesitated and I chose not to enter the law school class I was admitted into. I waited a year hoping to find work, and didn't. Soldiering was the work that year. I guess I could have chosen to make that a career, and in some ways I"m surprised I didn't.
The last year of my undergraduate degree I tried switch to a different field:
I'd be offered a summer position with them, but not until years later, at which point I was already practicing law and engaged. I've posted on that before.
If 'd had my druthers, which hardly anyone does, I would have have been a rancher. I have been around agriculture which is to say that I would have ranched full time. I came close it without really realizing it after law school right as my father was looking at retiring. We came close to the two of us starting a place, and then he died. I abandoned that particular effort in order to help my mother, who had no such interest. Laster I found she was baffled why I hadn't let her know.
My wife and I have always had cattle, but it's never been a full time thing. Sometimes it's promised to almost be that, but it never has. Now I'm 63 and time has moved on. It's something I'll never recover from. It was one of the goals that kept me at my desk job, and now the goal can't be met.
Time and effort wasted.
There are some things that are quite scary about time moving on, I'll note. Fear of death is not one of them. I constantly hear that people are supposed to be afraid of death, but I've lived pretty close to death my entire life and I'm not. If death arrives before my plans play out, well, so be it. Nobody knows the day nor the hour. Momento mori.
But what has moved on is the opportunity to complete a bunch of things I used to do and be engaged in before I started practicing law. That must show something about my own character, as other lawyers take long vacations and the like, but I don't really seem capable of devoting time to vocations and avocations. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which is which. The interest in those pursuits remains, however.
Gone is interest in the law itself. I'm not interested nor fascinated in it. I never loved it in the first place, but I have had over the years a reputation as being a legal scholar. I still get calls from various lawyers about legal situations which are rare or difficult. The difference is that I no longer find them interesting at all.
At one time, seeing as I was a lawyer, I really wanted to be a judge, which is a position for legal scholars, and I've applied within our system a bunch of times, and been encouraged to do so by judges. Now I'm too old, as mandatory retirement is at age 70 and the committee isn't going to appoint somebody at age 63 for a single term. Or I suppose not. To my surprise, they recently almost in fact did that in a district in which very few people were applying for the position. The past two Governors and the Judicial Nominating Committee have pretty much wrecked the process for successful lawyers, so applications are way down.
Indeed, one of my frustrations with the practice of law has been watching the decline of the judicial nominating system, which has grown much more political over the last few decades. When I started out you could really see why various judges got appointed to their positions. When Matt Mead became Governor, however, he had an agenda of appointing women and that's what he was going to do. That was a politically motivated bias and it meant if there was a man up for the same position, he wasn't getting it.
Governor Gordon has had a very strong bias towards prosecutors, although there are some exceptions.
The oncoming Governor, Barlow, will be interesting to watch in this regard. He's a professional himself (veterinarian) and perhaps he'll take a more informed and balanced view.
Anyhow, after 36 years of this, it's time to move on, so I'm moving on. I'll complete this year, but I'm not starting another one.
Indeed, on the topic, I'm capable of reading the signs. The American dream is that you live to age 100 and die in your sleep. You probably aren't going to.
Over the last couple of years I've watched some of the lawyers who are older than me decline pretty seriously in some ways. And I'm declining too. I had colon surgery out of the blue, something that probably could have been averted if I'd had regular colon checkups like you are supposed to. Going through that process I ended up having an odd thing on my thyroid discovered. Half my thyroid ended up coming out, although I probably could have avoided that if I was willing to risk it being nothing, which didn't seem to be a solid risk at the time. Now I have to take pills every day for the first time in my life.
A year ago the eye doctor noted something peculiar in my eye. Last week, on my follow up exam, it was clear it was a tiny cataract It's not a problem yet, but it probably will be in "ten years". I'm young for a cataract, but it's due to an injury.
I've endured a lot of injuries over the years.
I'm considerably more tired than I used to be, and my physical stamina, still pretty good, has declined. I could probably address this as people ought to at my age by exercise, but my schedule is incredibly burdened.
I don't handle stress anywhere near as good as I used to, however, and stress is a killer.
So, in four months, I'm done.
The big challenge now is letting everyone know, and getting my wife to accept it. That part isn't going to be easy at all.
It's not going to be easy as at least my long suffering spouse doesn't want to believe I'm at this point. I've been mentioning it, but when retirement comes up, it's always "you can't". Retirement is, she suggests, a year further in the future than I imagine it.
A year isn't much, but it's a year. I hear all the time that somebody retired and then died, as if retirement killed them. Really, they just hang on too long.
And again, that hanging on is a funny thing. I've watched one lawyer who has no family (divorced) and who has no faith keep on going to work. I guess it's his identify . I mentioned retiring to him once and he scoffed, saying "good luck". Of course, I don't have to pay alimony and I don't take expensive trips.
I've also watched a couple of very ill lawyers hang on after their illness set in. It provided a distraction I guess. Indeed, on the very odd occasion I mention this to anyone people always suggest a law job I could take in retirement, which isn't what I have in mind at all.
In contrast, one lawyer who experienced a health care scare recently, one year younger than me told me that next year was definitely the date. When I expressed doubt, the reply was "watch me".
What you are supposed to say, like Edith Piaf, is that you have no regrets about your career as a lawyer.
I can't say that.
I probably should feel that way. Just yesterday, once again, thinking over the past 36 years I came to the conclusion that with the box I was in, I did the only thing I could do. True or not, and it's probably true, hindsight being 20/20, I'd have avoided the law like the plague if I'd known what it was like. As noted above, I'm sure there are people who look back and say they loved every second of it.
I'm not one of them.
To compound things, I've been in litigation the entire time. That was a mistake, as I'm not well suited for it internally. I'm an introvert and I don't like being in extroverted situations. I just couldn't find a way out of it.
Well, anyhow, page one of the concluding chapter.
So now, I have to start informing people. This isn't going to be fun at all, but knowing myself, if I don't, it won't become real.
I've never liked doing trials. Some lawyers claim to love them, and I suppose they do. There's something in their personalities, a defect really, which requires them to test their wits against other people. Most lawyers don't like doing them, and most of the lawyers who say they do, are lying.
Like baseball players before a game, most lawyers have some sort of ritual before they try a case. At one time, as late as the early 90s, that ritual for quite a few involved heavy drinking. I don't think that's the case so much anymore. Frankly, while conservatives are all worked up about it in some quarters, I think that's one of the things that the massive introduction of women into the law changed, and for the better.
When I get close to trials, I usually rewatch The Wild Bunch. I know that's odd, but I love that movie and I find it very engaging. Part of the reason that I watch it in this context is that the protagonists in the move are basically all mercenaries of a sort. Yes, I know that they're criminals, but still. And there's not one redeeming person in their whole contest.
Everyone who likes movies is familiar with the famous concluding gunbattle of the movie. But that's not the last scene. Former gang member turned bounty hunter Deke Thornton is waiting outside the town gate as evening arrives, having sent the dead bodies of the gang back with the other bounty hunters. Elderly gang member Skyes rides up with Mexican Indians and the following exchange occurs.
Sykes: I didn't expect to find you here.
Deke Thornton: Why not? I sent them back. That's all I said I'd do.
Sykes: They didn't get very far.
Deke Thornton: I figured.
Sykes: What are your plans, now?
Deke Thornton: Drift around down here. Try to stay out of jail.
Sykes: Well, me and the boys got some work to do. You want to come with us? It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.
That's how I feel about things. I intend to hunt, fish, work cattle, write and put in a garden.
But even if I only do a faction of that stuff, it'll be okay.
Stacker compiled a ranking of the coldest Julys in Wyoming since 1895 using data from the National Centers for Environmental Information. Rankings are based on the lowest average temperature in each month. For each of the coldest months listed below, we've included the average state temperature, state-wide highs and lows for the month, and the total precipitation.
#10. July 1912 - Average temperature: 62.3°F - Monthly high temperature: 75.5°F - Monthly low temperature: 49°F - Total precipitation: 2.2"
#9. July 1904 - Average temperature: 62.2°F - Monthly high temperature: 76.9°F - Monthly low temperature: 47.5°F - Total precipitation: 1.06"
#8. July 1972 - Average temperature: 62°F - Monthly high temperature: 77.5°F - Monthly low temperature: 46.4°F - Total precipitation: 0.99"
#7. July 1902 - Average temperature: 61.7°F - Monthly high temperature: 76.8°F - Monthly low temperature: 46.6°F - Total precipitation: 0.97"
#6. July 1958 - Average temperature: 61.4°F - Monthly high temperature: 75.8°F - Monthly low temperature: 46.9°F - Total precipitation: 2.02"
#4. July 1950 (tie) - Average temperature: 61.2°F - Monthly high temperature: 75.7°F - Monthly low temperature: 46.7°F - Total precipitation: 1.52"
#4. July 1895 (tie) - Average temperature: 61.2°F - Monthly high temperature: 76.1°F - Monthly low temperature: 46.4°F - Total precipitation: 0.99"
#3. July 1992 - Average temperature: 60.8°F - Monthly high temperature: 74.7°F - Monthly low temperature: 46.8°F - Total precipitation: 2.24"
#2. July 1915 - Average temperature: 60.3°F - Monthly high temperature: 74.3°F - Monthly low temperature: 46.3°F - Total precipitation: 1.75"
#1. July 1993 - Average temperature: 58.9°F - Monthly high temperature: 73.2°F - Monthly low temperature: 44.6°F - Total precipitation: 1.88"
The Strategic Air Command and the Tactical Air Command were created.
Shoulder patch of the United States Army Air Forces Strategic Air Command.
SAC therefore predates the Air Force as an independent branch of the military.
And so does TAC, which has been inactive since 1992, when it was merged into SAC.
I've been meaning to do a post on reorganization of the U.S. military, which the illegal war on Venezuela and King Donny's War shows to be a desperate need, but I haven't gotten around to it.
The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure went into effect.
French forces engaged in the The Battle of Thakhek in Laos, allowing the French to reestablish themselves in that portion of French Indochina.
Kenny Washington became the first African American to sign with a professional football team since 1933.
I'm a Westerner and an Irish Catholic. That informs my vote pretty heavily.
When I first registered to vote Ronald Reagan was President. Marine Corps Raider veteran Ed Herschler, a Democrat, was the Governor of Wyoming. D-Day veteran Teno Roncolio, also a Democrat, was our Congressman. Republicans Malcolm Wallop and Alan Simpson were our Senators.
That was sort of the political landscape here at the time. More Republicans than Democrats, but there were still Democrats, and those Democrats tended to be pretty tough conservative people. Republicans were already tacking off into batshit crazy economic theories but they weren't completely bathed in them yet.
I registered as a Republican.
I didn't stay a Republican for a really long time. I don't recall when exactly I switched parties, but by the time I was at the University of Wyoming, I had registered Democratic. I stayed in the Democratic Party for a long time. I was still a Democrat when I became a lawyer and I know that I was when I was married. However, sometime after that, I couldn't stand the sea of blood the Democratic Party had become. I became an independent.
As an independent you missed the primaries pretty much, however, and starting in the Clinton era in general Wyoming Democrats began to drift over to the GOP. After all, the mainstream of the Democratic Party wasn't all that different from the traditional mainstream of the local GOP. After awhile, I registered as a Republican.
Little far right Dixiecrats like Chuck Gray like to scream that people like me are "RINOs", when in fact they're the malignant innovation into the GOP. That element hadn't entered the GOP at the time I was first in it, and didn't for a long time. Gray himself, who nobody really knew anything about, was probably the first, followed by Jeanette Ward, who served one term in the legislature before losing a bid to retain her seat. While she lost, that showed the direction things were headed in. Carpetbaggers who knew nothing about their state moved in and wanted to convert it into pre 1964 Alabama.
It's not as if the Democrats stood still. As moderate Wyoming Democrats left the party, it too became delusional. If the Republicans became increasingly fascistic or Dixiecratic, the Democrats lived intellectually in the Greenwich Villages' Stonewall Inn in 1969. It made going back into the Democratic Party an outright impossibility for people like myself, particularly as they lashed themselves increasingly to abortion and perversion.
More recently, I'll note, that seems to be wearing off. The Democrats are still "pro choice", but they don't talk much about it. For that matter Republicans who were really gung ho on being pro life have sort of lost their fire for that as well, following the lead of Orange Mussolini.
What the Republican Party, nationally, has become is flat out insane. No thinking person can be a member of it and be comfortable.
There are still good Republicans here in Wyoming. They began a big fight against the Dixiecrats prior to the legislature and largely prevailed this session, in spite of the fact that the diehard adherents of The Lost Cause were theoretically in control of the solons. That should give local Republicans who aren't literally whistling Dixie some hope.
But with the current national Trumpites in control, the line has been drawn.
For years people like Dixiecrat Chuck Gray, or Dixicrat Bextel, have claimed that the Republican Party here was infiltrated with Democrats. Well, it was. They're the Democrats. Democrats from 1960 Alabama. They just don't know it. But the screaming lunacy that they've espoused does have an effect after awhile. Yell at people that "you are a RINO" for long enough, and they'll take it up.
I'm remaining registered in the GOP. Chuck Gray's efforts to disenfranchise voters has been enough for me in and of itself not to change registrations. Frankly, if I was to take a run at the House of Representatives, and I've thought about it, I would switch parties as right now that would give a person a place in the November election no matter what. But I'm not going to do that. I'm old, worn out, and very tired.
So I'm remaining in the GOP in no small part so that I can vote for the decent primary candidates, of which there are some right now.
At this point, merely stating that you are "pro Trump" will be enough to cross my vote for you off the list. At least three House candidates are promising to be Trump's biggest lover, and they're all of the list. I hope I run into some of them during their campaigns. I probably will.
And I've already quit giving MAGAs in my midst slack. Frankly, since the start of the assault on Iran, that's been easy, as the "never war" MAGAs can't explain that one without sounding like hypocrites, and they know it. Even a few have begun to look as if Valentines to Trump weren't a good idea.
But in the Fall. I'm not voting for any Republicans for anything.
That won't exactly be easy. So far here only one candidate from the Democratic Party has signed on to run for a statewide office. He has my vote even though I like the only Republican whose announced for the same position. And just because I'm not voting for a Republican doesn't mean I will vote for Democrats. In my state house district a really decent Republican holds the seat and a young woman from the Democratic Party has announced against him. She's already on the sea of blood ticket. I can't vote for her, but I won't vote for the Republican I've voted for many times before.
To vote for Republicans in 2026 you have to accept that a low IQ, deranged, octogenarian should have complete dictatorial control over the Federal Government, can start major wars on his own, can demolish parts of the White House as he has the tastes of a bordello owner, can cause the hiding of files on a major pedophile ring, and can have a domestic army occupy the streets. It also means you have to be willing to sacrifice the environment of the planet for scientific denial. You have to be willing to endorse lies at a never before seen rate, which makes you a liar yourself if you do.
Pancho Villa's skull was stolen by grave robbers. It's whereabouts remain unknown.
Mussolini delivered a defiant speech about the fascist program of Italianization of South Tyrol, which had an ethnic German majority.
The Italians and Germans managed to put this aside after the rise of Hitler, but had the Germans won the second World War, they certainly would have turned on Italy over this issue. As late as the 1990s, if not later, there was still Italian support for the fascist decrees on the topic.
Lex Anteinternet: The dog that hasn't barked.: By the way, by odd coincidence, they've given Ghislaine Maxwell a therapy dog. None of this will matter. People will say this doesn...
What is going on here? Something sure is. Trump's called out all the stops, even bringing in Lauren Boebert to the Situation Room to pressure her. Beobert, who is somebody in the MAGA camp, is apparently refusing to go along with Trump.
That in and of itself is remarkable.
What we know is that up to 1,000 girls were raped in association with Epstein. We don't know all of the details of that by any means. Some of the rapes were pressured "statutory rapes", but others may have been physically violent rapes of female minors, based on what little we know. In either instance, the entire thing is horrific.
Was Trump a rapist? So far we have no reason to believe that, other than the "where there's smoke there's fire". Trump has, a long history of hanging out with those who have an interest in screwing teenagers and who have carried out their interest. Epstein wasn't the first in that category. The first that we know of, and probably the first significant person, was John Casablancas, who owned a modeling agency. Frankly, modeling agencies tend towards being morally dubious in some instances, but Casablancas was personally so. He divorced his first wife due to an affair with model Stephanie Seymour whom he began seeing when she was 14 years old. At age 50 he married 17 year old Aline Mendonça de Carvalho Wermelinger.
Casablancas represented Ivanka Trump when she became a fashion model at age 15.1
It's worth remembering here that Trump is nearly 80 years old. He was born in 1946, which means he turned 20, as a rich man, in 1966, and 30, in 1976. Trump, therefore, had wealth right in the era in which American sexual morals really began to plummet and he was in his 70s when the clubbing scenes in New York was in full swing.2 People complain about the US being a moral sewer now, but that's because their memories are bad. The 70s were really a decade of rank libertinism.3
They were also one which winked at Hebephilia and Ephebophilia, or rather, more accurately accepted the gross sexualization of early teenage girls and men preying on them, with that getting advanced at first by Playboy which really flirted with the lines of illegality with its centerfolds.4 Advertising in the era really dipped down into the younger years, for girls, in a way that you couldn't and wouldn't now, for instance:
How old do we think that girl is? Not old.
Brooke Shields as a young woman was shown only in her "Calvin Klein's" and portrayed a 12 or 13 year old prostitute in the 1976 film Pretty Baby (which she now detests) and a castaway in Blue Lagoon who grows into, I guess, a teenage common law marriage portrayed as the natural ideal. Shields regards herself as having been exploited, which she truly was. Only slightly older, 1968's Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zeffirelli featured Olivia Hussey' topless visage, albeit briefly, in a quite sexualized portrayal of the Juliet character. She was 14 years old and later sued.5
In spite of the horrors of such things as transgenderism, the re-creation of the lower class Victorian "common law" marriage arrangement in a new form in the American lower middle class, and the overall breakdown in sexual standards in the Western world, the outright aggressive exploitation of women sexually has really retreated. Retreating with it was a fairly open acceptance of what we'd now call "date rape". The concept that pressuring women into sex by way of position and power constituted rape flat out didn't exist. Even as a teenager myself in the 1970s, I can recall that jokes based on "get 'er drunk" were really common with the suggestion that happened relatively commonly, and that it wasn't regarded as rape. For that matter, as early as the early 1980s, I can recall instances of men in certain positions being caught in sexual relationships with underaged teens and simply losing their positions, quietly, over it.6
The point of all of this is that maybe a person could party down with John Casablancas while being a self admitted libertine and avoid picking the teenage fruit that others were picking, but most people who would find that morally reprehensible, which would be most people, would avoid hanging out with such people pretty quickly. For one thing, the behavior is gross and disgusting. For another, hanging out with kiddy diddlers would cause a person to run the risk of being regarded as a diddler.
Be that as it may, Trump went from Casablancas on to Jeffrey Epstein, whom he started hanging out with in the 1990s, some twenty, more or less, years after Casablancas. Epstein shows up in a Mar A Lago party's video footage in 1992. That party featured NFL cheerleaders. Trump flew on Epstein's private jet at least seven times in the 1990s. In 1997 Trump and Epstein were photographed together at a Victoria's Secret "Angels" party in New York. In 2002 Trump made his now infamous comment that Epstein was a "terrific guy" they shared interest in "beautiful women". Trump noted that Epstein's interests were in women on the "younger" side. In 2003 Trump drew a nude figure, with oddly small breasts, in a birthday card for Epstein, with a really enigmatic comment, and signed his name as, basically, pubic hairs.7
Now we know that Epstein had commented that Trump knew about the "girls" and that Epstein claimed, in a private email, that Trump knew this due to Virginia Giuffre, the teenager who would be supplied to Prince Andrew.. Giuffre's father worked as a maintenance manager at the Mar-a-Lago property and helped Giuffre obtain a job there. Maxwell recruited her to Epstein from Mar A Lago.
None of this proves in any fashion that Trump was diddling. Indeed, Giuffre states that Trump never touched her. Other women who were associated with Epstein have claimed that, but all of those claims have remained basically on the fringes of this story. So all that can really be said is that Trump has lead a life of moral dissolution with adult women, and he's hung around with men who had an extremely creepy attraction to girls in their teens, but there's no evidence that Trump personally crossed that line.
But there sure is a lot of evidence that he doesn't want the Epstein files released.
Indeed, he's downright desperate about it.
Why?
Earlier on Trump indicated he wanted the files released. Releasing the files became sort of a MAGA crusade, with MAGA's convinced that they'd provide damaging information on Bill (and maybe Hillary) Clinton. Indeed, as recently as a couple of months ago a MAGA I know maintained that the files were being kept secret due to what they'd show about Clinton, and maybe Obama (who is in no way implicated in any of this), thereby making the bizarre assertion that the Republicans are keeping material secret to protect a former Democratic President they detest.
Eh?
Given Trump's change in tune, what probably is in there is one of two things. One, the most likely, is that it's been pointed out that some rich and powerful person in the Trump circle is implicated, and badly. Trump may be protecting that person or persons, and if he is, there's some connection either with Trump or the GOP that must really be needed for protection.
The other possibility is that he knows, which he didn't before, that he's implicated as somebody who really knew something grotesque. Epstein himself, in his emails, noted that he apparently told Ghislaine to knock something off, and Trump has maintained that had to do with raiding staff from Mar A Lago. But what if what he knew is something worse, that women were being recruited to be sex slaves, which is basically what these poor girls were.
Whatever it is, we don't know.
The files are going to be released, which brings up these two things.
Trumps willingness to act illegally is now so pronounced that there has to be a strong suspicion that the files are being scrubbed. When they are released, and they will be, there's a good chance that some of the contents will be gone. This did occur to some extent with the files on the Kennedy Assassination, although I personally don't believe in the various conspiracy theories in that area, so it can definitely be accomplished.
For that reason, and for others, I also feel that the files should be released as is, complete with names of the victims. I know that's not the norm, and why, but the whole truth here is never going to come out if we don't know who was subject to this barbarity. And, ironically, in this instance releasing the names protects them. As noted earlier, Trump was sued by an anonymous woman who withdrew her suit after being subject to much pressure. There may perhaps be nothing to those claims, but the fact is, at this point, that we're dealing with men who are enormously wealthy and powerful, and have the means to threaten their victims as long as their identities remain unknown.
Footnotes:
1. On this, Trump has famously remarked about going back stage in, I believe, Miss World, competitions, or some such competitions, while the competitors were topless. These young women would, however, be of age. This is still pretty creepy.
2. The New York club scene was famously a cesspool, and heavily associated with drugs. There is, however, no reason to believe that Trump has ever taken illegal drugs. Indeed, due to the exposure to alcoholism provided by his brother, Trump does not drink.
3. As a minor note, the culture of the times reflected back in the form of music.
Rock music has been regarded, probably pretty inaccurately, as sort of countercultural. More accurately, when it was really popular, it reflected the cultural influence of people ranging from their teens into their thirties. Real rock music is pretty much dead now.
The 1970s and early 1980s saw a fair amount of rock music that outright endorsed ephebophilia and hebephilia. Ted Nugent's 1981 Jailbait outright did, with the female subject (victim) declared to be 13 years old. Kiss' 1977 subject was a bit older in Christine Sixteen. The Police hit the subject with Don’t Stand So Close to Me in 1980, which involves a teacher being attracted to a female student. That song is particularly creepy given its reference to Lolita and due to the fact that one of the members of The Police had been a teacher who admitted to having been attracted to female students, but not having acted upon it.
ABBA, which is regarded as sort of a bubblegum rock band, touched on the topic in 1979's Does Your Mother Know?, with the protagonist outright expressing torture over the advances of an underaged girl. The Knack's 1979 song Good Girls Don't at least kept the behavior down at mutual teenage level. Aerosmith broke into popularity with 1975's Walk This Way which is a tour de force of sexual double entendres all celebrating teenage sex. The story was flipped in Rod Stewart's 1971 Maggie May in which a teenage male regrets being seduced out of school by an older woman.
So that's a bunch of song, but were they that popular? Some really were, at least by my memory. I don't recall Nugent's song at all, but the only song of Nugent's I recall being popular wsa Cat Scratch Fever, which is about prostitutes. And Kiss was regarded, where I lived, as sort of juvenile joke more popular with junior high kids than us mature high schoolers, so I don't remember their song either.
The Police's Don't Stand So Close To Me, however, was hugely popular, although not with me, mostly because I can't stand that band. ABBA's Does Your Mother Know? was also big. Walk This Way was so big that even though it had been released in 1975, it was still really popular in the early 80s, which at the time was amazing as songs aged quickly. Maggie May shares that status as it was popular over a decade after its original release. Good Girls Don't didn't age well at all, in contrast, but it was huge in 1979.
Almost all of these songs, or maybe all of them, are outright reprehensible, which is the point. Amazingly, they were heard all the time in the 70s and 80s, and nobody really said anything about it. The only time I recall anyone condemning the lyrics of a song was in 1977 when a Parish Priest lambasted Only The Good Die Young by Billy Joel from the pulpit. I don't know where he'd learned of the song, but the Church was associated with the school, which went up to 9th Grade, and I now wonder if it was there. I was in junior high myself at the time and I had no idea what he was talking about. My father didn't either, and asked me about the song after Mass. It'd be years before I heard it, and like every Billy Joel song, I was underwhelmed.
4. We've touched on this before, but Playboy got in trouble in Europe as it was viewed as encouraging ephebophilia and hebephilia, and moreover being in that category while barely disguised as not being. It actually changed some of its content, notably its cartoons, as a result. Nonetheless, some Playboy models, such as Frances Camuglia were barely legal teens when photographed, and in fact a few were younger than 18 years old. One model's photographs went to press when she was still 17, with it apparently being the case that Playboy was unaware of her actual age, while it still played up that she was just out of high school. Another was outright known to be 17 when she was photographed with the magazine holding her photos until she turned 18.
5. All the then teenage actors in these films later maintained, probably correctly, that they suffered lifelong emotional trauma for having been in these films. Shields has been particularly critical of her mother for pushing her into them.
6. More specifically, I can recall three high school teachers in this category. Neither was arrested, they were simply let go. Another was a National Guard officer who was a local businessman. He was quickly discharged from the National Guard and there was as criminal proceeding, but the charge never hit the news and the resulting sentence was minor.
7. Trump has denied this, of course, but there seems to be no doubt. Assuming that it is Trump's, it's impossible not to conclude that he at least knew of Epstein's unrestrained lustful conduct. There was at least one other drawing, by somebody else, that alluded to the same thing. The thing here is that Epstein was strongly attracted to teenage girls, and if you know that the guy is strongly attracted to females sexually, and his targets are. . . well.
Postscript:
I thought about predicting this, but thought it too icky.
The last few days, as this has been breaking, I thought that, at some point, MAGA commentors would come out and basically start excusing ephebophilia. I should answer the question, first, on "what's that" although its been explained here before. According to Wikipedia:
Ephebophilia is the primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19 and showing Tanner stages 4 to 5 of physical development.
And now its happened.
Megyn Kelly "There's a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old…”
Well, yeah, there is, in more ways than one. A 5 year old is particularly gross as a victim and technically that's pedophilia. But ephebophilia is pretty darned disgusting as well, and rape in that context, which much or all of this would be by modern definitions is horrific. Moreover, according to some of the testimony, some of these girls were 14, or even 13, which is hebephilia and creeping right up n the edge of pedophelia.
And it's being excuse. That's what I thought would start to happen.
So, what we're starting to see, so that it's clear, is "yeah. . well, sure, they were jumping little teenage girls, but that's okay. . "
It's not okay.
And not only is it not okay, these people are starting to make the excuses now, without anything actually saying that Trump did that. We know of course that somebody was. . . but we don't know who.
