Buy me 1 please!!

LOUIS XIIILOUIS XIII COGNAC

$3,500.00  

https://www.reservebar.com/louis-xiii-cognac

Herr Trump in bed with Russians

The Stones, the Prezznit

[Jarmo Koponen, a senior Finnish correspondent and Russia expert agreed: “Putin has been -trained to be a mastermind of human souls, he is a specialist, so he’s really got Trump by the balls!” Koponen told The Daily Beast.]    https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-just-fell-for-a-classic-kgb-trick

Planet Nude

[Eric Stagno, 34, insisted that he was only enjoying Planet Fitness’s policy of being a “Judgment Free Zone” . . .  when he walked around naked and started doing exercises on the yoga mats.]
https://jonathanturley.org/2018/07/24/false-arrest-or-false-advertising-massachusetts-man-arrested-naked-at-planet-fitness/#more-136795

Kaepenick contra Cutler

[Why do billionaire football team owners give a flying fig what President Dummkopf says?

The answer should be obvious. It’s not fear of Trump. It’s that they are Trump. Billionaires are not allies in the fight against the white-supremacist, anti-labor aims of this administration. They are the beneficiaries. This has gotten twisted in recent months, as people have been grateful for the diverse, proudly political voices that ESPN has hired in recent years, as well as the sight of NFL owners backing their players after Trump’s abhorrent Huntsville, Alabama, speech, where he called NFL protesters “sons of bitches.”  (emphasis added)]
https://www.thenation.com/article/nfl-owners-and-espn-bosses-are-showing-which-side-they-are-on/

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/20/1782247/-After-Miami-Dolphins-try-to-punish-protesting-players-NFL-rethinks-its-anthem-protest-policy


https://thebiglead.com/2017/08/03/selling-miami-on-colin-kaepernick-would-be-particularly-difficult/

https://jonathanturley.org/2017/08/24/naacp-calls-on-nfl-to-protect-kaepernicks-constitutional-right-to-protest/#more-123939

https://nypost.com/2016/11/23/how-colin-kaepernick-defended-fidel-castro-to-skeptical-miami-media/

https://floridadailypost.com/cutler-vs-kaepernick-takeaway-freedom-speech-repercussion/

https://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/07/colin-kaepernick-jay-cutler-paul-newberry/

https://www.thenation.com/article/nfl-owners-and-espn-bosses-are-showing-which-side-they-are-on/

Will on trump

"He speaks English as though it is a second language that he learned from someone who learned English last week. "   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-sad-embarrassing-wreck-of-a-man/2018/07/17/

Netherlands pm, Mark Rutte, schools Herr Donald

Charter Schools Fail More; not worth the money robbed from public schools

[For years, Florida politicians have trashed public schools, describing them as “failures.”

Traditional public schools get it wrong, they say.

Charter schools get it right, they say.

We need to take money away from “failing” traditional schools and give more of it to charter schools, they say.

Yet when school grades were released this past week, not a single traditional school in Orange County received an F.

Five charter schools did.

Yes, every single “failing” school in Orange County was a charter school.]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-florida-charter-schools-failure-scott-maxwell-20170629-story.html

Talk about your just desserts; Poachers eaten by lions.

[A pride of hungry lions in a South African reserve just saved the day, at least for a herd of rhinos. The poachers, who had illegally entered that reserve with a gun and axe to kill those rhinos, were not so lucky.

The big cats mauled and killed at least two — possibly three — poachers, leaving behind just their bloodied and partly-eaten body parts, according to news reports.

The illegal entrance and subsequent mauling attack happened at the Sibuya Game Reserve sometime between Sunday night (July 1) and Monday morning (July 2), according to a statement by the reserve.]  https://www.livescience.com/62998-lions-kill-rhino-poachers.html]

US mistreatment of detainees. Shocking!

We know from reports from inside the centers that migrants will first pass days caged in freezing cold hieleras, or “coolers”—the Border Patrol’s overcrowded temporary holding facilities—where the lights blaze 24/7 and migrants are forced to sleep on the floor. They’ll receive substandard and even deadly medical care, and will have the constant threat of deportation hanging over them as they are thrust into an increasingly antagonistic and restrictive immigration-court system. They could spend months or even years behind bars, many without ever having committed or even having being charged with a crime. And, as detailed in a new report from immigrant advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants, the guards and detention center officials sometimes treat them inhumanely, hurling racist, Islamophobic, and homophobic nastiness at them. The report, “Persecuted in Immigration Detention: A National Report on Abuse Motivated by Hate,,” details the deeply unsettling, rampant hate spewed by ICE and ICE-contracted guards in immigration detention centers, documenting at least 800 complaints of abuse.  https://www.thenation.com/article/just-hateful-abuse-immigrants-face-detention-centers/Immigrant detainees, mistreatment

Why does it take a comedian to speak the truth?

Save The Chew

Trump's tenuous ties to truth

Now PlayingMemorable...(CNN)President Donald Trump has a very casual relationship with the truth. To him, facts are fungible. They are things to stretch, pull and sometimes break -- all in service of the story that he tells himself about his life.

In his first 466 days in office, Trump said more than 3,000 things that were either partially or entirely untrue, according to a count kept by the amazing Fact Checker blog at The Washington Post. That's 6.5 a day!

Trump's penchant for prevarication is, at some level, an accepted piece of his presidency at this point. It's a feature, not a glitch. For most people -- both those who support Trump and who vehemently oppose him -- his exaggerations, mistruths and, in many cases, outright lies are baked in.

But there's one place where Trump's lack of candor and honesty is a major liability: in a legal deposition where lying carries criminal penalties.    https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/politics/donald-trump-mueller-special-counsel-russia-sit-down-interview/












T

Stupid Crook News: Man takes drugs to police

Avoiding the main rule of buying drugs--only buy from someone you know will sell you the real deal--a Florida man had doubts about whether he'd purchased real methamphetamine so he took the stash to police.

Bad move.

The police confirmed the Hawthorne, FL did indeed have meth and promptly arrested him for possession.  Helpfully, the Putnam County sheriff's office also volunteered to test any drugs for authenticity.

Holders, however, will find themselves subject to arrest.

The police posted the following note for others seeking police assistance in such matters: “If you believe you were sold bad drugs, we are offering a free service to test them for you. “Remember, our detectives are always ready to assist anyone who believes they were misled in their illegal drug purchase.”  https://jonathanturley.org/2018/06/15/florida-man-takes-drugs-to-police-station-to-confirm-authenticity-police-confirm-and-then-arrest-him/

President Dummkopf gives short shrift to our closest allies and embraces Russia

In a feat of stupidity unrivaled by all previous occupants of the Oval Office "our" president managed to shun all our closest allies and embrace our worst enemy: Russia.

Herr Dump stiff armed our allies by demanding they drop imagined trade barriers, thus upending 70 years of strategic and economic relations and turning towards our main international competitor: again, Russia, thus earning the appelation Dummkopf.

Of all the short sighted, ill considered, and frankly stupid blunders, this has to rank among the worst in at least a hundred years and threatens to start an international trade war and ignite another Great Depression similar to the way US actions precipitated the first Great Depression.

Ain't just me saying that:

Our allies are not stealing anything. It is far from clear what, if anything, would satisfy him. If — and it is a big if — Trump is serious about erecting barriers to U.S. markets, we are looking at a full-blown trade war with our closest allies and trading partners, along with the trade wars with China and Mexico. All this would redound to the benefit of exactly one country, Russia. A worldwide recession would not be hard to imagine. 

Trump becomes irrational and unhinged when contradicted, and given the degree of contradiction permitted within his inner circle (none), it must be unnerving indeed to discover that our allies view him with disdain if not contempt. Arriving late and leaving early from the G-7 gathering, Trump played the petulant child, trying so very hard to say that he didn’t want to be part of their group anyway — so there! Worse still, his disturbing invitation for Russia, the United States’ most worrisome foe, to join the G-7 suggests he really cannot tell who is a friend and who is an enemy.  (emphasis added)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/06/10/after-the-g-7-summit-be-afraid-be-very-afraid/

Anthony Bourdain's first paen to kitchen life

Anthony Bourdain burst into the literary world with this article unmasking the secrets of the professional kitchen.

Don't eat the fish on Tuesday; it ain't fresh.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness. The members of a tight, well-greased kitchen staff are a lot like a submarine crew. Confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders, they often acquire the characteristics of the poor saps who were press-ganged into the royal navies of Napoleonic times—superstition, a contempt for outsiders, and a loyalty to no flag but their own. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-reading-this 

Suicide is a desperate act, but it is also a hostile act. It begets more hostility. It gives the survivors the perfect opportunity to express all their real feelings about one another, good and bad. Years of petty resentments, years of unmentioned slights and snubs, grab center stage. 

Something — or somebody — had driven my father to take his life. Somebody had failed to recognize the symptoms. Somebody had failed him, over and over. It was somebody’s fault. It had to be somebody’s fault — anybody but the guy who did it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/suicide-is-desperate-it-is-hostile-it-is-tragic-but-mostly-it-is-a-bloody-mess/

 


https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ 

Pres, Dump: "No porn in White House"

Deportation Kills

Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco should have graduated from high school in Des Moines last month. The oldest of four siblings should have walked across a stage in a cap and gown to become a proud symbol to his sister and brothers of the rewards of hard work and education....

Instead, Manuel died a brutal death alone in a foreign land, a symbol of gang supremacy in a country plagued by violent drug cartels. It happened three weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement returned him to Mexico, a country he had left at age 3 when his parents brought him here without a visa.

More than anything, his brief life and gruesome death are a reminder of the heartlessness and counter-productiveness of our immigration policies and removal practices, which don't factor in the harm that people may face upon return.  https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/rekha-basu/2018/06/07/deportation-death-des-moines-high-school-dreamer-daca-mexico-drug-cartels/680234002/

Trump a stooge for Putin and Russia

"When you look at Trump's behavioral patterns, his unwillingness ever to criticize Vladimir Putin, his slow rolling sanctions, his unwillingness to create problems with Russia, even though, as he attacks NATO, disrupts relations with the E.U., how can you not draw the conclusions that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is frightened of Vladimir Putin."
https://www.alternet.org/former-nsa-analyst-claims-us-spy-agencies-have-known-trump-was-russian-agent-2016

Anthony Bourdain: Still exploring Parts Unknown--RIP

“He was elegant, he was kind, he was a dude. Charming. That’s the kind of guy he was,” LeDuff continued. “We all have to go. Some of have to go in a hard way. I’m shocked like everyone else, he had everything going. I don't know why. It’s just sad.”

“Even the world’s most interesting man hurt.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/anthony-bourdain-dead-from-suicide-cnn-says

[Yes, Anthony Bourdain was American cool.

I say this as somebody who hates the word “cool” and all the contrived nonsense that it stirs up, but the man really was. He could hold court with gourmand French chefs in one episode, and then gut and cook a chicken on the Congo River in the next. I was proud to have my country associated with him—he was in that brash yet debonair American mold that foreigners eat up.]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/anthony-bourdain-was-american-coolhttps://www.thedailybeast.com/anthony-bourdain-was-american-cool

Even I, with my studied and callous indifference towards others, hurt today.  The death of Bourdain diminishes us all.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Call 1-800-273-8255

Available 24 hours everyday

Baptizing Pastor killed by croc

[Pastor Docho Eshete was baptizing at least 80 members of his Protestant congregation at Lake Abaya, in southern Ethiopia, an area known to have a huge crocodile population, when one of the creatures leaped out of the water and grabbed him.

“He baptized the first person and he passed on to another one,” a local resident told the BBC. “All of a sudden, a crocodile jumped out of the lake and grabbed the pastor.”]

Remember the Afghan War?; We lost!

As Colonel Danny Sjursen notes in his Tom Dispatch article, history provides a primer into the future of our efforts to "win" the war in Afghanistan.  Hard to believe, but a collection of warring tribes and sects and villages and a religious movement (the Taliban)--who collectively despise and hate the government in Kabul--can fight and beat the greatest military in the world.  Despite the bravery of our US forces, they try to do the impossible: unify Afghanistan and create a central democratic government.  The tribes don't defeat the United States, they just have to reach a stalemate.

Nevertheless, the policymakers refuse to realize we can never win.  From Bush Jr to Obama to the current occupant of the White House--and the alternative, Hillary Rodham Clinton--all refuse to accept this difficult proposition: the US cannot win this war.

That’s right, the local “Taliban” -- a term so nebulous it’s basically lost all meaning -- had managed to drastically alter U.S. Army tactics with crude, homemade explosives stored in plastic jugs. And believe me, this was a huge problem. Cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to bury, those anti-personnel Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, soon littered the “roads,” footpaths, and farmland surrounding our isolated outpost. To a greater extent than a number of commanders willingly admitted, the enemy had managed to nullify our many technological advantages for a few pennies on the dollar (or maybe, since we’re talking about the Pentagon, it was pennies on the millions of dollars).  Links in original.

Even Bloomberg News, no bastion of progressive politics has noted the negative trends going on: [Almost sixteen years after the U.S.-backed ouster of the Taliban, Afghanistan remains in the grip of a war with “shockingly high” death rates among security forces and a record number of casualties among civilians, according to the U.S. government watchdog monitoring the country’s reconstruction efforts.]  (emphasis added)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-01/afghan-deaths-soar-to-highest-on-record-as-u-s-weighs-strategy

US policymakers need to face these facts: operations in Afghanistan have a deleterious effect on the entire US military as reported in Business Insider: "

Years of complex operations and the ongoing demands of units in the field have left the armed forces struggling to maintain both operational capacity and high levels of readiness, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office."]  (Links in original)

So the time has come for our imperious leader to turn his eyes from the false promise of peace with the North Koreans--does anyone seriously think Kim Jong Un will give up his nuclear weapons?--and fix the mess in Afghanistan by getting the Hell out of there and saving lives of American men and women, husbands and mothers, sons and daughters.

Tour the Millennium Falcon

https://www.space.com/40696-star-wars-millennium-falcon-photo-tour.html

Cry of the poor

If you close your ear to the cry of the poor, you will cry out and not be heard. 

- Proverbs 21:13

Jesse Duplantis Appeals for $50million private jet

This despicable cur wants to take the very pennies from widows' pockets, uncaring on the financial harm people do to themselves so he can buy a $50 million dollar plane.  See you in hell, preacher.

41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. Mark 12:41-43

Oh Jesus, breathe compassion unto my country

Abuses occurred. Just happened. Regrettable, yes. 

[Beginning in 2011, with soaring murder rates and narcotics crime spreading across Central America, there was a surge in unaccompanied minors — mostly teens — trying to cross the border. Many of these children were apprehended by Border Patrol, and the U.S. obviously didn’t have a good plan for what to do next. Some of the kids were placed with family members, but others ended in foster care or more ambiguous situations. It was a system with a high risk for abuse — and abuses occurred. 

Under pressure, the HHS agency stepped up its efforts to keep track of what is happening to these migrant kids, and so last month top officials in the department made a stunning admission to a federal hearing: When officials tried to follow up from October through December of 2017 on the whereabouts of roughly 7.500 kids the federal government had placed with sponsors, it was unable to find out what happened to 1,475 of them, or roughly one in five.

The agency tasked with placing thousands of kids — the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement — clearly wasn’t up to the task of vetting potential sponsors. An AP investigation found in 2016 that “more than two dozen unaccompanied children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay.”]  http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/trump-immigration-policy-border-patrol-separating-families-20180527.html

Tesla Oops: Tesla car crashes into police cruiser

One of the most important rules in Handbook of Drunk Driving states to never run into a police cruiser.  Cops tend to hate that.  In this case we had driving while automated rather than driving under the influence of unrealistic expectation rather than, you know, several shots of scotch.

Of course, Tesla wants drivers to keep their hands on their wheel at all times and pay attention also, which begs the question how that differed from "real" driving.

A Tesla sedan in Autopilot mode crashed into a parked Laguna Beach Police Department vehicle Tuesday morning, authorities said. 

The collision happened at 11:07 a.m. at 20652 Laguna Canyon Road, according to Laguna Police Sgt. Jim Cota. The officer was not in the cruiser at the time of the crash. The Tesla driver suffered minor injuries, but refused transportation to the hospital.

"Thankfully there was not an officer at the time in the police car," Cota said. "The police car is totaled."  (Emphasis added)  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-tesla-collision-20180529-story.html

When it comes to drunk driving, Just Don't Do It.

Voting right revocation among last bits of legal apartheid in Florida

"To infinity and beyond!"

https://www.space.com/40672-spacex-launches-grace-fo-iridium-satellites.html?utm_source=notification

GRACE mission rocket launch.

He's a minority; she's a minority; don't you want to become a minority too?

When you come right down to it, every person makes up a minority of one, withh different dreams, hopes, fears, fetishes, plans and hopes.

Well, Godammit, guess I'm an "Incel"

Had to read several paragraphs i--and really resent that--to find definition of term in headline of article: "The Rage of the Incels."  Incel means involuntarily celibate.  Must number myself in that number as, first, nursing homes offer few chances for privacy, and, two, most people view persons in wheelchairs as pitiful and not as sexual beings.

Dammit, just my legs don't work; everything else works tolerably well, for a sixty year old male.

Nevertheless, what ought my personal ad convey?  Should I write, "warm hearted, humourous male seeks genetic female for relationship?"  Here, my prejudice shows, because despite my anger at getting shunned, I let that conflict show with my hypocrisy by shunning trans females. 

Yet, "I yam what I yam."

And who knew so many sexual variants exist among humans?  Sure, I know what LGBTQ means from research, but things have gotten even more complicated.

Incel stands for “involuntarily celibate,” but there are many people who would like to have sex and do not. (The term was coined by a queer Canadian woman, in the nineties.) Incels aren’t really looking for sex; they’re looking for absolute male supremacy. Sex, defined to them as dominion over female bodies, is just their preferred sort of proof.  (Link above)

Apparently, Incel stands for a whole political and sexual ideology:

"Incel, the online community of “involuntarily celibate” men radicalized by their shared mistrust of women, has existed on the internet for years. But it wasn’t until Monday, when a man drove a van down a street in Toronto and killed 10 people, that many people knew of its existence. 

What makes the attack different from many other forms of terrorism is that incel isn’t an organized militant group united by political or religious beliefs — its main grievance is with women’s ability to choose their own sexual partners. An explainer on the movement from our sister site Vox quotes J.M. Berger, an expert at the International Center for Counter-Terrorism in the Hague: “Misogyny isn’t new, and ideological misogyny isn’t new. Having a distinct movement that is primarily defined by misogyny is [fairly] novel.”

Then, just when I think I have a handle on these roles and definitions, I find this tidbit: "The terms and definitions below are always evolving and changing and often mean different things to different people."

"Evolving and changing," gotta have a damn PhD to keep up with this sex stuff.  Guess we have more issues than just my situational celibacy.  Nevertheless, my boring straight life remains relatively uncomplicated.  Hats off to my other than standard gendered brothers and sisters.  If you can keep your life straight, you got no problem with me.  (That's a pun, dammit, meaning straight as in ordered, not "straight" straight.)

LGBTQIA...B, C D, E, F, H....indeed.

Humans, infinitely entertaining.

Addendum:

The term "incel" is an acronym for the phrase involuntary celibacy, which was coined rather innocently by a queer female blogger in 1993 but only began representing a movement of male supremacist ideology in recent years. In 2014, Elliot Rodger went on a deadly rampage in Isla Vista, California, using a knife, a gun and his car to kill six people and wound 14 others before taking his own life. In a lengthy video Rodger uploaded to the internet before his murder spree, he blamed his rage on being rejected by women — that is, being involuntarily celibate — and stated his intention to exact retribution for his loneliness on the women who had rejected him and had chosen to have sex with other men. (The incel community refers to such women as Stacys and such men as Chads.) 

Like many mass killers, Rodger attracted a following. His attack and accompanying manifesto brought together similarly misogynistic men, such as members of the Pick Up Artist and Black Pill, Red Pill online communities, under the name incels. These self-identified incels tend to be sexually frustrated and believe the world perceives them as beta males. They share a powerful anger toward both the women who reject them and the men who are more sexually successful. Like Minassian did in his Facebook post when referring to the Supreme Gentleman, incels revere Rodger. 

According to researchers who follow the movement, the social media platform Reddit's incel subreddit contained 40,000 members before it was shut down in November 2017 because of hate-filled and violent rhetoric that frequently called for the murder and rape of Stacys and Chads. Many incels have relocated to the website 4chan (as Minassian mentioned in his post), which is known for hosting shocking and controversial content.  https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/why-it-matters-yet-doesnt-incel-toronto-attacker-terroristhttps://worldview.stratfor.com/article/why-it-matters-yet-doesnt-incel-toronto-attacker-terrorist

Politicians and people, meet climate change in CA.

[Now a new report by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, part of the California Environmental Protection Agency, tallies the environmental losses California has sustained.

The data points to the blistering conclusion that severe climate change has already arrived in California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Climate change is not a conceptual or theoretical challenge. The evidence is overwhelming — universities and scientists worldwide agree — that climate change is all too real,” Matthew Rodriquez, California secretary for environmental protection, said in a statement.]  https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/california-climate-change-effects-report  (Links in original)

Sustainable fishing increases fish catches

Critics of conservation often portray as a zero sum game, saying trying to conserve stocks of fish will diminish the catches of most fishermen.

Nevertheless as Bubba Cochrane said, depletion of red snapper fishing stocks just a few short years ago threatened the likelihood of all who relied on the snapper for a living.

A catch as catch can system with seasons made captains race to catch as much and as quick as possible as they could.  This glutted the market and actually depressed prices.  With a new quota system captains could plan their seasons and hopefully get their catch.

Just 15 years ago, over fishing threatened to wipe out red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.  This pained me personally because my mother's standard restaurant order was red snapper.  You can find few things more delicious than broiled red snapper.  They be damn good.

Conservation and common sense saved the fish for all of us.

Under the old management system, commercial fishermen raced to catch all the snapper they could during the government mandated seasons, which some years lasted only a few days. That resulted in a lot of dangerous fishing, wasted fish and huge market swings for customers. Sometimes fresh Gulf snapper was available only a few weeks a year. 

The new approach allows commercial fishermen to pace themselves throughout the year, putting less stress on the stock and injecting some predictability into the market. Now, Gulf red snapper are more plentiful than ever, and customers can find fresh snapper at the seafood counter or on the menu nearly year-round.
https://www.sharethegulf.org/stories/77

Update: "Often, commercial fishermen are perceived to be a group of people focused on taking as many fish as possible as quickly as possible. This simply isn’t the case. We are business owners, we are problem solvers, but at heart, we are conservationists."  (Emphasis added)
https://shareholdersalliance.org/who-we-are.php

"Impossibly Corrupt"

ON how I weep for the red, whire, and blue of the USA: 

[Oh, didn’t you realize our country is impossibly corrupt in ways likely too entrenched to ever fully overthrow? Aw, bless your heart; not everyone can be a PLAYBOOK INSIDER (sponsored by BP).    

To be fair, it’s not just Playbook playing the smug “Oh, didn’t you realize?” game: Politico’s Josh Gerstein tweeted that “Much of the dudgeon and pearl clutching on [Michael] Cohen selling access to the new admin is feigned or groupthink....]  https://splinternews.com/politico-playbook-can-fuck-right-off-1825951911 

The banality of Trump

Just a few years left, please God, and President Dump will become ex-Preznit.

What will we have left of our US constitution?

Most of us are shocked in real time. But the existential question is whether the Low-Bar Presidency ends when Trump’s tenure does. Or will our expectations forever be lowered because of what he has managed to do less than 18 months into office? Will we assume, from here on out, that our politicians lie so cavalierly to us? That they misuse our taxpayer funds for the betterment of their private lives? That they are incapable of meeting the challenges of  governance? If so, the costs could be horrifying.  https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-damage-of-trumps-low-bar-presidency-is-worse-than-you-think

'Dignity of the office:" Trump hires hookers to play pee games

Not judging perversions but hiring hookers on Moscow to defile the very bed the Obamas slept in with piss play just sounds funny and reveals more evidence of Trump's deranged mind.

We regret to inform you that James Comey, the former director of the FBI, says it’s “possible” that a pee tape involving Donald Trump and Russian prostitutes actually exists. 

The most infamous section of the Steele dossier, which was full of salacious claims involving Trump and Russia, included a totally unverified claim that the now-president paid prostitutes in 2013 to pee on a Moscow hotel bed where Barack and Michelle Obama once slept.  https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-pee-tape-could-be-real-says-comey

Or you can read gory details of the dossier itself:  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

Bruce Cockburn,"If I Had a Rocket Launcher '

Finally found right song. 

"Arm the Homeless," Tom Morello

I'd Blow Them All Away:" Starting with the NRA

Maybe former taxi drivers can work washing autonomous vehicles

Say you live on a tree lined street with no garage or you drive the second car in family with one car garage, happy to go to work in your autonomous vehicle, reading your newspaper and sipping your coffee.  You push the start button and the sweet engine fails to turnover; you only get a warning light and polite computer voice saying, "You are screwed.  You have bird doodoo on one of your Light Detection and Ranging Sensors (LIDAR).  Good luck figuring out which one."

OK, made that last one up.  Nevertheless, point remains these dream cars depend on functioning sensors.  Plus, you wonder how these things can reliably sense stuff like other cars in a driving, tropical FL downpour, which we real men tend to drive on through.  You just slow down, pray, turn on your lights, and watch for people ahead braking. 

....There are a range of problems with putting a self-driving vehicle through a traditional car wash, experts say.
For example, soap residue or water spots could effectively "blind" an autonomous car. A traditional car wash's heavy brushes could jar the vehicle's sensors, disrupting their calibration and accuracy. Even worse, sensors, which can cost over $100,000, could be broken.
A self-driving vehicle's exterior needs to be cleaned even more frequently than a typical car because the sensors must remain free of obstructions. Dirt, dead bugs, bird droppings or water spots can impact the vehicle's ability to drive safely....

(S)elf-driving car companies such as Toyota, Aptiv, Drive.AI and Uber described to CNN that they use microfiber cloths along with rubbing alcohol, water or glass cleaner for manual cleanings.

For snowy and icy conditions, Uber has a worker apply windshield washer fluid with a squirt bottle to its camera lenses. A puff of air is then used to remove whatever residue remains.  (Emphasis added)  http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/22/technology/self-driving-car-wash/index.html

Nowzabout Buffalo after a few feet of snow?  Do you want to set your coffee and paper in your car and whip out your cleaner, microfiber cloth, and can of compressed air to clean your sensors before you drive?  Self cleaning sensors drive up price keeping vehicles our of hands of the unwashed masses.

Donald Trump Wig Reveal - Full Video

Now that the Cubs have won a World Series, what do I have to live for?

Law Professor Jonathan Turley claims that pampering a group of goats lifted the "Billy Goat curse," which perhaps prevented the Cubs from winning it all for several generations.  Seems as good an explanation as any.  So to lift the curse:

The four goats were rubbed down, feted and pampered. One particularly adorable goat named Neptune was passed around like a goat version of the Adoration of the Magi. When it began to storm, we refused to risk insulting the goats again and brought them into the house. The connections between Cub and goat were so strong that we were told that farm would name the new expected goat Cubbie in celebration.

I have struggled through the years to teach my four kids that being a Cubs fan is character building. It is easy to be a New York Yankees fan and be fed a constant diet of pennants like peanuts. But being a Cubs fan is a test of faith. Indeed, when you spot another Cubs fan, there is an instant bonding. The Cubs stand for the idea that there is something transcendent and liberating in groundless hope. You stand by your team like you stand by your God, your family, your country … in that order.

Now what does this year and the arm of Yu Darvish hold for the Cubs?  Grab the beers, boys, and let's enjoy the season, billy goats be damned!

The View wtrh Michael Wolff, author of Fire and rhe Fury

Even Worse than We Feared: Trump Department

Slew of unfavorable stories lately about  the current occupant of the White House.  Let me give you snippets from Daily Kos and others too in link strew:

     No one can say that Donald Trump’s campaign staff wasn’t united — by the idea that      Trump was an idiot who really, really shouldn’t be president.

    The only thing worse than listening to Trump’s moronic statements is listening to              everyone else.    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/3/1729537/-Behind-the-          scenes-at-the-Trump-White-House-Uglier-meaner-and-simply-dumber-than-you-can-     imagine

 https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/6/1730332/-Paul-Krugman-If-Trump-Falls-The-Entire-Republican-Party-Falls-With-Him


htt/:www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/6/1730448/-Report-Mueller-Is-Moving-Closer


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/4/1729796/-New-excerpt-from-Fire-and-Fury-details-Trump-s-broken-press-operations-and-his-real-daughter


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/29/1728381/-Rob-Reiner-pretty-much-nails-what-the-majority-of-Americans-think-about-Trump-s-NYT-interview


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/3/1729659/-Lawmakers-got-a-two-day-briefing-in-December-from-a-psychiatrist-about-Trump-s-mental-state-TWO-DAYS


https://crooksandliars.com/2018/01/rep-dan-kildee-trump-people-who-have-say


https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/heres-list-people-close-trump-who-may-think-hes-seriously-nuts-0

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/comeuppance-evangelicals-who-sold-their-souls-trump-coming

Another Holiday Tradition: Blood, gore, a Yeti, decapitated penguins, and more

If you have a twisted bone in your  body, you might like Bloody Penguin Bashing where you get a Yeti to decapitate penguins, aim for landmines, and score  points based on how far the severed penguin heads fly.

Penguins are funny, dammit; any penguin is a funny penguin.