Posts from — January 2017

In a move that not even cats bought, Hrumpfy Drumpfy declared his inauguration day to be a National Day of Patriotic Devotion. The North Koreans may sue for copyright infringement.

The ABC offers A guide to the Geneva Convention for beginners, dummies and newly elected world leaders. Meanwhile Press Secretary Sean Spicer continues to display his drift into an alternate space/time continuum by using the Quebec mosque shooting to defend Trump’s travel ban. I guess they are saying that if Canada had banned Muslims, they wouldn’t have been there to get shot by a right-wing whacko.

This kind of thinking requires someone not tied to reality to interpret.

If you don’t agree with The Desolation of Drumpf’s alternate reality, you’re fired:

Donald Trump has fired the acting US attorney general, after she questioned the legality of his immigration ban.

Sally Yates, who had been appointed under Barack Obama, earlier ordered justice department lawyers not to enforce the president’s executive order.

In a statement, the White House said Ms Yates had “betrayed” the department.

Disagreeing with Hrumpfy Drumpfy is not allowed.

In reaction to the anti-Muslim ban a mosque was burned in Texas and six Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Quebec were murdered.

Drumpf has ordered the military to come up with a plan to defeat ISIS in 30 days. In 30 seconds: Treat Israel like every other nation in the Middle East and pull out the US military assets.

January 28, 1986

Commander:
Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Pilot:
Michael J. Smith, Commander, USN

Mission Specialist:
Judith A. Resnik
Ronald E. McNair
Ellison S. Onizuka, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Payload Specialist:
Gregory B. Jarvis
Sharon Christa McAuliffe

Year of the Fire Rooster

Chinese New Year
[Spring Festival]

While top US diplomats leave the State Department, Hrumpfy Drumpfy needs to prosecute all of his staff for using a private e-mail system, just like Hillary Clinton.

It isn’t just the State Department. A lot of career people are deciding to retire rather than deal with the new administration. They are taking with them the ‘institutional memory’ of their departments, as well as causing issues because of the hiring freeze.

The White House staff is using the Republican National Committee e-mail system rather than the official White House system for official business. Having pounded on Clinton for using a private system, it is standard Republican hypocrisy that his staff are doing the same thing.

January 27, 1967

Virgil “Gus” Ivan Grissom, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Edward Higgins White, II, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Roger Bruce Chaffee, Lieutenant Commander, USN

The anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip at Port Jackson in New South Wales on January 26^th, 1788.

Here’s the official site, and more information at Wikipedia.

This is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns in Ayr, Scotland. The Burns Night celebrations conducted by Scots all over the world with haggis, whisky¹, and poetry.

Wikipedia has a description of the standard celebration, but easy on the malt or you may end up with a William McGonagall morning.

In honor of the occasion a bit of Robby Burns for the GOP “leadership”:

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promis’d joy!

To a Mouse

1. This is the correct spelling when referring to Scotland’s “water of life”.

The Desolation of Drumpf believes that, like Humpty Dumpty, a word “means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that President Donald Trump’s inauguration actually didn’t have the biggest audience ever, and produces evidence to back their assertion.

The British Broadcasting Corporation notes Trump claims media ‘dishonest’ over crowd photos, and produces its own photos taken from the Washington Monument in both Obama’s 2009 inauguration and Trump’s 2017 inauguration, that obviously show that the attendance at Obama’s first inauguration was two or three times larger than Trump’s.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that:

There were strong signs across the U.S. that the number of people who attended the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday topped those who gathered on Friday to watch U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

But as over a million people around the world protested in solidarity with events in Washington, both the president and his press secretary took aim Saturday at the media for “attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration” and claimed a bigger turnout than the available data suggests.

Take note of “available data suggests”. The ‘available data” are hotel vacancies, transit ridership, photographs of the crowd, empty seats. The data say that the Women’s March was bigger than the Inauguration.

This is why Sean Spicer, the new press secretary introduced “Alternate Facts” [AKA LIES!] to justify his boss’s claims, and refused to take questions.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.
― Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

Now we have to hope the parachute opens.

The word of the year for 2016 was Post-truth and the contender for 2017 is Kakistocracy, a term meaning a state or country run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. [Via Shirt in Comments]

If you enjoy words you could read about Falconry terms like: Hoodwinked, Fed up, Under one’s thumb, Wrapped around one’s little finger.

You can cheer up with Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s version of Fanfare For The Common Man, and then bum yourself out with For What It’s Worth followed by Eve of Destruction.

It is definitely time to legalize cannabis.

Update: Consider – The Trump administration has not had a single appointment approved, but has asked all current appointees to resign at Noon today. There are no US ambassadors in any country and no heads of any Cabinet department.

Tomorrow at Noon Eastern Standard Time the asylum that is Washington, DC will be handed over to the inmates. For as long as four years the country will be in the grubby little hands of an individual who thinks it is appropriate to express the will of the government of the United States of America in 140 characters.

This photo is just as valid as the ones Trump has been directing people to to prove that “Bikers for Trump” are coming en mass to his inauguration. With a probable 37% approval rating at the point in an administration when the approval rating is normally peaking, he needs thunderstorms and tornado warnings to excuse the turn out.

I have the thunderstorms tonight which are appropriate for this event.

Eugene Andrew Cernan, Captain, US Navy retired
(March 14, 1934 – January 16, 2017)

Astronaut, Naval Aviator, Electrical Engineer
Aeronautical Engineer, and Fighter Pilot

When critics attack:

A Scottish newspaper’s TV listing of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration has caught people’s attention both in the UK and the US.

The Sunday Herald TV critic Damien Love reimagined the ceremony as a return of the classic science fiction series The Twilight Zone.

When it comes to Congresscritters I get represented by real ‘winners’. Joe Scarborough is one of my former ‘Critters, The most recent former ‘Critter was Jefferson Beauregard Miller who, as chair of the House veterans committee held no hearings on the VA until the media began to report on problems. Before him was Earl Hutto whose most remarkable accomplishment was starring in a locally produced children’s TV show. Now I have Matt Gaetz, who Charlie Pierce highlighted:

…Meanwhile, Matt Gaetz from Florida began his one-minute oration with a Shakespearean flourish, which brought to the proceedings all the gravitas of the average middle-school book report.

“Mr. Speaker, I come to bury Obamacare, not to praise it. The evil that men do lives on after them…”

Oh, just shut up, Fenwick. Honest to god.

I ragged on former Senator Arlen Specter for years about his use of a Shakespeare quote during the confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas. Gaetz obviously is totally unaware that Mark Antony’s funeral speech is a great piece of sarcasm. I used it with the death of Fidel Castro, and I resort to its deepest sarcasm with references to ‘honorable men’, you know, like the Republican members of Congress or the Director of the FBI.