Posts from — April 2019

Twitter has been removing fake accounts making Trump and “conservatives” unhappy about lost followers. They removed millions of obviously fake accounts in 2018, and followed up in 2019 removing fake accounts tied to Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.

Twitter would like to remove white supremacist accounts, but the algorithms keep targeting Republican and/or “conservative” politicians, for some reason. 😈

Joe Biden announced his candidacy for the nomination for President.

Two things, among many, disqualify him for me: Anita Hill and Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. I don’t forget and I won’t forgive.

For all those people who keep saying people aren’t ready for a woman to be President – with all her baggage Hillary Clinton received 3 million more votes than Trump. In spite of all of the “sins” of the media, James Comey, the attacks of the GOP, and the assistance of Russia to Trump, she decisively won the popular vote. After a few years of Trump they are more than ready.

In ancient times (1960s) the mantra was don’t trust anyone over 30. At my age (> three score and 10) my contemporaries are one accident away from dementia. Joe & Bernie need to retire.

Today is World Penguin Day. Krill is the appropriate gift – well for a penguin…

It is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, which is similar to the American Veterans Day, in that it began as a remembrance of World War I, and has become more generalized over the years.

“Anzac Day commemorates the involvement of Australian and New Zealand troops in a World War I campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.”

The Gallipoli Campaign began as a Winston Churchill [then First Lord of the Admiralty] plan that spun out of control and got a lot of people killed on both sides with nothing much changing, but then, that was quite common in World War I.

Peter Weir made a movie, Gallipoli, which, if nothing else, proves that Sergeant Alvin York, and T.E. Lawrence weren’t the only people who fought in World War I.

[Note: The date is April 25 which April 24 in the US because of the time difference.]

Saint George is the patron saint of England, Georgia [the country], Bulgaria, Portugal, Catalonia, and the city of Moscow. Orthodox countries tend to celebrate George on November 23^rd.

PETA condemns George for his senseless slaughter of dragons. The YWCA condemns the condemnation and wants to know when PETA is going to volunteer to be DragonChow™

It is UNESCO’s International Day of the Book.

It is also the birth and death day of Billy the Bard, who was a great writer in desperate need of a spelling checker.

Master Shakespeare gave all of the best lines to villains supplying low humor to those who have read the Folio, e.g. Arlen Specter quoting Iago, reputedly in support of Clarence Thomas.

She’s the only planet we have, if we blow it, we can’t pack up and move.

There’s no Plan[et] B.

Wikipedia has an Earth Day entry, with links to other sites.

The BBC reports on the Ukraine election: Comedian Zelensky ‘wins presidency by landslide’

Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelensky has won a run-off election to become the country’s next president by a landslide, exit polls suggest.

The polls give him more than 70% support. He dominated the first round of voting three weeks ago when 39 candidates were on the ticket.

Mr Zelensky challenged incumbent president Petro Poroshenko.
…
Mr Zelensky, 41, is best known for starring in a political satirical drama called Servant of the People in which his character accidentally becomes Ukrainian president.

Mr. Poroshenko is the Ukrainian version of Donald. The voters decided if there was going to be a comedian in charge it should be a professional comedian.

With Veep in its final season, maybe Julia Louis-Dreyfus should join the wave and announce a run. She’s had better ratings than Trump and won Emmys.

This is what happens when you have small children – you dye your kitchen.

Yes, the festival of Easter, goddess of the Spring, is celebrated this time of year with the traditional symbols of fertility, the egg and the rabbit, by the people who settled around the Baltic Sea – the Teutons, Slavs, Finns, Prussians, Letts, et al. It is a festival of plenty after the hardships of winter, with the promise of new growth.

Of course, later groups took the celebration and turned it to other purposes, but I doubt Easter minds.

[An oldie from Easters past]

Sundown today marks the beginning of Pesach [Passover]. The story is found in the Book of Exodus.

You can, of course, just pop in a DVD of The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. DeMille’s version.

At its core this is a story of immigration and anyone claiming to be a Christian or Jew should pay attention – it’s on the FINAL EXAM.

Courtesy of MSNBC get your own sample of Mueller Lite in the PDF container.

Comrade Misfit points to the Borowitz Report review of the manufacturing process: Putin Almost Done Redacting Mueller Report.

Crooks & Liars noticed a pan of the introduction by Fox News host Chris Wallace: ‘Barr Acting As Counselor To The President’.

A personal note to the Barr-tender: ‘No collusion’ is a rather obvious pointer to the real author of your remarks. Lawyers tend to avoid “collusion”, oh, excuse me, you are still a lawyer, right?

Property and Excise are 12 today.

The theme music for the day on YouTube.

Katie Bouman: The woman behind the first black hole image. A nice starter article from the BBC. Followed up by more details in an ABC article so you are ready for The Register’s dive into minutia about a 1000 pounds of spinning rust that made the image possible.

That will put you in the mood for NASA’a feature When the computer wore a skirt about NASA’s Langley lab from 1935 to 1970 when women did the calculations with slide rules.

Anticipation has been my theme song as I wait for the Mueller report and Trump’s tax returns. It has been raining cats, dogs, gators, coons, possums, and even water for a week. We left inches behind and shifted to feet for measurement. As there has been an elevated chance of a power outage I have been turning things off during the worse of the storms. My UPS is only good for 20 minutes, and resetting a flooded transformer takes a couple of hours.

As he can’t stand life without crisis, the Child in Chief has decided to eviscerate the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security for a lack of loyalty and telling him that what he wants to do is illegal.

I thought about Stalin’s purges initially, but shifted to Hitler’s Nacht der langen Messer, “Night of the Long Knives” when acting under Hitler’s orders the Schutzstaffel [SS] arrested and later executed the leaders of the Sturmabteilung [SA “Brownshirts”] for a lack of loyalty to Der Fuehrer.

This seems to be part of a policy being pushed by Stephen Miller whose role in the White House appears to be similar to Rasputin [or Gríma Wormtongue for Tolkien fans]. The purpose of leaving the second most important security organization in the US government so bereft of permanent leadership appears to be to create a crisis that Trump seems to feel will help him win reelection.

Border apprehensions had been going down before Trump, but now they are going back up as his policies are making things worse in Central America. Instead of working on the source of the problem, he wants to waste money on “Wall”, his personal fetish object.