What We Can Learn From Ukraine

Zelenskiy looks like a contender. 

He is an actor and comedian. 

I love the movie “Dave”. 

We currently have a reality tv sack of shit pretending to be president. 

I would much prefer Kevin Kline.  

Images Served By Screen Saver Over The Last Few Days

Not An Admission Of Fault

Boeing today has said that its fix to the control software for the 737 Max aircraft “is not an admission of fault”.

A Boeing Press Relations Factotum elaborated:

“No admission of fault; just an alternate flight pattern system based upon the  clearly stated preferences of the flying public: they would prefer flying on planes that don’t fly uncontrollably, in an attitude vertical to the surface of the earth, and into the ground.

“They have spoken and we have listened”.

P. T. Barnum And The Mueller Report

P.T. Barnum made it big advertising that his tent was full of various wonders to behold: the Goat Boy, the Spider Lady, the Living Mummy, etc. etc.

When the crowd had paid its pennies and had traversed the interior of the tent they always realized that they had been had; but they always loved it; or at least they never asked for their money back.

The phenomenon apparently involved deep embarrassment caused by having been had.

That embarrassment generated an unwillingness to admit it –  having been had.

Soon after the 2016 election The Economist opined that trump voters were all suffering from the P.T. Barnum Syndrome.

Yesterday the story of the phenomenon continued.

An appointed trump lackey created a four page work of fiction telling us of the complete exoneration of donnie to be found in a document that nobody but he – the lackey, and a few closely knit sub lackeys – has seen.

Or will ever see.

All of the rest of us, including our elected representatives, are being told to pay our pennies and go into the tent (accept the four page work of fiction) and get on with making America Great again.

Images For 23 March 2019

The Mueller Report: What I Think

I can’t imagine that two years work by 13 staff attorneys has generated a report that has found nothing.

A report that had found nothing would have been a a one sentence page of paper that said “we have found nothing”.

Apparently, however, there is a multi page report.

Apparently those attorneys found something.

However the letter of transmittal for that report says that there are no further indictments.

In the face of that statement a palpable and deafening sigh of relief has arisen form the hoard of the deplorables.

And now the deplorables are all chanting in unison “there is no collusion”.

That of course is debating error called false causality.

But here is what I think the document does say, in brief.

1. “Here is a list of the crimes of the president “(followed by the detail of each crime).

2. “There is Constitutional support for the premise that a sitting president can’t be indicted”.

3. “That being the case, this document does not indict the president for the crimes here enumerated”.

4. “Good night and Good Luck”.

Too bad no one will ever get to read it.

The Tweets And The Compass Problem

The trump Debacle is apparently coming to a conclusion.

Daily for the last two or so years he has been a pornographic embarrassment to all Americans living and dead.

In fact, hard though it may be to imagine, he, I am sure, is much more embarrassing to our dead kindred, than to our living kindred.

The dead, after all, only need to keep being dead; the rest of us need to try to figure out how to avoid being mugged and how to keep feeding ourselves and mundane stuff such as that that are the pains in the ass attendant to being alive.

Not dead.

So they probably have more time to be embarrassed.

Among the dead that I believe are embarrassed, just at random, JFK, George Washington, FDR, Abraham Lincoln, MLK, and Malcom X  come to mind.

I can imagine limitless others.

Over last weekend donnie tweeted what Fox was saying as he watched Fox; that resulted in 50 separate tweets.

Sort of government by Fox via Twitter directly to the people.

What a system.

Somewhere in all those tweets donnie threatened that the military, the police and the bad bikers were all with him and ready to intervene.

If the rest of us get out of hand..

But other than that:

The tweets were all typical: hate filled, lies and fucking ridiculous.

Two possible explanations loom:

1. He knows he is about to be unhorsed by the Mueller Report

or

2. He has finally slipped his last cog into utter senile paranoia.

The thing that bothers me is that, whichever it is, it doesn’t matter.

The real problem isn’t trump; the real problem is the people.

The problem is, not only the people who voted for him, and are going to vote for him again, it is that many – or most – of the rest of the people don’t care that their president is an idiot, who either can’t or at least doesn’t read – anything, anytime – they admire those characteristics.

The real problem is that the world order conceptually started by Wilson, forged by FDR, cast in concrete by Truman and reinforced and utilized by every president ever since – until donnie the moron – has been shattered by the moron; since he doesn’t read he doesn’t know anything; to be president of the United States you need to know a lot of things.

The real problem is not that donnie has no moral compass: he looks upon any woman he deems to be attractive as legitimate prey, his daughter included; the real problem is that donnie has no compass of any kind.

The reason he hasn’t drained the swamp is, lacking any compass of any kind, he can’t even find his way out of the swamp, let alone drain it.

One might have supposed that utter amorality on all levels would have been a problem with the evangelicals.

Apparently, however, the sliding scale of morality adopted by the various genres of donnie-allied “Christians” is more than able to accommodate that sorry state of affairs.

However: I ask readers to expand what  are donnie’s sins to what else probably is un-mentioned, but obviously included in the list of sins of which donnie is guilty, but of which the people don’t car;: whatever they are or might be and whenever of however they come out the people won’t care.

(Remember the jacket the Croatian whore was wearing not long ago?)

That and those are the measure of the magnitude of the problem.

Because that problem is fatal to the Republic.

And the problem isn’t the sins and monstrous shortcomings of donnie.

It’s way more sinister and non-obvious.

It is that there are enough people in states where the electoral college jimmies presidential elections who “don’t care” and “love donnie” that we don’t have a country anymore.

We have a militia.

And the implications of that are yet to be felt.

The wild wind is about to be reaped.

Birds From Yesterday's Walk On The Tombolo

Boeing 737 Max 8–Follow On

In my most recent post I pointed out that the FAA doesn’t want to ground the Boeing 737 Max 8 until they have more data.

I further wondered if that additional data might be the obvious – more crashes.

Putting two and two together I said that I wasn’t going to volunteer for that gathering of data.

Now, tonight, on the PBS News Hour, I just heard that the FAA has told Boeing that flying the 737 Max 8 involves a “risk of impact with terrain”.

Since it’s only a risk, and at that, only a risk of impact with terrain, I withdraw my concerns.

I would hope the related passenger safety briefing will include the fact that the FAA has said that this plane may have impact with terrain.

I just wonder what the passengers in those briefings are going to be told to do when the Max 8 goes perpendicular to the surface of the earth at high speed.

I’m sure it will be to be sure your seat belts are fastened. 

A friend of mine, after reading this, reminded me of one more obvious statement to be included in the Max 8 safety briefing:

"Put your head between you legs and kiss your ass goodbye".

It’s good when the we can all work things like this little glitch out and assure that corporate profits are not damaged.

I just heard that donnie the simplifier has ordered the FAA to ground “all those damn complicated planes”.

Simultaneously the local PBS outlet is shrieking about the loss of 12,000 jobs at the Boeing plant in Renton.

I haven’t had a chance to go to the FB/Twitter experts yet, so I don’t know what to think, or if I should think at all - ever, about all of this.

I am burdened with minimal bandwidth it would seem.

Boeing 737 Max 8

US airlines that use this aircraft and the FAA who supposedly keep an eye on the airlines in the interest of the safety of the citizens of the United States all say that any grounding of the aircraft would be premature.

We need more data they say.

I guess some people might be ok being more data.

But I am totally uncomfortable with the proposition.

After all, more data is probably not no new news, but is instead more crashes.

How many does the FAA need?

Crashes?

I’m not going to volunteer.

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Salmon Berries

Not an easy shot to get

Paris Arsenal

Rome: Tiber evening

My secret Orchid patch

Les Champs Elysees

Harlequin

What A Surprise

Ol’ Kim Jong Un is re-opening his missile launch site.

Ol’ donnie assures us that he is sure that that is fake news.

I’m an opponent of “being – and staying - safe” but I do believe in avoiding “being stupid”.

Too bad we have stupid-in-chief at the helm.

76,000 Is A Crisis?

Recently 76,000 Central Americans have presented themselves to American authorities at the border so their claims of being refugees, under the terms of both International and United States law, can be adjudicated according to both those bodies of law.

I have several times recently heard that there are 233,000 or so – but who is counting? – Venezuelans newly ensconced in South Florida.

Why does donnie rail against the 76,000 Central Americans exercising their rights under United States and International law while basking in the warm adulation generated by his pandering blitherings to the 233,000 Venezuelans?

And how many of those 233,000 are undocumented?

And how did they get here?

And why weren’t they in any count of illegals?

And how many of the undocumented 233,000 will be invited to special polling places to vote for donnie in 2020?

Since they apparently are all happily at home in Miami one has to surmise that the fix is on.

But then, donnie always speaks out of both sides of his nasty little mouth, so one should not be surprised at this travesty.

Brett Kavanaugh Strikes Again

I just heard an excerpt from CBS’s interview with R. Kelly.

Apparently he has adopted the “Hysterical Outburst” strategy that served Brett the Beer Drinker so well in his recent Congressional confirmation hearings.

Maybe donnie will nominate him for the next Supreme Court vacancy.

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