Pont Neuf After Sundown

An Eagle, A Female Merle Noire And A Salmonberry

Lopez Island

Paris: Promenade des Plantes

Lopez island

The Markets Don't Lie: They Are Not Liking That Answer

It started with donnie the stable genius assuring Americans:

"There's a very good chance you're not going to die".

That was not long after no less an authority on world health and epidemiology - Larry Kudlow - had assured the nation that the virus was shut down.

Then donnie appointed Mikey Pence, whose key epidemic credential was his highly effective exacerbation of an HIV epidemic when he was governor of Indiana, to replace Kudlow at the top of America's pandemic control apparatus.

And since, every interview of a donnie regime official involving the pandemic, no matter what the question, the answer has been, "the president has appointed Mike Pence..."

The markets don't seem to be liking that answer, no matter how on message it may be.

Paris: Quais Conti At Night And A Crow

Paris: Swans Flying Down The Seine

donnie And The Corvid Part Two

Here is what Part One was:

From The New York Times:

"For the U.S., it’s not if but when, federal officials say”.

“We cannot hermetically seal off the United States to a virus,” Mr. Azar said. “And we need to be realistic about that.”

President Trump, speaking earlier in the day from India, said that the United States was well able to protect itself against the spread of the coronavirus and offered an optimistic outlook.

“I think the whole situation will start working out,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference.

**************************************************************************

We are so lucky to have a stable genius at the helm.

And he’s a brilliant bidnessman to boot.

I wonder if all those Syrians on the run from the Russians have face masks.

****************************************************************************

Here is Part Two:

Since then no less an authority on world health, medicine,  all things science, and, of course, pandemics (prior to his new world health expertise he was a pseudo economics commentator on CNBC) Larry Kudlow weighed in:

“‘We have contained this”.

I guess we don’t need to worry.

I wonder why the stock market went down two thousand points in the last two days.

donnie And The Corvid

From The New York Times:

"For the U.S., it’s not if but when, federal officials say”.

“We cannot hermetically seal off the United States to a virus,” Mr. Azar said. “And we need to be realistic about that.”

President Trump, speaking earlier in the day from India, said that the United States was well able to protect itself against the spread of the coronavirus and offered an optimistic outlook.

“I think the whole situation will start working out,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference.

**************************************************************************

We are so lucky to have a stable genius at the helm.

And he’s a brilliant bidnessman to boot.

I wonder if all those Syrians on the run from the Russians have face masks.

Birds And Plants

View From Pont Solferino

I think that's where I took this picture from.

But who knows?

Images 022020

Lopez Sundown

We Are So Screwed II

Last night I watched an hour long interview of Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the authors of A Very Stable Genius.

It was a good interview.

After a while though, I began to feel a sort of dread: there were a whole lot of people watching this, all of whom came to the interview appalled by what has happened to America since 20 January 2017.

All of us were getting an entertaining dose of horror-reinforcement from the interview, and would get more if we read the book.

But donnie is still there.

None of our horror can stop the mayhem, malfeasance and destruction.

The only people who can stop all that, I pondered, were not even watching the interview; they were watching Fox.

About the time that unsettling realization had sunk in, Rucker and Leonnig began recounting the timbre, nature, tone and content of trump rallies, reaching back to before he was president and extending to only hours before the interview.

Talk about chilling.

I thought that they must have read the predecessor to this post, Screwed I.

Two Paris And A Lopez

We Are So Screwed I

“We” being the  people who have been drafted, or who have volunteered for military service, and who have paid whatever the taxes that have been levied, and who have believed what all our grade school and high school history teachers have told us about our origins and about our probable futures.

That’s “we”.

A lot of “us” have probably heard John Stewart sing Can You Hear Me Wyoming?

But that is from a simpler time.

So this next is a little jarring:

More than 1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr’s resignation

Sounds as if the soul of America still exists, doesn’t it?

However the prime caveat in donnie’s-dildo-land (seriously they are planning a reality TV theme park with that name, featuring of course, a phallic trump tower at its center) rules.

And that caveat is that the 1100 had better worry about their tax returns - donnie-the-you-can't-have-my tax-returns - probably has already gotten his minions in the IRS to turn them over to Fat Billie.

Barr is such a slimy pig that donnie actually looks kinda harmless sometimes - being overtly stupid can be an endearing characteristic.

But Fat Billie serves well the slime in chief.

"I have my orders" he has been heard muttering; "Heil Drumpf" has been another interesting outburst.

White House wags have been heard referring to it as "Barr doing a Peter Sellers".

But the longer we go the more likely the implosion of the Republic.

And I am not at all convinced that Medicare for All or even a Fifteen Dollar Minimum Wage (after all, that has been in the talking for several years and still hasn't happened) and time and tide and inflation - in the things needed for survival, like rent, have all marched smartly on - have much purchase on the problem with which the Republic is threatened.

That threat is its own population.

Or a large segment thereof.

Tocqueville marveled about many of the things that he encountered in America.

Of paramount importance among them was that we could govern ourselves – quite successfully and effectively – without a king.

A significant percentage of our population has emerged as the “base”.

I have heard of base metals and base motives; I guess there are base people.

And therein lies a little problem which belies Tocqueville's observation.

The “base” has no idea what the responsibilities of self government and its attendant freedom from the tyranny of monarchy are.

They love a despot.

If he seems funny.

Just like what they have been watching on the tube for their entire lives.

And that leaks into serious shit: apparently the keepers of the electoral college farce all love donnie, no matter what he does.

After all, it’s just TV.

Right?

One needs to wonder how that viewpoint differs from stupidity.

A Panorama Of Hotel De Ville At Night

At least I think that's what it is.

When Screen Saver serves up its never ending supply of images that I have taken over the last couple of decades I don't always remember what they are.

But I'm pretty sure that I shot this out of the window of an apartment on Isle de La Cité that I once lived in.

On the third floor - fourth if you are an American.

And Hotel de Ville was a frequent subject of my camera work.

Watching donnie Cut And Run – Part Two

Fat Mike has announced a deal with the Taliban for a seven day cessation of atrocities – both sides.

Fat Mike says this will get us out of Afghanistan.

And that probably is true.

Seven days should give donnie the dildo enough time to set aside his Revenge 2020 campaign for a few hours and tuck his big tail up between his ample haunches and run for it.

I imagine the Americans and Afghans who have died in the last 18 years are as happy as the dead little clams that they are.

If you are interested in donnie cuts and runs – part one, click on it.

Then tune back to the latest of The Adventures of Bar and trump, the poor man’s Burns and Allen.

Paris After Dark

To App Or Not To App?

That is not the question.

And here’s why.

Some states’ political parties use the caucus method of choosing their candidate for president.

The reasons given all seem to boil down to the belief that the caucus is face to face, town meeting, Thirteen Colonies style politics.

And that, the caucus states parties assert, is a good thing.

And I think it is.

I speak from personal experience: I caucused in the Democratic contests in Washington State in 2008 and 2016.

To implement that town hall meeting type of politics is, oddly, complicated: initial horse trading begets a vote which begets a winner and one or more non-winners; rather than leaving it at that, in the interest of consensus, the non-winners are asked to horse trade their way into another voting round from which a winner and – perhaps one or more non winners emerge; that goes on until a winnowed, consensus, winner emerges.

The physical mechanics of this process varies by state but that’s more or less the idea.

One of the long term criticisms of the process is that it tends to draw a limited group of participants.

Another is that the rounds of horse trading take a lot of time.

Apparently in response to those – valid – criticisms, various forms of automation – apps – are being adopted.

The problem with that technology adoption is that the availability, reliability, speed and security of currently available networks all put a gaping pothole into the road of implementing a caucus app right at the starting line; and even if data begins to flow down the network, the weirdness of the calculations required seems to quite consistently yield no results or bogus results.

And, even if the calculations consistently work, a table based computer calculation replacing rounds of sweaty, smoke filled room horse trading negates the whole ostensive purpose that has made the caucus the vehicle of choice in the first place.

And the requirement for expensive devices and expensive networks and the expertise to utilize those expensive resources are obvious factors standing in the way of participation.

So the question is why do parties continue to use the caucus at all?

Barr blasts Trump's tweets: 'Impossible for me to do my job'

Barr and trump,

the last vaudeville act;

that's the only way I can explain it.

Some Images For 13 February 2020

Gull Landing

Canal St Martin

I like to walk from my apartment down the Seine on the river level quai and cross to the right bank on Pont de Austerlitz and go down into the Paris Arsenal and walk through the little quai-side parc.

That leads to La Bastille.

Keeping in the same direction, beyond the gold guy on the column:

I start walking up the covered portion of Canal St Martin.

After awhile the canal re-appears in a series of écluses, stiles and slack water stretches.

Then at rue Crimée I leave the canal and go on to Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.

But that story is for another day.

Sous Pont Alexandre III

Paulo And Fransesca

They joined us every morning for breakfast on our little patio in Florence.

This picture shows them showing their disapproval to our cutting off the bread and fruit after an hour or so.

They wanted more.

A Nice Picture Of Le Départ St Michel

Some Paris Pictures

Several trips to Paris ago, and several accompanying years back, I had a revelation: there are probably more sushi restaurants in Paris than there are in Tokyo.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw and shot this image in the sand of the quais not far from the Paris Cop Dock - which is pretty near the pillars in the Seine where I get my best cormorant pictures, and just down the egress road that leads up to Quais St Bernard, where the parrots leak out of le Jardin des Plantes and inspect the holes in the trees down by the cop dock.

The crow was in a little garden on the same river level quais quite near a really troubling sculpture of

A guy manning a machine gun.

The gunner seems to be pretty sexually aroused.

Anyway, here are the pictures.

Sushi in the sand:

Crow with pickled sushi ginger:

Cop Dock Cormorant:

Parrot inspecting a hole in a tree on the egress road by the cop dock:

I have never taken a picture of the machine gun guy.
I respect his right to privacy.
I guess.