Declaration of Incoherence

 

This guy just shut down the Department of Education. pic.twitter.com/SSwsrw7oll

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 1, 2025

I fully intend to add to this, but my word, it is made of stupid. The man literally seems to have no idea what the Declaration of Independence is. And he just says random things. 

 UPDATE: I do not know where his brain short-circuited, but Harvard went in one ear and Harlem came out of his mouth:

Smith asked Trump what he would say to those who view his attacks against the Ivy League school as “an attack on academic freedom, rather than a defense of fairness.”

“Well, I say this. We had riots in Harlem, in Harlem, and frankly if you look at what’s gone on—and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard. They happened to be on my side,” Trump said.

“You know I got a very high Black vote. You know that? Very, very high Black vote. It was a very great compliment to me,” Trump continued.

You know what never happened? That. That never happened.  

Fly Eagles Fly

 

Trump: I watched this great quarterback who has a phenomenal wife. She’s a MAGA fan.. when quarterback wins as much as he’s won, I’d have to go with Kansas City.. pic.twitter.com/RszJlOLSdF

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 9, 2025

Then you go losing, because the Eagles soared.  Philadelphia won. The birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A minority-majority city Trump hates because we have no use for his ass. 

I don't especially care about sports, but I love my city, and I love it when Trump is wrong. I am wearing green tomorrow and being fucking insufferable. I want to point out Trump had some braindead shit to say about Patrick Mahomes and Tommy Tuberville, and I still consider Mahomes a great player.  This wasn't his night, and I don't blame him for what Trump says or does.

But I celebrate my city and this win because, because, because. 

Good things happen here, and we will celebrate them. 

Sometimes this city wins. Sometimes people Trump doesn't support wins. That's all I'm saying. 

TWGB: Who is the Fairest One of All?

 

Donald Trump is very jealous that Taylor Swift is prettier than him and has a football player boyfriend and is the Time Magazine Person of the Year. And she did it all herself.  So he wants to send his flying monkeys to let her know he IS SO more popular than her. He was president once you know, and probably still has papers in his possession that prove it! He's still BIG. It's just the Deep State and the Lying Media's fault he looks SMALL. 

He'll show them! He's ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille! 

Just, maybe not so close. And with a bit of a filter, And with so much makeup it looks like he's applying shoe polish to his face. 

Deciding he needs to go after a female pop star just after a hefty defamation decision against him sounds like just the sort of beef he would get into. Being appalling to women is one of his hobbies, after all. And consider that it's women who are or would be giving and have given him the most trouble. The nasty Hillary Clinton, who first pegged him as a national security threat and his followers as a basket of deplorables. Nancy Pelosi of the two impeachments. Letitia James. Fani Willis. Nikki Haley. Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, Tanya Chutkan... 

Kansas Institutes the Pee Parts Police

 

Kansas Republicans just overrode the Democratic governor’s veto, enacting a new law that allows for forced genital inspections of children to make sure they’re not transgender. https://t.co/7Zx1nVQc1y

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) April 5, 2023

The trans panic that somehow, exposure to the existence of people who did not identify with their birth gender assignment will "contaminate" others has now resulted in something ghoulish and perverted that affects all kids who want to do sports in Kansas--they have to subject their genitalia to someone's review. 

Kansas decided to be the pee parts police and go totally weird. The Powers That Be decided to become genital inspectors to decide who can do sports.  Wow. People want to be the deciders of genital correctness. Trans athletes in k-12 education are probably less than 1% of candidates to participate in school sports, but here is Kansas, deciding to physically humiliate any children. Any children at all*. Who just want to do sports. And should not have their genitals subjected to some weird review. No one should!  These legislators do not care who it humiliates, who it hurts, how it is offensive and does not affect the non-trans people in anyway. They just have their scapegoat and here they are--goat scaping. 

The idea that anyone should be the pee parts police is just ridiculously intrusive. We don't think people should search a house or a car without some reasonable pretext--why body parts? This isn't conservatism--it's a perversion. Why are so-called GOP family values conservatives so interested in underage genitals? It is sick and should be treated like a sickness. 

UPDATE: For any who are confused when I say "any", when the law is supposed to focus on trans students, all students are going to be suspect, I mean, the concept of what is feminine or masculine is subjective, and human anatomy doesn't necessarily agree with social parameters. So you get a Caster Semanya. She is no man. She is just XX with high androgens. But other athletes can get challenged about their gender because of their skill. 

There's no reason to think trans people are going to change their gender just to participate in sports--that's a whole lot for any human to center their lives, loves, and legal documents around just to excel at some participatory meritocracy thing. So what I think is going to happen, sadly, is snitch culture will challenge the genitalia of really good athletes who aren't trans at all and kill women's sports specifically. Because trans rights are human rights, but are also rights feminists need to be attuned to. 

What in the Slap-Happy Hell?

 

Power Slap—the series developed by UFC prez Dana White—drew in nearly 300K viewers in its debut on Wednesday. The TBS show outperformed the Young Sheldon reruns that took its place last week after White exchanged slaps with his wife on NYE. My @FOS story. https://t.co/uTDbEdjEVy

— A.J. Perez (@byajperez) January 20, 2023

I have a hard time watching football anymore because of the issues regarding CTE.  A lot of good athletes and decent people have experienced brain trauma that changed their personalities, caused serious life repercussions, even cost players their lives and the lives of people around them. 

I grew up loving professional wrestling. Sadly, professional wrestling also has a reputation for being a sport where people can experience a shortened life span, and a lot of that has to do with the toll constant physical trauma has on--well, just every damn part on one's life, from pain management to potential brain damage. The incredibly talented Chris Benoit was found to have had CTE after he killed his wife and child and himself. I've seen too many people die young who are associated with that sport, as well. 

So, call me a killjoy, but I just don't see any joy in a so-called sport that revolves around rattling the fuck out of someone's brainpan and subjecting yourself to getting your own skull rocked. In any fighting discipline, it's true that you can learn how to take bumps in a way that protect your neck and head and minimize the damage your extremities experience. 

Welcome Home, Brittney Griner

 

I want you to know that Brittney Griner cut her locs because it was so cold in detention in Russia that her hair couldn't be washed--it would freeze. I can not imagine what she suffered as a queer woman of color in detention in a place of pure hostility to everything about her, but I am so glad she has come home. She has come home to her wife, and a country that should value her because she represents us--America the Beautiful. The Brave. 

This is a woman who was imprisoned for an amount of hash solely for management of having a body that does stuff. It very well would be treated as medicinal here. She is not what we could consider a drug addict or a dealer. Just an occasional ad lib user because bodies sometimes need an assist for relaxation. 

Some people want to pit the existence and freedom of this athlete against some straw human--or make a straw human out of Paul Whelan, who Russia insists is some kind of spy. 

I don't understand how getting an American home is supposed to be wrong. I am happy this woman is home. 

UPDATE: Conservatives who are critical regarding her release seem to have the wrong idea that getting Whelan released was an option President Biden had but rejected. Actually, it was an option former president Trump had when he was in office but rejected. Just to clear that up. 

Behind the First Tee at Bedminster

 

I'm committing this here, just because when something niggles at my brain, I have to blog about it to get it out of my system because otherwise no further blogging will ensue. There is an air of tragedy about being buried behind the first tee at one's second husband's favorite self-owned golf course. The site is but the first of what is intended as a family plot, graced with a low-profile and simple stone--far simpler than what I imagine Ivana Trump would have wanted for herself and lacking even the least personalization--only her name and dates of birth and death. Not "beloved mother and grandmother". Just the absolute starkness of her having existed. 

I can shudder at the likelihood that this is her final resting place because her second husband gets a tax break from his Bedminster property being a cemetery as well as a working farm (it has goats!) (I'm not joking about the tax break--the property is also proofed against tax sales in the event of bankruptcy.) And I still can't cast the idea (described as #staircasecancer on Twitter) of something dodgy about her death having taken place, out of my mind. 

Imagine her friends or non-Trump family who want to pay their respects having to go through Trump's business to visit her grave? I imagine it. It's hard to think of Trump joining her there, although I balk at the idea of this country letting the president of the insurrectionists rest at Arlington. I find it too easy to see him, also, at Bedminster--but in something much more elaborate.  Subordinating her in death by having a nice mausoleum erected. 

This is the same property where Trump welcomed the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, to the dismay of 9/11 survivor families and colleagues of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi alike. Suddenly Trump, who once was certain that KSA was responsible for 9/11, insists that no one ever really "got to the bottom" of that tragedy. We most certainly have gotten to the bottom of that one, but has anyone ever gotten to the bottom of Trump's greed, or is it bottomless?

I thought we were never supposed to forget what happened there, although Trump's memory has often been selective. 

The result being that the tickets were on sale for $1-3 on StubHub as crowds stayed away in droves. That's sad, especially since Trump graced this even with the prestige of the presidential seal, which the former president is still using despite having no authority to do so. As if putting the US government's seal of approval over the sports-washing of a murderous regime. 

It's unsavory, unethical, illegal, and to the world outside of Trump World, it looks bad--although it does seem par for the course. 

What Do You See?

 

The Alameda County Sheriff's office is investigating a group of men who disrupted a drag queen storytelling event at the San Lorenzo Library Saturday with homophobic slurs. https://t.co/46G1IDQzVB

— KPIX 5 (@KPIXtv) June 12, 2022

So consider the scene--people in costume are reading books to children in a calm and unprovocative setting, and then weird violent guys show up and say horrible things with language that has no business being said in front of children. It was not weird until these people decided to come on in and make it weird. It was the Proud Boys--you know, the ones who have nothing to be proud about, accept for being accepted by the Miami-Dade GOP and being affiliated with the insurrectionists. Maybe they haven't decided to be as entirely domestic terrorist as Patriot Front this Pride month, but they definitely decided to make an impact. 

Just as a necessary follow-on to what I posted about yesterday--this movement is aiming increasingly harsh public harassment at gender-nonconforming people in what looks to me like a way to "disappear" LGBT people. Like Gov. DeSantis (who was protested today at Chelsea Piers by Chelsea queers) whose "Don't say Gay" law tries to put people back in the closet and jeopardize the employment of LGBT teachers by focusing attention on whether they mention a basic facet of their personal lives, a lot of the legislation that pretends to "spare the children" from adult topics is really aimed at just making it publicly difficult to be any kind of queer. 

What Rhymes With "Ineffective Stunt"?

 

We all take ourselves to the porcelain refuge at one time or another, that watery bastion of comfort, release and repose. Sometimes we go for all the obvious mechanics of our digestive requirements, and at other times it is simply a place of solitude, a place to check one's clothing seams and makeup, or maybe even to escape protestors. 

I'm sympathetic to the idea that one should feel secure in the loo. I am also, however, not feeling charitable to someone who has set out to leave her principles in such doubt that we don't even know why she isn't sticking with what she told us were her principles, but is instead of doing her constituents' business, going to fundraisers and not even answering questions about what she does stand for. 

The activist who cornered Sinema in the ladies' room is an undocumented immigrant young person whose grandparents were deported. Our screwed up immigration and naturalization policies keep families separated for reasons that are needlessly stupid and cruel. We should do better in this country, but aren't. Sinema knows the terrain, but isn't showing follow-through on the mission: taking care of residents of Arizona who need their citizenship status fixed. It's a part of the Democratic agenda, but she's being capricious about that right now.

And she's shown disrespect to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which to me is very concerning. Senator Sanders points out that rather than thinking of Pelosi delaying a vote on legislation as being what Sinema called an "ineffective stunt", it was a procedural move based on the votes--totally within her prerogative. It's not about Kyrsten Sinema's preferences as a first-term senator, but all of Pelosi's understanding of how Congress works. And in the meanwhile, the legislation in question is unquestionably about benefiting her constituents (not ahem! the donors).

Now, you might look at the title of my blogpost, and assume I'm implying something not at all feminist. My goodness people, don't you know me yet? It rhymes with "sometimes you bunt". What matters is getting on base. But Sinema is being very off-base right now. 

We are not retiring shit without a run in this inning. That's how this game is played. I don't know what game Sinema is playing but she isn't playing it in the bathroom. 

The Chinese Seeds Conundrum

Stephen King could have written this mess, and we'd be only at like, Chapter Five, right now. Still from Creepshow, You Lunkhead.

Human beings are primates, I remind myself, or find myself reminded, on a regular basis--and the thing about your monkey brain is--it's curious. Well, your monkey brain, my monkey brain, the point is, we are more curious than we are smart, but we are also fucking dumb. Case in point: The Chinese Seeds Conundrum:

In late July, America was briefly enthralled with “Unsolicited Seeds from China,” which started showing up in mailboxes in all 50 states. These mystery seeds prompted warnings from the USDA, which said people should not plant them, and should instead alert their state agricultural authority and mail them to the USDA or their local officials.

Many Americans heeded this advice. Many more decidedly did not.

You guys, this is how the horror novel starts out. "Many more decidedly did not." That right there is just negligent, but what did the folks do? They were told not to plant them of course, because, like, lets say it's just some random GMO licensing legal fuckery that takes over your lawn--it's just raw naivete to assume there's anything good in that.  Or who even knows what:

Audrey 2 from the brilliant movie "Little Shop of Horrors"

Yeah, I'm not saying it could definitely be alien man-eating plants, but no. It could be--okay what if it were alien man-eating plants and then you had that on your conscience in your suburban picket-fence tract home somewhere that's green Mr. Man? Is that what you want?

America Needs Football

I dunno, man, I really just don't know.

UPDATE:  Well, I don't know but have ideas. But we're learning that even very fit, young athletes are experiencing what could be long-term heart damage from contracting COVID-19.  I don't trust schools to do what's in the best interests of their student athletes . And it's questionable that even under ideal circumstances, they will be capable of taking every reasonable precaution.  And I get it--school athletics are a big part of campus life and many students are attending on sports scholarships, and sports programs will suffer financially. But we shouldn't be so willing to play games with young people's lives.

The cheesy graphic is courtesy of MS Paint and Jim Jordan's Tweet proclaiming that "America needs college football", which in my pop-culture-enfeebled brain reminded me of the SF cult classic "Mars Needs Women". Yes, I made a typo, which I think adds to the overall melty Velveeta fries charm of the composition.

"America needs college football" was then echoed by Mike Pence, and now it feels like we've got some BIG PARTY COORDINATION going on. It's marginally culture warish. The Purity of our Gatorade baptisms/electrolytes plants crave energy is very significant. Wow, very jock. Messaging machine go BRRRRR.

Loeffler Earning a Loss

Dream and Mercury players are wearing “Vote Warnock” shirts to their game today.

Raphael Warnock is running against Kelly Loeffler for Senate. Loeffler is a co-owner of the Dream and said she opposes the Black Lives Matter movement.

(via @sportsiren)pic.twitter.com/w1INikFQPQ

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 4, 2020

The athletes of the WNBA are wearing shirts in favor of Rev. Raphael Warnock because GA US Sen. Kelly Loeffler, in addition to being a ghoulish insider trader on COVID-19 info (the dropped charges don't mean a damn thing in TrumpWorld, thanks!), is going full-racist, giving an interview to another racist to talk about what a bummer it is to be called out on her racism.

Criticism against Loeffler doesn't necessarily affect her where it counts, for her. I mean, political office pay is peanuts compared to what she could net from her daily grind--unless she was using her office to advance the lot of rich white people and welp. I guess we can draw our own conclusions about what staying a US Senator means to her, and also conclude it doesn't have as much to do with representing regular everyday Georgia residents as she wants to purport. She wants to talk nonsense about Marxism while collecting money for investing in COVID futures. I think she should be done with that level of psychopathy. I hope GA voters feel the same.

Oh, His Tone is Changing, They Say?

So disgusting to watch Twitter’s so-called “Trending”, where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one. They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend. Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2020

I know I keep saying this, but the pivot isn't coming. People thought back in 2016, at some point, Trump would stop dishing out red meat to the rubes and start behaving like a person who wanted to win a general election. He didn't pivot, and welp. So, after the election, he was gonna get serious once he was on the job, and behave presidentially. Welp. And now he is saying mean hashtags on Twitter are not just "very unfair!" but illegal. Sure. All bad news about him is "fake news" and all bad polls are "rigged".

So when I see any story that suggests he's got a "new tone", let's take that with a grain, it better include, as the link does, that that new tone is probably about re-election and his discovery that "his people" are also getting it. (Let's just not take it with a grain of hydroxychloroquine, which the newly-serious Trump has been retweeting links about this evening. It still hasn't demonstrated any proven effectiveness and has serious side effects, including death.) He wants to appear serious and concerned, but let's not confuse that for actually being that way.

In other news, Trump apparently announced that he would throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game because he was jealous of Dr. Anthony Fauci....and there was no such event ever planned.

“Randy Levine is a great friend of mine from the Yankees,” Mr. Trump, referring to the president of the baseball team, told reporters on Thursday as Dr. Fauci was preparing to take the mound. “And he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I’m doing that on Aug. 15 at Yankee Stadium.”

There was one problem: Mr. Trump had not actually been invited on that day by the Yankees, according to one person with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s schedule. His announcement surprised both Yankees officials and the White House staff.

But Mr. Trump had been so annoyed by Dr. Fauci’s turn in the limelight, an official familiar with his reaction said, that he had directed his aides to call Yankees officials and make good on a longtime standing offer from Mr. Levine to throw out an opening pitch. No date was ever finalized.

That seems a little weird, doesn't it? I wonder how that kind of thing polls with the boaters. Yes, I said "boaters":

According to two people who’ve been in the room when Trump has fixated on the issue, the president has repeatedly stressed that “boaters”—MAGA fans who join in on pro-Trump flotillas, with ships adorned with Trump and Mike Pence banners and gear—are a shining exemplar of the enthusiasm gap he enjoys over Biden. He has delighted in advisers showing him boater photos and videos that have bubbled up on social media. And during strategy sessions in the past two months, he’s told officials to keep bringing him more and to push out the content on their own accounts, as well.

He lives in his own little world where doing things like pretending to throw out a first pitch or impressing people with boats matters, and actually doing his job well or respectfully does not. So when you consider things like his not planning on stopping by to pay his respects to Rep. John Lewis, keep in mind that he isn't wanted at certain funerals or weddings because of who he is, what he says, how he behaves.

There is far more wrong with him than merely "tone."

UPDATE: See also Parker Molloy's very good coverage of the last five years of journos pretending Trump is doing something he is most certainly incapable of.

Toto, I Have a Feeling...

After discovering that sneaky Kansas City had been in Missouri, Trump deleted his Tweet, which I guess is better than trying to change the map by executive decree or something. I don't know what we expect. This is, after all, the guy who Lamar Alexander said on Meet the Press just wouldn't know you're supposed to go to your own Attorney General regarding suspicions of corruption against a US individual. But you know. He'll learn from all of this.

Baby steps for a toddler president.

In other funny things from the Super Bowl, I've seen some pecksniffery about the half-time show out on the intertubes.

It's always weird here in the 21st century to hear about them skimpily-clad jezebels with their jazz dances, destroying the morals of our youths.

Derpal Nerple

OOOOOOKKKKKKKKK pic.twitter.com/4I29XhPrQI

— Dan Linden (@DanLinden) November 4, 2019

Honest to goodness, I know I'm supposed to be rounding up actual news stuff to recap and comment on after the traditions of my bloggy wont, but this is simply the weirdest "hands-on" public behavior between a politician and a sports figure I can recall (not that I track such things). A reach-around "tune in Tokyo"? It starts as a kind of quick shoulder squeeze and then?

This is just a week out from the odd, impulsive thing where Trump set candy on the top of a kid's minion costume (where it predictably slid off). He seems to have bad impulse control. It's sort of cringe in these two episodes, but in a kind of "Oh, he's being awkward" kind of way. Tell him not to look at the eclipse--he looks at the eclipse. Derp, right? And sometimes inappropriate, yes? Especially when it comes to physical contact, apparently, like his history of awkward handshakes.

It's funny, except sometimes it's not. I think about Trump's impulse control, and how he uses his physical presence a lot. It stops being funny when you realize that his impulse control and physical boundary issues permeate how he treats people in other ways, and the power he has, not just in funny one-off ways, but in ways (like threatening to out the whistleblower, or smearing Lt. Col. Vindman) that can negatively impact people's lives and careers. I guess that's why these "sports-guys visit the White House because it's an honor" things seem so surreal to me. Not because he might paw some dude's jubblies in a strange way in front of people, or because you never know when he's going to put out a room-temperature takeaway buffet for people. It's because of whatever else he does.

Just my opinion, of course.

So Much Winning?

When Trump announced that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a military operation, this was supposed to be a win. He announced that there would be news coming Sunday morning the night before on Twitter, and within moments, it seemed, people knew this is what it was likely about. But instead of simply stating the bare facts of the operation and letting someone from the Pentagon field any questions, Trump's ego got the better of him, and he sort of killed the moment with his mouth. 

He compared the death of al-Baghdadi with the operation against Osama bin Laden (of course Trump says he got the bigger terrorist, and if people only listened to him, they would have known about bin Laden before 9/11, which is just absurd). He thanked Russia first, which was odd, because their Defense Ministry definitely seemed cool about what even happened. He also told them about it before notifying any Democratic lawmakers (which certainly wasn't about operational security--it was pettiness).  And, while he tried to make it appear that this operation came about as a result of his decision with respects to pulling back in Syria--that doesn't seem to have helped matters at all, but made them more difficult. 

He went on in morbid detail about crying, whimpering al-Baghdadi (rather more than good taste or sense would have allowed) but it appears that he wouldn't have seen anything from the tunnel in which the terrorist deployed his explosive vest. And he went on about Syria's oil again, which the US doesn't have a right to and wouldn't be that valuable to us, anyway. While the world won't mourn al-Baghdadi, Trump somehow managed to make his death announcement grotesque and pulled the sense of victory out of it. 

At the top of the post, I have the somewhat stagey-looking picture released by the White House of Trump in the Situation Room. That was supposed to be the iconic takeaway image of the day. The actual picture to take away from today is this:

This picture, showing an "Impeach Trump" banner being unfurled at Nationals Park where trump attended Game 5 of the World Series, shows the real story of the day: Trump was booed and met with chants of "Lock him up." Nothing he does will win with the people who have seen enough of his presidency for a lifetime. 

Of course, it's a job well done for Delta Force and the rest of our fighting men and women, and our partners in the region. To them all thanks. But a dose of reality should be Trump's reward.

Congratulations to the US Women's Soccer Team!

NOTHING GIVEN 🇺🇸
EVERYTHING EARNED 🏆#OneNationOneTeam pic.twitter.com/fbXkGKmaI6

— U.S. Soccer WNT (@USWNT) July 7, 2019

Winning their 4th World Cup victory is in itself, absolutely amazing--also having a stadium chant "Equal pay!" in honor of their off-field battle is another great accomplishment. It's one thing to be in favor of equal pay for equal work--but this team has been so dominant it's damn amazing work (I'm chanting "and then back pay to even this up", myself).

(And I will only parenthetically note a little political schadenfreude.)

The Only Orange Muppet I Fully Stan

Of all the absurd 2018 things to happen, one of the best Philadelphia-flavored ones has been Gritty, the mascot of your (my) Philadelphia Flyers. I haven't actually actively followed the team since the Legion of Doom days, but have stayed an admirer in absolute principle, as I have for the Iggles and the Phils, because it is my duty as a homer and because "No one likes us."  Indeed, Gritty became my red-headed brother despite what I thought at first was a corny, googly-eyed misfire--people outside the city called him out. 

Bitch, that's our corny, googly-eyed mascot. You get back in line. 

And then he got co-opted as an Antifa icon. 

Better yet, something about Gritty being Antifa in the local political culture (Philadelphia is demographically brown, resolutely Democratic, fiercely working class and eccentrically progressive--with dashes of old-school racism and class war getting their ass regularly kicked) pisses off the people who by all means, need something to piss them off and entertains the people who need to add humor to their activism. 

Twitter has embraced the orange-bearded hero we all deserve:

Gritty will not fight your wars of empire pic.twitter.com/JSXgcTIMms

— Fellow Worker Gritty (@FellowGritty) October 7, 2018

Gritty is one of us. Late for Occupy, but not too late for the assizes to come. I don't expect a stadium of orange-jerseyed sports fans to switch in their preference from "God Bless America" to "Bella Ciao" anytime soon. 

But we have a mascot. And as we are the City of Brotherly Love, he is also with you. Join us, you have nothing to lose but your chains. 

Somehow, Twitter is Free

I don't know what this means for the rest of 2018, but Brit Hume has gone wild and it's only January.

(Also, while there is actually no penis talk as a result of Trump's good health report, there is an awful lot of speculation about whether his height and weight figures were fudged. I don't know--I think he snuck in at least an inch in height because at his age, people usually are not still growing, his height has previously been given as 6'2", and in pictures where he has stood next to Jeb Bush (actually 6'3") he seems shorter, and next to Barack Obama (6'1") he seems about the same. Sports Illustrated did a comparison of Trump's physique vs. athletes of similar height and weight stats which seems a bit unfair. I find that I genuinely do not care what Trump's weight is, and also wonder if I should be watching more football.)

Pence and Nonsense

So, VP Pence flew to Indianapolis to show up at a game he had no intention of staying at to make a BS point about "an event that disrespects our soldiers, etc.". I guess that went better than the last culture war-signifying event he "had" to leave.  But I think the grotesque thing about this was how very obvious his display actually was. He even had the press pool wait while he made his little show because he knew he wasn't going to be that long.

Every bit of it was kind of obvious. The Tweeting of a three year old picture like "Whheee, I love some sportsball!"  Being just shocked that the 49ers, who've had players kneeling since the beginning, were still participating in silent protest. And of course, not having enough time on his actual itinerary to stay for the whole game since he had things to do. Like fundraise for Dana Rohrabacher. I mean--I'm sure VP flights don't take as long as commercial flights, but even straight-through commercial:

And this was not a cheap stunt either--think about the taxpayer-funded flight and the Secret Service coverage and all that...

But of course, the real giveaway that this was just some culture war-signifying was that Donald Trump says it wasn't. He Tweeted:

Just marvelous. You can almost imagine wee Donnie playing hide'n'seek as a youngin', crowing from his hiding spot "You won't find me, because I have the best, biggest, most beautiful hiding space!" He thinks this is brilliant political work, and wants credit!

Of course it's a damn distraction from the mutiny over the Bounty towels, the questions arising from the Tillerson not-quite disavowal of calling Trump a "fucking moron", and who know what all else. The health care reform clusterfuck, the bad jobs numbers and crappy polls. Trump and Pence seem to think that if this display gains a news cycle, we will all forget the other stuff (North Korea? Iran?) and just hate on people taking a knee to protest...

Police brutality and racism. Not the flag, not veterans. Police brutality and racism. Screw Pence and Trump for this game. There are real issues out there that should occupy their time. But this trifling is where they prefer to linger. Lying about honest protesters to make up a BS concern of their own as a distraction. 

UPDATE: And apparently, Trump is still very proud of his stunt in the wee hours of the morning:

"Long planned." A stunt. Just remember who to thank/blame!