Author: Burr Deming

• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post counts the abundance of Democratic candidates and demands that we, as voters, do our civic duty and research each one. Or at least listen to town halls.
   
• Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara makes the case that the reasons many of us want open information about election funding (untraceable dark money, transparency) are actually “hollow catchphrases meant to equate free speech to some sinister underworld.” I’m so ashamed. How could we promote such distortions?
   
• At The Moderate Voice, Robert Levine says we don’t know for sure whether Putin has kompromat on my President. But we know for sure that Trump feels he owes, really owes, Putin. And we know that Putin has Trump in a subservient position.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony has come across a way to impeach my President without stumbling into the disadvantages Democrats anticipate.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger discovers outspoken opposition to Trumpism from a surprising source. It comes from a while before he became President, in fact 19 centuries and 75 years before.

Continue reading “D-Day, Tiananmen, Democrats, Dark Money, UK, Ancient Trump Warning”

From Politico:

Donald Trump asked for a meeting with Boris Johnson during his U.K. visit, but was turned down.

According to an official close to Johnson, the U.S. president called the former foreign secretary and suggested they have a one-to-one meeting. The official said that Johnson thanked Trump but declined the invitation as he had to prepare for a Tory leadership campaign event.

Shorter Donald: I’m officially inviting you to a public meeting during my visit to London.

Shorter Boris: I’d like to, but I’m scheduled to wash my hair just then. What day was that again?

• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from MSNBC as my President’s minions-in-government go behind the scenes to weights and measurements, changing the definitions of such things as poverty, contamination, and climate change.
   
• Andy Borowitz comments on all the disputes surrounding the Mueller report on not-enough-to-prove conspiracy and not-allowed-to-say obstruction in TrumpLand as Robert Mueller himself stokes that controversy by urging Americans to read.
   
• News Corpse reports on the increasing difficulty my President experiences in keeping his Mueller story straight.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post suggests that Donald Trump and Jared Kushner were not only guilty of incidents of money laundering, they continue to run a money laundromat.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz asks his MAGA friends whether they really think refugee parents are taking their own children and undergoing life-threatening physical hardship finally to arrive in order to steal, set up criminal activity, take away jobs, or anything else other than to escape even greater danger and oppression. He speculates reasonably about those who embrace anti-refugee propaganda, separating the sheep from the goats. Are you among the delicate, frightened white conservative side? Or are you simply a lousy human being who doesn’t care about the suffering of those who are most vulnerable?

Continue reading “Mueller Reading, Trump Befuddled, Freedom Gas, Racism, Sins Original”

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

Understanding how a president thinks can help make sense of his decisions. Trump’s case is harder than most.

The reporting is pretty clear: Trump doesn’t read briefings, on politics or anything else. He doesn’t appear to have absorbed the basics of public policy, whether on health care or national security or even issues, like trade, that he cares about. Instead, he seems to pick up fragments of information in conversation or, more often, from cable television. Often, it’s partisan talking points, which isn’t surprising since much of what airs on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC consists of partisan talking points. Trump then extracts some fact or detail he finds useful from that input, and comes up with his own way of expressing it. Usually, he pretties it up, smooths out any nuances and exaggerates significantly. Then he tests it out, on Twitter and especially at his rallies, working for the wording that gets the biggest reaction. And then? As far as I can tell, Trump winds up believing the final version of whatever it is he has produced.

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

A movie monster, appearing in different forms in a series of movies, proves inspirational to two calculating scientists. They explain their calculations, in this study:

“A Movie Monster Evolves, Fed by Fear,” Nathaniel J. Dominy and Ryan Calsbeek, Science, vol. 364, no. 6443, May 31, 2019, pp. 840-84.

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From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

Flameouts Are No Fun

There is this stuff called “diesel exhaust fluid”. It’s not supposed to be used as a fuel additive. Diesel engines don’t like that.

But Murphy being the bastard that he is, DEF has been added into fuel stocks. it is really bad when it is added to Jet-A, which is essentially diesel fuel that is made to a higher purity level.

DEF has been found in Jet-A. What seems to be happening is that instead of adding anti-icing additive to Jet-A, the guys at the fuel farms at airports have added DEF.

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Shorter Mueller:

Shorter Barr:
     See? No evidence.

Shorter Trump:
     See? Totally Innocent.

Memorial Day is upon us.

• At The Moderate Voice, Dorian Estuardo de Wind greets the coming day of remembrance, recalling the Morse code he used while serving our country, and celebrating one brave prisoner of war who used it to blink out a secret message to the United States in full view of his captors.
   
• Green Eagle listens with some skepticism to the drumbeats of war, including easy to win prospective battles, and hears the echoes of war drums of years ago.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger goes to the experts to find out how great a danger Iran poses to the United States.
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass takes note of a group of often ignored activists fighting for reproductive rights.
   
• Max’s Dad has a few vulcanic thoughts about anti-abortion laws.

Continue reading “Memorial Day, War Drums, Climate, Reproductive Rights, Immigration”