Paulietics

We all know what the word means, right? Even if we’re not lawyers or US Senators? You’re in a court or trial or giving testimony of some or or the other and someone tells you to put your hand on a Bible, raise your other hand, and asks something along the lines of, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

You say, “Yes.”

Let’s assume you’re being vetted for an extremely high level government job. Extremely high. Can we safely assume that you recognize and understand all of those big words? In particular, “truth”?

And the Bible? “So help you God?” Jeez Louise, if you don’t understand that part, how did you ever get nominated for dog catcher in this Administration, let alone an extremely high level government job? You guys have a real Jones for that Bible and God stuff, you must take it seriously, right?

Given all of that, how can you possibly dismiss or write off today’s news about our new Attorney General?

When asked, under oath, if he had been in contact with any Russian officials, he said, “No.” Yet he had the Russian ambassador in his office once and met with another Russian official on another occasion.

Did he not know that the Russian ambassador was Russian?

Did they meet in his office but they never actually “had contact”? Maybe that means that they didn’t touch or speak? Did they have aides pass notes between them while they sat in chairs more than an arm’s length apart?

Maybe, like a tremendous number of other extremely high level government officials in this Administration, he’s so used to lying and expecting people to believe it just because he’s saying it that he’s so out of touch with reality that he doesn’t even know the difference between truth and lies?

Or maybe a distorted sense of reality has nothing to do with it. Maybe our new Attorney General is simply a lying sack of shit who can’t be trusted to tell the truth even if he’s telling you the time of day.

Regardless, are those any of those explanations which should result in Sessions remaining as Attorney General? If you think so, please let me know your logic and reasoning, and show your work.

Over on the less-sweary and ranty side of my writing and ranting I pointed out a number of neat things coming out of Boston Robotics.

Things which can also be borderline terrifying these days.

On the other hand, there’s this “thing” going on in Washington that’s looking way too much like a bad remake of “Wild In The Streets.”

If they want radical, catastrophic change, how about unleashing the robot legions? How much worse could it be than where we’re heading at breakneck speed now?

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. Especially given the options.

I see that the Trumpencritter will be addressing a joint session of Congress tomorrow night.

Oh, be still my beating heart…

As the new ABC series shows us, having “borrowed” a Tom Clancy plot line and only barely filed off the serial numbers, there will no doubt be a “designated survivor” off in a bunker somewhere, just in case the unthinkable happens.

Which of the slimy swamp critters that make up the Trump Cabinet would you stick underground for the duration? If you’re Bannon, or the head of the GOP, who would you set aside as living, breathing insurance?

Not insurance as in “at least our Constitutionally blessed government will go on in a legal and approved fashion.” Insurance as in, “No one would be stupid enough to do anything rash, because as bad as Trump is, the alternative here is far, far worse”?

It’s a toss-up for me between DeVos and Sessions. Horrible and horrible-er.

What’s truly bizarre about this world we find ourselves in is that in this scenario, Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy (I know, he hasn’t been confirmed or sworn in yet, but play along) wouldn’t “get the job done” since even he on his worst day is better than Trump or Pence on their best.

Yes, that Rick Perry. The one who will be succeeding Ernest Moniz, an MIT professor of physics, who in turn succeeded Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, who in turn succeeded Samuel Bodman, another MIT guy with a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. Now we get Rick Perry, who in an infamous moment of a debate while running for President said he wanted to eliminate certain government departments, but couldn’t remember the name of one of them.

It was the Department of Energy that he forget.

He wanted to abolish it, yet couldn’t even remember its name. Now he’ll be the Secretary of Energy. And still a potential better President than Trump will ever be.

We are so, so very fucked.

First, who’s the poor sucker in the White House who gets to let Trump know what was being said at the Academy Awards tonight?

Second, what time does that happen? When’s Trump’s “private” (i.e., morning shit) time when he does all of his best tweeting?

This will be epic. With any luck, his head will explode.

The Trumpencritter has announced (insert flourish of trumpets here) that he will not attend this year’s White House Correspondent’s Association Dinner. Well, his Twitter account announced it – the fact that the tweet in question was written in actual English without typos, grammatical errors, all caps, multiple exclamation points, or any insults or threats pretty much guarantees that he didn’t write it himself.

Yesterday the White House excluded the New York Times, CNN, Los Angeles Times, the BBC, Huffington Post, Buzfeed, and Politico from the daily press briefing because those news organizations had been saying mean things about them.

All over the country, Republican Congresscritters have been either cancelling, cutting short, or outright fleeing from their own “town hall” meetings when their constituents began berating them and demanding that they do their job.

These “patriots”? These tough guys who are going to take on ISIS and all of the other boogeymen they see under the bed? These blowhard, loud, braggadocio-filled bullies?

Cowards!

Craven cowards to the core, every single one of them.

They’re terrified of the millions of outraged citizens in the street, protesting every outrageous attack on the Constitution and our country’s citizens and their civil rights.

They’re terrified of the thousands showing up at the meetings they themselves called, people who are simply trying to hold them accountable for their bullshit and their actions.

They’re terrified of a handful of reporters who dare to actually act like journalists and point out that the Trump Administration is full of lying sacks of shit who couldn’t tell the truth if it bit them in the ass.

I saw this video today and thought it was hilarious on one level for being cute and showing how innocent small children can be as they discover the world around themselves – it was just as hilarious but a bit sad and bittersweet as I realized how much it reminded me of these assholes who think they’re “leaders” in our country.

Let’s give them something to really be afraid of.

Unemployment.

Responsibility.

Prosecution.

It’s our big fundraising event tonight so I’ve been occupied. Take a two minute break to check the headlines and what have the fascist assholes done now?

You didn’t allow the press in if they aren’t kissing your ass and repeating the propaganda verbatim? Seriously?

That’s some big time tinpot dictator shit right there. Congratulations, that’s barely a month in office and you’ve now shredded the First Amendment.

When will you attack and shred the Second Amendment?

Oh, right. What was I thinking?

Today a Delta domestic flight from San Francisco to New York’s JFK airport was met by Customs & Border Patrol agents. Passengers were “requested” to show “their papers” (driver’s licenses, other forms of ID) in order to be allowed to exit the aircraft.

I am not a lawyer, but those who are and those who still have some clue of what being a journalist is all about, they’re all questioning the legality of such a move. The law seems to be pretty clear that CBP only has jurisdiction on international flights, but that didn’t stop anyone.

I’ve seen pictures that people took, and comments they made to the press and so on, but I haven’t heard of anyone actually refusing to show ID.

What would have happened if someone, perhaps someone who was actually a lawyer, had refused to show ID? What if they had refused until shown a legal warrant based on likely cause, and not one produced after the “troublemaker” was held illegally for several hours until such a warrant could be manufactured solely for the purpose of harassing said individual?

What would have happened if a whole plane full of troublemakers had said, “Fine, fuck you, either get out of our way or we’ll just stay on the plane.” And then every one of them started calling the ACLU and their own lawyers and started bringing lawsuits against CBP for unlawful detention and violation of their rights under the 4th Amendment?

Or maybe that one someone did protest and now someone’s wandering around JFK wondering where they went and why they’re not there to be picked up. If CBP decided to make an example of you for the “crime” of exercising your rights as a citizen and not taking their Gestapo bullshit, how long would it be before they even let you call a lawyer or a loved one to check in?

Drastic? Outrageous? Utter nonsense? Hysterical hyperbole?

Ask some of the people who were detained when Trump’s ill-conceived Muslim travel ban was put into place for two or three days a couple of weeks ago. Ask them how long they were kept isolated, without medication, without bathroom facilities, without a phone call, without legal counsel, without anything to eat or drink. And then some of them were illegally deported.

Ask them if it’s hysterical hyperbole.

It’s been just over a month since the fascists and white supremacists took over the White House and already it’s ordinary citizens, regular folks who just happened to be on the wrong plane at the wrong time, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, men, women, young, old, folks just like you and me, who are forced to decide to either give up their rights and submit in order to just get on with their day, or fight for their rights and be detained illegally for some unknown amount of time.

Hysterical hyperbole?

Read the last quote from the CBP in the Rolling Stone article.

Rolling Stone asked CBP to clarify whether the CBP document search was truly a “request” – or instead a legally binding demand by the agents. The spokesman again could not clarify CBP’s legal authority, warning only, “It is always best to cooperate with law enforcement, so as to expedite your exiting the airport in a timely manner.”

If we don’t stop it now, it’s going to be that much harder to stop it tomorrow.

They’re stripping civil rights away as fast as they can get away with it.

They’re doing their best to crash the US and world economies in order to give themselves and their billionaire patrons control of 99.9999% of the country’s wealth instead of only 99.99%.

They’re destroying education.

They’re destroying 70 years or more of political and military alliances.

They’re making our country the laughing stock of the world.

But what’s their focus on? What was today’s exercise in leadership? What passion burned in their gut to right which wrong?

Of course, it’s the grandest of causes, that most noble of endeavours. They had to make sure that grade school and high school trans kids are forced to go to the bathroom in the “correct” one.

And, of course, it’s done in the name of God and protecting the children from perverts.

Speaking of God, what would be my idea of heaven?

How about getting a front row seat to watch these fucking hypocritical, sanctimonious, perverted assholes answer for their sins and hatred – and answer to the God that Jesus talked about, not the hate mongering boogie man that their sick, twisted, and bigoted religions use to strike fear into the helpless.

That would be a good day.

There are some very creative and insulting (yet accurate, oh, so very accurate!) nicknames for our new White House resident.

From before the election, he’s been “The Trumpencritter” for me. It’s even gotten to the point on my phone where that’s the default auto-fill choice for “Tru.”

Several I saw in a thread on Twitter today:

• Mango Mussolini
• Wotsit Hitler
• Cheeto Jesus
• Lord Commander Marmalade
• Mangled Apricot Marmalade
• Cheeto von Tweeto (a strong contender!)

But the best alternative yet has to be:

SCROTUS – So-Called Ruler Of The United States

Remember, we have to keep our sense of humor. It doesn’t mean that we have to normalize or accept SCROTUS’s behavior or actions. Just that we want to be sane when we come out the other side, however and whenever that might be.

Approximately three-quarters of a billion people have commented on the irony, duplicity, and hypocrisy of the Trumpencritter bitching loud and long now about leaks from the intelligence community. Now it’s a disgrace because it’s providing proof of what an incompetent buffoon he is – then it was perfectly alright when he wanted to use the information to manufacture and spread bullshit about Obama.

I would like to point out something similar.

The conservatives are often the loudest proponents of advanced security measures, many of which are put into place on dubious grounds with a serious erosion or destruction of civil rights. Cameras, wire taps, back doors into computer systems, cell phone tracking without a warrant…

“If you’re not doing anything wrong,” they say, “then you won’t have anything to worry about!”

Ditto now for Trump. Regardless of whether or not these intelligence leaks are legal (they’re not) or moral (they’re really, really not), if Trump has done nothing wrong, hasn’t lied to us, and isn’t in fact selling out the entire country in order to bail himself out financially, then he has nothing at all to worry about from intelligence leaks.

Right? Isn’t that the way this works?

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Hello? Is this thing on?