Bastet

This from a FB friend. We used to be friends when we lived in NYC and then lost touch as we moved to different cities. I'm kind of pissed but I suppose I deserve it since the post isn't very tolerant. But seriously? Why do I have to tolerate people who support Pumpkin Spice Hitler? Why is it ok for the tone police to shit on me? I don't think I'm being terribly objective here, but I'm kind of annoyed. She's your friend, so you'd know better, but I read her response the opposite way you did. To me, she's being sarcastic and agreeing with you: She's mocking the position that it's being offended that's wrong, not being offensive. That it's despising hate and intolerance that's awful, not being hateful and intolerant.

Even Antonin Scalia, of all motherfuckers, said the Court's Korematsu decision (upholding the executive order forcing Japanese Americans into internment camps) was wrong.

Regarding the NSA Director's comments on WikiLeaks ("this was a conscious effort by a nation state to achieve a specific effect”), the closing paragraph of this short Jezebel article is sobering:

I encourage you to do it. I hate crowds, too, but demonstrations are my major exception to that. I remember my first one (in college), and the powerful, nearly euphoric feeling of being part of it. However many of them later, it still feels the same. It's a heady, positive experience, and there really isn't anything quite like it. (Not that there isn't anything that feels as good, or better, just that it's [at least to me] a unique set of feelings.) It has been a while since I've attended as a demonstrator (I think the last time was a protest against the invasion of Iraq); now, I'm generally there as a Legal Observer (or I'm not there, as I may wind up representing some of the demonstrators). But since this would be out of state, perhaps I'll go.

With good reason. He thinks the danger of pesticides is a myth conjured by "anti-chemical activists," for one thing.

I always think of one of my favorite moments from The West Wing. The Chief of Staff admonishes the White House Counsel for calling a Supreme Court Justice an idiot, telling him to practice some tolerance. The reply: "I believe as long as [fictional justice] is intolerant towards gays, lesbians, blacks, unions, women, poor people, and the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments, I will remain intolerant towards him." They've replaced the sign she was really holding (from the #Bring Back Our Girls Twitter campaign) with that one. (It has happened before --Know Your Meme entry.)

In general, I don't think you owe an explanation for why you're not attending, just a timely response that you're not. Now, if it's someone you're quite close with and it's an important event, it's natural to explain why you can't go, because it's a case where you'd be there if you could. But a random birthday outing? No obligations beyond a timely reply, so to explain or not explain (and with the truth or a "white lie") is entirely down to your preference.

Yeah, he apparently drained the swamp, took a look at the primordial lifeforms gasping for oxygen in the remaining sludge, and appointed them to Cabinet and advisor positions. This would all be a masterful manipulation of our national corporate-controlled media if wasn't so easy to do -- he delivers an acceptance speech that sounds remotely sane and inclusive and, never mind that one speech sounding nothing like what he's said the whole campaign, the media hops on this "wait and see/it might be okay" bandwagon, so he immediately reverts to lunatic form, but the media blares on with its normalization of his message and advisors via this "unity" bullshit, because to do otherwise would reveal they fell down on the job all along.

I thought I posted this last night, but I must have passed out in despair before I did. NOW (the National Organization for Women) issued a press release yesterday stating that "by appointing Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counsel, Donald Trump is elevating a leader of the 'alt-right' who has consistently denigrated women and trafficked in white nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic propaganda." After giving examples, NOW went on to call upon Trump to rescind this appointment and, "unless and until he does, we call on honest journalists everywhere to stop normalizing these men and report the facts as they are. Our democracy depends on you to tell the truth." Anyone think the corporate media will step up? Anyone, anyone? (Bueller?)

When my next-door neighbor started losing her hearing, she started whistling. Really loudly. (Impressively so; Guinness should perhaps have been contacted.) She wasn't fully aware of the fact she was doing it, and I liked her so much, but it drove me nuts. Our lots in this old neighborhood are long and narrow, so - while topography and walls mean we have completely private backyards - our houses are pretty close together, separated by just a little strip of garden space and a single-car driveway. When I had my windows open (which is most of the year), I could hear her whistling -- even if her windows were closed. I miss her, but I do not miss the whistling. (My late kitty Baxter hated whistling, and would leave the room if someone on TV started up; he'd have gone nuts if he'd still been around when she took up the habit.) Better than the guy who rented the house across the street for a brief time and fancied himself to be a drummer. He wasn't.

Greg Palast knows his stuff, and has uncovered all sorts of voter suppression in previous elections (I first read about him when he uncovered the more than 55,000 black voters in FL who were incorrectly identified as felons and thus improperly denied their right to vote/have their vote counted in 2000, but that's just one example from his career of investigative reporting; he's been sounding the alarm for a long time). I've set the article aside to digest properly tomorrow, but it's a must-read.

Scientific American reported on Trump's pick of Myron Ebell (and other anti-science nutjobs being appointed to the transition team) back in September. Surprise, not a peep in the mainstream media then.

This makes me think of Scream, when Sidney says all horror movies are the same: Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. (And then, of course, because it's Scream, she winds up running up the stairs a few minutes later.)

Add Joan Armatrading, Remy Zero, and Fleetwood Mac to the Save Me list.

Easier than trying to get it on the gums is just to get it between the gums and the cheek; you need to make sure it's absorbed rather than swallowed (because it would get almost immediately eaten up by digestive acid and never enter the bloodstream), so if you get the gum/cheek area of the mouth rather than the throat, you can congratulate yourself on a job well done. Horrible timing, and I understand why you're so overwhelmed; I, too, feel like one more thing right now would send me right over the edge. I hope you get some good news today, and will be checking for an update. Keeping you and the kitty in my thoughts!

Tonight's NewsHour was difficult to get through, and not for the usual reasons it's hard to stomach the news these days. As someone with a journalism degree from decades ago (who wound up going a different direction almost before the ink was dry for various reasons) and as someone with a desperate thirst for actual journalism in an era in which that's an increasingly precious commodity, I respected and appreciated Gwen Ifill. To not only get a brief recap of why that was, but to hear from those who knew and loved her as a person as well -- that was a tough broadcast during a tough time. I'm not generally one to have much more than the passing, "that's too bad" thought about the death of someone I didn't know personally, but this one is on the list of such losses that hurt.

Well, huh. Apparently all those years my dad had high-level security clearance (complete with Defense Dept. investigators regularly haunting our neighbors and friends to check that he had not violated any parameters that came with such a responsibility, and me having to clear international travel plans with the DoD) as the head of top-secret programs for a defense contractor, my mother and I should have been given such clearance ourselves. Instead, in a bizarre twist, my dad took his responsibilities seriously and kept his fucking mouth shut at the dinner table. (First day of school "and what do your parents do?" around-the-class discussions? I sounded like a goddamned moron who'd been accidentally enrolled in the honors section because I had so little description of my dad's job.)

I love that. Chester (one of my parents' cats) follows the sun all day long, no matter where that requires him to sleep.

Witch hunt after witch -- I mean, taxpayer-funded investigation after taxpayer-funded investigation found nothing to even charge her with, so there's nothing to pardon her for.

A few days ago, I said in an email that I need some mad scientist to create a programmable clone of Ruth Bader Ginsburg so that if she dies we can hide that fact and just send in the clone, and my friend wrote back that if she dies we'd need to Weekend at Bernie's her so I can ghost-write her opinions. So I'm sending her that manipulated screen-cap, thank you!

There's just enough room to crawl around, although crawl is generous, because sometimes instead of hands and knees it's more like dragging myself along by my forearms. Whenever anything requires me getting under the house or up into the attic space (where there is just enough room to crawl), I groan and wish I could teach the cat how to handle plumbing or wiring. At least what I needed to get to was right in between two access points; there are two on one side of the house and one on the other, so getting to something smack dab in the middle is a long crawl. That's usually when I offer my dad a hot dog and beer if he'll come do it for me, heh.

I think it's the pretzel part that sealed the deal, but this made me laugh out loud. The Sierra Club just launched an emergency campaign (and there's a dollar-for-dollar match going on); the executive director said in an email: I'm sure you heard it this weekend: we need to wait and see what Trump does. I'm here to say it. He has made his agenda crystal clear. There is no wait and see. We cannot wait and see how many gallons of oil spill in the Arctic Ocean. We cannot wait and see how many kids develop asthma from new coal plants. We cannot wait and see what happens when more people drink water contaminated by lead. We cannot wait and see how many endangered species go extinct from the impacts of expanded drilling and mining on public lands. We cannot wait and see how much temperatures rise from pulling out of the Paris Climate Deal.

Have I mentioned how much I hate plumbing? Anything else that needs to be fixed, it generally turns out to be what I expected it to be once I get into it (although I do, with annoying frequency, need to stop and fix a tool before I can use it to fix the problem). But plumbing? There is always something extra lurking. So after spending my entire morning fixing the problem I knew I had, I headed out to get something new I'd need to fix the extra problem I found, and discovered it would cost me as much to buy it as it would to hire a plumber. I'm annoyed, because it should <knock on wood> be a pretty straightforward job, but this would basically be a one-use item, so why I don't I just give the money to the plumber instead of the hardware store -- especially since my local one doesn't have what I need and I'd have to shop at Home Depot/Lowe's. It's the plumber I had replace all my old galvanized pipe with copper several years back (the only time I've had someone other than my dad do any plumbing for me), and I really liked him and his work, so I went ahead and booked him for tomorrow morning (at 8:30, ugh) so I could get some damn work done today and move on. So, anyway, peeves: one, plumbing problems being a pain in the ass, and, two, spending a couple of hours crawling around under my house and still not being done.

I, too, became concerned when she took time off for health reasons again, since she'd taken a leave earlier this year. And I knew it had to be quite serious for her to miss election night coverage. But I still let out a gasp when I read the news. She was one of my favorite journalists, and this is a big loss (and at such an important time!).

If those papers started doing their job now, they'd have to answer why they failed to do so during the campaign. This "unity" crap serves as a cover for them, and in normalizing Trump and his increasingly-frightening circle of advisers, they're continuing to fail the public.