The Vanish Armada

For over a week now, we've been told that a carrier task force led by the nuclear aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was heading toward the Korean peninsula as a show of force regarding North Korea's ballistic missile test launch. Incompetent buffoon Donald "Rump" Trump even referred to the task force as "an armada". The Beltway media stenographers and punditocracy took the bait, citing it as an example of Rump flexing America's military muscles toward North Korea.

Now, it appears that all of last week the task force was engaged in exercises with the Australian Navy, and was in the Sunda Straits in Indonesian waters last Saturday, and not headed toward the Sea of Japan some 3,500 miles away until earlier this week. As one news outlet charitably observed:

"It isn't clear yet whether the storyline about the Carl Vinson was the product of deliberate deception by the Navy, defense officials in Washington or the White House, or whether internal miscommunication within the government might have turned the snowball into the avalanche."

We'd surmise that it's a combination of deliberate deception and bumbling from Rump's White (Supremacist) House which keeps tripping on its shoelaces.

Rebel Smell

The "treason in defense of slavery" dirtbags are at it again, right in the home of secessionist treason, South Carolina. The Congressional seat of former Rep. and far-right nutjob Mick Mulvaney, now the OMB Director under neo-fascist incompetent Donald "Rump" Trump, is open and the Rethug candidate clown car there is full heading to a May 2 election. Hanging on to the roof of the car is one Sheri "Eww" Few, who is staking her candidacy on bringing the traitorous and racist Confederate flag back into the public square. For Eww, the flag's a symbol of a "war on history" and it's removal a sign of "political correctness," despite its historical and unequivocal association with racism, slavery and hatred. She identifies herself as an "anti-Establishment" Rethuglican (i.e. a TrumpChump), but her views also accurately reflect the position of white supremacist groups and far-right militia, who have incorporated the racist symbol into their insignia.

It's long past time that the flag of treason in defense of slavery be banished from public display. Let a few rot in museum cases, or thumb-tacked to Eww's bedroom walls and those of other redneck cretins. But get it out of the sight of the rest of us.

Trump's Expanding Legal Problems

The non-profit watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has amended its lawsuit against narcissist and ethics-flouting Donald "Rump" Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. The amended suit adds new plaintiffs, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, Inc. and Jill Phaneuf, a Washington, DC hospitality event booker, who are claiming that they've lost business to Rump's hotel in Washington, which has drawn foreign dignitaries and businessmen who are seeking influence with Rump. The Emoluments Clause prohibits Federal officials from receiving gifts and emoluments (i.e., a salary, fee or profit) form foreign entities. By staying in Rump's hotel, the foreign officials and businessmen are directly contributing to Rump's family business.

In addition, the lawsuit cites China's granting of trademark rights to Rump immediately after he announced support of the "One China" policy, in an apparent quid pro quo that will have a positive impact on his commercial interests in China.

The "me-first" corruption of the orange shitgibbon is out in full view, but he's banking on brazening it out as he has done with countless lawsuits in his past. He knows his cult following is with him to the bitter end, and that Congress fears his cult at the ballot box. It's up to the courts to bring him to heel.

Was He Waiting For The Russian National Anthem?

When you're so bad at being #POTUS, your wife has to remind you to respect the anthem.#EasterEggRoll #MAGA
pic.twitter.com/gkdrCZ58y4

— Keegan (@JohnDoe_997) April 17, 2017

Study: Racism A Main Factor in 2016 Election

We've noted before that the 2016 elections was not really about "economic anxiety" as it was racial resentment by low-information voters who responded to neo-fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump's xenophobic and racist rhetoric about Mexicans and Muslims. In the aftermath of the elections, the pent-up rage burst forth in a flurry of vandalism, attacks on minorities and other products of Rump's incitement.

Now, the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) says that the 2016 elections were indeed about racial hostility and xenophobia. The study, which has been done post-election since 1948, involved 1,200 participants, and gauged whether Rump voters were voting on the basis of Rump's authoritarianism or the underlying racial message he was sending in his speeches and comments. According to a key finding:

"Since 1988, we’ve never seen such a clear correspondence between vote choice and racial perceptions...Racial attitudes made a bigger difference in electing Trump than authoritarianism."

There are jobs being lost to automation and corporate cost-cutting, but the overwhelming number of Rump voters were not in the throes of economic distress; on the contrary, the median household income for Rump's core primary voters was $72,000. The media, looking for a narrative to explain his unexpected electoral college win, grabbed "economic anxiety" as their facile conventional wisdom, when in fact it had far more to do with his base's racial resentments toward minorities and immigrants.

Something To Hide

Tomorrow is the deadline for filing taxes (or an extention), and sociopath and Putin loyalist Donald "Rump" Trump will again to refuse to release his for the public, breaking four decades of Presidential precedent. His most recent refrain is that the public doesn't care and they voted for him anyway, even though a Global Strategies poll conducted April 5 - 9 indicted that 80% of Americans want Rump to release his tax returns, including 64% of Republicans.

Until recently, he's claimed that since the IRS is auditing his previous years' tax returns, he can't release them, a lie because the IRS has stated that there's nothing preventing him from releasing his taxes, audit or no audit. He's not able to use that dodge with his 2016 tax returns, since they're not under audit.

What's in Rump's tax returns that he's so willing to buck overwhelming public opinion? Loans and investments from Russian oligarchs or Chinese banks? Continued financial connections with mobbed-up individuals or companies? Creative bookkeeping to hide his income? Likely yes, yes, and yes, and more. Whether he gives to charity (himself probably through self-dealing foundations) or not would only be a further affirmation of his narcissism, greed and lack of empathy, so that's not it. He's hiding something that could cripple his hold on power. That's why we need disclosure and why he won't give it.

Photos Of The Day - California Superbloom

Thanks to an unusually wet winter in California (breaking the State's years- long drought), there's a "superbloom" of wildflowers emerging. The visuals are stunning (more here -- note WP advertising will drop in); all photos are by Robyn Beck/ Agence France- Presse via Getty Images.

(click on images to enlarge)

Virginia Tech: In Memoriam

Ten years ago today, a deranged shooter took the lives of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA. Each stone marker (pictured above) has the name of a victim of the mass killing. In the aftermath of the shooting, Virginia closed legal loopholes that had permitted mentally unstable people to legally purchase handguns. The Federal government moved to tighten up its National Instant Criminal Background Check System, unfortunately too late for the 32 slain innocents.

The community of Virginia Tech is committed to never letting the victims be forgotten, and have a website dedicated to them, where you can read their biographies and see their pictures. Heartbreaking.

(photo: Roanoke Times)

Across The Universe, Cont. - Starbursts!

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From NASA/ ESA, April 10, 2017:  Despite all efforts galaxy formation and evolution are still far from being fully understood. Fortunately, the conditions we see within certain galaxies — such as so-called starburst galaxies — can tell us a lot about how they have evolved over time. Starburst galaxies contain a region (or many regions) where stars are forming at such a breakneck rate that the galaxy is eating up its gas supply faster than it can be replenished!

NGC 4536 is such a galaxy, captured here in beautiful detail by the Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Located roughly 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), it is a hub of extreme star formation. There are several different factors that can lead to such an ideal environment in which stars can form at such a rapid rate. Crucially, there has to be a sufficiently massive supply of gas. This might be acquired in a number of ways — for example by passing very close to another galaxy, in a full-blown galactic collision, or as a result of some event that forces lots of gas into a relatively small space.

Star formation leaves a few tell-tale fingerprints, so astronomers can tell where stars have been born. We know that starburst regions are rich in gas. Young stars in these extreme environments often live fast and die young, burning extremely hot and exhausting their gas supplies fairly quickly. These stars also emit huge amounts of intense ultraviolet light, which blasts the electrons off any atoms of hydrogen lurking nearby (a process called ionisation), leaving behind clouds of ionised hydrogen (known in astronomer-speak as HII regions).

Credit:  ESA/Hubble & NASA

Sunday Reflection - Time To Decide

"Whatever comes next, there is nothing predestined about it. If America is to be saved, it won’t be because we are us. It won’t be because some columnist wrote soothing words. It will be because enough of us decided America was worth fighting for, and did." -- Leonard Pitts, Jr., in the Miami Herald, on America's time to decide. Please take a moment to read his entire op/ ed. It expresses so much of what so many of us think.

Bannon Vs. Kushner - Trump Chooses (UPDATED)

Saturday Night Live's cold open killed:



UPDATE: "Sean 'Spicy' Spicer" delivers "his" Easter/ Passover message:

Today's Cartoon Twofer - Trump's "Militant Ignorance"

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(Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press)


(David Horsey, Los Angeles Times)

Here are some excerpts from a good read by Josh Marshall on Rump's "militant ignorance":

... Trump told a reporter for The Wall Street Journal that his understanding of the problem of North Korea changed dramatically after hearing ten minutes of history from the President of China. Needless to say, Trump didn’t need to admit this. But neither was it candor. [snip] 

So far the Trump Presidency has been a sort of Mr Magoo performance art in which the comically ignorant Trump learns elemental or basic things that virtually everyone in the world of politics or government already knew – things that the majority of adults probably know. [snip] 

What is key though is to understand that this is not just ignorance. Ignorance is just the first stage of Trump’s fairly advanced problem. He is not only ignorant but clearly unaware of his level of ignorance. This is compounded by a seeming inability to understand that everyone else isn’t equally ignorant to him. Those of us who are parents know the wonder of discovery experienced by small children. They find out there were things such as dinosaurs or close primate relatives called lemurs. As loving parents we indulge them, sometimes feigning ignorance of things we actually already knew to support a child’s joy in discovery. 

But Donald Trump is a 70 year old man. And not a terribly nice man.

In fact, we would say a terribly bad man who isn't going to grow, change or "pivot" into a mature adult.

Cinderfella Demands A Golden Coach

This almost reads like a parody, if it weren't involving self- parodying narcissistic vulgarian Donald "Rump" Trump (The Times of London, via Hullabaloo):

Donald Trump waving from the Queen’s royal carriage is not a scenario many would have foreseen a year ago, but it has become a very real prospect, forcing security services to plan an unprecedented lockdown. 

The White House has made clear it regards the carriage procession down the Mall as an essential element of the itinerary for the visit currently planned for the second week of October, according to officials. 

Security sources have warned, however, that the procession will require a “monster” security operation, far greater than for any recent state visit. (our emphasis)

Why would a populist champion of the "Forgotten Man" want to ride in a golden carriage, you ask (not)?  Here's Rump's Trump Tower penthouse entrance way, as a reminder what his "style" is:


(Sam Horine, via Curbly)

Now, here's the Queen's royal carriage:


(Toby Melville/AFP/Getty Images)

Any questions?

It's impossible to imagine the Queen would want to be in such close quarters with the p*ssy- grabber- in- chief. Also, think of the cost of sanitizing and restoring the coach after Rump occupied it. Can we all hope, in the best of all worlds, he'll be out of office by October and save everyone the embarrassment?

In the meantime, this is a "coach" better suited to transport the shitgibbon -- it even has a "golden" roof (via Wonkette):

The Easter Dummy

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"Instead of eggs, you're going to look for lost balls in the water hazards"

For the seventh weekend since his inauguration, narcissist and pathological liar Donald "Rump" Trump has descended on his Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach to spend Easter weekend. As is widely known, each trip costs taxpayers an estimated $3 million, putting him on track to spend as much on personal time travel in one year as President Obama did in all eight years of his presidency. That's money that could be spent on worthwhile programs he's cutting. Every time Rump travels to his private club, he also gives it free advertising and boosts interest (memberships now cost double what they did a year ago), again raising familiar conflict of interest charges.

His constant travels to his Florida club also reveal his utter hypocrisy. During the campaign, Rump criticized Obama for taking vacations "when there's so much work to be done," adding:

"You're in the White House. What's better than the White House? Why these vacations?"

Why, indeed.

(cartoon: Paul Noth, The New Yorker)

White House Visitor Log Secrecy -- What Are They Hiding?

Proving once again that the only thing transparent in the regime of Putin puppet Donald "Rump" Trump is their utter lack of ethics, it was announced that the regime will not continue the policy of the Obama Administration of disclosing the names of visitors to the White (Supremacist) House. In announcing the rationale for the decision, the Trumpers cited "grave national security risks" (too late -- he's already in the Oval Office) and "privacy concerns," the grotesque hypocrisy of which has been nicely summarized in this tweet:

The same WH that just agreed to sell your browsing history won't disclose visits to WH to protect privacy of lobbyists. Swamp wins again. https://t.co/CaWgxxa8H4

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 14, 2017

The move has prompted at least one watchdog group to file a lawsuit to force the Rump regime to release the White House visitor logs.

We know why they're hiding the information (=cough= Swamp wins =cough=);  right now, we just don't know what specific shenanigans would be revealed.