Month: January 2017

In the hullabaloo about the recent allegations of Donald Trump’s wet and wild activities in Russia and whether the reports can be verified or not, we’re in danger of missing a couple of things — firstly, the opportunity to refer to him using an amazing pun: “The Micturian Candidate”.

It’s a play on words, borrowing from:

• The Manchurian Candidate: From the book and films (the first in 1962, and the 2004 remake) of the same name, which are about a presidential candidate who is unknowingly being programmed and installed by adversarial governments, and
• micturate: Another word for “urinate”. (See? I just added another word to your vocabulary!)

More importantly, the thing we should be really worried about is that the reports are about a cache of memos circulated about the intlleigence community that appear to show communications between officials in Vladimir Putin’s government and Trump’s campaign, the Russian government’s possession of “highly compromising” material on Trump, and Trump having been “cultivated” by Russian intelligence. The “golden showers” thing is just silly; if true, the signs that a capricious, narcissistic president-elect and his team are too chummy with, and possibly beholden to, a very aggressive, authoritarian, anti-democratic, and unfriendly regime are the real problem.

There’s another problem: If false, any reports of real wrongdoings by Trump and company — which are quite likely, given his connections and track record — could be all-too-easily dismissed.

Worth reading

I’m with Lawfare on this one: before reacting to the story — aside from taking advantage of an opportunity to come up with clever puns — slow down and take a deep breath.

As put in their blog:

We shouldn’t assume either that this is simply a “fake news” episode directed at discrediting Trump or that the dam has now broken and the truth is coming out at last. We don’t know what the reality is here, and the better part of valor is not to get ahead ahead of the facts—a matter on which, incidentally, the press deserves a lot of credit.

I recommend checking these out:

• Lawfare — About that Explosive Trump Story: Take a Deep Breath
• The Intercept — The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer

Trump report could all be false. But notion that Kremlin doesn’t engage in collecting compromising info does not, um, hold water. https://t.co/UxBbhxalWs

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) January 11, 2017

This comic may have been written with school group projects in mind, but I’ve been in similar situations where paychecks were involved. Most of the time, I was the firefighter…

Click the image to see it in its full 1970s glory.

The illustration above comes from Volume 3 of Understanding Human Behavior, a 24-volume series of books published in — as you might have guessed — 1974. I love the Lex Luthor / Joker purple-green color scheme in that office!

The cover for Volume 1 was pretty surreal:

Found at 70s Sci Fi Art via Merlin Mann.

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Someone please remind me why we even let Todd hang out with us in the first place.

Found via Steve Suckington.

The next four years will be terrible for all sorts of people in the U.S., but a gold mine for New Yorker cartoonists. This one was drawn by Emily Flake, who has a darkly amusing new book titled Mama Tried.

Click the photo to experience the Florida Dog story at full size.

Perhaps the Guerrero family were setting themselves up for trouble when they named their pit bull mix “Scarface” (but hey, it’s a very Florida name, so why not?), but they sealed the deal when they tried to put a sweater on the dog.

The dog was so upset with being made to wear a sweater that it took a lot to subdue it. In fact, it took so much that you could sing the list of measures to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas, starting with “5 gold rings”:

• A stabbing in the head and neck,
• a beanbag gun,
• a taser,
• a catch pole,
• …and a cartridge in a trank gun!

With the exception of a couple of relatively chilly days, it’s been a warmer-than-usual December here in Tampa. The last thing a dog here needs is a sweater.

Many people believe a lot of falsehoods about pit bull terriers, so it’s worth reading this article: Pit bulls — the myths, the legends, the reality.