Undisclosed Location.

I’m recreating this weekend. I need relaxation and no stress. Cell service is non-existent. Had to pick up some groceries so I have access to wifi briefly. Going back into the woods shortly.  Lamb tonight. 

Tonight is Beltane Eve. It starts at sundown. Light a new fire. The rules don’t say you can’t use butane. 

May your May Queen find her Green Man. 

Florida Correspondent Biff

The entire US Senate was flown today to Mar-a-Lago, the “White House South” in Palm Beach, Florida, for a presentation by Secretary of State Rex “King” Tillerson and Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis about the growing dangers of North Korea and it’s belligerent leader, Kim Jong-Un.

Republican senators travelled on Airforce One, while Democrats were ferried via the President’s personal Trump Force One jet. Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner remained in Washington to direct the “alternative White House”.

While meetings of the senior cabinet and the entire senate are rarely hosted at the White House, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, “It’s really hard to book a conference room in this town. It seems like Jared or Ivanka have them permanently filled. This was the only place we could find a SCIF.” 

A SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, is a clean room that has been dusted for bugs and wiped free of viruses and germs. 

“This is the first time I remember anything like this. In my congressional career there’s never been a similar type of a meeting held at the White House that I’m aware of,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). “And they served the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen,” he said, complementing the gracious hospitality always provided by the Trump Organization.

In addition to the introduction by the President and the main presentations, Chairman of the JCS Joseph Dunford and DNI Dan Coats also briefed the senators. The presentations, said one of the Republican attendees, were mostly “at the 30,000 foot level, short on the specifics. Because we really don’t want to give away our plans. I mean, why would you tell the enemy that, right?” It was unclear whether the senator was referring to the North Koreans or the Democratic senators in attendance. 

“I didn’t hear anything new,” said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It’s good to get everyone together! I can’t wait to get back and vacation here!” added Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker (R-TN).

“I really enjoyed seeing The Interview on the flight back,” said one of the Democratic attendees. “Seth Rogan is such a funny guy. Maybe he will run after Franken retires. ”
— Biff

Looking Into The Future

“Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.”
–Desmond Tutu

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John Oliver unpacks Ivanka and Jared Kushner.

I remember when we used to force “family businesses” out of countries for the benefit of their citizens. Do Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos ring a bell? How about Baby Doc and Michelle Duvalier?

just sayin’.

Go outside, BiFF

You can binge on Game of Thrones tonight. 

It’s nice out there. I’m headed to Highland Park reservoir to work on my blonde. 

I’ll mulch later…

Papa Bear on his way out?

New York Magazine says Bill O’Reilly is being pushed out at Fox:

Sources briefed on the discussions say O’Reilly’s exit negotiations are moving quickly. Right now, a key issue on the table is whether he would be allowed to say good-bye to his audience, perhaps the most loyal in all of cable (O’Reilly’s ratings have ticked up during the sexual-harassment allegations). Fox executives are leaning against allowing him to have a sign-off, sources say. The other main issue on the table is money. O’Reilly recently signed a new multiyear contract worth more than $20 million per year. When Roger Ailes left Fox News last summer, the Murdochs paid out $40 million, the remainder of his contract.

I know, you’re probably all torn up about it. 

A couple of names have been floated as his replacement, like Dana Perino and Tucker Carlson. I don’t think either one of them is going to work. 

Billo’s thing was he was a Harvard educated (source of authority), older guy with sex appeal. Yeah, I don’t get it either but that’s what I heard from some long time fans. Also, he is a “godly man” according to someone I used to work with. 

You know, you need to remember to breathe during a laughing fit. 

Anyway, Tucker doesn’t exactly rock the bow tie and Dana lacks a penis, I think. 

But don’t worry, Fox probably has another obnoxious, lying blowhard on the bench. Wait and see. It can always get worse. 

What fresh Hell?

Read this piece (of work) from Chris Cilizza at CNN if you can stomach it. He interviews two guys (they’re ALWAYS guys) who place the blame on Hillary for the fact that we got Trump and nothing but hard ass Republicans for as far as the eye can see. 

Let’s break it down point by point, shall we?  

1.) The data analytics were off. Yes!  They were!  Nate Silver at 538 said in about August that there was a lot of volatility in the model. For whatever reason, the model was not behaving as expected. He started to push the panic button just about the time the Comey letter came out. Put that together with the volatility and that suggests that any flap of a butterfly wing somewhere in Venezuela was going to have an outsized effect on the polls. 

Yes, the MEDIA expected her to win. That’s why they carelessly kept dumping on her. Journalists, like many Americans, can not interpret data. They need to learn so this doesn’t happen again. But, hey, it was so much fun to beat her up, amirite?  

2.) Her campaign was in disarray. I saw no evidence of that as a volunteer, even though I think it underestimated the technical capabilities of its campaign volunteer staff and relied too heavily on paper. 

But the authors seem to have this idea that the chaos in Clinton’s campaign was worse than in Trump’s campaign. I don’t know where they’re pulling this information. After all, Trump recast his Campaign manager THREE TIMES during the summer.  I don’t remember Clinton doing that. 

So, you know, there’s that. 

3.) Robbie Mook should have resigned because Hillary did a bad, bad thing with her email server. 

What??  

It was worse than colluding with the Russians to hack the DNC, flood Facebook with fake news stories and failing to release tax returns?  In what universe?  The Trump campaign was being investigated by the FBI, unbeknownst to the rest of us. But we just HAD to know what was in Clinton’s emails?  

Someday, we’re going to have to have a discussion about trust and how badly the media has defined that word. 

The whole interview is stupid, the book’s authors appear to have an agenda and, no doubt, there will be viewers and readers who will feel like their worst suspicions are confirmed. 

It still boils down to the best candidate who has run for decades who was also a woman was forced to concede to the worst candidate we have ever had who happened to be a man. This despite having won more votes than he did and being more honest than he’ll ever be. 

This is the world we live in. 

Take us out, Gillian

Hope your Easter was warm, green and delicious. Now is the time to think about all the nice things that happened today, put them beside you when to sleep, and look forward to the next week.

Fear no nightly noises.

Happy Easter!

To all you Christians out there, “He is risen indeed!”

Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus is a Easter favorite and one of my own personal favorites since I learned it in concert choir, along with All We Like Sheep, with its killer runs, and the fugue And With These Stripes We Are Healed. 

It is customary to stand during the Hallelujah. The legend behind this is that King George II stood during a performance, probably for a 7th inning stretch. The Messiah is a long piece and the Hallelujah doesn’t happen until near the end of it. Etiquette demanded that when the king stood, everyone had to stand. So, now we all do. 

There are certain pieces of music that are a joy to sing. Mozart’s Te Deum has a fast and furious fugue with a dramatic pause at the end that’s almost orgasmic, which might be why he was always in trouble with the archbishop. Sacred music is full of beautiful phrasing to satisfy the singer. Handel’s Hallelujah is no exception like right where the piece turns from “lord of lords, and he shall reign”.

Our director used to say “let it dance!” just before the music began. So, get up and dance, sing if you know it, just hum along if you don’t. 

Blowing S#^+ Up.

Have you seen this video of the  30′, 20,000 lb MOAB we dropped on an encampment in Afghanistan?

I feel badly about posting that. That was not survivable. Whatever you may feel about the targets, we shouldn’t forget that dozens of lives were snuffed out in an instant.

I worry that seeing videos like this will numb us to the reality of killing people. We’re the most powerful country on the planet and it would be trivially easy for us to just bomb everyone we don’t like into submission.

There are two problems with this: 1.) it tends to piss dangerous people off and 2.) where do we stop?  Dropping big bombs and drone warfare can make us even more of a threat because it comes at relatively little risk for us. We have no “skin in the game”.  That should be deeply troubling to anyone

Other countries are starting to take notice of our recklessness. China is now raising its voice over the way Trump is stirring up tensions between North and South Korea. We could end up causing the deaths of thousands of Koreans. China’s foreign minister is surprisingly blunt:

“The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent, and there have been storm clouds gathering,” China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in Beijing, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

“If they let war break out on the peninsula, they must shoulder that historical culpability and pay the corresponding price for this,” Mr. Wang said.

This is especially stupid if, as that article points out, North Korea has nowhere near the capacity to launch a nuke at the United States. All the fearmongering on our side sounds like the same lies the Bush administration used to get us into war with Iraq. Remember how Saddam Hussein supposedly had the ability to rain WMD’s on us in 45 minutes all the way from Baghdad?  Turns out that wasn’t even remotely true.

But, hey, they’re over there, far away from us. All we need to do is apply all the force at our disposal to subdue those North Koreans. At least we’re doing something because someone needed to do something sometime to someone and what the hell do we have all these bombs and stuff for if we’re never going to use it, amirite??
I’ll be the first to criticize the Obama administration for not getting involved in Syria much earlier when intervention might have spared that country 5 years of devastating civil war. It’s a little late for that now. The damage is done, the players too compromised. We have major regional instability.

But blowing shit up is not always the answer to every problem. And the world hasn’t changed geographically. The choke points that were major theaters of war in WWII haven’t moved. The eastern Mediterranean, South China Sea, South Pacific  and the North Atlantic are still vulnerable areas of the world. We can’t just keep dropping bombs everywhere because it makes a bunch of clueless male Trump supporters hard.  Is that what it takes to feel like a man these days?  Really??

Those are real people under those drones.

For more on how masculinity is defined by each party, as well as why Steve “Thomas Cromwell” Bannon doesn’t stand a chance with the aristocracy, listen to TrumpCast’s So Many Men episode with NYT’s Frank Bruni. 

Bottom line: Republicans can get away with this stupid macho posturing whether they’re soft, tanning bed idiots or not. Trump wants to be a Putin but he keeps appointing well dressed rich men to his administration. Democrats better up their macho because there are some voters out there who are sucked into the Republican manly man ideal every time.

If there’s going to be any blowing things up, let’s start with the ridiculous idea that a bunch of guys sitting from the comfort of their armchairs are going to be able to overthrow the government with their silly underpowered pop guns.

They’ve obviously never been to a protest these days.

But I have.  I’ve seen what they’ve got in store for us.

The government can crush you like a bug.

Compulsory Work Reception Centers and the What’s Wrong With the FBI??

The reason why Trump voters are not our favorite people is because we have to listen to stupid shit Sean Spicer says:

 

Holocaust Centers? He makes it sounds like the reception area of a compulsory agritourism resort. This isn’t right. It isn’t even wrong. It’s just bad.

We probably don’t need to cater to the Trump voter anymore. It’s not a hate thing. It’s just pointless to try to talk to people who think that just about anything is acceptable anymore because reasons.

They are not special.

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Meanwhile, back at the FBI, The Washington Post reports this afternoon:

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.

This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

So, let’s recap.

The Trump campaign was under investigation and Trump advisor Carter Page’s communications were being monitored, last summer.

Not a peep from the FBI.

Hillary’s email turned out to be a nothing burger and the Comey letter 11 days before the election likely did her in among voters who for some reason can’t evaluate candidates based on their merits.

For this we are saddled with Trump and a slew of Republicans for four years and we have just had a Supreme Court justice stolen from us to be replaced with a guy who believes in Natural Law. He’s to the right of Scalia.

And Obama said… nothing.