Stride.

I had to work today. I’m not complaining. I walked through Market Square. It’s so sunny and warm. Going to a cookout. Taking a salad and a bottle of chilled white wine. Not sure which one is in the fridge but I’m sure it will go with everything. Listening to Babylon while I’m walking through the square to the bus and trying to feel my Cheerios. 

Hope your Fourth of July is fun and relaxing. See you then. 

Champion manspreader on the bus in semi-lotus position. Pay particular attention to how he maximizes surface area and daintily brings his feet together for the dismount. Style points for the unconventional use of color in the shirt and tie, while he uses his hand to modestly shield his junk from our prying eyes. Note that in this variation he is completely occupying the seats on the right side of the grab bar while also allowing his knee to intrude to the left of the grab bar, potentiating a knee to knee interaction. That kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident. No, that’s planning and strategy. 

Semi-rant: How come men carry their laptops around in chic little messenger bags while women damage their shoulder ligaments with big honkin’ lead weight bags?  

Let’s face it, men get lighter laptops with multiple turbo massively parallel CPUs and terabytes of RAM pushing Moore’s law to the edge so they’re razor thin, sleek and slide easily into the padded sleeve of those messenger bags with room to spare. Oh, yeah. 

We get the equivalent of IBM Selectras. 

Alright, I admit it, I have toy envy. 

Sounds about right.

I found this comment at WaPo in the Trump is social media troll thread that seems to be clairvoyant:

Scruffy10101

4:35 AM EDT

That is truly going to matter when Mueller’s report comes out showing Trump has committed treason and has committed financial crimes and he is going to start losing his Presidency and his fortune. He is going to have many many constitutional powers at his disposal at that moment. The only thing that will stop him will be his love of this country and his morality. In other words, things are going to get very very very bad within the next 6 months.

Some commenters are comparing Trump’s attacks on the press to what Erdogan is doing in Turkey. And how is that going?

The Republic of Turkey has jailed more than a hundred journalists since the failed coup last year. Kadri is one of the many slapped with the charge of helping terrorist organisations and being a coup conspirator. “I mean, everyone knows these charges are frivolous, everyone does. Kadri has been arrested because he is critical of the government. Always has been, always will be,” says Nazire. According to a report released by the Council of Europe and compiled by Cumhuriyat, 87% of journalists in Turkey feel targeted. Seventy-two percent experience threats from the police, 64% from political groups and 51% admit to self-censorship and reporting events less critically.

Frank Rich at the NYTimes suggested in a recent interview on Trumpcast that Trump’s presidency will unravel under the ongoing FBI investigation.  It’s just going to take time. 

In the meantime, the press will be under siege. With journalists getting body slammed and bullied like they have been recently, it’s starting to get very ugly, very fast. It’s beginning to feel like a summer campaign, almost like it is being planned and executed. 

“Democracy Dies in Darkness”

Begging for it.

I had a couple of good essays bouncing around in my head. All week, I’ve been pocketing away articles from various sources about the root causes for why some people support Trump. I had one for the working class perspective, the women’s perspective and the 01%’s perpective, which I think is the most interesting of all because it’s becoming clear to me that the super wealthy aren’t motivated by the prospect of a tax cut. No, it’s something much more insidious and rapacious than that. I suspect it goes back almost a thousand years. 

And then there was the matter of Kris Kobach’s request for the personal identifying information for every voter in every state in the country, and PA’s governor Tom Wolf’s tart “go fuck yourself” letter in response was orgasmic. 

But none of that happened today. I admit that I get distracted, as I am likely to do these days. My mind is elsewhere. I can’t help it. But even if I had carried through with all of those proposed posts, they would have been drowned out by the cacophony stirred up by this:  

Dear Trump voters, you really don’t want to go down this road. There is a Rubicon and we are at it. Tolerance of this behavior is like taking one step over that Rubicon. You know, the river Julius Caesar had to cross to become Emperor? Defying the Republic and forcing Pompey to flee?  No?  Go download Rome on HBO. At least the sex will keep your attention. (Or not, as the case may be. There are a LOT of sex scenes.)

Anyway, it looks to me like Donald is begging for someone to declare him mentally unfit. He had only one job and all that. He should be allowed to resign and go play golf. This White House gig is over his head and his ratings are down. 

There are a lot of very bad things in store for all of us if he’s not forced to step down over this. Ok, sure, life isn’t going to be any better under Pence. But at least Pence is the devil we know. 

We can’t function effectively as a nation when a man child with this little self control thinks he’s an emperor. 

He needs a psych evaluation. Like, yesterday.