Wednesday – In The Eye of the Stormy Daniels and other Sketchy Nonsense

Reposted at Really? Seriously?

Good morning from my Hunker-Bunker overlooking the Puget Sound in West Seattle. It is 0643, 44°F and sunny, with an expected high of 62°F and mostly sunny. My cat is on her perch, snoring beside me. She’s setting the proper example.

I didn’t do fuck-all yesterday. It was wonderful. I heard nothing from outside my walls. No news, no emails, no frantic calls from work. I probably should have been doing some work on my SQL project, but I needed a break from having to think in logical terms. I needed an escape — into the streaming boob-tube world. At some point, I woke up with the Roku screensaver, and kinda remember leaving my theater room and heading into my bedroom, where I woke up this morning at 0300 to shit, shower, and shave my head. Made a fine breakfast of three scrambled eggs over a small bed of arugula, with a scoop of guacamole and a light sprinkle of pico de gallo. A few Frito Lay corn chips on the side to round it off.

Don’t get the wrong idea: My healthy eating is mostly hit and miss. I could have grabbed a couple of frozen pancakes out of the freezer and gone the carb route. But my scale was telling me a different story this morning. I need to fast for the rest of the day. (I’m so reactionary…)

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the news is so gross that you feel you need your own PPE to even handle it?

Well, today is one of those days. Trust me, I did NOT go out of my way to be exposed to the top ‘news’ from yesterday. Every media source and platform was filled with graphically-excessive, play-by-play descriptions of the sexual relationship of … I vomit a little in my mouth even mentioning the two names together. There are some visuals that take way too long to scrub from your mind…

Glove up, let’s get going…

Headlines That Caught My Eye This Morning

Item 1: Trump’s Stormy Weather

I will be perfectly honest with you here: Much of the details were public six or seven years ago, so I have not bothered to read the current stories I’ve helpfully provided for you hear. The less I recall, the better I will be, and my suggestion is that you don’t open and read them either.

Save yourself. The headlines are more than enough of a warning.

Where is Melania? Oh, the palace intrigue! The gossip and theories abound. Honestly? Who cares? She’s smart enough to not want to have anything to do with any of this shit. All she has to do is endure a couple of more years…

Now about the sketch “scandal”.

What is wrong with this sketch? It looks fine to me. It’s a fucking sketch, not a portrait. It’s not supposed to be flattering.

People bitch about the stupidest things…

There is just something about this court sketch that screams to me, “I belong in the Smithsonian!” When can I buy a print! #TrumpTrial #Trump #StormyDaniels #Stormy pic.twitter.com/kb0CRB8OBs

— Chris Ho (Blue Checkmark) (@chrishophoto) May 7, 2024

Courtroom sketch artist rendition of Stormy Daniels on the stand pic.twitter.com/u1hmqkIpK8

— Amanda Corsin (@amandaaaaaz) May 7, 2024

Item 2: Nikki Haley Pulls 22% of Republican Votes in Indiana

Trump getting 78% of the Republican vote is a ‘fantastic’ number in a race with three or more candidates, but if the race is only between two people, and one of those people hasn’t been in the race for almost three months, for him to get ONLY 78% of the PARTY vote means that potentially there are almost a quarter of the party that will either not vote or vote for Biden. Is it enough to lose a reliably-Red state?

Item 3: US paused shipment of weapons to Israel to head off Rafah invasion-official

Given the fact that the US has already given Israel a ‘record amount’ of weapons and ammunition since the October 7th 2023 Hamas attack, they may not even notice the delay. The key word here being “delay”.

To be perfectly honest here — knowing that it will piss a few of you off — I’m glad we ‘delayed’ this shipment. While Israel has a right to defend itself from attack, and we have a duty to step in and help defend Israel against such attacks, we should NOT be involved in Israel attacking other groups of people or nations as a general rule. Our support is massive, but it isn’t unlimited nor should it ever be taken for granted. As such, nor should our advice on how or where to use the weapons and ammo we are providing be ignored.

If the US — and frankly most of the world — is telling Israel to cool their jets and not continue with their plans for attacking the last corner of Gaza, then Israel has two choices: either pause/stop, or continue on and have their supplies restricted or cut until they get the message that there are strings involved here and that we have control on those strings, even if we’ve allowed a lot of it to be played out.

Biden is just sending a much-needed reminder as to who the daddy is in this relationship.

Item 4: Joe Biden Is the Least Popular President in 75 Years

He ain’t high on my popularity list either. I really don’t care if a president is “popular”. They aren’t supposed to be high school jocks and cheerleaders, for fuck’s sake. The fact they can fill an arena doesn’t mean they are up to doing the actual job of being an effective POTUS.

Item 5: Ottawa approves British Columbia’s request to make public drug use illegal again

We just moved the last of our stuff out of British Columbia.

Item 6: TikTok Sues The US Government

“Obviously Unconstitutional”.

Without a doubt. But if this Rightwingnut Court eventually upholds the law, then free speech will be gone.

Item 7: R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain

A dead, brain-eating worm?

Sounds like it starved to death…

Item 8: Desperate for Workers but Dead Set Against Migrant Labor: The West Virginia Dilemma

“Migrants are taking away our jobs!”

I know there are a lot of coders and other tech workers suddenly looking for work. My neighbor, for example, used to work as an electrician, then became a coder for a game company. The bottom just dropped out and all these tech companies are shedding employees. He’s one of them. He’s going right back into the trades while he still can.

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