Category: Uncategorized

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Congressman Rod Blum in a Dubuque town hall (Monday) night asked, ‘Why should a 62-year-old man have to pay for maternity care?’

I ask, why should I pay for a bridge I don’t cross, a sidewalk I don’t walk on, a library book I don’t read?

Why should I pay for a flower I won’t smell, a park I don’t visit, or art I can’t appreciate? Why should I pay the salaries of politicians I didn’t vote for, a tax cut that doesn’t affect me, or a loophole I can’t take advantage of?

It’s called democracy, a civil society, the greater good. That’s what we pay for.” ~ Barbara Rank, Hidden Oaks Court, Dubuque

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From Salon.com:

We’ve reached a magical time in the great story unfolding before us, the time when everybody knows that Trump is guilty, but the verdict is not yet in. I remember exactly how it happened in the Watergate story, when everybody knew Nixon was guilty of ordering the break-in at the DNC headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex and supervised the cover-up, but evidence sufficient to prove his guilt wasn’t yet available. Guilty men lie, and lie repeatedly. Their early lies beget later lies; their little lies beget bigger lies; their implausible lies beget extraordinary lies; they tell more and more outrageous lies as their day of reckoning closes in. It was true of Nixon and now it’s true of Trump. The lies multiply, they become ever more far-fetched, and finally the day arrives when lying doesn’t work anymore. We’re there with Trump. He lies practically every time he takes a breath, but his lies aren’t working anymore. He’s choking from lack of oxygen. He’s a dead man lying.

(continue)

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…it will work out the same way for him.

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…of the legitimacy of what this article is reporting. It was forwarded to me last night by a friend and I’m unfamiliar with the particular source, so it could be nothing more than some fever-fantasy (one that, admittedly, is shared by millions of my fellow Americans), or it could be truth. I don’t like spreading idle gossip on this here blog thingie, but this idle gossip made my heart flutter a little and gave me hope that our national nightmare may be coming to an end.

From Patribotics:

Several sources familiar with the matter say that Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is being given security briefings to prepare him for the Presidency.

Sources close to the legal community indicate that matters are proceeding rapidly in the forthcoming proceedings to remove Donald Trump from office, and to indict the co-conspirators around him.

Sources with links to the intelligence community described a sense of both inevitability and urgency over the unraveling of the Trump-Pence administration over their attempts to obstruct justice. “Trump’s presdidency ended May 9th,” said one source, referring to the overtly politicized dismissal of FBI Director James Comey.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence have both violated their oaths of office in plain sight over the unconstitutional dismissal of Director Comey, these sources say, and elements of the Judicial Branch are asserting the separation of powers described in the Constitution. This matter is separate from, and additional to, the substantive charges of collusion with the Russian state, and of money-laundering, sedition, violation of the Logan Act, and other crimes with which both Trump and Pence may be charged. As I exclusively reported earlier this week, Speaker Paul Ryan, normally third in the line of succession, will be excluded as the intelligence community has an intercept in which Ryan openly admits that he knew Sergei Kislyak was washing Russian money into the GOP. This will convict Ryan on RICO charges; as I have also exclusively reported this week, a RICO case exists against the GOP as a body. The raids earlier this week on a data and consulting firm close to Paul Manafort formed part of evidence gathering in this RICO case.

Some of the violations committed this week by Pence and Trump include, but are not limited to, lying that Director Comey told Mr. Trump he was not being investigated; explicitly connecting Trump’s firing of Comey to the investigation of his connections with Russian hacking; using White House spokesmen knowingly to lie to the public, for example, Sarah Sanders Huckabee claiming Comey “committed atrocities”; having the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, involve himself on a matter on which he was recused; explicitly stating that the White House wishes a new FBI Director to bring the Russia investigation to a conclusion; and witness tampering with threats to Director Comey.

As a result, sources say, steps are being taken by aspects of the Judicial Branch to preserve the constitutional Separation of Powers and these steps include ensuring a smooth transition of power. In order that Senator Hatch, the fourth in line, be ready to assume the duties of the office he will shortly be undertaking, several separate sources with links to the matter, report that the Senator is receiving copies of security briefings he will need upon becoming President.

There will be further reporting on this breaking story later today.

Now admittedly Orrin Hatch would not be my first choice to replace 45, but if this is what is required to remove the rot in the White House, I’m all for it.

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“If the Earth were really flat, cats would’ve pushed everything off it by now.”

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So now even Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell are getting caught up in the Russian web. This is priceless—I’d like to see all of them frog marched out of office. It would correct one of the major blunders of the 21st century.” ~ Truthspew

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It’s only taken four decades for the light to come on, but it finally did.

It was on the occasion of my 19th birthday, and several of the friends from Tucson I’d made since coming out at the start of my second semester away at school made the trek up to Phoenix to help me celebrate.

As I was now of drinking age and could finally legally go out to the pubs, the biggest question was where to go?

The decision was unanimous—and it was to become my favorite watering hole/dance-my-ass-off venue for the next two years. It was a cavernous place on the east side of 16th Street, tucked up against the canal just south of Indian School Road that went by various names as it kept reinventing itself (or changing owners). That first night—and for probably a year or so thereafter, I believe it was going by the name Moon’s Truck. Then one night out of nowhere I arrived at the door to see it had became HisCo. Disco. (The order of those names could be reversed. Cut me some slack; it’s been nearly four decades!) All I know is that anyone who’d been going there for any length of time simply referred to it as Maggie’s and regardless of what the sign on the outside of the building said, that’s what we called it.

Anyhow, one of the great mysteries of my life had always been that name: Moon’s Truck. Never made a lick of sense to me or anyone else. Whereas The Connection (which became my preferred place to pick up men in the early 80s) had an actual Mac Truck parked within the building, Maggie’s had no such claim. And Moon? What was that all about?

Well today, while going down the Internet rabbit hole and trying to find something—anything—about the place, it finally dawned on me:

Moon’s Truck = Moonstruck

I can be so dense sometimes.

And I still couldn’t find a thing.

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What if Barack and Michelle were never on vacation, but were out destroying Steve Bannon’s horcruxes?

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January 1984.
My future husband was six months old when this was taken. Let that sink in.

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Gillian Anderson as the goddess Media in American Gods, my new obsession.

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This view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is the sharpest ever taken of belts of the features called propellers in the middle part of Saturn’s A ring.

The propellers are the small, bright features that look like double dashes, visible on both sides of the wave pattern that crosses the image diagonally from top to bottom.

The original discovery of propellers in this region in Saturn’s rings (see Four Propellers, Propeller Motion​, Locating the Propellers​) was made using several images taken from very close to the rings during Cassini’s 2004 arrival at Saturn. Those discovery images were of low resolution and were difficult to interpret, and there were few clues as to how the small propellers seen in those images were related to the larger propellers Cassini observed later in the mission (for example ‘Earhart’ Propeller in Saturn’s A Ring, Cassini Targets a Propeller in Saturn’s A Ring​, and Bleriot Propeller Close-up​).

This image, for the first time, shows swarms of propellers of a wide range of sizes, putting the ones Cassini observed in its Saturn arrival images in context. Scientists will use this information to derive a “particle size distribution” for propeller moons, which is an important clue to their origins.

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In case you haven’t seen it…

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I don’t really have to write anything about the events of the last 24 hours, do I? Y’all know what’s going on.

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…who voted to repeal the ACA:

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But after seeing this I’m looking forward to it. Nothing will ever match the original, but damn this looks good.

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What. The. Fuck.

I’ve come away from the last two episodes of the third and final season of The Leftovers feeling like I’ve been on some sort of mind-bending field trip that—coupled with the Alice Through the Looking Glass world we’re actually currently living in—leaves me believing the events of this series could actually happen; and in fact that we’re on the verge of them happening. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

As if the first two seasons of world-building with the whole off-kilter millions-of-people-spontaneously-disappearing and humanity’s reaction to it weren’t enough, in the third and final act of this story we’re now watching Kevin Senior’s trek through the Australian outback in search of spiritual enlightenment and Kevin Junior continuing to see people who may or may not be there. We know something huge is coming…or is it? All I can say is “What the fuck, HBO? How are you reaching so deeply into our anxiety-ridden collective subconscious and pulling this shit out?”

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While looking over old posts I’m discovering that not only are many of the music-related YouTube videos I’ve posted now missing, so are quite a few other, seemingly copyright-innocuous ones as well. I’ve thought about actually posting the names of the videos under them on future posts—allowing me to readily locate other versions should they disappear—but I think the only way around the problem of the disappearing ‘tubes is to download the videos and post them directly. Cumbersome, yes, but it makes sure they’re still available years from now…

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