Twelve Plus Eight Equals Too Much

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Jimmah had his peanuts; Ronnie had his jellies. Trump has aspartame and teeveeeee (in rather extreme quantities).

12 cans of Diet Coke per day!

President Donald Trump drinks roughly 12 cans of Diet Coke every day, according to a lengthy New York Times profile about how he grapples with the daily demands of the presidency.

Trump is famous for his voracious consumption of cable news and tendency to fire off impulsive tweets when he’s displeased with the way he’s portrayed in the media. According to the Times report, the only people allowed to touch the TV remote are Trump and the technical support staff. The Times said the president watches up to eight hours of TV per day.

4 – 8 hours of the plug-in drug!

People close to Trump told The New York Times that Trump spends at least that much time in front of a TV each day, and sometimes spends as many as eight hours watching television.

The Times reports that Trump begins each day around 5:30 a.m. by turning on CNN before quickly flipping to Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” He occasionally watches MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” because it works him up, Trump’s friends told the Times.

Wow…

This, being about 7 times my annual consumption of these things – each day!, may explain all the Tweets.

Anyway, to each his own. At least the man smokes a good cigar after a nice, rare steak. Oh, wait….

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Patheos.

Failed Terror in NYC: Put That in Your Pipe Bomb and Smoke It

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Another day in the Big Apple, another visit from ISIS. Luckily, this one – all the way from Bangladesh (via Brooklyn) – was incompetent. I always get the sulfur/charcoal/saltpeter ratio mixed up. You?

Taxi driver and/or electrical worker and/or homicide enthusiast, Akayed Ullah, arrived at NYC’s main bus terminal early this morning on a mission. Seems his plan was to detonate a homemade bomb in the middle of rush hour. The device had other ideas, detonating prematurely and pitifully. *POOF!*

The explosion happened around 7:20am, in an underground tunnel linking the Port Authority Bus Terminal to Times Square.

The suspect, identified as 27-year-old Akayed Ullah, took the A subway train to Port Authority, got off and was walking east towards Times Square when a ‘low-tech’ explosive attached to his body with Velcro and zip ties partially exploded.

A photo from the scene shows Ullah crumpled up on the ground of the tunnel as police took him into custody. He was then rushed to Bellevue Hospital to be treated for serious burns and cuts to his abdomen and hands. Jack Collins, Sean Gallagher and Anthony Manfredini have been identified as the hero Port Authority Police officers who took Ullah into custody.

Three other people were also injured in the blast for minor injuries like ringing in the ears and headaches. But they were able to talk themselves to local hospitals.

Crafty New Yorkers: talking themselves to the ER: probably on the cellular.

Many speculate he was angered over the recently announced plan to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This would fit with the general reaction of many in his home country, Hamas, and various American and European liberals. He told police he wanted revenge.

Akayed Ullah, 27, who is from Bangladesh and was living in Brooklyn, told authorities he was trying to exact vengeance for Israeli actions in Gaza — where four Palestinians have been killed amid violent protests and airstrikes since President Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel last week, police sources told CNN.

Of course, per my First Law of Terrorism, Ullah was on someone’s radar before today. At the very least they had to look, glancingly, at him seven years ago when he tagged along behind … whomever from Bangladesh.

The miracles of post-1965 chain migration never cease. Car 54, where are you?

An added benefit was that, once again, Americans were treated to seeing their streets look like some Banana Republic:

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Perceived security – after the fact. Daily Mail.

Friends, as terrible as this incident was, there is still time to act. That is, if we have the will. We can (and should) ban “assault-style” pipes. I’ve been a hunter for over 30 years and I can tell you that no sportsman needs a pipe. Your pipe will be useless (and pretty silly) going up against an Abrams tank or a nuclear carrier. Only the military needs “hi-capacity” pipes of this nature. Maybe plumbers…

One can’t help but note that I called for banning pipes almost a year and a half ago. I also called for a ban on buses – no buses, no pipe attack at the bus station!

Better to ban these hateful objects of hate that, say, civic nationalism and terrorists.

Drunk and Dangerous: Life in DC

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Two surveys of note came out recently.

The first measured drinking, heavy drinking, and binge drinking around the USA. Unsurprisingly, the District of Corruption (considered as a “state”) came in first for heavies and bingers.

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Detox.net/CDC.

And, in not unrelated news, the District (counted as a city) is just plain dangerous.

Washington ranked 166 out of 182 large cities/metros surveyed. This, despite being tied for first place (with NYC, Philly, and St. Louis) for the highest number of cops per capita.

Mordor on the Potomac has been dismal for decades. However, the standings (both counts) did improve slightly when a particular man departed…

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Comic Connections

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So this morning, as usual, I read today’s Pearls Before Swine panel. It was unusual but unusually good. See it HERE.

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Pearls, Dec. 7, 2017. Pastis/Go Comics.

Based on Pastis’s and Pig’s soul-searching I did a Google search and settled for his (Pastis’s) page at Wikipedia (Infogalactic it’s not, but they try). I found something very interesting.

A while back I noted my Big Four daily comics: Garfield, Pearls, Get Fuzzy, and Dilbert. 

It turns out that three of the four have more in common than just my liking them. There’s a Peanuts connections too. Charles Schulz was Pastis’s mentor going into the field. A little later Pastis received public praise from Scott Adams (Dilbert) which launched his career. Pastis later collaborated with and learned from Darby Conley (Get Fuzzy).

I looked around for a connection to Jim Davis and Garfield but couldn’t find one. So I made one. Via this article (and a few in the past) the two titans are hereby linked.

Carry on.

Impeachment Effort Fails: The Brilliance of the Democratic Party

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Hilarious news from the Dead City today: efforts to impeach President Trump failed miserably. Against the wishes of their own leadership a gang of Dems led by Al Green of Texas alleged Trump committed the high crimes and misdemeanors of:

“[A]ssociation with “White Nationalism, Neo-Nazism and Hate,” as well as “Inciting Hatred and Hostility…” 

(I think those are spelled out in Article 13, Sec. 69).

Said Green, “Friends, whether we like it or not, we now have a bigot in the White House who incites hatred and hostility.”

Despite no mention whatsoever of Russia, 58 Dems voted to move the process forward. The rest of the House, surely acting on orders from Moscow, killed the measure.

Now, now, now … to her credit, Nancy Pelosi “has insisted that any impeachment effort should be put on hold until there is evidence of an impeachable offense.” Imagine that.

Green, not one to be dissuaded, said he would take the issue to the NFL for a communal knee this Sunday. He says that way all 23 fans collectively in attendance may decide the matter.

A few blocks away and at almost the same time, while not seeming at all concerned about his imminent removal from office, the Hater in Chief, literal Hitler, and known inciter of hostility, Donald John Trump, aka THE Neo-NAZI, was busy recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital. (Yes. It does seem ironic when you think about it.) He also vowed to move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv.

In reaction to Trump’s announcement Hamas vowed a “day of rage.” Perhaps Green should join them?

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Islamist Assassination of Theresa May Foiled

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Hopefully Trump won’t Tweet about this one; such actions angry Mrs. May and Wrath of Khan. I’m not sure about Khan nowadays, but Trump isn’t the enemy the Prime Minister needs to worry about.

“It is in essence an extreme Islamist suicide plot against Downing Street. Essentially police believe that the plan was to launch some sort of improvised explosive device at Downing Street and in the ensuing chaos attack and kill Theresa May, the Prime Minister.”

“This is something which has been pursued over several weeks at least by Scotland Yard, MI5 and West Midlands Police. It came to a head last week with the arrest of two men, by armed police, who earlier today were charged with preparing acts of terrorism.”

Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, from north London and Mohammed Aqib Imran, 21, from south-east Birmingham are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday morning.

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May is a bit better protected than the average Brit. Sky News.

This is really much ado about nothing, the antics of some misguided “teens” or something. No reason for Mrs. May to even think about coming close to the Enoch Powell train. No reason to read Camp of the Saints. No need to open her eyes. Nothing at all, here. I probably shouldn’t even be posting this. It is certainly nothing to Tweet about.

I’ll admit: one, I don’t like Twitter in the first place, and; two, Trump’s Tweets seem to get out of hand at times. But, it turns out that being out of hand sometimes actually works to the advantage of international intelligence.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said at a national security event in Simi Valley, California, over the weekend that Trump’s tweeting has actually yielded helpful intelligence.

The current CIA director sat down with former CIA director Leon Panetta and Fox News host Brett Baier for an hour of discussion on world events from a security perspective at The Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.

Baier brought up Trump’s tweets about the Muslim videos and asked Panetta why he thought “it was like playing with fire.”

“When you tweet something like that out there you don’t know what the consequences are going to be, and the consequences could be lives,” Panetta replied solemnly. Baier turned to Pompeo: “One account on Twitter makes your job harder?” he asked. The CIA director’s answer was almost certainly not what the host expected. “No, I don’t know that that’s the case,” he replied. “I’ve actually seen it help us.”

“I have seen things the president has put on his Twitter account actually have a real-world impact on our capacity to understand what’s going on in other places of the world,” Pompeo said. “That is, our adversaries responded to those tweets in ways that were helpful to us to understand command and control issues, who’s listening to what messages, how those messages are resonating around the world,” he added. Panetta seemed taken aback by Pompeo’s answer.

Tweet! Tweet!

Christmas Tie Season 2017!

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It’s that time of year again. I hereby declare Christmas Tie Season has arrived.

Oddly, I do this even on a day when I forgot to leave the house wearing one. Come to think of it, I may have to dig the trove out of storage…

At any rate, here’s my video from last year heralding the joyous event:

Perrin Lovett/YouTube.

The spectacle will improve tomorrow. Honest…

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Have Hydrazine, Will Travel

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Over 40 years and 141 AUs after launch Voyager 1 is still rocking along.

At present, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is 21 billion kilometers from Earth, or about 141 times the distance between the Earth and Sun. It has, in fact, moved beyond our Solar System into interstellar space. However, we can still communicate with Voyager across that distance.

This week, the scientists and engineers on the Voyager team did something very special. They commanded the spacecraft to fire a set of four trajectory thrusters for the first time in 37 years to determine their ability to orient the spacecraft using 10-millisecond pulses.

After sending the commands on Tuesday, it took 19 hours and 35 minutes for the signal to reach Voyager. Then, the Earth-bound spacecraft team had to wait another 19 hours and 35 minutes to see if the spacecraft responded. It did. After nearly four decades of dormancy, the Aerojet Rocketdyne manufactured thrusters fired perfectly.

File this one away under “pretty cool;” another of man’s most impressive, if quiet and distant, little accomplishments.

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