never remember or known unknowns

After citing a terror attack that did not occur in Bowling Green in order to justify the travel and immigration ban, the regime has persisted with the argument and narrative that die Lügenpresse is selectively under-reporting major incidents of terrorism.
Bob Canada’s Blogworld gives us some of the gruesome and chilling statistics from insurgencies that were heretofore subject to a self-imposed media blackout, like the siege on Fort Knox by arch-villain Aurus Goldfinger the horrendous attack on Metropolis by Kryptonian terrorists and fugitives from justice Zod, Ursa and Non. What do you think? There’s a lot of trivial matters—like crowd-size and turn-out, but there’s far more at stake with people’s lives and livelihoods. Credibility is important and none of the characterisations that come out of the regime’s spokes-liars ought to be given a pass.

amicus curiæ

Quoting Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger, the nominee to the US Supreme Court’s 1988 Columbia University yearbook entry was, “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Though the seriousness of this tag-line is up for speculation and probably understood to be satirical by legal-eagles of the time, no one is yet bothering to scour the earnestness of the claim that the justice in the wings is calling Dear Leader’s disdain for the judiciary demoralising. I wonder, if like the vice-president’s attestation that Russia was behind the hacking attack or that climate change was a reality or that sorry-not-sorry chiding given for turning the office of the president into the Home-Shopping Network, this is an insincere lunge for independent and critical though that’s merely meant to make these abnormal times seem more palatable.

6x6

montezuma’s revenge: salmonella bacteria could be weaponised as a therapy to attack cancer

ralf und florian: unaired pilot for a Kraftwerk sitcom

creative commons: the Metropolitan Museum of Art released its online catalogue into the public domain

vinegar valentines: vintage cards for trolling those unworthy of your affections

cultural appropriation: unhinged preacher wants to reclaim the rainbow as a reminder that the final judgment will be by fire

gallery 1988: 80s pop culture icons presented as postage stamps

hey nineteen—no we can’t talk at all

The rule invoked to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren’s dissenting view on Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s appointment to the office of US Attorney General has been rarely used and was codified into law a century after Thomas Jefferson first anticipated the need for mechanism to maintain order when a heated debate escalated to physical violence.
The parliamentary proceedings that the Founding Father drafted was meant to curtail deliberations on the subject of abolition and following the fist-fight (over the subject of lynching) that spurred formal adoption in 1902 states, “No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form firm of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator… No Senator in debate shall refer offensively to any State of the Union…” Of course, this atmosphere of congeniality precludes debate on the floor and so has been sparingly called on. Warren’s rebuke could only be muffled by this legal fiction because the nominee happened to be an incumbent senator, who also happened to be denied a federal judgeship for being racially insensitive and his civil rights record and potential menace to social justice. The excerpts from a petition from civil rights icon Coretta Scott King from three decades hence that Senator Warren (whom Dear Leader still calls Pocahontas) tried to cite only recently came to light as the receipt of Ms King’s letter failed to enter it formerly into the congressional record. Now that Sessions is no longer a fellow senator, Warren is free to say anything she pleases about him. If we are to adhere to the rule book this closely, note well Rule XIX also provides, “Former Presidents of the United States shall be entitled to address the Senate upon appropriate notice to the Presiding Officer who shall thereupon make the necessary arrangements.”

flashback friday

Keen-eyed followers have noticed that former official White House photographer, drawing on his extensive archive of presidential and diplomatic moments, seems to time his posts in juxtaposition to what the current court jester is steam-rolling or ranting about.

Scharfsichtige Anhänger haben bemerkt, dass der ehemalige offizielle Weiße Haus-Fotograf, der auf seinem umfangreichen Archiv aus Präsidenten- und Diplomatischen Momenten aufbaut, seine Beiträge in der Gegenüberstellung zu dem, was der jetzige Hofnarrer zerstört oder beklagt, zeitweilig zu sehen scheint.