Today's Tweet

Breaking: https://t.co/jMVYmgaIWw pic.twitter.com/7eH16D8B60

— Tengrain (@Tengrain) March 1, 2016

Tunes For A Tuesday

Lake Street Dive via NPR Tiny Desk Concerts

Rachel Price - Lead vocal
Mike (McDuck) Olson - Guitar
Mike Calabrese - Drums
Bridget Kearney - Standing bass

"I Don't Care About You"
"How Good It Feels"
"Godawful Things"

Obama Bond

Why do they hate him?  

Cuz they know they wanna be - and they know they'll never be - this fucking cool.

Today's Tweet

this gif was never more relevant pic.twitter.com/lXPAzNRGw2

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 29, 2016

John Oliver

" ... written in gold Sharpie, which is so quintessentially Trump: something that gives the passing appearance of wealth, but is actually just a cheap tool."

Today's Pix

Chris Rock Rocks

We might be talkin' about this for a while.

And this too.

And the winner for least funny #Oscars bit goes to @FoxNews' @REALStaceyDash: https://t.co/p0FsTAtxPe pic.twitter.com/Qao1iRSKsv

— Matt Wilstein (@TheMattWilstein) February 29, 2016

Today's GIF

And Now We Know

Thinking about Trump's famous bit about "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

Now in the last coupla days:

I've been saying for a while that Trump wants out, and that all the weird shit he says is an attempt to find the exit. In that light, the decoded version of the quote sounded like this to me: "What do I have to do to get you idiots to let me go?"

But maybe I've been wrong (now there's a shocker, eh?).  Being wrong is part of the game - I'll prob'ly get over it.  

Anyway, if this is a real thing, then we've got a pretty simple equation: Voter = Customer.  To Trump, it doesn't matter what the customer thinks or says or does, as long as that customer shows up and spends - nobody's money (ie: vote) is worth more or less than anybody else's money (ie: vote).  So his ridiculously blatant pandering is just something he does because he's a good salesman who understands that his business is to grow his business.

What matters is that you make your numbers - plan your work and work your plan - the strategic goal is to achieve the strategic goals, and your tactics are of no great concern to executive management.  Just get me those results.

Putting it tritely - Trump is all about the end justifying the means. At the very least, he's exploiting an opportunity to upend what's left of a process that was intended to protect us from people like Donald Trump. It's not like he doesn't know that. Why would a good Rentier pass on a golden opportunity to own a controlling interest in USAmerica Inc?

There's a lot to look at concerning Process, and Lord knows the process has been getting bent up and fucked over for quite a while, and is long overdue for some serious refit, but we're supposed to be all about The Process here in USAmerica, and an awful lot of that process has been pimp-slapped in the usual way by people with the power to ignore the consequences of the law.

So we need to get back to caring about - and caring for - the process.  And here's the short-cut version of it all: In a democracy, the death of process is nothing less that the death of the democracy itself.

Stay together. Work together. Get shit done.

Saturday's For The Blues

Back To The Blues --Dinah Washington