Kafka's Jokes

McSweeney's Internet Tendencies:

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” Alois asked again, more insistently.

“Knock knock.”

And so it went for years. It wasn’t until his deathbed Alois realized he was on the outside of the door.

-and-

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, “Why the long face?”

“I was born into servitude, and when I die, my feet will be turned into glue,” replied the horse.

The bartender realized he would not be getting a tip.

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

Enough irony to choke O Henry in his grave.

NEW: Veselnitskaya’s permission to be in US was expired when she met Trump Jr. https://t.co/hluCzO8k2c pic.twitter.com/SziVh46FXO

— Katie Zavadski (@katiezavadski) July 13, 2017

A New One For Me

This hasn't been on my radar at all, but I've heard it 2 or 3 times now in the last few days.

Consciousness of Guilt
Law and Legal Definition: Evidentiary rules allow a prosecutor to introduce testimony that tends to show that the defendant's actions prove he knew he was guilty (at least of something). This is sometimes referred to as “consciousness of guilt”.

Consciousness of Guilt Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/c/consciousness-of-guilt/

This Just In

Newly discovered surveillance video of Russians arriving for the meeting at Trump Tower last year.

Scary Shit

Rachel's whole show last night felt like I was stuck in the part of an old monster movie from the 50s where the 2 plucky teenagers are trying to tell the friendly local sheriff about seeing something really weird and dangerous, and holy crap why won't the grownups listen!?!

It's Not An Absolute

...but education counts for quite a bit.

Stanford - BA Public Policy
Rhodes Scholar
Oxford University - PhD Political Science

Dropped out of 2 colleges and a Vo-Tech school

1 college course (theology)

Dropped out after 2 semesters and a summer session

Like Dr Adler said: Your education often starts after your schooling is completed.

But when it's time to learn about something that's complex and weird and has 37 different angles and can't be shoehorned into a simple binary model - when you need to get the story from someone who's been thru some kinda program that isn't just OJT in the entertainment business - which of these people makes up the better, more logical choice?

A Deficit Of Honor

Jennifer Rubin at WaPo:

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”

Seriously, kids - we can't make this little experiment in self-government work without a Republican Party that's reasonable, and capable of engaging in thoughtful fact-based conversation.

Paraphrasing Blue Gal's Facebook pal: Hyper-Criticism of the Democratic Party is like slagging a single parent who's struggling to raise 4 kids - it's a ginormous mess because the other parent is a fucking deadbeat.

This is politics, dummy. You're not gonna get everything you want every time.

Today's Tweet

Uncle Walt says...

"There is no such thing as an ex-Soviet intelligence officer"
V Putin, Dec 2015 pic.twitter.com/iGZOGCkKqs

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) July 14, 2017

The Podcast

Episode 397: Ted Cruz and the Billy Bass Healthcare Plan

The Professional Left

(go there and shop their Amazon link)