Today's Tweet

Puny

Mueller said he is a Puny God!😂👍🏽
SOUND UP pic.twitter.com/9T4TLKyRz1

— Eugene W. (@NOW1SOLAR) February 18, 2019

On Loving

WaPo's RetroPod:



The Daddy State is never far from power. And the stealthy resurgence of the TheoCons in the background of both state and federal politics is becoming more of a problem.

Once we're rid of Cult45, we'll still have a struggle on our hands because theocracy and fascism go together like pie and coffee.

The En-Dumb-ening Continues

Last Week Tonight returns (finally), and we get a glimpse of Idiots on TV in the second block.

Welcome back, John Oliver.

(there's a glitch at about 9:00 where they cut the clip of the "reality show" - I'm thinking because of copyright trouble)

Today's Tweet

And an answer from another deeply unpopular president who understood something important about not trying to force himself on us.

It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.” --LBJ
(in a letter to the Smothers Brothers show upon their cancellation by CBS partly because POTUS had called the network and complained)

Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019

Today's GIF

Today's Today

As of 11-9-16, on the 3rd Monday in February, we take the day off in honor of 97.8% of our presidents.

Trae Redux

Trae Crowder from a year ago - worth repeating:

Blue Jeans

NYT, Eric Curran (3rd year, Temple Univ Med School):

PHILADELPHIA — I remember the first time I saw a teenager die. He came to Temple University Hospital in the back of a police cruiser with three bullet holes in his chest. He was wearing bluejeans that had turned red. 

The nurses cut them off and threw them at the end of the bed. The bluejeans that were no longer blue dangled for a while, eventually falling into the puddle of blood collecting underneath them. After nothing more could be done to save him, the bed that held his thin body was rolled away, leaving streaks of blood across the floor.

As a first-year medical student, this image haunted me. I think it always will.

Over and over, young Americans from Parkland, Fla., to North Philadelphia are carried into ambulances and the back seats of police cars and rushed to a hospital. The emergency room nurses and doctors lift them onto stretchers. If they are awake, they may ask if they’re going to die. The doctor tells them no.

Once inside, the trauma team yells out locations of holes in their body. The medical student tapes paper clips to each bullet wound so that they’re visible on X-ray. If the heart stops, doctors break through the sternum with a mallet and a chisel.

Two gloved hands hold the heart and start to squeeze. More nurses and more doctors help inject medicines. They place paddles on the lifeless heart. If God or luck or physiology allows, it beats again. And then the wheels on the bed spin toward the operating room and leave those horrible red streaks on the floor, red shoe prints all around them.

In the wake of the struggle to save a human life, a silent, splattered room remains. Gauze, tubes, shirts, gloves, pants, tape and sneakers lie scattered. Hospital workers come in and wash away the blood. They bring mops, towels, brushes and trash cans, and work with respect and grace, on hands and knees. The room must be cleaned quickly because another young victim could be wheeled in soon.

I started photographing this room out of the helplessness and despair I felt about these senseless deaths. I wanted the violence to stop. I asked if I could hold a camera. Not to capture the dead and dying. They deserve privacy and respect. But I wondered if capturing and sharing the moments after lives are saved and lost could help Americans understand what is happening.

I place plastic covers over my shoes. Sometimes I hear screams — the loved ones receiving news that their son or daughter, brother or sister, spouse or partner, has been shot to death.

Temple University Hospital treated 481 patients with gunshot wounds last year, and 97 died. In this one hospital in one neighborhood in one city. As a country, we lost nearly 40,000 lives to guns in 2017. These images are here to show you what happens. And to inspire change. Because here, in America, shouldn’t bluejeans stay blue?

So far, in 2019: 40 mass shooting incidents (most recent = yesterday, 16 FEB 19), 72 dead, 121 injured - as reported by Gun Violence Archive.

Today's Tweet

Libertarian Paradise - free of the government's tyrannical stop signs.

When you keep postponing simple but important solutions .. pic.twitter.com/sc32II1f0P

— Sakhavat Mammadov (@s_mmmdv) February 16, 2019

Change Gonna Come

Part of "The Vulnerability Series," a collection of paintings by Syrian artist Abdalla Al Omari.

World leaders - somewhere not too far down the very road we're on.

They all had more than a few chances to "make it right". Some tried harder than others, but the likely results will render those differences moot.

Obama

Ahmadinejad

Merkel

Cameron

Erdogan

Kim

al-Assad

45*

Putin

I'm anything but some kind of God-Knobbin' Jesus Pimp, but this tune has one of my all-time favorite lines: "On the 31st floor, a gold-plated door won't keep out the lord's burnin' rain."

Sin City -- The Flying Burrito Brothers