The Blogiversary

On this date way back in 2009, the mighty blog of eVilleMike was born.

Whoopty-fuckin-do.

I'm starting this post in February, thinking I'll be able to write up a nice long reflection-y piece on how everything has evolved in these past 10 years.

Doubt it.

But maybe.

I think I'm really just hoping the world will still be in more or less one piece.

As always - hopeful while not particularly optimistic.

Because

...a Twitter spat is just one of the bullshit things we have to put up with now, here in USAmerica Inc.

VICE:

President Donald Trump sparked a Twitter beef Sunday with celebrity couple John Legend and Chrissy Teigen. Such fights are pretty normal for Trump. But Teigen’s response was perhaps a bit more profane than he’s used to: she tweeted the president was “a pussy ass bitch.”

The whole thing began on Sunday, with an MSNBC special about criminal justice reform. Legend — who has an organization that aims to end mass incarceration — was a guest. Trump apparently tuned in and felt like he didn’t get enough credit for the First Step Act he signed in December, which reduced some federal drug sentences and looked to reduce recidivism.

I don't know if it's at all worth looking into - I'm going to leave it here in the large and growing pile of shit I wish I was making up.

Today's Tweet

The trend has become so strong, Ray Charles coulda seen this one coming.

More than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world https://t.co/3G837I2wbQ

— POLITICO (@politico) September 9, 2019

Today's GIF

Mood swings

I Am Q

Bill Maher:

"Alternative Facts"

The Daddy State will change the meaning of words to suit their immediate needs.

They denounce Historical Fact as Political Correctness, while demanding that we accept their demagoguery as truth.

WaPo:

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A Monticello tour guide was explaining how enslaved people built, planted and tended a terrace of vegetables at Thomas Jefferson’s estate earlier this summer when a woman interrupted to share her annoyance.

“Why are you talking about that?” she demanded, according to Gary Sandling, vice president of Monticello’s visitor programs and services. “You should be talking about the plants."

At Monticello, George Washington’s Mount Vernon and other plantations across the South, an effort is underway to deal more honestly with the brutal institution that the Founding Fathers relied on to build their homes and their wealth: slavery.

Four hundred years after the first enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia, some sites are also connecting that ugly past to modern-day racism and inequality.

Here's the thing - nobody owes you a customized version of history. If you need it to be scrubbed clean so it fits with your narrow viewpoint, go to Disneyland. The rest of us know enough to prefer learning about real things in real ways.
Weirdly, if you spend enough time online, you'll encounter oddball web skulkers barking about some of the weirdest shit you ever heard, swearing to its authenticity, and proclaiming it as the truth that everybody is just too blind to see - specifically citing its wacky oddball-ness as proof of its veracity.  As if the more incredible something is, the more believable it has to be.

Today's Word

Remastered

OK, kids - headphones on for this one so you get the full effect.

Ringo's drumming.

Paul's bass work.

With John and George putting the lie to "minimalism" - showing us that it doesn't mean "I really can't play worth a damn so I'll make up some bullshit term for it".

And the backing vocals? Holy fuck.

Today's Pix

click a pic

⇩

Sources Of Money For Trump's Wall

Collaboration

Natasha Bertrand & Bryan Bender reported on a little weirdness:

Politico:

In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.

What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.

Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.

The inquiry is part of a broader, previously unreported probe into U.S. military expenditures at and around the Trump property in Scotland. According to a letterthe panel sent to the Pentagon in June, the military has spent $11 million on fuel at the Prestwick Airport — the closest airport to Trump Turnberry — since October 2017, fuel that would be cheaper if purchased at a U.S. military base. The letter also cites a Guardian report that the airport provided cut-rate rooms and free rounds of golf at Turnberry for U.S. military members.

Taken together, the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat — the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.

“The Defense Department has not produced a single document in this investigation,” said a senior Democratic aide on the oversight panel. “The committee will be forced to consider alternative steps if the Pentagon does not begin complying voluntarily in the coming days.”

The Pentagon, Air Force and White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

These guys need to hear from us:

@DeptofDefense

@SecArmy

@secnav76

@usairforce

When the CinC starts giving unlawful orders, and the rank and file obey them, we're in a crisis that's deeper than we feared just a little while ago.