The On-Crack Ass Clown for August, 2018

Well, we've come to the end of another month, and it's been a doozie. Today is the last day of August, the fifth Friday of the month, and the third opportunity to name another dishonoree in our long series of cringeworthy ass clowns.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, it is time to name

The On-Crack Ass Clown for August, 2018

and the award goes to

Representative Duncan Hunter (R, CA 50)

and

Margaret Hunter

Representative Hunter and his wife Margaret were charged in a 47-page indictment with more than 200 separate instances of using more than $250,000 of campaign funds for their personal benefit*. This alone is enough to earn Representative Hunter - as an elected official in a position of public trust - an Ass Clown Award, but what really cemented his victory this month was his shameless attempt to shift the blame to his wife.

At a time when our elected representatives of all parties are held in the lowest of esteem by the citizens they are supposed to represent, the blatant misuse of campaign funds by Mr Hunter and his wife further undermines public confidence in the honesty and integrity of members of Congress. 

Representative Duncan Hunter and his wife Margaret are designated as our On-Crack Ass Clowns for August, 2018. Remember such behavior when you cast your votes in the November elections.

Have a good day, and come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Including, according to the indictment: "Hotel rooms, airline tickets and upgrades, meals and food, and entertainment expenses for vacations for themselves and their friends and family...;" and, "On or about July 9, 2014, the Hunters spent $250 in campaign funds at United Airlines to fly a family pet to Washington, DC. for a family vacation."

Musical Sunday

It's always a shame when a romance turns ugly. I thought about this song in the context of Donald Trump's affair with Karen McDougal, Stormy Daniels, and whatever other ladies have yet to come forward ...

Bad romance, bad outcome. If you'll pardon the expression, he's made his bed, now he can lie in it.

Have a good day. More thoughts later.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Please, just make it stop ...

Donald Trump continued to badger and undermine his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, leading Sessions to push back and Trump to whine that Sessions should be investigating Democrats and other Trump critics; respected senator and war hero John McCain has decided to stop medical treatments for his aggressive form of brain cancer; the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization has been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony in the investigation of Trump fixer Michael Cohen; CNN shouting head Chris Cuomo and White House shouting head Kellyanne Conway engaged in a shameful shouting match in which they shouted over each other, traded accusations of "how dare you!", and generally accomplished nothing beyond embarrassing each other and their professions*; and California Representative Duncan Hunter, accused of spending a quarter of a million dollars of campaign contributions on personal luxuries and travel, tried to shift the blame to his wife, saying that she handled the family finances.

Oy. Just, oy.

This week, in "honor" of the continuing abomination of Donald Trump's relentless attacks on law and the judicial system, I thought a collection of cartoons about lawyers would be appropriate ...

Trial planning in the 21st century ...

If the shoe fits ...

It's not easy finding enough jurors with all these witch hunts going on ...

Yes, remember ...

Positive ID ...

There's bias, and there's bias ...

I feel this way every time I see a Rudy Giuliani or a Michael Avenatti fulminating on television ...

This is from my Trump-to-English dictionary ...

"Thanks" to Kellyanne Conway for this sad addition to our legal lexicon ...

And that's the truth ...

Perhaps Shakespeare was right.

Have a good day and a great weekend. Come back tomorrow for Musical Sunday, this week featuring Lady Gaga ... because why the hell not?

More thoughts later.

Bilbo

* If that's even possible any more.

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

Once more into the breach, dear friends ...

Oops ...

Smart dog ...

I wonder if this is how I look when waiting for a bus ...

Relaxed ducks ...

This is the equivalent of the "package is filled by weight, not volume" notice on your bag of chips ...

Ouch! ...

Yes, I consider that a drawback ...

Screw the fish? Must be a dish beloved of Trump's EPA ...

Wait ... what day is it valid? ...

Now, that's going too far! ...

So there.

It's been a heck of a week, so be sure to come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday ... we all need it. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Thoughts About Security Clearances

The latest buffoonery coming out of the Trump White House is one that few people fully understand: Donald Trump's petulant stripping of security clearances from former intelligence and security officials who have criticized him ... including taking them from those who actually no longer have security clearances.

Because of the excessive spin and bloviation on this topic, I thought I'd share a few observations with you based on my career as a military intelligence officer and as a civilian contractor supporting the Air Force after my retirement from active duty.

First of all, former senior members of the intelligence and security communities - particularly those who were career officials rather than political appointees - represent a wealth of knowledge and experience on which their successors can draw. Maintaining their clearances allows them to be tapped (often on short notice) for advice or historical perspectives on planned actions. Here's a personal story: after I retired from the Air Force in 1996 I worked as a contractor on the Air Staff, where one of my early tasks was to develop a planning framework for cyber security for the Air Force. I spent months working on the project, and when it was far enough along, my Air Force customer wanted it presented to a "greybeard* panel" (more colorfully known as a "murder board") of former senior intelligence officials. The board consisted of a half-dozen retired intelligence generals and admirals, including two former directors of the National Security Agency. I presented my proposals to them and answered very detailed and probing questions for a long and agonizing day, at the end of which they endorsed many of my ideas, shot down others, and made a number of excellent suggestions for improvements. They were able to do this because they had the professional knowledge and experience and the retained clearances that allowed them to continue to contribute to the nation's defense. Trump apologists seem to believe that a high-level clearance can be granted on the fly for brief periods of time if necessary. This reflects an abysmal misunderstanding of how classified material is protected and how access to it is granted.

The White House has accused former intelligence and security officials of "monetizing" their clearances - of using them to make huge salaries in the commercial world. Well, consider this: it's very expensive to get a security clearance. It involves months of investigations, interviews, and parsing of virtually every aspect of the candidate's life, and a careful consideration of the risks and benefits of granting access to classified information. A company that wants to bid on a classified contract needs people with clearances, and - understandably - prefers to hire people who already have them, rather than hiring new people and paying the government tens of thousands of dollars to conduct new clearance investigations. The government, for its part, wants to hire people who are ready to go, without the need to wait for clearance investigations and adjudications to be completed. I'd have thought an administration that's as intensely pro-business as this one would love to save companies money by recognizing the savings represented by hiring people who've already been cleared.

Third, the idea that criticism of Donald Trump and his policies has something to do with the possession of a security clearance is ridiculous. No one needs a top secret clearance or other special accesses to see the damage this administration is doing to the nation. Mr Trump is not at all concerned about security clearances per se ... he's simply concerned that the stature and experience of these persons gives authority to their criticisms, and yanking clearances is a petulant and convenient way to hit back at them when he can't argue on merit.

That's my take on this. I expect that those who worship at the festooned altar of Donald Trump won't accept this view, but I'm past caring about it. I no longer have a clearance, but I don't need one to recognize ignorance and poor leadership.

Have a good day. More thoughts later.

Bilbo

* I suppose if there had been any women on it, it would have been a "greybeard and bluehair panel."

Poetry Sunday

An interesting mental exercise is to look at simple things and decide what you can deduce from them. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took this to extremes with his famous consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, but anyone can try to draw conclusions from the things they observe, even if they're not a high-functioning sociopath. In this poem, former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser looks for the stories to be told by an old and decrepit farmhouse ...

Abandoned Farmhouse 

by Ted Kooser 

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.
A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm-a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.


Things do go wrong, so they say. Sometimes, sadly, on a national scale.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse ...

Legendary R&B singer Aretha Franklin, widely respected as "The Queen of Soul," died on Thursday at the age of 76; in a direct attack against criticism of his administration by former senior officials, Donald Trump stripped former CIA director John Brennan of his security clearances, accusing him of "lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary;" in the Italian city of Genoa, at least 39 people were killed when a bridge collapsed, dumping dozens of cars 145 feet into a valley below; in a salacious tell-all book, former White House official Omarosa Manigault Newman accused Donald Trump of being both racist and mentally unstable, leading Trump to refer to her in a tweetstorm as a "dog" and raising questions as to exactly what her role in the Trump administration (for which she earned a salary of $179,700) had been; and a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a 900-page report which accused hundreds of priests, bishops, and other church leaders of molesting more than a thousand children over a period of decades.

If we ever needed a little humor, we need it now. How about a collection of cartoons featuring symbols ...

Such a conversion can be hard on all concerned ...

I guess math can be fun, after all ...

Murder by the numbers ...

A good pun in a cartoon can alpha lot to up the humor ratio ...

I'm not that musical one in my family, either ...

So am I ... but one has to be very careful nowadays ...

I thought I'd be more vigorous, too ...

Before alphabet soup, there was ...

A timely question ...

Well, what else is there? ...

And that's it for this week's symbolic Cartoon Saturday. I hope it helped you get over the insanity of the past week. Sorry I can't do much about what's to come.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow on Poetry Sunday. Be here.

Bilbo

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for August, 2018

Well, it's that time again ... time to skim the scum from the surface of our bubbling cesspool of ass-clownery and name our

Left Cheek Ass Clown for August, 2018

and the award goes to

Omarosa Manigault Newman

Omarosa first became known as a scheming and vindictive character in Donald Trump's "Apprentice" television series. She was later hired into a high-paying White House job by Mr Trump, from which she was unceremoniously fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly after (wait for it...) scheming and vindictive activity*. She went on to publish the latest tell-all book about the Trump administration - Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House - which led Mr Trump to his latest unpresidential tweet storm, in which he wrote

"When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!"

But this award isn't being presented to Donald Trump (who -although deserving - is no longer eligible, having received a lifetime achievement award), it's being presented to Ms Manigault for her own less-than-stellar behavior, including her flagrant violation of security regulations by taping conversations inside the White House Situation Room ... supposedly one of the most secure locations in government. 

For her contributions to the embarrassing circus that is the Trump administration, Omarosa Managault Newman is named our Left-Cheek Ass Clown for August, 2018.

Have a good day, and come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Donald Trump evidently feels there's only room for one scheming and vindictive character in the White House.

Eingebaute Vorfahrt

When I was living in Germany and learning all sorts of colloquial expressions to fill out my school-taught German, Agnes taught me the expression eingebaute Vorfahrt, which translates literally as "built-in driving priority." It's applied to expensive cars like high-end Mercedes and BMW's that often seem to roar up behind you on the autobahn, flashing their lights to demand that you get your lesser automobile out of the way so they can move on ... the drivers of such cars believe that their machines have eingebaute Vorfahrt.

I don't often have occasion to use that term here in the States (although I have used it once in a while), but I thought about it today when I read this interesting article in the Washington Post: "Are Rich People More Likely to Lie, Cheat, Steal? Science Explains the World of Manafort and Gates."

The article describes a set of experiments that tend to confirm the corrupting effects of wealth. The key takeaway is this:

"The findings build on similar research in recent years that suggests wealth and power strip people of their inhibitions, increase risk taking and feelings of entitlement and invulnerability. At the same time, power makes people less empathetic and able to see others' perspectives ... 'Wealth is basically a mechanism for power, and power has a freeing effect on people. It takes away the constraints of society and frees people to act according to their dominant desires,' said Adam Galinsky of Columbia Business School, whose experiments have explored how power often propels people's actions. In some cases, those desires may be altruistic or helpful to society, so power heightens those goals and can give rise to effective philanthropists. Often, however, power leads to self-serving behaviors unrestrained by the usual concerns over rules or the consequences for others."

Yes, what you long suspected is more than likely true - the rich are different, and the dominance of wealthy and powerful people in government ought to be of some concern, because ... well ... they have a whole different set problems and concerns from yours.

They have eingebaute Vorfahrt, after all.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Musical Sunday

Today is the birthday (in 1950) of singer/songwriter and bandleader August Darnell, better known as "Kid Creole," the lead singer of the group "Kid Creole and the Coconuts." His hits include "My Male Curiosity" and "Endicott" (both of which have been featured in this space) and this one - "Stool Pigeon," which seems appropriate as we watch the unspooling drama of the trial of Paul Manafort ...

Ha, cha-cha-cha!

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

You just can't make this stuff up ...

The parents of First Lady Melania Trump received their US citizenship in a ceremony this week - a citizenship enabled by the "chain migration" system that Donald Trump has repeatedly and loudly denounced; Vice President Pence announced details of the administration's proposal to create a US "Space Force;" Donald Trump imposed additional tariffs on Turkey in order (among other things) to pressure that country's government to release an imprisoned American pastor; a white supremacist rally scheduled for August 12th in Washington, DC, appears to be drawing far more counterprotesters than white supremacists; and North Korea has reportedly rejected every denuclearization proposal put forward by the United States, declaring them to be "gangster-like."

This week, in honor of the policies and pronouncements of the administration, we have cartoons based on fairy tales and myths ...

As we get older, the fairy tales change ...

Unhappily ever after ...

One-upmanship at Mother Goose's tavern ...

If the (cement) shoe fits ...

All of us parents have been there ...

Even fairy tale characters have to watch their diets ...

And what's in the Girl Scout Cookies? ...

If Hansel and Gretel had had GPS ...

The sad truth ...

Poor Quasimodo, he just can't help it ...

And there you have it - another Cartoon Saturday attempt to keep your spirits up while the swamp is being restocked.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow, when Musical Sunday checks in with Kid Creole and the Coconuts.

Bilbo

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

And away we go ...

Well, yes, if you're into watching the sky ...

I thought that was the whole point ...

I'm surprised he wasn't strangled by the apron strings ...

It's the brown-plate special ...

Poor vampires need to eat, too ...

I wonder how many people realized the mistake ...

I think this editor won't be getting a lot of dates ...

We have a lot of hysterical buildings in Washington, too: Mr Trump lives in one, and Congress works in another ...

Adding insult to injury ...

I'll bet June was one satisfied lady ...

Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday ... you need the laughs.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo