Urine a Spot of Bother...

RE: the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the ex-Russian spy and his daughter in the UK.
The initial public response from the Russian president?
Something along the lines of:
"We would never be so incompetent. If we had wanted him dead, he would be dead."
A better Ludlum-like line has never been written. 

So, it's a point of professional pride, as far as the former KGB head is concerned, that the Russian Federation did not poison the former spy and his daughter. It wouldn't have been botched. They would have been dead.
Ha!
So there...
Like Jack the Ripper dismissing a charge of murder because it lacked his signature surgical precision.
"I would never have been so imprecise and amateurish."
Ha-rumph...

And speaking of questionable alibis, our current POTUS is apoplectic about the Steele Dossier (you know... the 'dirty one'). Denying the verisimilitude of the alleged 'Pee Tapes', Drumpf has declared both publicly -  and privately to James Comey - that the tapes are a total fraud because...
wait for it...
He's a germophobe.

For his defense, Drumpf did not state the boilerplate claim that he was an up-right, up-standing, righteous family man, dedicated to his wife, blah-blah-blah...
(No one ever accused him of those scurrilous charges, that's for certain.)

No, his offered rationale for discrediting the Steele Dossier and the co-mingled  'Pee Tapes' is that he is too much of a neurotic to pay for 'Golden Showers'.
How reassuring...

Ladies and Germs, the President of the United Snakes...

And the 'Evangelicals' have no problem with this because...?
Urine is a gift from 'god'?

Drumpf's facile rationale for avoiding micturating women-of-the-night brought to mind Drumpf's prideful, arrogant claim that he's a 'counter-puncher' who hits back twice as hard. (Just like his mentor, the slimy fixer, Roy Cohn taught him.)
He boasts about being a counter-puncher as a way of frightening people off. 

He has also publicly stated many times that he likes nothing better than revenge, sweet revenge.
(Well, maybe slightly less than 'Golden Showers'... allegedly...)

To the point; Drumpf gets off on getting back at people.

So, the obvious rhetorical question for his 'Evangelical' supporters is: 'Whatever happened to the core tenet of Jesus of Nazareth's message, 'turn the other cheek'; a fundamental precept of Christianity?

It's a rhetorical question because the 'Evangelicals' divorced themselves from most of the Christ's ministry long ago.

Love thy neighbor as thyself?
NIX!
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?
Feck that!
It's harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass thought the eye of a needle.
Fill in your favorite douche-bag mega-church god-con. (e.g. Joel Osteen)
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.
But screw taxes...

If these self-styled 'Evangelicals' can't see themselves clear to upholding the principles of the Constitution (The First Amendment, separation of church and state) at least they could take a decent stab at pretending to practice the basic ideology of their publicly professed religious affiliation.

Is that too much to ask?
Don't ask...

The De-Construction Proceeds Apace

This is good! (snark!)
(Tip o' the hat to Bill Palmer's Palmer Report...)

POTUS is under criminal investigation.
The VP has done a David Copperfield.
There is no Secretary of State.
The Attorney General is a suspect in a huge, growing investigation from which he is recused and is constantly under threat of being fired.
The Assistance Attorney General will also most likely be fired.
The Senate Pro Tempore is quitting.
Lyin' Ryan, Speaker of the House, has announced his retirement.
The Chief of Staff has been effectively made redundant.
The heads of most the Departments and Agencies are gung-ho to destroy their little fiefdom in the government and the rest of them are, at best, competent in corruption or outright stupid.

Oh, did I mention that the new National Security Advisor would like nothing better than to have a senseless, bloody, endless war named after him?

Obama Was No Saint, But...

Obama was no saint. I doubt there has ever been a politician who was truly saintly (although many try to play one on TV), but he wasn't the utter, contemptible villain that Drumpfen-dork has been all his life. He's been sued 3,500 times. That is unprecedented (yes, unprecedented...)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/01/donald-trump-lawsuits-legal-battles/84995854/

As the editorial board of the New York Times wrote in the on-line publication on April 10, 2018;
'Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado.'

Drumpf is a con-man of very low character. The fact that he hasn't killed anyone outright (that we know of... yet...) is one of the few positive things one could say about this tawdry, tasteless, shameless excuse for a human being.

Now, he's playing the biggest con of his life. 

This will all be historic.

His campaign, his election, his administration (filled with vile swamp monsters, sociopaths and ne'er-do-well, blackguards, loafers and churls), his legalistic finaglings and dodges, his contempt for the US legal system, his brash defiance of the Constitution (and his oath to defend it) his escape from prosecution and his exile.

He's doing a smash and grab on a grand scale. 

Watch him bolt to Moscow when the indictment come down. He has his own plane, after all...

Paul Ryan and the Oldest Lie in the Book

Paul Ryan will not be seeking re-election to the House. (Hurray!) He's quitting to 'spend more time with his family'.

...er... yeah... right... and I've just been awarded an Oscar for my portrayal of a Polish mother in 'Sophie's Choice'.

Quitting to 'spend more time with family' is one of the oldest lies in the book - right after 'the check is in the mail' and 'I won't come in your mouth'. It's the standard weasel-phrase for politicians who have been disgraced by scandal.

Ryan is just jumping the gun a bit by mouthing the old saw before his scandal is revealed publicly. He's not quitting to 'spend time with his family' - not unless his wife or one of his kids is a 'white-shoe' attorney specializing in criminal cases.  No, Paulie will be spending time working on his legal defense to avoid prosecution in the conspiracy to obstruct justice (amongst other charges) which the Mueller investigation has uncovered.

What will the actual charges against Lyin' Ryan be? Good question. That, dear reader, is, as President Drumpfen-putz so deftly puts it, a 'wait and see' issue. Indications from a number of sources are that the GOP received millions from foreign nationals to fund various political campaigns. Some of the funds, evidently, were laundered through the NRA. With Mueller and team playing everything so tight to their vest, we have to await indictments and subpoenas to know more.

(Advisory: read the Palmer Report by Bill Palmer for loads of little scoops the MSM don't pick up until days, weeks or months later.)
http://www.palmerreport.com/

Paulie is running scared - that's why he's not running for re-election.

(Ironic, ain't it?)
His skinny arse is in the wringer. All that's required is for Mueller to start cranking the rollers and Ryan will start to squeal and none of the Koch Brother's dirty money is going to save him. One thought is that Ryan's quitting helps set the stage for the Dem retaking of the House and thence the filing of impeachment against the Drumpfen-furter and his cohort of de-constructionists.
 

Any bets on his flipping against anybody and everybody within reach to save his putrid behind from the Graybar Hotel?

Ask and You Shall Receive (offer void were prohibited)

A new irony to add to a growing list: Evangelical Christian paranoia of Facebook and Google algorithms.
Allow me to spell this out...

Here, we have firm, unshakeable people of 'faith' who hold as a core tenet of their belief that the deity they serve is an all-knowing  being. Should any of them have a request for good fortune or good health, guidance in troubled times, a need for a sign from the 'heavens' to lead them on the path of righteousness - to act in accordance with the will of their deity - they ask their 'god' through prayer, directly. They cast their 'bread upon the waters', so to speak. They may consult a 'man (or woman) of 'god' who will lead them in prayer and assist in the supplication for assistance from their omniscient deity. Then, following their supplication, they keep their eyes peeled for any omen or portent which might betoken an answer from the 'divine'. Sometimes, if the bodement isn't clear, the 'believer' will consult another member of the 'faith' or a person of the cloth to augur the deity's pronouncement.

In a nutshell, they speak to the wind and wait for answer from the Aether. 

However, they are aghast that search engines and social media; Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Bing, Pintrest, Reddit, Snapchat, Digg, blah-blah-blah, and the disembodied digital entities such as Siri and Alexa,  not only provide immediate answers to their inquiries but can predict what other questions and interests the cyber-supplicant might find of interest.
(Apparently, their deity does not provide this service.)

One believer wrote, "It was so eerie to have a conversation about something and then have ads pop up during web searches that were like the experience I've had when I searched for a product or service on the internet. I thought it was just a weird coincidence or that I had searched it and forgotten. But it's been confirmed that Facebook was listening."

Oooh! Booga-booga! The ghost in the machine is real! Hide your babies!

 
 Perhaps, 'people of faith' know that the code-writers, who build the platforms upon which the search engines and social media sites operate, utilize algorithms which can 'foretell' the likely needs of the cyber-consumer based on past inquiries. (If you inquire about a specific movie, the algorithm then tabulates the probability that you might also be interested in the director or the actors in the film or in other films of the same genre or auteur. )

Perhaps... 

But, I find it very strange that such people of faith would be perturbed - even panic-stricken - by the smooth and instantaneous provision of their digital requests by algorithm. They clearly glow in renewed confirmation of the faith they place in their deity when the most vague and ill-defined portent or most serendipitous happenstance occurs to which they assign divine significance. 

Cause and Effect - if you ask Google for a list of Sam Kinison's movie appearances, you get what you've asked for in the blink of an eye. Ask Amazon.com to send you a digital copy of the complete works of Rudyard Kipling and it's delivered to your Kindle or other reader in a trice. Ask Facebook to block some Trumpian know-nothing and it's a fait accompli before you can say, 'Impeach the Putz!'.

Ask and ye shall receive... with applicable charges and fees.

Try any of the above requests with the your choice of deity/deities. I dare say you'd go without the information, the reading material and the relief of being disassociated from a nincompoop. 

 
'God does work in mysterious ways'.

So does Google, but you'll actually get what you've asked for, no question, no prevarication, no delay, no blind faith involved.

(Before somebody suggests that folks display 'blind faith' in Google or Amazon.com (for instance) I'll insist that they're wrong. Purchasing a book on Amazon requires no faith, at all, at all, at all. One must only contend with a reasonable degree of confidence that the company will comply and fulfill one's order. This confidence is based on logic; Amazon.com will act in its own best interests. Those interests and their business plan is based on consumer satisfaction.  If Amazon.com failed to deliver, then its reputation as a reliable retailer would be harmed and Amazon.com would cease to be a viable retailer.
Faith plays no part in it. The act of buying from or through Amazon.com requires only rational thought and logical thinking based on evidence... and a credit card, of course.)

In God we Trust - all others pay cash.

Yet 'people of faith' (one of whom I've quoted above without attribution) do not trust the algorithmic processes which drive Siri and Alexa, search engines and social media sites even though they work quite efficiently. In fact, 'people of faith' see such algorithmic workings as somehow nefarious, sinister and menacing because the mathematics can anticipate requests. 

Oooh...  back to that creepy feeling. Dark arts and demons!

'People of faith' would rather mumble to an imaginary friend and accept 'on faith' that their request will be heard, understood and fulfilled despite all evidence to the contrary.

Pointless...

I know because I asked for a red bike for Christmas in 1955 and I am still awaiting delivery. Maybe 'god' should  talk with Jeff Bezos about upgrading the heavenly order compliance system.