This space is usually filled, I know, with a torrent of disgust and effluvia based on the disgusting torrent of effluvia erupting daily in the U.S. and in the world at large.
However, today we will focus on something less than our usual 12-million-calorie bounty of an engorged, buffet-table cornucopia with strap-on bib. We will instead take a light meal, and a little water. And an electric hot pot, or some Sterno. (Think Ramen. More on that in a sec.)
Alex Baer: Pray for Change - R'amen!
Alex Baer: Home of the Knave, Brand of the Tweet
It's taken us all longer that it should have to arrive at the obvious: Trump was never running, Trump never wanted the job, and we've all been conned in a fashion no one ever thought possible.
It would be like learning the whole point of NASA's moon missions was to test out if the place really was made of cheese, and, if so, to keep it from the Russians, at least until we had global dairy prices locked down.
The (likely) real story behind Colin Powell’s email advice to Hillary Clinton
What was almost certainly in the email Powell sent Clinton was the story of his successful efforts to drag the State Department into the modern age. I worked for State during that period of time, and watched it happen.
When the rest of the world was working on PCs and using then-modern software in their offices, State clung to an old, clunky mainframe system made by the now-defunct company WANG. WANG's version of a word processor was only a basic text editor with no font or formatting tools. Spell check was an option many locations did not have installed. IBM had bid on a contract to move State to PCs in 1990, but was rejected in favor of a renewal of the WANG mainframes.
New bio 'Trump Revealed' offers troubling portrait
For Donald Trump, real estate magnate, casino mogul and reality TV star, it's clear there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Even so, it's hard to imagine he will embrace Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power (Scribner, 347 pp., ***½ out of four stars), The Washington Post's dive into the Republican presidential nominee's life and business record.
Alex Baer: Scratching While Shooting the Magic 8-Ball
In pool, having the cue ball leave the table -- jumping a bumper or plunging down a pocket-hole -- is a scratch. Most people play as if it's not a big deal, that it's just the end of your turn. You don't get to keep shooting.
However, in most forms of a game of 8-ball, if you scratch while shooting the 8, and pocket that 8-ball -- well, that's an instant loss. Game over.
And that thought gives me no rest. White American votes (for the most part) are the cue ball on this green-felt-topped, slate table-top game of politics, and The Trumpster is the 8-ball if ever there was one.
Fracking Update: 3 tremors in 24 hours near Oklahoma shale country
Three minor seismic events were recorded near the shale reserve areas in Oklahoma in the past 24 hours, data for the U.S. Geological Survey show.
USGS data show the strongest of the three seismic events was a magnitude-2.9 tremor recorded shortly after midnight in southern Kansas, a few miles from the state border with Oklahoma. A magnitude-2.5 event was recorded in Fairview, Okla., early Sunday afternoon.
Alex Baer: No Prisoners, No Apologies, No Rules
No matter how many toys, gadgets, and gizmos we create, we're still batting zero in social evolution. Mostly. (We can talk about one exception, later on.)
Considering the number of apologies we've received from the banksters who nearly collapsed the world economy with their charlatan scams and bottomless greed. My count still stands at Precisely None, in both the Forced and Unforced categories.
Iraq hangs 36 people sentenced to death for killing of troops in 2014
Iraq said on Sunday it had hanged 36 militants sentenced to death over the mass killing of hundreds of mainly Shi'ite soldiers at a camp north of Baghdad two years ago.
It is the highest number of militants executed in one day by the Iraqi government since Islamic State fighters took control of parts of northern and western Iraq in 2014.
The executions were carried out at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, state television quoted the Justice Ministry as saying.
Alex Baer: Working to Live It Up (and Down)
There are still some things in life worse than working for a living. That's not immediately clear, when the alarm clock has triggered its doomsday, crash-dive klaxon, just when, in your dream, you were headed toward a bulkhead in your pina-colada-submarine... while doing underwater calisthenics with bulked-up dolphins in swim caps.
Another of the things worse than working? Staying up too late, watching Olympic athletes, and getting too little sleep, finding in the morning that someone has swapped out your brain with moldy linguini and damp sawdust. This was probably when you dreamed about synchronized snowball fights, and got up in the night, groggy, and turned the A/C blizzard down from arctic eternity to moderately crunchy eyebrows.
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