Posts about things that happen in the news. Sometimes light, sometimes cynical. Often critical.

Florida residents told to prepare for evacuation. All of them.

Yes, that’s right. All of Florida’s residents are supposed to prepare for evacuation. Twenty. Million. People.

Of course, it makes sense: Irma is huge. As Governor Rick Scott points out: Irma is wider than the entire state of Florida. Looking at the devestation it caused in the Caribbean (we’re told Jack Sparrow and his Kraken were quite impressed Irma did that without even a single drop of rum), it makes a lot of sense to not be there when the full force of this agent of destruction is projected to hit Florida head on!

But how on earth can Florida prepare and evecuate everyone in less than two days? Is there some teleportation there we don’t know about? And if so, couldn’t it just… beam up Irma?

Looks like Trump finally managed to get something done

No, that’s not really true. But he managed to spark something: Facebook rants. Now, this is not the Facebook rant of your angry coworker against the machinations of his own mind that he thinks are out to get him. Not by a long shot. When these Facebook users rant, the world pays attention.

What happened? Well, Donald wants to cancel DACA in a fit of seeming like he can actually form a policy. This sparked a reply from a few well-known Facebook users. One of them being the ultimate Facebook users, Mark Zuckerberg himself:

Among the large number of people disagreeing with the latest Trump attempt was President Bill Clinton:

And yes, Trump managed to get another Facebook-rant from President Barack Obama:

Is that it? No, not really. Yet another Facebook rant on the decision came from one of the richest men on earth:

So, there you have it. Amidst reports that, for some reason, 29% of New Yorkers STILL see Trump favourably, he finally starts having a Presidential legacy. Not with the Wall, or Tax Reform or even Making America Great Again.. but not everyone can say that some of the most influencial and wealthy people ranted about their policies on Facebook within a span of 24 hours.

Donald Trump tweeted “Thank you”. But… thank whom? And why?

In his series of tweets from yesterday, commander-in-chief and POTUS “Real” Donald Trump told the internet he’s meeting his generals to discuss the North Korea situation.

And he thanked us. Or someone. We don’t really know what to make of it! Why? Is he assuming praise for doing the job he was elected to do? Did someone offer him a cookie? Was Melania giving him a blowjob under the table and did he mistakenly thank the internet while orgasming to the thought of nuking North Korea? Much like covfefe, we’re assuming this masterstroke of internet communication will remain a mystery.

Not unlike the cognitive capabilities of Trump himself, as he promptly displayed in a follow-up tweet.

Stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea. That includes China. You know, that little country that inspired the themeparkish city blocks with lots of asian food and cramped up little shops owned by old men who sell Gremlins.

Chinatown: the source of indigestion and Gremlins.

Well, apart from Chinatown and cheap labour back in the day when the Railroads were being built and the Irish demanded actual wages, China is now once again the source of cheap labour. And a huge trade deficit. 2016 sported a $309.6 billion dollars deficit, a total trade of $648,2 billion, which would be about 3% of the total US economy. And that’s just the cost of stopping trade with one country, without even accounting for the damages that large companies like Apple would suffer if they had to move production (or their headquarters) elsewhere because of trade bans.

White Supremacy Terrorists in Charlottesville Terror Attack

Charlottesville was a terrorist attack. Stop calling it something else.

In the wake of the Charlottesville events, most of the coverage have been referring to the event as a ‘rally’, ‘mess’, ‘white supremacist rally’ and ‘hate crimes in Charlottesville’. Very few articles included the word terrorism. And we’re wondering why.

Terrorism is the use of violence for a political purpose. Now, maybe we should exclude activists that end up fighting by chance from that. However, given the info from ProPublica we should conclude that the violence was not only political, but also planned. It’s profoundly disturbing to read neo-nazi’s try to find which ways to hurt and kill people who disagree with them. It’s disturbing to read people that “want to end the race war once and for all”.

Other comments include: “With how closely we’re working with the police, the cops are likely to..”, assuming that the cops would focus on counter-protestors. Some even went as far as hoping to recruit cops for the cause. That is even more disturbing: the police working closely together with white supremacists?

Terrorism

However, the public perception should change. These guys were planning on using violence. They did use violence. Someone got killed. Had a Muslim done any one of these, the media would have discussed it as a potential terrorist and as soon as they found the vaguest political motive, would have labelled it as terrorism. In the case of Charleston, the motive is clear. The violence is documented.

But since it is white people hurting other people with what looks like the support of the cops, it’s suddenly not a terrorist attack? Clearly, this needs to change. Charlottesville was a terrorist attack. Let’s stop calling it something else.

Cowboy of the Captiol

Cowboy of the Capitol: more outlaw than sheriff

For this post we’re donning our spurs and we’ll saddle up the old gray stallion riding backwards in time to the Wild Wild West. Warren Love, a State Representative, is still living in that time.

The State Representative called for a good old-fashioned lynching. The person who vandalized a Confederate statue should be hung. Love (proving a name says nothing about the product itself) uttered on the pretty damn modern telegraph-like thingamajig called Facebook that the perp should be ‘hung from a tall tree’.  After that, he was suprised to find that people disapprove of politicians calling for lynchings.

Cowboy of the Capitol

The self-proclaimed “Cowboy of the Capitol” apparently thinks that this is just ‘an exaggerated statement’. Apparently, the US is now entering a phase where politicians think they’re not responsible for the things they say. This is getting ridiculous. People shouldn’t have to guess about the intentions of their politicians. They’re too busy figuring out which words are partially true, to begin with.

Now, we’re not calling for a lynching. However, this seems like the kind of thing that should be political suicide. In any normal democracy, it would have been.

Kelly Thomasson threatened in the name of Trump

The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia reportedly just shared this image he got via the mail after the Charlottesville attack by the extreme White Supremacists. It seems to be a threat to the life of Kelly Thomasson.

According to the above tweet Kelly Thomasson’s husband, Clark Mercer, shared this image on Facebook.

So you think you can #Brexit? UK struggling to book any results

The UK government decided to enact the article 50 procedure, triggering the Brexit, earlier this year with no actual plan of attack in place. The results of this… ‘strategy’ are now showing. Mostly through their absence.

On the one hand, the UK is likely to strike a bargain with the EU for an extension of the Brexit-negotiations. This will most likely mean an extension of the current agreements after the UK officially leaves the EU up until the point when both of them manage to hammer out a new trade agreement. In other words: Britain will, for all practical purposes, be the equivalent of an EU member. Just one without a vote at the table.

It’s either that, or the cliff-edge Brexit variant. Nobody really wants that, tough talk aside, and the EU didn’t want a Brexit to begin with, so they’re in no hurry to come to an agreement to alter that. Brexit is brexit, except maybe not so much. It’s as though you’re retired and start using up you’re pension, yet you still come to work every day until you and your boss agree to a deal about who’s going to do your work. The work your boss doesn’t want you to stop doing.

The Japanese are crazy, but not that crazy

In the mean time Theresa May is trying to persuade the Japanese to broker a copy of the nearly-finished free trade agreement with the EU. And although Japan is a big investor in the UK, that’s mostly because they’re, that’s right, in the EU. So the Japanese should be interested. If May can guarantee they’ll still have access to the EU, of course.

Kind of a hard thing to do, if you’re working on no longer being part of the EU. No wonder the BBC “Reality Check” figures that May may find it hard to come home with anything substantial after her Japan trip. Japan may be home to some of the weirdest cultural shit on earth, but they’re not this crazy.

Stupidilly McStupid

All in all, it doesn’t look like the Brexiteers are getting a break anytime soon. And may we say it’s really not all that surprising? Diving into one of the most complicated negotiations of all time with no strategy, no clear vision of what is to come and no real consensus on anything was stupid enough. Calling for a general election and losing the majority in government as a result of this was even more stupid. So it’s no wonder Britain is drawing the short straw on so many fronts. We’re honestly surprised nobody’s started looking for a way out of this mess yet.

Mueller indicates he’s going after Pence

Well, as if this political soap opera that is unfortunately not a “House of Cards” rip-off, but real life, needed more complications. It didn’t. Still, Robert Mueller is now also going after Mike Pence, or so it seems.

Mueller is investigating wether Michael Flynn was getting kickbacks, fraud. He asked the White House for documentation on Flynn’s employment. This relates directly to Pence: if the documents prove that Pence knew about his work as a paid foreign agent, and claimed his innocence, it makes Pence an obstructor of justice, according to Bluedotdaily, who reports on the matter in this article.

Will Pence take the fall before any serious impeachment against Trump is going to be in action? If anything, this administration is a hurricane of fast-paced news and it’s getting really hard to keep up with everything. One has to wonder how Trump even can, himself…