"Robicheaux" by James Lee Burke, 2018

Dave Robicheaux is back. This is almost as good as Tin Roof Blowdown. Burke returns with his great characters, and descriptions of the underbelly of southern Louisiana that keep you up at night. Another great one from the old master.

"For many years our state legislature has been known as a mental asylum run by ExxonMobil. Since Huey Long, demagoguery has been a given; misogamy and racism and homophobia have become religious virtues, and self-congratulatory ignorance has become a source of pride...

How do you handle it when your anger brims over the edge of the pot? You use the shortened version of the Serenity Prayer, which is "Fuck it"...have faith in your own convictions and never let the naysayers and those who are masters at inculcating self-doubt hold sway in your life. "Fuck it" is not profanity. "Fuck it" is a sonnet."

"The Son" by Philipp Meyer

A damn good novel about four generations of a Texas family. Meyer details Comanche customs as well or better than "Empire of the Summer Moon"; his portrayal of the Mexican-American 'war" in South Texas in the early 1900's, and the Texas oil barons is as good as any history I have read while placing the context in a page turning novel. Highly recommended. Note: Skip the AMC series. It is another story altogether. It's not worth the time.

Even if God existed, to say he loved the human race was preposterous. It was just as likely the opposite; it was just as likely he was systematically deceiving us. To think that an all-powerful being would make a world for anyone but himself, that he might spend all his time looking out for the interests of lesser creatures, it went against all common sense. The strong took from the weak, only the weak believed otherwise, and if God was out there, he was just as the Greeks and Romans had suspected: a trickster, an older brother who spent all his time inventing ways to punish you. Meyer (2013). p. 505

The cotton men had burned their own buildings to bring us into the war and before the sun came up the next day, their newspapers were blaming escaped slaves and Yankees, whose next step would be to burn all of Texas, right after they got done raping all the white women. Meyer (2013). p. 439

My old flip phone and bare internet look better every day ...Maybe the internet needs to go...

That would be a far worst experience for those viewing my feed...

The day after I set it up, it caught me walking through the living room naked, resulting in the very first nude video of me (that I know about), which was promptly sent to the cloud and saved to the Home Cam app on my phone. This appears to be a common problem for the smart home set.

When you are an asshole and the President, maybe you should be more selective with your friends and associates....

Josh Marshall's (Talking Points Memo) political commentary is consistently prescient and accurate. This article focuses on the Porter situation.

All of it starts to feed on itself. The President is defined by his predation. He attracts these people to him or they are the only options available and he in turn protects them. He’s staffed by the inexperienced, the incompetent and the reprobate. They are unable to hide his nature even when it would be in his interest to allow them to do so. The rush of crises and incapacity yields desperation and lying, in part because of the nature of the situation but even more because these behaviors are validated from the top. Did John Kelly start out as a liar? We don’t know. He seems to be one and a not terribly good one now. Porter’s exposure is like a brief but sustained flash of light amidst the moral darkness and squalor of Trump White House, briefly illuminating all the dreck and rot of the rough beast of Trumpism.

JUAN PABLO VILLALOBOS VOLUNTEERS THE NATION OF MEXICO TO BUILD TRUMP’S WALL: IT'S GOING TO BE REALLY TERRIFIC

Let's build the wall...read it all...Exceptional piece...

Let’s build the wall. And okay, we’ll pay for it, us Mexicans. But we’ll build it ourselves, and we’ll put an aid station every twenty kilometers, a proper shelter with doctors, food, water, beds where people can rest and gather their strength, and English classes. And most importantly, we’ll have lots of doors all up and down the wall, thousands of them. Doors that can only be opened from one side: ours...

The only policy they understand is Revelations...

Richard Land of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, appeared on the “Point of View” radio program, where he told host Kerby Anderson that he has been shocked by how much influence he and other Religious Right activists have had over the make-up of Trump’s administration.

“Some of my conservative friends and I, we have been pinching ourselves, are we hallucinating or is this actually happening?” Land said. “I know a good number of people on the transition team and I can tell you right now, about half of them, Kerby, think I’m liberal. I mean, these are very conservative people.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/even-richard-land-is-shocked-by-how-much-influence-the-religious-right-is-having-in-shaping-trumps-administration/

This Tain't Zoning Regulations, Cheetoini...

Ethics Schmethics...Get ready for the great fleecing...

Shaub pleaded with Trump to change his mind. “It’s important to understand that the President is now entering the world of public service,” he said. “He’s going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices. He’s going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflicts around the world. So, no, I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the President of the United States of America.”

Trump’s impulse is to cavalierly disregard ethical and democratic norms that he views as inconvenient.