Truckin': The President tries out a big rig

The President met with a group of truckers and trucking CEOs at the White House Thursday afternoon, "to discuss healthcare."  Here are images from the photo-op.

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Richard Nixon's Commandments of Statecraft

1) Always be prepared to negotiate, but never negotiate without being prepared.

2) Never be belligerent, but always be firm.

3) Always remember that covenants should be openly agreed to but privately negotiated.

"Public tactics tend to harden the opposition. 
Successful diplomatic or business negotiators resist the temptation to grandstand or make public demands that can be interpreted as threats."

4) Never seek publicity that would destroy the ability to get results.

5) Never give up unilaterally what could be used as a bargaining chip. Make your adversaries give something for everything they get.

6) Never let your adversary underestimate what you would do in response to a challenge. Never tell Him what you would not do.

7) Always leave your adversary a face-saving line of retreat.

8) Always carefully distinguish between friends who provide some human rights and enemies who deny all human rights.

9) Always do at least a much for our friends as our adversaries do for our enemies.

10) Never lose faith.  In just cause faith can move mountains. Faith without strength is futile; but strength without faith is sterile.

11) "Sometimes leaders are hesitant about executing strong and controversial measures in the belief that a less than full-hearted operation mutes criticism. When you once decide, go with all your might."

12) "When saying 'always' and 'never,' always keep a mental reservation; never foreclose the unique exception; always leave room for maneuver. A president always has yet to be prepared for what he thought he would never do." 

A message from God on a church readerboard

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Drawing: Faces 1919 — The gallery at the Gorsuch hearings

Detail:

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Statues from Rapid City, Iowa's City of Presidents (with images of Nixon, Van Buren, FDR, Coolidge, Harrison, and Grant)

To learn more, do a search on City of Presidents statues, or start at the Rapid City presidents website .

They do not yet have a statue of Barack Obama or Donald Trump.  President Obama's is on the way.  President Trump's will come after he finishes his term (in whatever fashion!).

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WunderTütenFabrik— The most unsatisfying video in the world

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Just one phone call, officer

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Faces 1918 - Six Sleeper Cells

Drawings by Jack Brummet

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The irregular middle finger roundup (Emmy Anderson, The Grateful Dead, Ben Affleck, Carrie Fisher, Grace Slick, Iggy Pop)

By Mona Goldwater, Signs and Gestures Ed.

The latest batch of middle fingers submitted by readers. Keep them coming!

Emmy Anderson

The Bride

Former President of Mexico Vicente Fox (on the right) sending a greeting to President Trump

Carrie Fisher

The Grateful Dead, 1967

Trump supporter at a rally gives the finger to the press pen

Grace Slick

Ben Affleck

Iggy Pop

Unknown sunbathers

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World Poetry Day, Part 2: The Day Lady Died by Frank O'Hara/Painting of O'Hara by Alice Neel

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday 

three days after Bastille day, yes 

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine 

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner 

and I don’t know the people who will feed me 

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy 

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days 

                                                        I go on to the bank 

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres 

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine 

after practically going to sleep with quandariness 

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE 

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton 

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it 

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of 

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT 

while she whispered a song along the keyboard 

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

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Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. City Lights Books. 

Alice Neel, portrait of Frank O'Hara

Fun with cattle prods

Happy World Poetry Day! "Ozymandias" by Percy Shelley Reading by Bryan Cranston)

Ozymandias by Percy Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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