Saturday, March 25, 2017

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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Friday, March 24, 2017

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." 

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

WunderTĂ¼tenFabrik— 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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Tuesday, March 21, 2017

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.
                    ---o0o---