Monthly Archives: January 2021

The Bernie Mitten Look

Supposedly imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Do Internet memes fall into that same category?  I guess we could ask Bernie Sanders, the independent-leaning senator from Vermont.  When he arrived at the presidential inauguration last week, Sanders maintained pandemic protocol and sat a few feet from others and wore the appropriate face mask.  But he also wore a pair of thick mittens hand-made by Vermont school teacher Jen Ellis.  Along with a thick parka, he was obviously prepared for the cold New England weather.  Nothing is extraordinary about those mittens, but sometimes there’s just no reason something or someone becomes popular.

Sanders’ mitten fashion has sparked plenty of creative imitators in the cyber-world.

Now Tobey Times Crochet has gone further by designing and creating a “Bernie Sanders crochet doll”, complete with parka, mask and mittens.  Measuring approximately 9” (22.9 cm), the figure is seated and bears wire-frame glasses and unkempt white hair on a balding scalp.

Ever the good sport, Sanders is using his new-found fame to raise money for charity.  And who doesn’t think an old seated alone in a chair during winter is adorable?

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Retro Quote – Abraham Lincoln

“If my name ever goes down into history, it’ll be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”

Abraham Lincoln, upon signing the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day 1865

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Word of the Week – January 30, 2021

Pollicitation

Noun

Late Middle English

The action of promising; a promise; a document conveying a promise.  In civil law, a promise not yet formally accepted, and therefore in certain cases revocable.

Example: I love to hear whatever pollicitation our elected officials spit out during their campaigns.

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Video of the Week – January 30, 2021

Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Green stalked and verbally assailed David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, earlier this week.  The alphamore congresswoman from Georgia ran and apparently won on her far-right extremist views, including that recent school shootings were hoaxes designed to restrict gun.  Like most right-wing idiots, Taylor-Green puts guns above the value of human lives.  For his part, young Mr. Hogg showed true character by ignoring the screeching banshee following him.

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Tweet of the Week – January 30, 2021

Kylie Brakeman

President Joe Biden’s $15-an-Hour Minimum-Wage Plan

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Worst Quotes of the Week – January 30, 2021

“This is what happens when you govern by pen and phone.  The jobs of hard working Americans are sacrificed in the name of environmental activism.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), criticizing the number of executive orders President Joe Biden has signed, including cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline

“Sadly, free speech is a notion that is increasingly radical to the liberal left.  I do not plan on leaving, and I need your help to fight back against this attack on free speech.”

Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), on being removed from the Board of Trustees for Texas Christian University (TCU) because he voted against certifying Joe Biden as president

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Best Quotes of the Week – January 30, 2021

“We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to act.”

President Joe Biden, upon signing executive orders to make the U.S. energy-independent and stop the use of fossil fuels to combat climate change

“I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago, so you can sit this one out.  Happy to work with almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed.  In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, criticizing Sen. Ted Cruz over the January 6 Capitol Hill riots

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From the ‘Get a Rope’ Files

Most Americans remember the tragedy and miscarriage of justice surrounding Casey Anthony.  She’s the Florida woman whose toddler daughter mysteriously vanished from her parents’ home in Florida in 2008.  The child’s body turned up just down the road several months later, but only after Anthony’s mother reported the disappearance.  Cindy Anthony called police after she opened the trunk of her daughter’s car, some 3 weeks following the little girl’s last known sighting.  Casey Anthony led police on a long road of deception before they realized she was most likely responsible for her daughter’s death.  Casey’s 2011 trial became a theatrical event, as people stormed the courtroom every day, and a slew of legal and media pundits offered their opinions and viewpoints.  When the jury found Anthony not guilty of all charges, except lying, outrage became palpable.

And now, just as we got rid of Donald Trump, Casey Anthony has surfaced again – like a mole you thought you’d excised from your face a decade ago.  Last December Anthony filed paperwork in Florida to open a private investigation firm.  Named Case Research & Consulting Services, LLC, Anthony hopes to help other “wrongfully accused people, especially women, and help them get justice.”

I feel this witch got away with infanticide only because she’s a woman, mainly a White woman, and serves no purpose on Earth.

As the old Texas saying goes – get a rope!

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New Blue

For the first time in 200 years, a new shade of blue is on sale.  In 2009, scientists developed YInMn Blue, which derives its name from its chemical components: indium, manganese and yttrium.  It absorbs red and green wavelengths to produce the bright azure shade, which is unique because it’s a hybrid of ultramarine and cobalt blue.

Even though it’s been over a decade, consumer access to the pigment had to process through the usual myriad of government regulations – particularly the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  In 2016, the Shepherd Color Company received a license to sell YInMn Blue and sees the color’s potential industrial usages.  The pigment reflects most infrared radiation; thus, keeping building exteriors cool.

The color blue has a lengthy history of discovery and innovation.  It is the first human-made pigment; dating to roughly 2,200 B.C.E., when Egyptians created cuprorivaite, known simply as Egyptian blue.  Its developers ground limestone mixed with sand and a copper-containing mineral, such as azurite or malachite, then heated it between 1470 and 1650°F.  This produced an opaque blue glass, which then had to be crushed and combined with thickening agents such as egg whites to create a long-lasting paint or glaze.

Thousands of years ago the ancient Maya developed their own shade of blue.  Known simply as Mayan blue, it’s a vibrant, durable and fade-resistant blue extracted from the leaves of the indigo plant (Indigofera) and palygorskite, a clay mineral.  Researchers believe Mayan blue was used in more ceremonial situations than artistic.

YInMn Blue is available to American consumers only through Golden Paints and Italian Arts Store.  Now anyone can purchase a tube of it for USD 179.40.  I don’t know if that’s retail or wholesale, but artists have another reason to struggle in the name of their craft.

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Don’t You Understand? They’re Victims!

“The Devil made me do it!”

Flip Wilson

You have to understand something about the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6.  They’re not entirely responsible for their actions.  They had merely responded to the words of their newly-formed deity, Donald Trump.  In the hours leading up to the siege, Trump had infused them with idea that he had been wronged by the voting process; that the 2020 elections had been manipulated by covert gangs of leftist forces determined to enforce abortions and gun confiscations upon helpless, red-blooded, bible-carrying Christian American citizens to ensure his loss.  He was a victim, Trump maintained, and vicariously so were his minions.

CHARGE!!!!!!!!!

Thus, the Trumpians had been victimized by the same queer-loving renegades and they were justified in storming the Capitol, tearing through offices, screaming like children told to come in for dinner, threatening others because they got their feelings hurt – all while dressed like ghosts of the Civil War and refugees from a Comic-Con conference gone wrong.

Please!

The Capitol Hill warriors are no more victims of enraged rhetoric than porn stars are of poor script-writing.  For years conservatives have proclaimed the tenets of individual freedom and personal responsibility.  They declared such values in reactive angst to a welfare society and relentless victimhood proclamations.

They loathed when non-White people bemoaned centuries of Euro-colonial oppression and systemic racism.  They rolled their eyes at the thought of women hollering about sexual harassment in the workplace and on college campuses.  They snickered at queer folks complaining of innate homophobia on the job and in school.

Then the U.S. Congress met on January 6, 2021 to certify Joe Biden as the winner of last year’s presidential contest, and – as Dante Alighieri once wrote – all hell broke loose.

The Trumpian crowd became maddened by the process and felt they had no other recourse but to subvert that constitutional mechanism in the most violent manner possible.  Their voices and votes had been ignored and they had to stop the madness.

So, in the name of Ronald Reagan, where the hell was all that talk of personal responsibility?  Where were the people to take ownership of themselves and their actions?  In other words, why do the Capitol Hill rioters suddenly see themselves as victims of…well, anything?!

They all sound like a bunch of – oh, God!  A bunch of minorities, women and queers!  Pass the rifle and heaven forbid!  Now these “victims” have placed themselves in the same category as tree-loving, pot-smoking, Muslim-loving liberals!

What’s going to happen next?  The magnetic poles will switch sides – like communist traitors – and life as we know will extinguish itself?

Again – please!

I personally don’t care to hear the anguished state of mind of these mentally- challenged pencil-dick and cavern-cunt imps.  What happened with last year’s presidential elections is something known as democracy.  It’s the sustenance upon which civilized societies survive.  We cannot exist without it.  The goons who stormed the Capitol three weeks ago didn’t fall victim to the verbiage of Donald Trump; they were victims of their own damned stupidity.  If they truly were swayed by Trumpian oratory, they are as gullible as a child believing in Santa Claus.  They roared into that building because what was left of their brain cells had perished in the swamp of their own hysteria.

It’s just so incredibly interesting that these right-wing extremists who wrap themselves in the American flag and cry freedom – while waving the loser traitorous Confederate flag – are suddenly helpless and violated.  They couldn’t help themselves.  Their faux president told them to do it.

The reality is quite simple: they’re violent and they’re stupid.  But they aren’t victims.

Flip Wilson on “The Ed Sullivan Show” January 11, 1970

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