Friday - The heat wave broke -skateboarding - sTrump'et's sock puppet Jim Jordan shows a high level of public incompetence.

I went to Manhattan again today. Still hauntingly quiet. I did see a few tourists, but only a few. I wonder if they were local tourists.

The restaurants are still closed, and that makes finding a spot to relax with a friend a little harder. Lucky for us, the rain broke early and we found a spot to sit in a plaza where the seats were not still wet.

The sTrump'et administration acts as if it's above the law until it gets caught. The Dept. of Homeland Security was monitoring journalists and distributing their "intelligence reports" to other law enforcement agencies until they got caught at it, and now they are stopping. Don't they know it's illegal? And that they are not above the law?

In Portland, they ask for the right to target journalists because they believe some protestors are hiding behind a press pass. Isn't the rule supposed to be a presumption of innocence?

sTrump'et is seeking to undermine trust in the electoral process because he can't actually make it go his way. It won't matter if he accepts the results, what will matter is that he is escorted out of the White House, either on his own or under duress, but either way, escorted out.

During hearings in the House of Representatives, accused enabler of pedophilia, Representative Jim Jordan, acting like a demagogue, a small-town Joe McCarthy, tries to hijack the hearing today with Fauci and Adm. Brett Giroir with a tirade and pointed questions about religion when the hearing is supposed to be about the administration's mishandling of the pandemic. It was a pathetic performance by a low grade ham. Fauci handled him well by refusing to stoop to accused pedophile enabler Jordan's level, and by keeping politics out of it. Now wonder Dr. Fauci is more popular than the Repulsives.

If the Repulsives treated the pandemic as seriously as it deserves, they might not seem as incompetent to govern as they do. But it goes against their grain.

There was more, but it's Friday and I'm tired.

The photos were shot this afternoon. While I was chatting with my friend these skateboarders started practicing until the building's security gently asked them to leave.

Skateboarding is not a crime.

Unelect Trump

Vote Joe Biden 2020

Take back the US Senate from the Repulsive Republicans and the sTrump'et Zombies

Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/07/friday-heat-wave-broke-strumpets-sock.html

Thursday - The outside repairs to the house move forward, Doofus Donald Trump spins until he's dizzy

Despite the heat, the painters and carpenters are doing a great job making the exterior of my 210 year old home look great. I am very impressed and will definitely give the company a recommendation. I would be melting out there if I had to do the work.

But damn, it needed to be done and it's getting done. Damn the cost, just do it.

I wish I could say the same for the Repulsive Republicans in Congress and the White House. They dither and dawdle, arguing among themselves about the non-plan for relief they still haven't formulated, flailing in waters they no longer know how to swim in, desperate to blame their opponents. I know some fools out there are buying it but it seems that Abe Lincoln's maxim about not being able to fool most of the people all of the time is coming true again. We will see come November.

Doofus Donald once more showed off his booger brains. He tweeted that he wants to postpone the elections in November, which he cannot do by law, and then when the trial balloon flopped and hit him in the head, he essentially walked it back saying he didn't mean it. With the sTrump'et he says on thing in the morning and the opposite in the afternoon. Who knows what he'll say tonight.

His sock puppet/cat's paw, Attorney General William Barr put on a poor show yesterday, spewing out the bilious falsehoods and misrepresentations that the sTrump'et's been farting all along. It was sad but again, his Repulsive Republican allies lapped the urine up as if it was mother's milk. 

Are there no persons of honesty and good will sitting among the Repulsives, or have they all been pummeled into stupefied submission, turned into brainless zombies, but their fear of the sTrump'et's twitter feed?

So let's do it: Unelect Trump, take back the Senate and drive some more Repulsives out of the House. 

A few more photos from my trip into Manhattan yesterday. It is still quiet and much more empty. I am also including aa small group where I played with a polarizing filter. It's interesting how quarter turns of polarization make a difference.

Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/07/thursday-outside-repairs-to-house-move.html

Wednesday - In Manhattan it felt like 99 in the shade. Jim Jordan was channeling Joe McCarthy during the House Judiciary Committee hearing

Yes, it's summer, almost August, and Manhattan is supposed to be hot. But damn, day after day this heat just wears on. I like getting out for a walk but on days like today, I am tempted to stay in the AC.

In Washington, alleged pedophile enabler Jim Jordan, a Repulsive Representative from Ohio just dripped bile while going off topic - the topic was supposed to be competition in the digital marketplace - to attack the CEO of Alphabet for allegedly censoring Conservative voices. His face was full of anger but I didn't feel he was really angry, just putting on a show for the cameras. He claimed to be defending freedom of speech but the only freedom of speech he seemed to care about was that of the far right. I imagine if Sundar Pichai said, "oh no, we are going to do our best to make sure the President is reelected," Jordan would've shut up.

If I am not mistaken, in the US corporations have free speech protections, and McCarthy, I mean Jordan, doesn't give a hoot about that if they might say somethnig against his positions, which are somewhere to i the neighborhood of Franco. Everyone to his left is a socialist and there is almost nobody to his right.

Meanwhile sTrumpet, during an interview for Axios, admitted he said nothing to Putin about bounties paid to the Taliban for killing American soldiers. He hemmed and hawed, well we helped arm the opposition when the Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan, but that fell flat, so claimed the intelligence brief never reached his desk, then hemmed and hawed some more and said something about how people are always going on about Russia, but what about China? Well sorry to tell you Mr. Boogers for Brains, but we know you asked the Chinese for election help, and we have been going on about China gangbusters.

Unelect Trump - he has proven he is just not up to the job.

And Ohioans, do something and dump Jim Jordan, a demagogue already, and probably a criminal.

The photos tonight were taken this morning and during the middle of the day. Manhattan is still a bit of a ghost town, as you can see. But most people wear masks.

Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/07/wednesday-in-manhattan-it-felt-like-99.html

Tuesday - I'm doing fine. Trump is really losing it.

It's been about seven months since I had knee replacement surgery so it was time for a follow up visit with the orthopedist. I had the x-rays taken of both knees two weeks ago and today I had a chance to see them. A prosthetic knee doesn't look anything like a real knee on the inside but it doesn't look any different on the outside. The biggest difference for me is the end of pain, the ability to lead a normal life.

My other knee is pretty worn well worn out. As the doctor said, it is bad though not quite as bad as the one that was replaced. The funny thing is, it doesn't hurt much and I'm able to do just about everything I can do with the new knee - hike, row, bike, take long urban walks. I guess after about 3 miles it gets a little sore, but that's about six times further than  I could walk on the other one, and since the replacement went in, the other feels better. The doctor and I agreed that it might be because I'm not favoring the old bad one, so this one is being used normally.

In the x-ray I could see where the bone is on the bone, and that there are spurs in the back of the joint that keep me from fully straightening my leg, but as long as it isn't painful, I'm not going to do anything about it.

I got to thinking about the person running on the Repulsive ticket for NY State Senate in my district, Rob "Sock Puppet" Astorino.. He is man who can lie and smile at the same time. He claims he is fiscally responsible despite the verifiable fact that when he was County Executive in Westchester, we received consecutive credit rating drops causing the county to do its borrowing at a higher interest rate, leaving his sucessor with a deeper hole to fill, which the Democrat did. Astorino is not only a climate change denier but actively worked to undermine efforts in the county to improve the environment. About the only thing I can say about him is that in person, he's not a total asshole.

Pete Harkham is doing right by the district - weekly food drives during the pandemic for instance, regular covid-19 updates, and keeping the state budget under control. 

Relect Harkham.

I did love the sTrump'et's latest bit of posturing, announcing he won't be able to throw out the first pitch for the Yankee's home opener. The announcement caught he own team and the Yankees by surprise because he had not been asked. So yeah, he won't be able to but not because he's too busy dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic as he claimed, because he certainly has enough time to get out on the golf course,

There was still no pandemic aid bill. The Repulsives are choking on anything verging on saving the economy and keeping drowning families from going under. It is pathetic. I don't think he can listen to his own administration when it comes to the virus. He said, "“you can look at large portions of our country — it’s corona-free,” while federal officials listed 21 states with outbreaks so bad they are in the "red zone," 28 in the "yellow zone," and only one, Vermont, is green. And Doofus Donald scratches that orange thing on his head while his booger brains complains that health officials in his administration are more popular and trusted than he.

It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

So Unelect Trump, win back the Senate for the disgusting Repulsive Party.

The photos were taken a couple of years ago on a sunny, Sunday afternoon in Manhattan, and included a visit to Katz's Delicatessen on Houston St. in Manhattan.

Permalink

https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/07/tuesday.html

Monday - Remembering working in very hot places - What horrors is Boogers for Brains working on now?

The hottest part of the day has become too hot for me, which isn't how it used to be. In the 1970s and 1980s I worked in places notorious for lacking air conditioning. I never learned to love it but I did learn how to tolerate it and survive to work another day. I remember how it felt, working in the very hot basement of the second hand bookstore during the summer, ventilation provided by large industrial fans on tall bases blasting hot, humid and dusty air down the aisles. I imagined it was like the engine room of a coal fired steamship and I was working in front of the open hearth. By the end of the day, I'd look forward to going outside, expecting to feel relief because it just could not be worse than in that basement.  But when I got outside, it wasn't any better. It just smelled different, had different noises and sometimes was worse for lack of a breeze.

Nobody ever moved to NYC for the weather, even people who say they did.

I feel for the men working on the outside of my house in the heat. They try to work on the shady side as much as possible, and since the long axis of my house faces east and west, they can do one side in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

I am worried that our baby-in-chief, his nibs Doofus Donald aka Boogers for Brains, is thinking about sending more paramilitary into other cities. He has no impulse control and since his campaign is trying to capitalize on the mess they are making in Portland, he might see it as an easy way to make more messes and make more campaign videos. This is someone who early in his Presidency started raising tariffs because he could, and decided that the pain they caused to trading partners was easy to see, and the pain caused at home was not, that they are good and he went ahead and did more, saying something like, "Tariffs are good."

The BLM movement is about justice, and he didn't get it when it started a few years ago and he gets it even less now, despite many people of various political strains seeing it. A person has to be a committed racist to not get it, and protests to the opposites, that all lives matter - which they do but that's not the point - are being obtuse.

I don't understand why the hate. I red an article today from the Washington Post, titled "When Black Lives Matter came to White, rural America"  (I hope clicking on the title will take you to it). It was both heartening and disheartening all at once. I was proud of the young women trying to make some changes happen, and saddened by the blind anger and hatred their small protests arouse in some people. This is not a zero-sum game. We all gain from opening doors and ending the institutionalized racism that is characteristic of so much of our society.

And in DC, the sTrump'et goads his zombies and makes them feel entitled and enabled by his own racist actions and comments. We are not fooled by his, "who me?" pretensions.

Unelect Trump. Take back the Senate. Make America America again.

Tonight's photos are from the Things I See series.

Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/07/monday-remembering-working-in-very-hot.html

Sunday - America on the cusp - Trump 's trial balloons for repression are failing.

Mark Meadows sounds like he's been spending too much time around sTrump'et - now he's got boogers for brains. When asked about how the revised unemployment supplement would be implemented, with major changes to its formula, all he could say is it would work and it would be great. He is sounding like his boss, who promises H...U...G...E and delivers little or nothing.

It's a dangerous situation. The Repulsives are are house divide against itself, with the extremists wanting to end it while a larger group needs something or they will endanger their own seats as welll as the Repulsive majority. That the dysfunction has become so public is rather pathetic. Boogers for Brains describes anyone in the Repulsive Party that isn't a zombie following his line as a RINO, including former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Ryan is no longer a sTrump'et Zombie but he is by no means a moderate. His Conservative credentials are strong, probably stronger than Doofus Donald's who is more demagogue than political,

The policy of sending Federal law forces into Portland has backfired. It has awakened anger across the country and new protests are now springing up. People who probably seeing videos of people being dragged off the street, of peaceful protesters goaded into escalating their actions, will endanger the administration's credibility more.

Black lives matter, justice is for all and not just an entitled majority, a tyranny of the majority is still tyranny.

We are at a crossroads. Confront the sTrump'et Zombies wherever you see them, but be polite. Don't fall into their cowardly tactics of anonymous death threats, of brandishing fists and offering to beat you up if you disagree. But be prepared at all times to defend yourself and in so doing, your community and our country.

Unelect Trump. Biden for President.

Help unelect Repulsive senators by volunteering your time or making small donations.

And make sure to vote in November.

From mid-February to mid-March, only one person I knew was worrying a lot about what was called then the novel corona virus. It was a problem in China, but we hadn't heard about cases here, yet. Then suddenly, the normalcy descended into shut-downs, thousands then tens of thousands, millions and now more than 15 million people infected with the virus, and almost 150,000 deaths in the USA. 

A few photos taken in late February and early March 2020 in midtown Manhattan.

These will be part of a series called, "Before the Plague: Pre-Pandemic Manhattan."