Still working on my Photoshop skills. This was a difficult one. Finding the right pictures of each member of America’s premier crime family took some time. It’s not perfect, but you should be able to get the idea. Actually, drawing and quartering might be more appropriate, but there’s some historical significance to this method.
PS – Jared and Malaria probably ought to be in here too, but I’m tired of looking at all of them.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Presenting the one and only Trumpanovs, Amerikkka’s premier royal pain in the ass family. Would that their fate mirror that of another family they remind me of . . . whose particulars, for some reason, I can’t quite recall at the moment.
Ha Ha. JK. I mean them no harm, despite their being consummate grifters and thieves, liars and prevaricators, fools and fiends. I can overlook the kids in cages, the efforts to end Obamacare, the abject cruelty, and the utter criminal negligence (if not murderous intent) of the handling of this pandemic we’re finally hunkering down for in order to slow its progress. Of course I can. Can’t you? Just a bunch of kidders, right? No harm intended, right? Just good, clean graft and corruption. Not like it hasn’t happened before, right? Ha Ha! What a bunch of Jokers. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.
Cosplay is defined by Wikipedia thus: “[A] portmanteau of the words costume play, is a performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term ‘cosplay’ applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage. Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject and it is not unusual to see genders switched. Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, comic books, manga, television series, and video games.”
I am of the opinion Donald Trump really isn’t the President, he’s merely a cosplayer pretending to be one. He’s clearly not interested in actually governing the nation, only in destroying what he and Steve Bannon refer to as the “Administrative (or Deep) State.”
In furtherance of making my point, and in getting some good practice in upping my Photoshop skills, I created a couple of memes expressing how I feel. Here’s the first one, which I posted on Facebook on March 7:
The second one, which I posted to FB on March 19, is a bit more elaborate, but kind of makes the same point:
Regardless of the authenticity of his costume, I maintain he’s doing a really shitty job of acting the part. In fact, based on his performance with the COVID-19 pandemic response, I’m arguing he’s guilty of 2nd degree murder, but I’d settle for a conviction of negligent homicide, even maybe reckless endangerment. Anything to remove him from any position of authority over the workings of our government.
Looking back on the news, it appears Governor Newsom ordered a statewide shelter-in-place on the 19th of this month (03/19/20.) However, when I look at my calendar, I see we started doing it the previous day. So, despite what I said in an earlier post, today seems to be the 10th day of our hermitage.
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time tracking the course of this pandemic, especially here in the U.S. and my home state of California. In doing so, I created a meme showing how things are changing . . . actually, accelerating with time, just as we were told would happen. Here’s that meme, which I just updated as of a few minutes ago.
I’ve also been keeping track of the growing death rate and graphing it for myself. All the data I’m using is coming from a site called worldometer and there are numerous tables and charts available there for a breakdown of all the states, as well as a list of every country’s numbers for this virus. The link I’ve provided is to the page with U.S. info on the Corona virus. If you go to their home page, you’ll find links to all kinds of statistics. Check it out.
It’s worthy to note that the percentage of deaths to total cases is 0.0154, which is considerably higher than the rate for the flu. It’s really far too early to tell if that’s what the actual death rate is, as there are just too many unresolved cases. Based on the data available now, the percentage of deaths to total resolved cases is 0.385, which is astoundingly high. What we should glean from this, IMO, is that it’s just far too early in the trajectory of this disease to gather much useful information on lethality or recovery.
I don’t know if or when I’ll update this again. It’s fascinating, but also quite depressing. Perhaps I should just watch television. 😦
Well . . . this came at an auspicious time. This article was just shared by a friend on FB, in a local Indivisible group. It’s very short, but contains a TED Talk that’s a little over six minutes long. It’s really worth watching; game me the chills. Also, think about what we’re doing right now by staying home and practicing social distancing. I am certain it’s making a difference, thought it may be another couple of weeks before the numbers will make it clear. And, since I’m one of the people who’s theoretically inside the bullseye (age and comorbidities) I’m thankful to everyone who’s taking this seriously. I certainly am.
This moment that we are living through right now, is really rather extraordinary. Tens of millions of us are sitting at home. We don’t have our military patrolling the streets, threatening to…
With respect to the subject of the video, there was a group of us at Rocketdyne who used to constantly say, “lead from where you are,” meaning “don’t wait for others to tell you what to do or how to do it; step up and step out. You know what to do. Now do it!” So, in addition to the speaker’s assertion that we need to accept ourselves as leaders, I would add we need to recognize the opportunities presented to us to do so. Enjoy the talk.
Source: The Quiet Leadership That Matters Most – Political⚡Charge
I’m not sure when we decided it was best to lock-down the ol’ homestead, but I think it was prior to the entire State of California doing so. I know it was before my County’s (Ventura) Health Dept. ordered our current lock-down and shelter-in-place restrictions. My City of Simi Valley was slow on the uptake, (at least in part) because most of the City’s “leaders” are very conservative Republicans and, no doubt, they believed Trump when he declared this a hoax. While it’s too early to draw any serious conclusions from what little data is available, according to VC Emergency, Simi Valley (population 125,851) has over twice the cases of both of the two largest cities in the County: Oxnard (population 209,877); and Thousand Oaks (population 127,690.)
In the last 10 days I’ve been out of the house to shop for groceries three times. All three were after stores had announced special early hours for folks over 65 years old (I’m nearly 73), those with comorbidities (I have several) or whose immune systems are compromised, and pregnant women.
My first trip was to The Grocery Outlet, a store that specializes in purchasing closeouts. I wasn’t looking for anything other than fresh fruit and milk. There was very little, though I did manage to get two half pints of lowfat milk. I purchased a few canned items as long as I was there. They’ve got pineapple chunks for $0.99/can, which I consider a great deal and which is half the ingredients in one of my favorite comfort foods.
My second trip was to Vons, again early in the morning. They are opened from 7:00 am to 9:00 exclusively for the above-mentioned classes of people. It was pretty crowded, but I was able to shop for everything I needed (except eggs) and stay at least six feet apart from other folk. Even in the checkout lines, everyone was maintaining their distance, so it appeared a little busier than it would normally. That was last Thursday, I believe.
My third and final trip was to Trader Joe’s, this past Monday. They don’t open until 9:00 and, until 10:00, they have two lines form from the entrance. One line is for the same classes of people as the other stores, and the second one is for everyone else. They only allow 20 people in the store at a time and, when it’s time to usher them in, they merge both lines like traffic is supposed to merge onto the freeway or from two lanes to one. They also hand each person a disinfectant wipe, which I was quite glad for as I was a bit concerned about having touched the handle of the cart I was using, I don’t wear gloves, but I’m scrupulous about not touching my face with my hands until I return home and wash them thoroughly.
The store was better stocked than I had ever seen it in my over twenty years here. Since there weren’t too many people inside, it was easy to avoid getting close to others. I was able to purchase everything on my list, including eggs! Checkout was fast since it was hardly crowded. I remarked to the guy who checked me out how fully stocked the store was and he said they had just received the first order they actually requested. Up until that order, they were merely accepting whatever the warehouse sent to them.
So . . . that’s about the extent of my forays out into the world in the past ten or so days. I also participated in an interesting Zoom chat with a friend in France, which included several others from different parts of the world. We were discussing the new world of virtual working, something I had introduced to Rocketdyne well over a decade ago and which, unfortunately, had never caught on to the extent it is now necessary. It was an interesting and calming experience.
I’m not planning on going out again for at least another four or five days. I’d like to make it a week before returning, but we may run out of eggs before next Monday.
One last thing; I wonder how many others have experienced the same thing. As a family, our grocery shopping habits have always been pretty ad hoc; that is, we make lists, but we go shopping sporadically. Sometimes we might not go for a few days and others we might go every day for several days in a row. We shop at Costco, Vons, Trader Joe’s, The Grocery Outlet, Sprouts, and others, keeping separate lists for the things we need from each of them (though a couple are at least partially interchangeable.)
We can’t do that any longer. We’re changing our habits so we can shop for a week at one place and at one visit. This has not been our MO, and I find myself struggling a little bit. I am thankful to live where we do, as there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of anything other than paper goods (TP and PT) which people (er . . . I mean idiots) have been hoarding. Fortunately for us, we buy those things at Costco and normally have at least a month’s supply out in the garage.
Also, many people have offered to shop for us and I’m considering taking one of them up on their generosity. What’s holding me back is my feeling that there’s no reason for them to expose themselves. Although I’m older and somewhat compromised, there’s no guarantee they won’t get sick and, from what I’ve read, even those who recover and never require intubation, there may be significant, residual, life-long diminution of lung function. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
This is a mashup of something from the news and a suggestion from someone on Twitter.
I don’t believe it necessary to say anything more. Do you?
I wrote and posted the following on my Facebook Timeline and shared it with several groups to which I belong:
The feedback has been positive, with the exception of a few Trump supporters in a local community group known for the number of people on it who are averse to anything negative about their “dear leader.” I posted it there on purpose, just to stir the pot a bit.
As the corona virus pandemic continues to spread across the U.S., and people come to grips with how it’s going to affect them, I’m seeing more and more posts from folks outlining just how hard the most vulnerable among us (economically) are going to be hit, even if they don’t get sick at all.
If ever there was an argument for universal healthcare and a strong, resilient social safety net, if not UBI or a socialist economy, I think this might be it. Our fear of socialism is actually a fear of authoritarianism, but the two are not inextricably intertwined. Also, we’re already living under an authoritarian regime and it’s only going to get worse as long as Republicans have anything to say about it.
Donald John Trump, and every one of his brain dead sycophants, represent a clear and present danger to the health and well-being of the people of the United States. Everything he does, every choice he makes, is predicated on assuaging his fragile ego and is aligned with his re-election campaign and his economic interests. Even when he appears to be looking out for the nation’s economy, it is only inasmuch as it affects, and reinforces, his own financial interests. He needs to be gone immediately but, thanks to the greed and avarice of the Republican party, we will have to wait until near the end of next January to remove his worthless ass.
As John Pavlovitz posted on Twitter recently:
This President didn’t create this virus, but he ignored it, denied it, joked about it, weaponized it, politicized it, and exacerbated it. He is culpable for the chaos and the unnecessary illness, and yes, the preventable deaths because of it—and his supporters are too. This is the human cost of the MAGA cult delusion, and we’re all paying for it now equally.
https://twitter.com/johnpavlovitz/status/1238127737031864321?s=20
I have one disagreement with John, however. We’re NOT paying for it equally. The most marginalized of us will suffer far more than those of us higher up on the economic food chain. Since I’m semi-retired and, when I do work, I can work from home, if school is cancelled my youngest, who’s still in high school, will have someone at home to care for her and my oldest, who works with 4th graders through our local Boys and Girls Club, will also have a comfortable home and whatever she needs until school resumes. They will not go hungry, unless we’re forced to stay inside for longer than a couple of weeks.
There are millions of children who depend upon school breakfasts and lunches to get a good, reasonably nutritious meal (sometimes the best meal of the day) and there are lots of parents who cannot afford to miss work should they be required to stay home for a week or two. I have no doubt many on the right see this as a matter of survival of the fittest, but I can’t go along with such a callous view of how we are to function as a society.
We are social animals and we thrive when we take care of each other, recognizing that we are all dependent on our collective strengths to overcome our individual weaknesses. It’s time we recognize this basic reality of our humanity . . . and pay homage to it by lifting all boats, not just those of the wealthy and powerful.
The word ‘equality’ shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it’s not the American way.
Martha Plimpton
I think I’ve mentioned before I am experimenting with, and getting better and better at, using Photoshop . . . mostly for creating political commentary, though with other applications in mind as well. I did a fair amount of work 12 – 15 years ago with Fireworks, a product of Macromedia (since acquired by Adobe, creators of PS) related to Dreamweaver and Flash.
Fireworks was quite similar to PS, so much of what I learned back then was applicable when I started using PS. However, the latter is far more feature-packed and useful, IMO.
Here is my latest, quite simple creation, inspired by a tweet, which I will also share. First, the tweet.
Here’s the graphic. I first posted this on Twitter and Facebook with the face from a photo and without a filter. After I looked at it later on, when some had commented on my posts, I realized it would likely look a bit better if I used an artistic filter, so I applied one with brush strokes. I do think it blends a bit better this way. What do you think?
Systems Savvy 