Will the media let Trump keep lying?

Jennifer Rubin, who is a conservative right-wing columnist at the Washington Post, and who really, really doesn't think Donald Trump should have been elected President, has some advice for the media:

Don't let Trump or his seconds lie to you.  And don't let Trump's seconds defend the lies that he tells.

She provides a transcript of George Stephanopoulos trying to get Mike Pence to discuss the topic of Trump lying about the "millions" of fraudulent votes in the last election, but Pence stuck to the script of denying that the Trumpster lied about that.

Interviewers cannot let Trump's lies fly by

A quote: "Trump’s assault on the truth goes a long way toward explaining his unhinged attacks on the media. He and his advisers scream bloody murder when the press reports his own words. That’s not “dishonest” or “liberal bias” as he says — it’s reporting on the objective reality (what came out of his own mouth), something that threatens Trump’s stranglehold on the national conversation. His bizarre notion that we should not take him “literally” (i.e., expect him to believe what he says) sums up the Orwellian world in which he operates."

One game at a time

Crystal Palace may not have been exactly dominant and convincing, but they did win against Southampton.  It helped that the Southampton goalkeeper took a mighty swing at the ball in front of his own net to send it deep into the Crystal Palace zone, and instead kicked it about three feet right to Christian Benteke, who took the gift and put it where it belonged.

So they live to play another week, and Alan Pardew is still the coach.

Tune in again this weekend to watch another tightrope walk against Hull City, a game that they should be favored to win, but nothing is ever easy.


Crystal Palace 3-0 Southampton: A birthday brace for Christian Benteke seals vital three points and hands under-fire manager Alan Pardew a lifeline

Lighthouse of the Week, December 4-10, 2016: Race Rocks, British Columbia, Canada

I've had a couple of British Columbia lighthouses as Lighthouse of the Week before, but I went back there again.  This time I chose the Race Rocks lighthouse, which is one of the oldest lighthouses in Canada, and is made out of granite.  Solid rock.  Built to last.

It's located south of Vancouver Island, close enough to Washington State and the USA that the Olympic Mountains make a dramatic backdrop in some photographs (as you'll see below).

It even has it's own Web site with live Webcam views (I think that's a first for my LOTW), and occasionally has elephant seals on the front lawn.

It is also now currently located in a Marine Protected Area.

More from Wikipedia here

Race Rocks Lighthouse Web site (with the Webcams)

History of Race Rocks Lighthouse

It's an old-timer, too: "The lighthouse was built between 1859–1860 by the crew of HMS Topaze and outside labourers under a contract awarded to John Morris by the British Government."

And the pictures:

Hope nothing happens before then

The U.S. military, specifically the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has just finished building and testing a new telescope designed to track space junk and small asteroids, for two primary reasons:

1.  To anticipate and hopefully prevent collisions of junk with things that are valuable;

and

2.  To keep track of things big enough to hit Earth with dangerous consequences.

The problem is, now that it's been built and tested, it has to get shipped to Australia and rebuilt, and maybe it'll be ready to start looking for space rocks and space junk in 2020.  That is, provided Donald Trump doesn't think space junk and killer asteroids are a Chinese hoax and cuts off the funding.

I don't see that happening, but you never know with The Donald.

DARPA's SST spans the sky for asteroids

My first sonnet for December

I haven't posted any sonnets for awhile, but I have a backlog.   So this when will start off the month.



rite impassioned

So simple and so commonplace, this act,
which happens ev'ry day uncounted times
so that it seems we'd be far too exact
to think that one of them deserves the rhymes
of a poetic utterance -- yet still,
participants may think their act was such,
so wonderous and thunderous they will
believe themselves as blessed, though in the much
more unemotional considera-
tion of statistics we all know they can-
not be so specially unique, yet they
will always think they were. The span
of globalness defines the grace for all,
where ev'ry pair creates their naked thrall.

Cutting taxes, spending more = doesn't add up

A budget watch group wants to know how POTUS-elect Donald Trump is going to pay for massive increases in spending (military, infrastructure) while at the same time instituting ginormous tax cuts.

Answer:  didn't work for Reagan, didn't work for George W. Bush, won't work for Trump.  No matter what pie-in-the-sky supply siders say.

Budget group tells Trump:  pay for your plans

"The president-elect has contradicted himself in comments on the deficit on the campaign trail.

In some speeches, he condemned federal spending, promising to eliminate national debt within eight years.

But he also outlined a dizzying array of new programs and tax cuts, sometimes in the same campaign speech. He’s called for a huge increase in defense spending and vowed to spend more on infrastructure than even his campaign rival Hillary Clinton had committed to do."

So, to put it simply, Donald showed us how to win elections. Tell the people what they want to hear, even if it's a lie and the numbers don't add up. And Donald lied all the time.

Iza's abs

I'll probably write a couple more postings about the most recent Victoria's Secret show (which I haven't even seen yet, of course).  But I had to note this picture of Iza Goulart.  I've commented on Iza's fitness before (here and here and also here), but this particular one captured her outrageous level of abdominal development.'

She's a very beautiful woman, of course -- these abs are just a highlight.