Random Musings

This is one of those weeks ... yesterday marked the third anniversary of my sister’s passing from lung cancer, and then tomorrow will mark the ten year anniversary of my mother’s passing from lung cancer.

Not a day goes by ...

The Grammy’s. It was an Adele v Beyoncé showdown and, well, the best woman won when Adele beat Beyoncé in every category ... and onstage.

As usual, Adele sings and Beyoncé “performs.”

The singer was fabulous, even when she flubbed a lyric in the George Michael tribute and asked to start over. The performer did some kind of bizarre sing-talk song and then tilted back in a chair. WTF does that even mean? Oh, she didn’t care because she is an artiste!

Sidenote: when Adele won the last two awards she stood onstage and said Beyoncé should have won because her album, and song, were Adele’s favorites. That was sweet ... now, picture it going the other way with Beyoncé winning; does anyone think she’d say Adele should have won?

I know, right?

And speaking of the Grammys ... Celine Dion hijacked the presentation of an award to talk about herself, and her late husband, and a Grammy she won eighteen years ago.

Sit down, Celine, please.

Oops ... more retailers are Dumping _____.

Both Kmart and Sears have dropped Hair Furor’s crappy, made in China, merchandise, again citing poor sales.

The statement from Sears says it all:

“As part of the company’s initiative to optimize its online product assortment, we constantly refine that assortment to focus on our most profitable items. Amid that streamlining effort, 31 Trump Home items were among the items removed online this week. Products from the line are still offered online via third-party Marketplace vendors.”

The #GrabYourWallet movement is claiming this as another victory—in addition to having Ivanka’s made in China crap removed from Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus last week.

The drop in sales of all _____ merchandise, from father and daughter, is the result of the majority of Americans who are disgusted and repelled by anything bearing that name.

Good.

So, we recently saw Hidden Figures, about the group off African-American women who helped get our astronauts into space and onto the Moon. Great movie, great performances and a couple of Hot Men ...

Aldis Hodge played Levi Jackson and he is just fine, while Glen Powell, who had played a nerdy perv on Scream Queens, was John Glenn in the film.

And last week, Mistress Maddie pointed me in the direction of the actor who played Prince Albert on PBS’ Victoria ... Tom Hughes.

I saw this at Biki’s place today—reposted from JoeMyGod—and thought I’d share it, too:

Some people are saying that we should give Donald Trump a chance, that we should "work together" with him because he won the election and he is "everyone's president." This is my response:

•I will not forget how badly he and so many others treated former President Barack Obama for 8 years...

•I will not "work together" to build a wall.

•I will not "work together" to persecute Muslims.

•I will not "work together" to shut out refugees from countries where we destabilized their governments, no matter how bad they might have been, so that we could have something more agreeable to our oligarchy.

•I will not "work together" to lower taxes on the 1%.

•I will not "work together" to increase taxes on the middle class and poor.

•I will not "work together" to help Trump use the Presidency to line his pockets and those of his cronies.

•I will not "work together" to weaken and demolish environmental protection.

•I will not "work together" to sell American lands to companies which then despoil those lands.

•I will not "work together" to enable the killing in any way of whole species of animals just because they are predators, or inconvenient for a few, or because some people want to get their thrills killing them.

•I will not "work together" to remove civil rights from anyone.

•I will not "work together" to waste trillions more on our military when we already have the strongest in the world.

•I will not "work together" to alienate countries that have been our allies for as long as I have been alive.

•I will not "work together" to slash funding for education.

•I will not "work together" to take basic assistance from people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

•I will not "work together" to allow torture and "black op" prison sites.

•I will not "work together" to "take their oil."

•I will not "work together" to get rid of common sense regulations on guns.

•I will not "work together" to eliminate the minimum wage.

•I will not "work together" to support so-called "Right To Work" laws, or undermine, weaken or destroy Unions in any way.

•I will not "work together" to suppress scientific research, be it on climate change, fracking, or any other issue where a majority of scientists agree that Trump and his supporters are wrong on the facts.

•I will not "work together" to criminalize abortion or restrict health care for women.

•I will not "work together" to increase the number of nations that have nuclear weapons.

•I will not "work together" to put even more "big money" into politics.

•I will not "work together" to violate the Geneva Convention.

•I will not "work together" to give the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party and white supremacists a seat at the table, or to normalize their hatred.

•I will not "work together" to deny health care to people who need it.

•I will not "work together" to increase the profits of the insurance companies.

•I will not "work together" to deny medical coverage to people on the basis of an alleged or actual "pre-existing condition."

•I will not "work together" to increase voter suppression.

•I will not "work together" to normalize tyranny.

•I will not "work together" with anyone who is, or admires, tyrants and dictators.

•I will not "work together" with Donald Trump or anyone who supports him, because I will not allow one man to feed upon the fears of the populace, blaming minorities for their condition or their inability to thrive.

This is the line, and I am drawing it.

•I will stand for honesty, love, respect for all living beings, and for the beating heart that is the center of Life itself.

•I will use my voice and my hands, to reach out to the uninformed, and to anyone who will LISTEN for what's really so dangerous about Donald Trump, his friends and the Big Lie they spin to the world:

That "winning", "being great again", "rich" or even "beautiful" is anything more than nothing... When others are sacrificed to glorify its existence.

#RESIST

~Mike Harnisch

Well, it looks like _____’s Minister of Propaganda, Kellyanne Conway, is being bounced off at least one news show.

Mika Brzezinski of Morning Joe revealed that Kellyanne Conway often times texts directly to schedule an interview hit. But after what Brzezinski calls a never-ending cascade of “fake news, [and] information that is not true” she’s done with Conway:

“I know for a fact she tries to book herself on this show; I won’t do it. Every time I’ve ever seen her on television, something’s askew, off, or incorrect. I will say: Kellyanne Conway does not need to text our show, just as long as I’m on it because it’s not happening here. And again, I don’t even think she’s saying things she knows to be untrue, she’s just saying things just to get in front of a TV set and prove her relevance because behind the scenes, she’s not in these meetings. She’s not credible anymore.”

Kellyanne Conway is like a _____ product ... no one wants her any longer.

Now, I’m not saying this is the fault of Betsy DeVos, the new head of the US Education Department, but it is quite telling that this happened just after she was confirmed.

At 8:45 on Sunday morning, the department’s sent out this Tweet:

The man’s name is W.E.B. Du Bois.

And, to make matters worse, the department then tried to apologize for it ...

... and misspelled the word “apologies.”

Again, this from the Department of Education ... but, to be fair, it’s a _____ Department of Education.