Okay, since Trump and Bolton are fighting each other over where and when we go to war, I was a tad disturbed that the Pentagon had not held a daily press briefing in a full year.  Yep, May 18th of 2018 was the last Pentagon daily press briefing.

So, yesterday they finally held a daily press briefing, which is now the yearly press briefing.  And to show their respect for the press and the American people, they went all out.

As the frontman of KISS, Gene Simmons occupies rarefied air — a rock star who entertains arenas filled with adoring fans. On Thursday, Simmons joined another exclusive club, conducting only the second on-camera press briefing at the Department of Defense in the last year.

To uphold the proper seriousness of the event, Simmons did not wear his usual make-up.  However, I don’t see how that would have made a difference.

And this is where we’re at.

Thanks to P.P. for the heads up.

Donald Trump wants to hear from you concerning the burning issues of our time.  I guess Trump is getting a little antsy during his Executive Time because he has a new hobby – whining about social media.

See, I don’t understand this whole Facebook is being mean to me thing. It’s not like the health care system or the IRS is being mean to you. It’s like they are being mean to you over at Joe’s Bar. So quit going to Joe’s Bar. Nobody makes you go to Facebook.  Or Twitter.

Trump doesn’t care about much, but he really really cares about social media because he has the social maturity of a 12 year old.

So, he invented a place on the damn White House website for you to whine about how unfair social media is.

I’m not kidding.

Trust me with the above link.  Click it and you will be taken to Trump’s idea of important crap.  Immediately after you okay the first page they start collecting information on you – your name, phone number, whether or not you’re a citizen, your profile on social media, your email address, and then they ask this —

Okay, seriously, how many Trump supporters know that information?

Then they give you the caveat.

Click here for the user agreement.

Okay, so nobody is going to read what you wrote but they will harvest the information when it comes time to empty your pockets for Trump’s election.

Just thought you’d want to see your tax dollars at work.

Thanks to Sam for the heads up.

Oh y’all.  A year ago, Donald Trump said that he wanted to form a Space Force.  Then it was never mentioned again because Trump gave all our money to his rich friends and by golly, we’re broke in more ways than one.

But then, then, of yeah then … Ted Cruz remembered and read something cold that somebody else wrote.

There’s one more thing you can add to the Trump Doctrine that we need to be afraid of.

Hey, listen to the man. Do you think anybody else would know more about what’s happening in outer space than Ted Cruz?

UPDATE:

The saddest Tweet I’ve ever seen.

People on Tweeter began to make fun of Cruz’s Space Force so what does he do?  He complains  whines to the guy who owns Twitter that people are making fun of him when HE’S RIGHT!

Now we get to make fun of him for not knowing the difference between a pirate and a privateer.

Some men are just so self destructive.

This morning was the Capital Challenge 5k, where the press, lawmakers and judiciary get together for an annual morning run.

And the runners aren’t the only jokes there.

Thanks to Deb T for the heads up.

You certainly remember Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s former foreign policy advisor and current right wing freak.

Poor Gorka got himself worked into a lather over the culture wars. Specifically, he started clutching his pearls over “Arthur,” the animated PBS children’s series about an anthropomorphic aardvark.

Gorka, who brandished the insignia of a historically Nazi-aligned Hungarian group called the Vitezi Rend at an inauguration ball in January 2017, flew into a rage because the season’s Monday premiere featured a gay wedding. Arthur’s third-grade teacher, Nigel Ratburn, exchanges vows with a local chocolatier, an aardvark named Patrick.

Be assured that the gender of the two people was never discussed and no to-do was made over a gay marriage.  It was treated as any other marriage would be.  How Gorka can identify the gender of a cartoon aardvark is something I really don’t want to know about.

He raged. He snorted. He declared western civilization dead, dead, dead. “This is a war for our culture, and that’s why we exist here, on ‘America First,’ on the Salem Radio Network,” Gorka said, on his radio show.

Look, the only indication from the whole event that western civilization is dead is Gorka. Someone should probably explain to Sebastian Gorka that if you’ve been reduced to attacking cartoon aardvarks on PBS it isn’t so much a sign of a cultural ‘war,’ as it is a sign of diminished capacity and not on the part of the aardvark!

Thanks to Deb T for the heads up.

We all know that John Bolton hates everyone and everything Iranian.  He desperately tried to get GWB to bomb Tehran back to the stone age, but still licking his wounds from his folly in Iraq, even HE wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Bolton’s bullshit on Iran.

Well, Bolton’s got a president now who is remarkably more stupid that GWB, so it’s Deja Vu all over again, and this time Trump IS stupid enough to go along with him.  Even while he denies he’s planning on sending in 120,000 troops into the Middle East, the defense department is planning on…sending 120,000 troops to the Middle East.  As we talked about yesterday, he’s already moved a carrier battle group into the region, and B-52 bombers are being staged into the area.

Now the State Department has ordered the consulates in Iraq be evacuated.  US central command in the Middle East has troops on high alert citing threats from Syria and Iran.  The problem, though, is that no one outside of the US government sees ANY increased threat from Iran.  In fact, the senior British officer in the coalition anti-terrorism operation in the Middle East confirms there is no increased threat; Trump responded to his comments as “fake news”.

In 2002, I was highly skeptical of all the bullshit that Bush/Cheney was peddling to whip up a war with Saddam Hussein.  Nothing they said made any sense, and there was NO evidence that Iraq had anything whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks.  This drumbeat to war feels the same to me.  No one with the government has given ANY evidence that Iran or Syria are doing anything that is more threatening that their normal hostility.  Because of these circumstances, I’m going to continue calling bullshit on Trump and call this what it is – Wagging the Dog to win the next election.  Nothing more, nothing less.