#newt newt motherf***ers

[markscherz]

Look at this friend I made on my way home the other day! What a glorious creature! So gracile and smooth! Truly a peak being. What a privilege it is to share this time in Earth’s history with creatures like this.

#field herping #Herpetology #nature #wildlife #animals #newt #salamander #Lissotriton #Lissotriton vulgaris #newt newt motherf***ers #friend shaped #this is a bad place for this friend to be #I see freshly dead newts on this path EVERY DAY #hundreds killed per year #so every time I find one I gently move it away #my habit of saying ‘hello friend’ to every animal has been adopted by my two-year-old #and it is magical #he literally says ‘helo fren!’

[cksmart-world]

The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis

By Christopher Smart

Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2019

MAYTAG MAN, LIBERTY LEE & GENERAL BONESPURS

World-Wide Pants

It's kinda sad that most people don't remember that fateful day in December 2012 that literally shook the world — at least on Salt Lake City's Temple Square (Magnitude 8.9 we're told). “Wear Pants to Church Day” will live in infamy for members of the faith formerly known as Mormon. Fortunately for heathens who pretend not care about LDS inside baseball, The Salt Lake Tribune has not forgotten and reminds us of its literal and metaphorical significance. As Peggy Fletcher Stack writes: “It was a symbolic act in the drive toward gender equality... After all, men still wore the pants — literally as well as metaphorically...” Mormon women, she explained, sought to “throw off the tyranny of the dress.” Many men, including departing LDS missionaries, have been imbued with the knowledge that Mr. Mac is the purveyor of literal and metaphorical two-pants suits. Although strides have been made, women still do not don Mr. Mac attire. Nonetheless, the revolution seems to be taking hold. Last month, the old guys who rule over the Utah-based church finally caved and LDS women missionaries throughout the world can now throw off the tyranny of the dress and wear pants. Equality marches on. Next thing you know, Mormon women will be using social media any time they damn well please.

Sheriff or Maytag Man

Who dat? Mitt Romney just said what Republicans dare not say until they leave office. Having just been elected to the U.S. Senate, the former Republican nominee for president came out swinging: Trump's “conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office,” he wrote in The Washington Post. Oh baby. He may have lost to Obama, but now the Mittster finally gets his chance to be Sheriff of Washington. Like others, Mitt took aim at Trump before he was president. In March 2016, seemingly out of nowhere, Mitt declared, "Donald Trump is a phony and a fraud.” But things have changed. Now, Republican loyalists — already whistling past the graveyard that is their place in history — say they don't much like Mitt's latest epistle. Although they couldn't seem to find the words to defend Trump's morality, they did feel obliged to bark up Romney's tree. Their responses varied from Newt Gingrich: Mitt should just shut up. To the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee: Mitt should just shut up. Among Washington Republicans and party loyalists the Mittster now looks as lonely as the Maytag man waiting for the spin cycle to end.

Lee For Liberty

Unlike that snarky Mitt Romney, Mike Lee is our guy is Washington — thank goodness. The man who now takes the mantle as Utah's senior senator knows just about everything. Lee tackles prickly problems without wasting a lot of time hand-wringing. When Republican Sen. Jeff Flake and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons forwarded a bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller, Lee courageously and single-handedly blocked it to preserve “the core of liberty.” And when those Democrats were castigating our president for alleged obstruction of justice, fraud and womanizing, Lee stood up to them, saying he's behind Trump all the way to the 2020 election. Amazingly, Sen. Lee still has time to right wrongs back here in the Beehive State. When rabble rousers succeeded in their underhanded fight to allow candidates to get on the primary ballot through petition, our man Lee spoke up again. The new law that gives the public the right to participate more directly in democracy, Lee concluded, cannot possibly be constitutional. Only party insiders should nominate candidates. And outside of President Trump and senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who knows more about the Constitution than Mike Lee.

General Bonespurs

Donald Trump would have made a great military general and strategist were it not for those darned bone spurs that kept him from serving in Vietnam. Some people didn't recognize the president's expertise in tactics and strategy until he informed his cabinet of his military skills: “I think I would have made a good general,” Trump informed them. He revealed his grasp of history when he explained that the Soviet Union was right to invade Afghanistan in 1979 to go after terrorists. Some historians and the Wall Street Journal were, apparently, misguided when they attempted to correct the president with the fake news that Soviets entered Afghanistan to prop up a communist regime that took power in a coup. The military endeavor bogged into a quagmire and shortly after pulling out of Afghanistan in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed. But the seat of power, the Kremlin, remains in Russia and seeks to reclaim its former glory. Russia's governing body, the Federal Assembly, recently voted to fix history by declaring the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a success — which, coincidentally, aligns quite nicely with General Trump. That should quell any misgivings about the departure of Secretary of State James Mattis, a former four star Marine general and, as the president has explained, an utter failure when it comes to Afghanistan. Fortunately,  the big guy in the White House has a firm command of the nitty-gritty of geopolitics. All is well — sweet dreams.

Post Script

This just in: Sen. Mitt Romney, again demonstrating his disgust with rude behavior, joined a host of Republicans who criticized incoming Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for saying, “we're gonna go in there and impeach the motherf---er.” Somehow, they all knew who she was talking about. But oddly, the complainants were worried only about the expletive. The rest, apparently, has a feel of inevitability about it.

Well Wilson, it looks like we're off to a great start for 2019. Can you and the band take us out with something to put us in the right frame of mind: My blood's so mad feels like coagulatin' / Trump twists the truth, he knows no contemplatin'/ Congress can't pass no damn legislation / The whole crazy world is just too frustratin' / And you tell me over and over and over again my friend / that you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction / No you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction...