Hardly surprising. They didn't mention that great mountains and seaside, the low crime rate, the superb National Health Service, or the food.

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Great quote... Freudian slip

 "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

George W. Bush

Washington, D.C., August 5, 2004

Now they’re in Taiwan, which unfortunately is a perfect place for them. 

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You bought it

by Robert Reich.
1. He called Hillary Clinton a crook.
You bought it.
Then he paid $25 million to settle a fraud lawsuit.
2. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually.
You bought it.
He hasn’t, and says he never will.
3. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest.
You bought it.
He is still heavily involved in his businesses, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
4. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said.
You bought it.
He then proceeded to put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
5. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people.
You bought it.
He nominated theocratic loon Mike Pence for Vice President. A white supremacist named Steve Bannon is his most trusted confidant. Dr. Ben Carson, the world’s greatest idiot savant brain surgeon, is in charge of HUD. Russian quisling Rex Tillerson is Secretary of State.
6. He said he’d be his own man, beholden to no one.
You bought it.
He then appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, whose only “qualifications” were the massive amounts of cash she donated to his campaign.
7. He said he would “drain the swamp” of Washington insiders.
You bought it.
He then admitted that was just a corny slogan he said to fire up the rubes during the rallies, and that he didn’t mean it.
8. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the Generals did.
You bought it.
He promptly gave the green light to a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though all his Generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained.
9. He said Hillary Clinton couldn’t be counted on in times of crisis.
You bought it.
He didn’t even bother overseeing that raid in Yemen; and instead spent the time hate-tweeting the New York Times, and sleeping.
10. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy.
You bought it.
He now gets all his information from Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
11. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done.
You bought it.
He took his first vacation after 11 days in office.
On the taxpayer’s dime.
And went golfing.
And that’s just the first month.

How much more of this crap do we have to wade through? President Trump says something totally off the wall, the rest of the world wonders what he's been smoking, and the President says it's not his fault. Not his fault! A vital duty of the President is to be better informed than anyone else!

LINK

近年小美身體偶有不適，醫師判斷，牠不喜歡喝水的壞習慣可能造成腎臟功能不佳。近來大獸醫師天天到北藝大為小美出診治療，究竟無法留住她，原因是腎衰竭。一0六年二月十九日，周日上午，小美往生了，享年十二歲。阿彌陀佛。

First casualties in Trump’s trade wars

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A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. -Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist (1821-1881)

As much as I disagree with Senator McCain's politics, I have vast respect for him. I couldn't have done it!

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天佑臺灣，逃過一劫。

美國總統川普無勇無謀，不仁不義，做事不用大腦，說話不計後果。不知道是哪一個人腦筋進了水，讓他干涉兩岸問題：這好比拿斧頭給情緒不穩的九歲小孩，叫他進手術室開刀。給他搞，頂多犧牲臺灣討好大陸。

幸好，他已經放棄賣臺的機會了。

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Senator Elizabeth Warren has been rebuked by Republicans. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said, “Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

What he means is, women should learn to hold their tongues.

LINK

The White House has complained that the press doesn’t cover his other executive orders. Okay, let Seth Meyers take a look.

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The Viet Cong were lucky that Trump had a tragic foot thing that kept him from serving in the military, because he is, in his words, really good at the military. Which foot was it in, it’s hard to say, but if not the left one, then it must have been the right thing.

Mohamed Bzeek is a Muslim immigrant who lives in Los Angeles. He comes from Libya, one of the countries placed on Trump’s immigration ban. He works as a foster father, and about ten children under his care have died.

Read on. LINK

In class today, to see if the students knew the word glutton, I asked, "What do you call someone who eats way too much? Say someone eats six hamburgers all at once, what do you call a person like that?"

Student: "American."

Me: "Ouch!"

President Trump, Making America Great Again, has had an eight year old American girl killed. She was Nora (Nawar) al-Awlaki, and was killed in a raid in Yemen that Trump called. Military sources say that on the raid, “Almost everything went wrong,” but some Al Qaeda personnel were killed.

The benefits of killing the Al Qaeda beasts comes nowhere near the immense propaganda value of killing a little girl, one of our own citizens. Of course there are conflicting reports about how she died, but count on it, her death is being used to stir up hate for the United States.

If you didn’t before, now you should understand why ISIS is so happy Trump won the Presidency. He doesn’t have the wit to defeat ISIS, but he provides them invaluable propaganda material.

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What could be more appropriate for the Chicken Year?

One day, Frederick Trump gave his little son Donald an axe. It was studded with diamonds and made out of solid gold, but it had a very thin handle so little Donald could wrap his little hands around it. As he had his servants give his son the axe, Frederick told his son Donald, “Don’t you dare chop down my cherry tree with your little axe!”

So Donald tried to chop down the cherry tree with his hatchet, but cherry wood is very hard, so Donald could not chop it down with his little axe and his little hands. So he hired a dozen illegal immigrants from Mexico to chop it down for him.

When Frederick came home, he saw his cherry tree had been chopped down, and he flew into a wrath. He told his servants to bring Donald to him.

Donald stood before his wrathful parent. “Donald,” cried the father, “Who chopped down my cherry tree?”

“Father,” said little Donald, “I cannot tell the truth. I chopped down your cherry tree with my little axe, and I saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering as it fell, because I am very intelligent, and I know the best words, like bigly, and I don’t like soldiers who surrender, because I am rich enough to get out of military service with fake medical problems. But Father, I will build a wall around your cherry tree, and the length of the wall shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. And I shall make the Mexican government pay for it, and if they refuse, I will make the American tax payers pay for it and tell them that if they think the Mexicans didn’t pay, they have been tricked by the liberal media. And I will do all that my master Putin tells me to do, for he will raise me to great heights. I will fill the Cabinet with toadies and thieves, and we will acquire vast riches, offend common decency, trample on the little guy, and do all within our power to defile the Constitution.”

“Oh, come to my arms,” the joyous parent said, “Truly you are destined for greatness and the largest crowd ever to attend an inauguration and other alternative facts.” And they hugged as the great United States went swiftly down the drain. 

The True Correct story about Trump’s Inauguration

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How long will it take some people to realize how badly they’ve been duped?
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CIA LINK

interesting excerpts

Do We Want to Live in China’s World?

·         January 19, 2017

Robert Daly

  

The C.C.P.’s primary goal is maintaining its monopoly on power. China’s military strategy, trade and investment policy, global media, and cultural and educational exchanges all serve that end. Because the C.C.P. feels constrained and demonized by the modern liberal order, it uses its economic and military might to break constraints and change minds. Beijing is trying to persuade the world to accept the C.C.P.’s domestic standards for the treatment of individuals, information, and institutions as legitimate alternatives to liberal norms. This program is evident in China’s rejection of international law in the South China Sea, its gaming of international trade rules, its curbing of Internet freedoms in the name of “cyber security,” its attempts to weaken NGOs in China and at the United Nations (U.N.), and in its readiness to punish nations which host the Dalai Lama or celebrate Chinese dissidents on their own soil. China pushes these policies even as it provides a growing number of public goods, including U.N. peacekeeping, disaster relief, medical aid, and badly needed infrastructure investment. For the C.C.P., there is no contradiction between the illiberal and beneficial aspects of its foreign policy: protectionist authoritarianism provides the stability that makes Chinese generosity and trade possible. All of these variables should be understood and welcomed, in Beijing’s view, as essential parts of a balanced equation....

Under Xi, China seems determined—gradually and peacefully, if possible, and through coercion if necessary—to become the benign hegemon of Asia. China can only achieve this through the weakening of the United States’ alliance system and rejection of key principles of international law.…

a region that boasts 60 percent of the world’s consumers and roughly two-thirds of global economic growth ….

The U.S. and China are now so interdependent, moreover, that Washington cannot impose economic costs on China that don’t ricochet onto U.S. allies and the United States itself.

- See more at: http://www.chinafile.com/viewpoint/do-we-want-live-chinas-world?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits#sthash.BOzFMgqs.dpuf

Eight months later, they finally discovered who found the camera they dropped from a plane.

坐飛機看自己農場，一失手攝影機不小心掉了。八個月後，終于找到攝影機~~~

Dylan Roof is a powerful argument for the death penalty. It’s not just the evil of his crimes: murdering nine people is bad enough, but how you could shoot someone after worshiping together with them for 45 minutes confounds me.

Roof is guilty and unrepentant. He obviously can’t be let free, so there are only two courses available: put him to death or lock him up in prison.

That’s the problem. If you lock him up, he will not allow his twisted mind to be cured, because he says psychology was invented by Jews and wants nothing to do with mental health. So in prison, if he is allowed to mingle with other inmates, he will pollute generations of prisoners. He will preach hate and racial war, and may even become an admired leader. If he is not allowed to mingle with other inmates, and locked up in solitary confinement, that is cruel and unusual punishment. (Either way, the taxpayers have to pay huge sums of money for his incarceration, health, and so forth.)

So the only other solution is to put him to death. It’s like having a bad apple in a bushel of good apples. You just have to get rid of it. 

People who say bad things about the Clintons disappear. Yeah, I’m a believer! And don’t let Snopes or common sense tell you anything different!

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Your brain on poverty

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A classic.

For those unfortunate souls who are unfamiliar with Beyond the Fringe, it was a comedy revue written performed by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller in the 1960s. Without further ado, just enjoy this gem.

an interesting viewpoint

Refusing The Hand Of The Empire BY MARK Y.A. DAVIES
The biggest mistake ever made in the history of Christianity [and there are a lot of them] is when the Christian Church decided to believe and accept that the Empire was on its side.
When Christianity allowed itself to be co-opted by Constantine in the early Fourth Century C.E., it was a bit like if Luke Skywalker had accepted Darth Vader’s offer to join him and rule the galaxy together.
The Church reached out and took the hand of the Empire instead of taking its chance with a leap of faith into the abyss, thereby becoming the servant of the dark side for the sake of its own survival.
The Roman Empire fell soon after its takeover of Christianity [a fact not easily explained by Christianity’s defenders], but Christianity re-attached itself to numerous empires thereafter to maintain its hegemony in Europe and beyond.
The Christianity of Empire, as opposed to the Way of Jesus, was used to justify crusades, inquisitions, conquests, colonization, slavery, and genocide – often done in the name of Christian mission, but always done for sake of the Empire.
That Christianity became an imperial religion is antithetical to everything Jesus lived and taught. The Empire was never a friend to Jesus, and Jesus was never a friend to the Empire.
The Empire executed Jesus with its most public and brutal method in order to display its power and eliminate a threat, and when the Jesus movement would not die, the Empire eventually co-opted the movement for its own purposes. That is what empires do.
Once the Empire co-opted the Christian movement, it focused on the otherworldly aspects of Christianity in order to keep power and control over people in this world. The Empire or State maintained control of the affairs of this world, while religion prepared the soul for the next.
Obedience to the Empire’s authority in this life became one of the prerequisites to enjoying the rewards and avoiding the punishments in the next. The Empire made central the peripheral strands of eternal punishment and eternal reward in Christianity as a means to maintain and consolidate power and keep order among its subjects.
Christianity in the United States continues in this long and tragic tradition of serving as the religion of the Empire. The way of Jesus has been mistaken for the American way; including adherence to its social, political, and economic systems.
Through increasingly sophisticated and ever present forms of propaganda, a form of Christianity is used to bolster loyalty to and support for the Empire. Every cry that we are a Christian nation is an echo of the imperial voice that seeks to tame Jesus and use the power of the Jesus movement to consolidate power of the Empire through the alienation of the “other,” by highlighting that their way is not our way, that “they” are not us.
Those who wish to the follow the way of Jesus rather than the religion of the Empire need a reminder that following Jesus is better done in the catacombs rather than cathedrals, in the barrios rather than basilicas, in the streets rather than status seeking institutions, in the turning over of tables of injustice rather than taking up seats around them, in the resistance to Empires rather than in their maintenance.
People who follow the way of Jesus follow a Middle Eastern person who refused to take the hand of the Empire and who was therefore tortured and executed by imperial authorities.
It is time for those who follow the way of Jesus to once and for all reject the way of Empire. It is time for Christians in the United States to get their Pre-Constantinian identity back and get to the work of bringing love and justice into a broken world, even if it means letting go of that which appears to be working on behalf of their institutional survival.
The Empire was never on the side of Jesus, and it never will be. 

– Mark Davies is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics and director of the World House Institute for Social and Ecological Responsibility at Oklahoma City University. 

A shady pastor will pray at the Trump inauguration, setting the tone for the next four years.

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Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country 

are decent, hardworking, honest Americans.

 It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. 

But then, we elected them. 

-- Lily Tomlin

Making music in a slum in Paraguay.

巴拉圭貧民窟的孩子撿垃圾做樂器~~

Маленькому Казаку 5 лет . Lokah balay laqi qani! 臺灣五歲小孩上捷運，大人趕快讓位，不然站了幾分鐘可能會累。哥薩克就不大一樣。A five year old Cossack boy showing his stuff.

It turns out that octopuses are extremely intelligent, but in ways quite different from us.

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A ferocious dogfight, a beagle attacking a great dane.

與大自然相處，尊敬、無畏。When dealing with nature, animate or inanimate, be respectful and unafraid, and all will be well.

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網路笑話

一位內蒙古人來臺灣鹿港旅遊，吃了一碗三十五元的麵線，要老闆開立發票報帳。

老闆問「抬頭要開什麽單位？」

內蒙人答：「中華人民共和國內蒙古自治區烏蘭察布市察哈爾右翼後旗烏蘭哈達蘇木那令格嘎查那令格村那令格二社村民委員會火山歷史文化遺址申報聯合國教育科學文化組織世界非物質文化遺產工作領導小組辦公室主任烏力圖.烏力吉吉爾格啦.巴彥爾太！」

老板說：「賽林涼，麵線錢不要了，林貝會寫那麽多字還賣個懶覺麵線。。。」

今天下午看了不丹電影「嘿瑪嘿瑪」。往戲院路上，我們多方面深入討論，看電影能不吃爆米花嗎？我們討論出來的結果，我們買了大桶爆米花，加一杯熱可可。

電影拙樸有力，跟一般大廠的電影不同。一念之差，一個小小的決定，影響深遠。故事、畫面裏很多細節。整個電影的畫面很美。沒想到的是，演員、拍片，很多華人。

推薦！也許需要看兩次。

This afternoon we went to see a movie from Bhutan, Hema Hema, Sing Me a Song While I Wait.

Before the movie, Chao and I had a long philosophical discussion on the possibility, ramifications, and morphological connotations of watching a movie without eating popcorn, but fortunately, were able to reach a decision, so we got a big bag of popcorn, plus a cup of hot chocolate.

The movie is powerful, and different from big studio, big budget films. The story line is not too complex, but there are a lot of details, and it is beautiful to watch. If you have a chance, this movie is worth watching, and maybe more than once. 

After all, how often do you get to watch a movie in Dzongkha?

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Despotism

Respect and power

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Bill Moyers, Farewell America

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In commemoration of a sturdy little vehicle, xe lam, the Lambro.

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Ah, the good old days! In the good old days, for an afternoon’s entertainment, you and your friends might nail a cat to a stake and take turns ramming it to death with your head. Someone might lose an eye in the process, but what fun! Or you could watch a neighbor flogging his slave,  admire the dead bodies strung up on the gallows (in case you missed the hanging), torment the people in stocks, or listen to the lady next door beating her servant. Then it’d be time for dinner; if you were effete and unafraid of ridicule, you might eat with a fork, but otherwise, eat with your fingers and knife, and wipe your fingers off on your shirt. When you have gnawed the meat off the bone, just drop the bone on the floor for the dogs to eat. When dinner was finished, the garbage was just flung into the open sewer in front of your house, and you abided with the stench. The pigs wandering the neighborhood would eat some of the garbage, and the rest might get washed away in a rain. You stayed in your hometown. You had no place to go, really, because travel was not only difficult but downright dangerous, with bandits eager to cut your throat for your purse, and trying to stay off the gallows. Of course you could go to the gallows yourself if you stole a handkerchief or got hungry and swiped some bread. If your child showed “strong evidence of malice” between the ages of seven and fourteen, they could be hanged, too. If the king didn’t like your religious practice, you might be burned to death, and friends and neighbors would come to watch and jostle for positions downwind so they could get a whiff of your burning body, to sanctify themselves.

Doesn’t that sound just great?

No. We have moved forward, fighting step by step. Before I go any further, I assume that my reader would not wish to be on the receiving side of such events: you would not like to be enslaved, do not think it’s nice to nail cats to stakes, think sanitation is a good thing, would not like to see your neighbor burned to death just because he is a Baptist, enjoy going off on vacation without worrying about getting your throat cut, and so forth.

Now normal people consider the events detailed in the first paragraph inhumane, but at the time (I am basing this description roughly on life in medieval London, although there were not African slaves yet), they were taken for granted.

Every step forward has been achieved only by the hard work of people who were not willing to accept those practices, striving in the face of fierce resistance of those who thought the old ways were just fine.

The people who have achieved these advances are called “liberals.” The people who oppose these advances are called “conservatives.” Issues liberals fight for are taken for granted fifty years later, and after another fifty years, when some issues may well be out of date, they are strongly defended by conservatives. 

I’m old enough to remember when Barry Goldwater was running against LBJ. One of Goldwater’s strongest attacks was that Johnson was promoting Medicare, which Republicans saw as a communist plot to overthrow capitalism. So it is with some bemusement that I see how sacred Republicans now hold Medicare. Things liberals fight for today are taken for granted fifty years later. 

Putin is happy Trump won. The KKK is happy Trump won. American national security advisors are worried to death that Trump won. Where does that put us? Up that creek without a paddle, maybe.

The only bright side is that Trump is backpedaling on his campaign promises like Lance Armstrong on steroids pedaling towards a finish line. But we do not need an unpredictable, vindictive president.

Kindly read the date here out loud.

天生我材，必有用

Another way of looking at autism.

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I don’t know what to make of this. Inuit elders say that the earth’s axis has changed. 

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天氣好，帶兩個小狗出去走走。想回頭，皮狗Yumin向前走，不見了。我叫，他不回來。天要黑，而我不想去拉他回來。Ksasan在我身邊，我自言自語跟她說，「要不要去找妳哥哥回來？」沒想到，她立即起步，飛快向前跑，不見了，沒多久看到她帶著哥哥回來。你說這個狗聰明不聰明？The weather was nice so I took the dogs out for a walk. When it was time to turn back, Yumin kept going on ahead. He was soon out of sight around a bend and wouldn’t come back when I called. Beagle. Ksasan stood next to me obediently. Sort of talking to myself, I asked her, You want to go get your brother to come back? To my surprise, she raced forward and was soon out of sight. Before long, she came back, herding Yumin. Is that a smart dog or what?

We just got back from a three day excursion to the east coast.

I was in a temple, talking with a nun, when somebody strolled by and asked, Aren’t you Americans having an election? What’s going on there? Yeah. I checked the news on my cell phone. The results shocked me. I told the nun, Trump won. She asked, How could anybody vote for a person like Trump? I said, He says he can restore America to the way it was sixty years ago. She was so agitated that she stood up and walked a circle around the room (Buddhist nuns do not get discombobulated easily). How could anybody possibly restore anything to the way it was sixty years ago!? I had no answer for her.

Countries that support America are in despair, and even Australia, the USA’s staunch ally, is considering distancing itself from us. ISIS, Putin, Khomenei, and Xi Jinping are celebrating Trump’s victory. Wonder why. 

Kiss American power goodbye. 

Tomorrow the American people will decide whether we need a President who is fully endorsed by not only the Kremlin but also the KKK. Hillary may have her faults, but the USA can survive them. Nobody seriously believes that Trump can Make America White Again, but he sure can send the country down the tubes. Keep your fingers crossed. Amitabha. 

Much fuss is made about Hillary Clinton’s erased emails, but nobody mentions the twenty-two million emails Dick Cheney erased.

This is good. LINK

My mother’s Golden Rule was, When you’re in a hurry, slow down.

I am working on a rush job translation of a student application. I meant to write:

XX University appeals to me

and I almost sent that out at

XX University appalls me.

Oops! 

This is worth reading.

“When children aren’t given the space to struggle through things on their own, they don’t learn to problem solve very well. They don’t learn to be confident in their own abilities, and it can affect their self-esteem. The other problem with never having to struggle is that you never experience failure and can develop an overwhelming fear of failure and of disappointing others. Both the low self-confidence and the fear of failure can lead to depression or anxiety.”

LINK

He is not well-spoken or intelligent. He is not a very good businessman. He knows nothing about foreign policy. Anything he says, he will contradict in time. He is proud that he wiggled out of military service and dodged paying tax. He holds those who have sacrificed for the country in contempt, and probably secretly thinks they’re stupid to have done so. He has no respect for Democracy or the Constitution. He displays no principles or morals, no love or esteem for anyone. He betrays his wife, lusts after his own daughter, assaults women, and is exactly the same as every bully you ever knew in grade school, but he’s seventy years old. He blusters and threatens, but his deep seated cowardice is obvious. He is not even honest with himself, the only person on this planet he loves.

The funny thing is, even those who are voting for him recognize instantly who I’m talking about. Anybody can see that he is a vile scoundrel, so why would anybody vote for him?

Why do we do things? As often as not, we hide our real motives from ourselves and overlay them with rationalization upon justification. I suspect that Trump followers, aside from the outright white supremacists and lunatic fringe, are distressed deep down that for eight years the country has been led by a black man, and now it looks like a woman will be President. Deep down, they yearn for the “good old days” when the President was a white man: a male.

I believe that if Hillary Clinton were a white man named Clint Hilton, and had exactly the same past (well, aside from giving birth to a daughter), done exactly all the same things, said the same things, made the same deals, and so forth, the election would be a shoo-in, and the only question would be whether Trump would manage to carry any state. But a woman in the White House?

In any event, I will be happy when the election is over and we are done with all this trumpery.

Philippine President Duterte, in a burst of exuberance, announced that he is best buddies with the PRC and has broken up with the USA. Meanwhile, the adults continued their meal and paid him scant attention.

To simplify things, I'd like any woman who met Trump and was NOT sexually assaulted to step forward.... no? nobody?

LINK

An interesting take on the Republican candidate.
He mentions Trump's "ready submission to sharper minds." This could be fatal. The narcissist believes himself much, much smarter than he actually is, so this, coupled with his astonishing lack of foreign policy aptitude, would allow his buddy Putin, among others, to lead him around by the nose.

LINK

This is so prophetic, it’s spooky. For everybody’s sake, let’s hope it doesn’t come true:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” 

– H L Mencken (1880 – 1956)

淡定True composure: English follows: 魏晉雅士，重儀態、務治心，泰山崩于前而色不變，麋鹿興于左而目不瞬。西元四七二年，劉宋明帝三十四歲病篤，太子才五歲，「慮晏駕之後，皇后臨朝，江安懿侯王景文以元舅之勢，必為宰相，門族強盛，或有異圖。己未，遣使寄齎藥賜景文死，手敕曰：「與卿周旋，欲全卿門戶，故有此處分。」敕至，景文正與客棋，叩函看已，復置局下，神色不變，方與客思行爭劫(案：行、埋伏；劫、制裁埋伏)。局竟，斂子(案：棋子)內奩畢，徐曰：「奉敕見賜以死。」方以敕示客。中直兵焦度趙智略憤怒，曰：「大丈夫安能坐受死！州中文武數百，足以一奮。」景文曰：「知卿至心；若見念者，為我百口計。」乃作墨啟答敕致謝，酌酒謂客曰，此酒不可相勸，飲藥而卒。

China knew little peace from the third through sixth centuries CE. The gentry placed great emphasis on keeping your calm; if there is a landslide right in front of you, you should be able to keep your expression calm, if an elk starts up just to your left, you shouldn’t even blink. In the year 472CE, the emperor Ming of the Liu Sung dynasty died at the age of 34. His heir was only five years old, so the emperor was worried that after he died, the queen would handle court matters for their son; her brother Wang Jingwen would certainly be appointed Prime Minister, and their family would become so powerful that they might take over the dynasty. So the emperor sent a jug of poisoned liquor to Wang Jingwen, with a handwritten letter saying, “I have dealt with you for a long time, and I want to protect your family, so I have to do this.” When the imperial command arrived, Jingwen was playing weichi (weiqi, go, a board game) with a guest. He reverently accepted the letter, read it, and stuck it under the board. His expression never changed. He concentrated on his game. When the game was over, he put the players in a box, and slowly said, “The imperial order I just got commanded me to die.” He showed his guest the letter. Another guest, a general with troops, was angry and said, “How can you just die like that! We have troops, we can put up a good fight!” Jingwen said, “I appreciate your sincerity, but if you really care, please give a thought to the survival of my family.” He wrote a letter to thank the emperor, poured out the liquor and told his guests, “I’m not going to invite you to share this with me.” He drank the poisoned liquor and died. 

有時候我覺得我很不了解現代生活。我(老古板)以為「撒野」的意思是放肆、不管禮法、不照規矩、不受約束。

最近看到捷運廣告，十月十五日有商人要舉辦「台北撒野生活節」，從早上十一點到晚上九點在指定的場所內可以「體驗撒野生活」。這樣規矩、約束還不夠，商家還規定dress code，你撒野時可以穿甚麼衣服、甚麼顏色，都有規定。

越撒野越拘謹。我沒有撒野，我只有傻眼。

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Yaravi, or Harawi, is music from the Andes. Hope you like it, I do. 

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Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize? What have those Swedes been smoking?

I suppose I ought to explain my disdain for a popular idol. It goes back to LA in the 60s. Who had time to listen to Bob Dylan? We listened to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Mothers, the Fish, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, endless acid rock and buckets of soul. Even the Mommas and Poppas, in a pinch. Dylan resonated with (white) football players and cheerleaders who wanted to show how hip they were by listening to Dylan and the Dave Clark Five. Their parents liked Dylan, too, because he was a palatable way to show that you were in the groove with young people. My Black Power friends thought Dylan was a condescending phony, and the Chicanos listened to their own stuff, really, really heavy on the bass. (Every time you thought it was another earthquake, it’d be a lowrider coming.) Dylan? He may have been a commercial success, but I’d take Ace of Cups any day, thanks. 

今天阿超有團體，我也跟去，想在附近找地方坐下喝咖啡看書。真奇怪，附近所有預計的餐廳與咖啡廳都公休，連附近的博物館也休館。幸好，有空教室，我就準備好好看書。還沒坐好，走進來幾個阿美族語班的學生，幸好我會那麼幾句阿美語，很快就熟了。但是我發現他們竟然以為只有泛泰雅有虜布(口簧)，卻不知阿美有datok，所以我就教他們彈(當然隨身攜帶虜布！)順便糾正男生的馬步。等他們上課時間到了，上課去了，但時常回來再要我讓他們彈虜布、練馬步。好個「找個咖啡店看書」！哈哈哈 Chao had a group, so I tagged along, thinking I would find a coffee shop where I could read until she finished. As luck would have it, all the coffee shops and restaurants Google told us were in the area were closed for the day, and even the nearby museum was shut! Probably due to the lousy weather. Fortunately, they found me an empty classroom, so I pulled up a chair and sat down to read… and in streamed the kids waiting for their Amis lesson (aborigine children are given token lessons in their tribal languages). Fortunately, I was able to come up with some Amis, and soon we were all getting along just great. I discovered that they thought the lubu (jew’s harp) was exclusive to the Tayal tribes, and didn’t know the Amis play the datok, almost the same. Of course I always carry a couple lubus, so I taught them how to play. They were tickled pink. Soon they went to their lesson and I got out my book, but from time to time a couple would drop in the classroom to see if I would let them play the lubu some more. So you think you’re going to have a quiet afternoon reading, hmm? 

FOR MEN

Has there been a woman in your life you love or respect? It may be your mother, your sister, an aunt, your wife, maybe a teacher who inspired you, maybe a nurse who helped you during bad health.

It is no secret that powerful men have trouble keeping their pants on. Washington, Franklin, Harding, JFK, Kissinger, Governor Mark Sanford, and many other powerful men have had their share of adventures with women, but for the most part, they maintained a modicum of decency and discretion. As far as we know, Thomas Jefferson never bragged about raping Sally Hemings. If Monica Lewinsky hadn’t blabbed, the world would never had heard from Clinton about his exploits with her, and no matter what, he has never been divorced, unlike say, Newt Gingrich. Even Senator David Vitter, co-sponsor of the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment, did not brag that he liked prostitutes to dress him in adult diapers.

Think about the women in the first paragraph. How would you feel if someone felt entitled to grope her simply because he considers himself a celebrity?

If Trump were a policy genius, his attitude towards women would still be reprehensible, and his continued keen interest in his daughter’s sexuality would be repulsive. On top of all his other failings, Trump is a man who has only slogans and shouting for domestic problems, makes very little attempt to conceal his racism and contempt for others who have not inherited fortunes from their fathers, and has no concept whatsoever of foreign policy. There is a foul reek to this man that no amount of Tic Tacs can ever cover.

Again, think of the women in the first paragraph. Only a man who is willing for Trump to grope them at every chance can in any good conscience vote for him. 

Allegations surface that a presidential candidate raped a 13 year old, and you think, It's plausible. How have we come to this?

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Meet the greatest female Baroque painter you’ve never heard of, Artemisia Gentileschi.

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這幾天後門外掛的黃色塑膠袋，有隻小青蛙棲在上面。A little frog has been hanging around on a plastic bag outside the back door.

You simply cannot make something like this up. On his Instagram account, Ramzan Kardyrov, the Head of the Chechen Republic, has posted a photo celebrating his party’s overwhelming victory in the recent elections. The overwhelming victory is not surprising, when you consider the long list of accusations of torture and murder leveled against Kardyrov. What struck me as somewhat bizarre, to say the least, is that in the photo accompanying this delighted announcement, he is dressed in medieval armor.

 

Of course, much of his thinking is medieval, endorsing honor killings and polygamy, and one of his aides said he “acts like a medieval tyrant.” But he knows his place. He assiduously licks Putin’s boots: “Putin is gorgeous,” he proclaims. That puts him fair square in company with another of Putin’s great admirers, our own home grown Donald Trump.

突然想，為甚麼沒有迷彩傘？上網看，發現很多。這就證明很有效，因為雖然多，但是都沒看過。

I was wondering why nobody produces camouflage umbrellas. A quick look online showed that there are a lot available. I guess that shows how good they are, because you never see them.

Stop and frisk is the sort of plan that would appeal only to a cowardly bully who has low intelligence and even less commiseration for others. 

Don't defend this reprehensible proposal unless you are willing to be frisked regularly.