Since my last post was about the leader we should have had, this one will be about the one we sadly had to let slip away.

Barack Obama at the Invictus Games with Prince Harry. 

Greeting the players

Being awesome

He brought his buddy Biden along as well

But don't think that all Obama is doing is showing up for photo ops, nothing could be further from the truth.

He is also still blowing people away with his words.

Courtesy of Thompson Citizen: 

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that closing borders won't create future jobs because what's changing industries like manufacturing are automation and artificial intelligence. 

Obama told a Toronto luncheon on Friday that the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy happened over the course of 150 years, but that the technological revolution is happening in 20 years. He said it's hard for governments to catch up to the pace of disruption. 

Obama said over the next 25 years, advanced economies will have to confront the fact that there is not going to be enough high-paying full-time work as we traditionally conceive it. 

"You'll still see auto companies doing pretty well and you'll see us manufacturing the goods that we use in the United States or Canada, but you'll walk through those factories and they'll be empty because they'll be run by robots and AI," Obama said. 

"The biggest challenge that we face in terms of maintaining good manufacturing jobs in our countries come from automation, and that is going to accelerate."

After the speech at the $1,000 a plate gathering attendees were asked their impression of the former American President:

"He still has this incredible optimism about Canada, the U.S., the world, in spite of how challenging our times are right now. It's very good for us to hear that," Glenda Rissman said. 

Sharing a similar sentiment, Cynthia Dale said her "first takeaway is how inspiring it was and how ludicrously humble he is. He's so humble about what he did and what he continues to do."

One group of Canadian high school kids even skipped school to see him:

A group of high school students skipped class to see the former president. 

It was "an experience you can't get in school," Abby Mcclellan said. 

Ava De Pagter said she loves just "what he stands for; everyone should be equal. No matter the race or gender."

Yes, he is in fact one of a kind. 

And we were blessed that we had him for as long as we did.

Sarah Palin takes to Facebook to flaunt her father's similarity to Vladimir Putin.

Yeah I have no idea why Palin thought it was a good idea to draw comparisons between her father and the man who tried to undermine our democracy, but then again I have never understood why this crazy woman does anything.

But in this case it is especially bizarre since there is actually very little resemblance between Heath Sr. and Putin at all.

The best I can come up with to explain this post is that Palin was wandering around her house having some kind of withdrawals since her LAST attempt to attract a little limelight only lasted about a day, and this was the best she could come up with.  

Sarah Palin is now like a child with behavioral problems who would literally shit herself just to get a rise out of the adults.

Donald Trump meets the Pope.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

I would say that this one is worth perhaps twice that many.

Have you ever seen a glummer group of people?

The only one smiling is the idiot in the early stages of dementia.

Here it looks as if the Pope cannot believe he has to actually interact with his moron as if he is the president of the United States.

After the meeting Trump had this to say: 

"He is something," Trump said of the Pope later in the day, during a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. "We had a fantastic meeting. We're liking Italy very, very much and it was an honor to be with the Pope."

For his part the Pope sent Trump a rather clear message: 

The Pope's gift left no questions about its symbolism, presenting Trump with an olive tree medal crafted by a Roman artist that the Pope said symbolizes peace. 

"We can use peace," Trump said. 

"I signed it personally for you," the Pope offered.

Like I said, a clear message. 

I think the 2016 year in photographs presented by White House photographer Pete Souza is exactly what we all need right now.

These are some of my favorites.

To see the rest just click here.

This is the photo that Donald Trump does not want anybody to see. You know what to do.

The Orange One screamed at @nbc for using this pic of him. He hates it. Don't spread it around the internet anymore. pic.twitter.com/wYtlMeTzow

— Lance Burson (@lanceburson) November 24, 2016

Really this one?

Not this one?

Or this one?

Or maybe this one?

Just that one huh?

Well okay I imagine we can do fine without it.

I mean we won't, I still fully intend to use it, but we COULD.

Religion in the age of the internet.

Source

Posted without comment.

Courtesy of Bristol Palin's Pikore account

Here was the caption:

2 1/2 weeks(ish) until we become a family of 3!!

I have had a long day, so I will let you guys take this one.

If you think Ben Carson the man is kind of bizarre, you should take a look at his house.

Aw what now?

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

The decor at Ben Carson’s home in Maryland shows that Donald Trump may not have the biggest ego among the Republican candidates. On display are awards, certificates, medals, and a painting of himself with Jesus.

This is that picture of Ben and his homie Jesus.

Seriously WHO has a picture painted of themselves with Jesus?

Not to nitpick, but isn't that supposed to be "proverbs" 22:4?

I guess Ben was too busy learning how to cut open human brains to learn anything about spelling.

There are many more photos at the link which show that Carson's home is literally covered with certificates, photos, and medals all paying homage to his greatness.

Speaking of proverbs wasn't there one in the Bible about pride and a fall?

By the way this is his wife Candy Carson.

(Be nice.)

And of course there are still more of Carson's lies coming to light almost on an hourly basis now.

At this point I think Carson's goose is cooked.

Or at least it should be.

But then again attempting to predict what the loons in the Right Wing might do in response to these revelations is becoming just about impossible.

Bristol Palin had a birfday!

Courtesy of Bristol's Pikore account:Thank you to my co workers for making my 25th so special ❤️❤️

So Bristol is now a quarter of a century old huh?  Yet, still just as ignorant as always.

Now before you start sniping at her mother for not posting anything to commemorate her birthday you should know that she did. Kind of:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY(s)! 🎉🎈🎊 It's Alaska Day! On this date in 1867 the USA received transfer of this abundantly rich territory, eventually becoming the 49th state in 1959. Thank you Abe Lincoln for hiring William Seward as Sec. of State, for it was he who nabbed Alaska from the Russians... for 2-cents an acre! We scored. THAT is the art of the deal. 🎁🎉🎂🇺🇸 

And sweeter around here today, it's also Bristol's birthday so HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRISTOL! Check out her fantastic blog that keeps us all all informed: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bristolpalin/ We love you so very much! 

- Mom. And the whole crew

So as you see Palin was perfectly willing to acknowledge her oldest daughter's 25th birthday, just so long as she could also include something to improve her credibility as an Alaskan, and also pimp the blog she pays Nancy French to write in order to convince people that Bristol shares her ideology and can string two coherent sentences together.

Kind of telling that Bristol posts a photo of her birthday celebration with her work mates, but nothing about her celebration with family.

That along with the fact that Sarah has mentioned nothing about Bristol's pregnancy, did not accompany her on her recent trip to Hawaii, and has not been featured in a photo with Bristol for about five months, does seem to indicate that perhaps there is a little trouble at the old compound.

In fact it seems that the only time Sarah mentions her daughter is when she is referencing the blog that we all know she has virtually NOTHING to do with.

Or am I just reading too much into this?

P.S. A lot of you sent me this Daily Mail today which states that Levi and Bristol have settled their child custody case. 

According to my sources that is absolutely not true, and if you visit Court View you can look the case up and see for yourself that it is still open.  In fact there are some murmurings that things are about to heat up again.

I don't know how the Daily Mail got this wrong, but it's not the first time that somebody has prematurely declared the case closed.

Just thought we should take a moment to admire our President and First Lady.

You know our next Commander-in-Chief really has their work cut out for them if they want to reach this level of class.


(The images by the way are from the President's dinner with the President of China, Xi Jinping.)

After a day of reporting the kind of news that I reported today I think I will close out with what has now become my favorite "Moment of Zen."

Alaska Governor Bill Walker and President Obama flying to Anchorage.

High five.

It makes me very nervous to see the President sitting in a small plane in Alaska.

The children's President

How could he not want to come back?

It is not only the children of Alaska who love him.

Sorry, always going to be my favorite part of the visit.

Last one, my karma is all repaired now.

Somebody sent me a link to the White House site with these amazing pictures and all day long as I reported on Franklin Graham's plan to create a theocracy, Sarah Palin's beg-a-thon, burned Planned Parenthood clinics, and Chris Christie being a giant ass, I knew that this would be the tonic to quell my aggravation, and calm my frustrations..

And do you know what? It worked like a charm.

I'm trying hard not to see this as creepy.

Courtesy of Bristol Palin's Pikore account:

Favorite 🙌 definitely went all out at work today 🙈🙊☺️🎉🎈

Yes that IS a picture of Bristol's employer  plastered on her chst.

Happy 75th Doc!!!

Oh and she was not alone.

Final image of the day.

Courtesy of the Obama Diary:

Long after the last partisan battle has been fought over Obamacare, long after Barack Obama has settled into a comfortable post-presidency, and long after the last joke has been made about some Joe Biden verbal misstep, people will remember the moment when the always-in-control president struggled to control his emotions. They will remember the moment when president and vice president embraced in front of the altar and exchanged heartfelt kisses on the cheek. And they will remember how their hearts ached at this intimate glimpse of one family’s pain. In an age when so many political moments are scripted, this was real. In a country whose presidents and vice presidents have rarely been close, this was genuine closeness. In an administration that prides itself on being hip, this was decidedly old-fashioned love.

I have to admit that I did not watch much of the funeral on TV yesterday, I have attended too many of them in my life. 

However I have seen clips of the event and as expected there have been a lot of feels. Especially in response to the President's tearful and moving eulogy.

I started this day with a photo of the President frolicking with a baby, and I end with a picture of our President comforting a friend.

Both of them tell us something important about the man that we elected to lead this country. And it is something that no partisan attack or conservative lie can ever diminish.

Separated at birth?

View image | gettyimages.com

Personally I think it's really a shame that Gene Simmons has let himself go like that.

Here is a picture of Palin holding a gun which of course makes her more recognizable. 

View image | gettyimages.com

Wait, that's not right.

View image | gettyimages.com

Oh here we go.

Boy that IS confusing!

By the way there is also this mindless interview with Gene Simmons, I mean Sarah Palin. Man I have to stop doing that.

Bristol bonding with her new beau in Kentucky.

Source

Here was one of the more humorous comments on the page: 

be careful @dakotameyer0317 what you're teaching @bsmp2 it might come back to haunt you!

Of course that might be more prescient than an actual joke.

However here is the picture that bothered me.

Source

 Now I'm sure there are a few of you who know that Levi has taken Tripp shooting as well. However those were smaller caliber weapons that Levi felt Tripp could handle. And from what I have seen he is quite safety cautious.

All I can think while seeing this is about the nine year old girl who accidentally shot her instructor in Arizona last year.

Of course the other question is why is Tripp in Kentucky (Yes that was confirmed through Twitter) instead of in school where he belongs?

To that I have no answer as my understanding is that Bristol cannot take Tripp out of state without Levi's permission. Unless of course Levi was not told the truth that is.

Did I mention before how many red flags this marriage had raised?

Yeah well now there is a whole new crop of them.

Project uses shocking images of veterans to illustrate the dangers of PTSD.

Courtesy of Addicting Info:  

There are 21.8 million veterans living in the United States. Out of those millions, about 1.3 million are living without insurance, and 60,000 of them are homeless. However, the struggles of veterans don’t end there – as photographer Devin Mitchell points out in a series called the Veteran Vision Project, which sets out to reveal the struggles of America’s veterans with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). 

Some of these images may be difficult to view, as Mitchell captures the raw emotions of what some veterans deal with on a daily basis. Throughout the series, it’s clear that even if a veteran returns home unscathed, the emotional scars are sometimes far deeper and more painful. 

To execute this project, Mitchell went to every participating veterans’ home and allowed them to have free rein on how they expressed what PTSD feels like to them. From their clothing to their props, each veteran’s photo resulted in a deeply personal look into their lives and how they’ve been affected. 

Here is a short documentary featuring some of the subjects feelings on PTSD and suicide.

This is what the photographer Devin Mitchell had to say to Buzzfeed about PTSD and suicide:“From the beginning of the project, it was my mission to let veterans say whatever they want through my photographs,” Mitchell told BuzzFeed News. “Many people who do projects on veterans only want to take a particular angle. I want to explore all of the issues, all of the darkness.”

“I think I can safely say that every person in the military has been affected by suicide,” Mitchell said. “Whether it’s something they’ve tried, or considered, or has impacted someone close to them.”

What I know about PTSD is that it often goes undiagnosed, and that if it remains hidden it is quite literally like a time bomb waiting to go off. And even if diagnosed, if there is no appropriate treatment, the timer keeps right on counting down.

Now that's not to say that Bristol Palin's new fiance is necessarily in the category. I mean it's not like his eyes betray any significant lack of sanity or anything.

    Of course I could be wrong about that.

The Senate report on CIA torture techniques may only be the beginning. Soon there may be pictures.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:

The Obama administration is withholding hundreds, perhaps even thousands of photographs showing the U.S. government’s brutal treatment of detainees, meaning that revelations about detainee abuse could well continue, possibly compounding the outrage generated by the Senate “torture report” now in the public eye. 

Some photos show American troops posing with corpses; others depict U.S. forces holding guns to people’s heads or simulating forced sodomization. All of them could be released to the public, depending on how a federal judge in New York rules—and how hard the government fights to appeal. The government has a Friday deadline to submit to that judge its evidence for why it thinks each individual photograph should continue to be kept hidden away. 

The photographs are part of a collection of thousands of images from 203 investigations into detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan and represent one of the last known secret troves of evidence of detainee abuse. While the photos show disturbing images from the Bush administration’s watch, it is the Obama administration that has allowed them to remain buried—all with the help of a willing Congress. 

The president may have entered office promising a new era of transparency—and was even prepared to release at least 21 of the photos in 2009. But Obama pulled back at the last minute at the urging of his top commander in Iraq, who worried the graphic images could generate a backlash against U.S. troops.

The possibility that terrorists might get angry enough to launch an attack on American troops of embassies overseas in response to anything released to the public concerning our torture of detainees is bullshit.

As others have said we are actively bombing the crap out of ISIL. If THAT has not convinced them to attack us it is hard to believe that a couple of reports or photos will push them over the edge.

However it just might cause the conservatives defending CIA torture to suddenly go quiet.

One of the reasons that the incident in Abu Ghraib grabbed the public's attention was that the American people were able to see what we were doing and they were disgusted.

I think the same thing will happen this time.

Which in my opinion would be a good thing, and would do much to ensure that we never revisited this type of inhuman treatment again.

In other words, bring-em on.

Just a reminder that you can pause a video to make anybody look stupid.

I sometimes get angry feedback due to my propensity for finding really terrible pictures of Sarah Palin and using them on this blog. Many of them are ones I create myself by taking screenshots and posting them here.

You know like this one.

And this one.

And this one.

Okay fair enough.

However in my defense I would like to point out that when you hear Professor Tyson speak it immediately dissuades you from believing that he is intellectually impaired in any way.

Yet when you hear Sarah Palin speak people instead think, "That screen capture really failed to fully grasp the stupidity of this woman."

And the defense rests.

New study claims it has discovered how to determine who is liberal and who is conservative. Surprisingly it is not through an IQ test.

Courtesy of New Scientist: 

The way your brain reacts to a single disgusting image can be used to predict whether you lean to the left or the right politically. 

A number of studies have probed the emotions of people along the political spectrum, and found that disgust in particular is tightly linked to political orientation. People who are highly sensitive to disgusting images – of bodily waste, gore or animal remains – are more likely to sit on the political right and show concern for what they see as bodily and spiritual purity, so tend to oppose abortion and gay marriage, for example. 

A team led by Read Montague, a neuroscientist at Virginia Tech in Roanoke, recruited 83 volunteers and performed fMRI brain scans on them as they looked at a series of 80 images that were either pleasant, disgusting, threatening or neutral. Participants then rated the images for their emotional impact and completed a series of questionnaires that assessed whether they were liberal, moderate or conservative. 

The brain-imaging results were then fed to a learning algorithm which compared the whole-brain responses of liberals and conservatives when looking at disgusting images versus neutral ones. 

For both political groups, the algorithm was able to pick out distinct patterns of brain activity triggered by the disgusting images. And even though liberals and conservatives consciously reported similar emotional reactions to the images, the specific brain regions involved and their patterns of activation differed consistently between the two groups – so much so that they represented a neural signature of political leaning, the team concludes.

Well now, that explains a lot. 

Possibly including how the conservatives can see this picture...

...and think future President, while most Liberals see it and think where are the Vice cops when you need them?

Personally I am fine with  gross images, but of course I have had a lot of exposure to them over the years.

Oh God, I may have spoken too soon.

What gun ownership looks like in America.

Courtesy of Slate:

 In early 2013, on a five-day assignment for the German magazine Stern, photographer Charles Ommanney traveled around the United States photographing Americans with their guns. Ommanney has built a career working as a political and documentary photographer and felt a responsibility to make a story that wasn’t just another “predictable NRA-bashing” type of series. He wanted to see “real” people to find out why they wanted to have guns in their homes. 

He also decided to shoot the project in a more engaged manner with his subjects instead of simply being a fly on the wall. Ommanney said the project took him to six states in the Southern and Western United States, where he met people who owned guns for protection, as preparation for when things go “horribly wrong,” or simply because they like the beauty of weaponry. Instead of photographing the gun owners at a firing range or at a National Rifle Association conference, Ommanney wanted to capture them in their homes to create a sense of “normalcy.”

Yeah I am not sure that I would use the word "normalcy" to describe that picture above.

There are some others that have less of a "Deliverance" vibe to them, but not by as much as I think this guy was, if you will pardon the pun, shooting for.

This one in particular really bothers me.

I cannot imagine the scenario where a father would think that an exchange of gunfire was reasonable while he had his child strapped to the same area where police officers usually strap their bullet prove vests.

Maybe it's just me.