monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Late in life an artless man has learned that he could leave his linguistic fly unzipped and life would go on. It may not be pretty, but it isn't a sign that his pants are going to fall down.

The difference between the younger man talking in sentences and the older one talking in vocal ejaculations is evidence not of decline but authenticity – he has settled into his normal.

What his speech patterns say about his mental fitness...

Late in life an artless man has learned that he could leave his linguistic fly unzipped and life would go on. It may not be pretty, but it isn't a sign that his pants are going to fall down.

Since he is someone who neither reads nor reflects, his linguistic comfort zone has always been the unadorned.

What his speech patterns say about his mental fitness...

From the same above source.

I wonder if Trump will allow the release of the democrat memo and if not what his excuse could possibly be?

US President Donald Trump has been the victim of a fake tweet which went viral overnight.

The tweet, which suggested the sitting president should be "shot into the sun" from a cannon should the "Dow Joans" drop significantly, was posted minutes after US stocks suffered their worst fall for more than six years on Monday.

Fred's take on morality

Master–slave morality is a central theme of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, in particular the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche argued that there were two fundamental types of morality: 'Master morality' and 'Slave morality'.

Master morality values pride, strength, and nobility, while slave morality values things like kindness, humility, and sympathy. Master morality weighs actions on a scale of good or bad consequences (i.e. classical virtues and vices, consequentialism), unlike slave morality which weighs actions on a scale of good or evil intentions (e.g. Christian virtues and vices, Kantian deontology).

The essence of master morality is nobility. Other qualities that are often valued in master morality are open-mindedness, courage, truthfulness, trust, and an accurate sense of one's self-worth. Master morality begins in the 'noble man' with a spontaneous idea of the good, then the idea of bad develops as what is not good. "The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, 'what is harmful to me is harmful in itself'; it knows itself to be that which first accords honour to things; it is value-creating."

Masters are creators of morality; slaves respond to master-morality with their slave-morality. Unlike master morality which is sentiment, slave morality is based on re-sentiment—devaluing that which the master values and the slave does not have. As master morality originates in the strong, slave morality originates in the weak. Because slave morality is a reaction to oppression, it vilifies its oppressors. Slave morality is the inverse of master morality. As such, it is characterized by pessimism and cynicism. Slave morality is created in opposition to what master morality values as 'good'.

Slave morality does not aim at exerting one's will by strength but by careful subversion. It does not seek to transcend the masters, but to make them slaves as well. The good is what is most useful for the whole community, not the strong. Nietzsche saw this as a contradiction. Since the powerful are few in number compared to the masses of the weak, the weak gain power by corrupting the strong into believing that the causes of slavery are 'evil.'

twitter has a great memory

We rate this fake tweet Pants on Fire.

Though it was a hoax, that didn’t stop the Twitterverse from going nuts over it. The tweet took off, and within 19 hours drew more than 22,000 retweets and 47,000 likes.

Minutes later, Usher followed up by making it clear the tweet was a hoax:

"Sweet mother of god. Not for one second did I think people would believe that to be genuine."

"omg it's everywhere. What have I done."

Schiff played by Russian radio hosts who promised 'naked Trump' photos

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee held an eight-minute phone conversation last year with Russian radio hosts posing as a Ukrainian politician who promised to provide compromising images of President Trump.

The conversation involving Rep. Adam Schiff, which took place on April 10 of last year, was first reported by The Atlantic last month. On Tuesday, the Daily Mail published purported audio of the call.

In the conversation, a caller identified himself as Andriy Parubiy, the speaker of Ukraine's parliament. In fact, "Parubiy" was two people, Vladimir "Vovan" Kuznetsov and Alexey "Lexus" Stolyarov, who have previously prank-called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

During this call, "Parubiy," claimed that Trump met Russian model and singer Olga Buzova while in Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, and that the two had had a brief affair.

"She got compromising materials on Trump after their short relations," the caller told Schiff.

"OK, and what's the nature" of the material? Schiff asked.

"Well, there were pictures of naked Trump," the caller said, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin was made aware of the "images" by Ksenia Sobchak -- a Russian journalist he described as "the goddaughter of Putin."

Parubiy" assured Schiff that he could provide records of Sobchak and Buzova discussing the images. He also claimed that the former national security adviser Michael Flynn met with another Russian singer, Arkadiy Ukupnik, in a Brooklyn cafe to discuss keeping the supposed images under wraps.

"On that meeting, Ukupnik told Flynn that all those compromising materials will never be released if Trump will cancel all the Russian sanctions," the caller told Schiff, who responded that "obviously we would welcome the chance to get copies of those recordings."