What the fuck are “drabs”?  What are dribs?  Fucking cliches… some of ’em with roots lost in the mists of time.

Yesterday, in the USA, a transgender politician, a former journalist, unseated a thirteen term douchebag in Virginia’s House of Delegates election.  The defeated 73 year-old Republican douchebag had referred to himself, apparently, as “Virginia’s Chief Homophobe”.  Doesn’t that old cocksucker know that homophobe means somebody who fears homosexuals?   What a fucking adorably ignorant faggot….  Congratulations to newly elected Danica Roem, you go, girl!

But I digress.

Cabin fever slowly roasts me as my lock-down in Sekhnetville continues.  I wasn’t told when I went for the immunosuppressive therapy two weeks ago, not by doctor, nurse, medical technician (though Sekhnet points out that SHE told me), that I could be randomly fucked up very easily with no immune system.   You’d think it could have been printed on a card every first time patient could be handed, along with the list of their expected side-effects:

“You may very well feel absolutely fine when you leave here today.  Do not be fooled.  Your immune system is suppressed, you are susceptible to every bug out there.  Stay out of crowds, restaurants, public place of all kinds, for a week.  If you go outside, carry Purel and use it after touching anything someone with a fucking runny nose may have touched or sneezed on.  Pretend you are the Boy in the Bubble for the next few days.” 

“Common sense, (idiot),” says Sekhnet, hammering home the implied “idiot” with an uncannily Alice Kramden-like facial expression.

In other news, good for Puerto Rico saying “no” to Whitefish Energy.  Look, I don’t know if it was a corrupt no-bid $300,000,000 contract to some people closely attached to the corrupt Trump administration, but their prices, if nothing else, looked a little suspicious.   Something like $300 an hour for the guys doing the electrical work on the ravaged island.   Forget that Ryan Zinke, Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, is from Whitefish, the small Montana town where the two person corporation is located, or that Zinke’s wife, Lolita Hand (if that is her name), and the wife [1] of Whitefish Energy CEO Andrew Techmanski are facebook friends.   Zinke and Techmanski (great name for a guy with a tech company, man) both say there was nothing improper about how the contract was awarded.    Shouldn’t that be the end of it?   

I’m reminded of the standard for judicial recusal from a case.  If there is “the appearance” of impropriety, a judge must recuse him or herself from ruling on a controversy before her/him.  For example, if the judge is close personal friends with one of the parties, has gone on vacations with them, flown in their private plane, etc. during the pre-trail period, there is an appearance of impropriety and the judge is supposed to recuse herself from judging the case.  Although the judge might very well be able to rule fairly and dispassionately on the merits, it looks bad if she stays on the case.   The “appearance of impropriety” standard is an element of fair play that is intended to give people faith in the impartiality and integrity of our legal system.   

So you have Antonin Scalia on TV, after he refused to bow out of a case involving his good friend, the aptly named Dick Cheney and his secret energy task force meetings that preceded the disastrous deregulation of energy in California.   Scalia was a brilliant guy, quick on his feet, with a smart mouth on him.   He was apparently personally a very warm and lovable person, odious as virtually all of his sickening reactionary pontificating from the bench generally was.   A young female reporter asked Scalia, since he had just returned from a hunting trip with Cheney, if there wasn’t an appearance of impropriety in sitting in judgment of a case involving Cheney’s claims of executive privilege, state secrets, go fucking fuck yourself, etc.   Scalia didn’t miss a beat.   

“I think it’s a sad day when Americans question the impartiality of the Supreme Court,” said the affable Justice snippily.

It was a sad day in America, without a doubt.  Doubly so because the reporter was unable to say, “granted, sir, it is a sad day, I agree, but that was no answer to my question.  I asked you about the standard for recusal, which is the “appearance of impropriety” and why you have not recused yourself from this case involving your friend Vice President Cheney.  What do you say in answer to that, you smart-mouthed bastard?” 

Of course, there’s no point to living in a dream world, right?  I don’t know if Zinke had anything to do with the contract for Whitefish Energy, and I don’t know anything about Zinke’s character, except that the fact Trump appointed him to a powerful government post does not speak well for it.  As no less an authority than George F. Will said recently (I paraphrase, but barely), anyone who is associated with Trump is irrevocably soiled with a stink that can never be washed off.   Ah, here he goes:  Pence is a reminder that no one can have sustained transactions with Trump without becoming too soiled for subsequent scrubbing. 

Well, wash my mouth out with a fucking bar of fucking soap, I have to go make some more tea and put socks on, the temperature seems to be dropping in here.   I feel some post nasal drips and drabs a comin’.

[1]    Techmanski’s wife, Amanda, is listed as one of two managers for Whitefish Energy Holdings LLC. She is a registered nurse, records show, and last month she touted on Facebook a new job she was starting as a nurse practitioner.

With Amanda Techmanski as a manager, Whitefish was listed as an “economically disadvantaged woman-owned small business” on a federal Energy Department contract it won in July for a small transmission line repair in Arizona. The company’s registered address also goes back to the couple’s remote Montana home.

A prior business venture in the last decade ended poorly for Andrew Techmanski, records in Britain show. In 2009, he resigned from a business he had helped form three years earlier to string electric lines. The company folded less than two years later, and some debts remained outstanding last year, according to records.

source