And for Trump, the Ultimate Punishment will be assigning him a job as a caretaker on the Fort Leavenworth golf course as he serves his 500-year sentence in USP Leavenworth. He'll have to spend all day, every day, on the links and he won't be able to touch a club for the rest of his life.

A person needs to be punished in a fitting manner.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43818059

I've been seeing "could Trump wag the dog?" messages.

He did. And Trump's telegraphed punch was probably preceded by a backchannel alert to the Russians so they wouldn't lose anyone in the attack, which led the Russians to alert their Syrian allies so THEY wouldn't lose anyone in the attack either.

My question is, what was Trump trying to knock out of the news cycle?

Most of us have seen either Gene Wilder's magical LSD-laced children's classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or the Johnny Depp-helmed abomination Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

If you look closely at this movie, it's actually a Christian allegory. A vast amount of our art is. Wonka, who appears to be a CIA officer when he's not making candy, is faced with five children, all of whom he tests:

Augustus Gloop, whose sins are Sloth and Gluttony. He is punished by being sucked into the factory's chocolate transport pipeline and dumped into a fudge boiler.

Violet Beauregard, whose sins are Pride and Lust. Her penance is to be tempted with a stick of "three-course dinner" gum that turns her into a blueberry.

Veruca Salt, whose sins are Greed and Envy. She's dumped down a garbage chute.

Mike Teavee, whose sin is Wrath. He gets processed through the Wonkavision system and comes out the size of a juvenile rat.

and Charlie Bucket, the most pure child of them all - one so good that Wonka rigs the contest to ensure his presence on the tour by declaring the Russian guy's ticket to be a forgery, placing a bar with a new ticket in it in the sweet shop Charlie goes to on the rare occasions he has money, leaving money in the snow for Charlie to conveniently find so he'll go in and buy candy, and making sure the sweet shop owner sells that exact bar to Charlie. (You gotta admit, that the Wonka employee who runs around impersonating Slugworth knows exactly where and when in the entire world he needs to be when a child opens a bar with a ticket in it is...well, kinda suspicious.) Wonka tests Charlie (with the fizzy lifting drinks and gobstopper in the good movie, and by demanding Charlie leave his family if he wants the plant) and finds no flaw in his essential goodness.

Now for tonight's exercise: Let's change from five kids to eight - one for each of the seven deadly sins, plus Charlie. Which leads us to this breakdown:

Charlie: no sin
Augustus: sin of gluttony
Violet: sin of pride
Veruca: sin of greed
Mike: sin of wrath

Describe one of the remaining three children, who have the sins of sloth, lust and envy. What are their names? How do they express their evilness, and how does Wonka boot them off the tour?

Mine: Go back to Clinton's tax system with four changes:

1) Adjust all the numbers for inflation.

2) Index AMT to inflation. This will eliminate one of the Hard Right's biggest complaints - that the income needed to push someone into AMT territory decreases every year.

3) Any taxpayer whose taxable income, as calculated by the standard deduction method, is $100,000 or below gets to take both the Standard Deduction and the Itemized Deduction. Further, any Dual Deduction taxpayer gets to deduct all their medical expenses, not just ones that exceed a percentage of your AGI.

4) The deficit may never drop below $100 billion again, nor may the national debt drop below $5 trillion. Infrastructure investment will be used to increase the deficit or debt if required. A balanced budget encourages Congress to engage in a pattern of reckless tax cuts and spending in an attempt to "spend the surplus." Requiring a reasonable and sustainable level of debt will discourage Congressional stupidity.

If the feds find that all the Stephanie Clifford hush money-related activity was conducted in New York, can they hand the case to the New York State Attorney General so Trump can't pardon Cohen?

Google “jet fuel hoax.” This isn’t a 911 thing; it is worse.

According to this lie, which is starting to pick up steam, jet airplanes run on compressed air and not jet fuel. They have two “proofs”: the A380 wings are neither large enough nor strong enough to hold as much fuel as they do, and the name of commercial turbine fuel, Jet A, is short for “jet air.”

Anyone who’s ever been near a running jet can tell you this is bullshit, but pointing this out gets you labeled a paid shill or a government agent.

And this theory didn’t exist before Trump. Neither did the sudden resurgence in flat earth theories.

Why would they do this? Why run planes on compressed air (or race cars, or anything else not owned by common people)? To enslave us all, of course. If The Rich can run their A380s and yachts on air but you and I have to settle for expensive gasoline, they own us.

If “making the world stupider” isn’t an impeachable offense, it damn well should be.

"Susie, where is your little sister Mary?"

'You know Henry, right? From across the street?'

"Yeah..."

'They're in her bedroom playing doctor.'

Mommy rushes to Mary's room and burst in on Mary and Henry. Both of them are sitting in chairs with toy telephones pressed against their ears.

"I thought Susie said you were playing doctor!"

'We are. We're on hold with the insurance company!'

These assholes named a (very expensive!) perfume "Fucking Fabulous."

https://www.tomford.com/fucking-fabulous/8806607586.html

I can just imagine the looks on the faces of cosmetics-department managers from coast to coast..."how the hell are we going to display THIS?"

https://www.boredpanda.com/customer-complaint-blanket-price-krafty-katt/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=Newsletter

Long story condensed: Guy texts Instagram crocheter "Krafty Katt" to commission an afghan that's 6 feet wide x 7 feet long, in a three-color complex stitch, and made from wool. She quotes a $400 price (which is Krafty Katt screwing herself out of a LOT of money - her estimate is the project will require 150 hours and 20 skeins of $8 yarn) half up front and customer pays shipping, and gets totally berated by this bully. When he found out she has a day job, he decided she could work for free and get the yarn on sale at a craft store, so he ordered her to make the blanket for $70, payment sent when the project was completed.

At this point you can see where she is much nicer than I am: after being told this she offered to make the afghan for $800. I would have told him to piss up a rope.