Drive-by politics

Why is it that men with the most opinions about women's bodies rarely look like George Clooney?  Usually they're gargoyles like Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh.  Can they see well enough to cross the road?  Or are they perpetually in high school, angry at the girls who laughed at them and enraged at the guys who didn't get laughed at, like Bill Clinton?

I can't decide if Gary Johnson is the Dan Quayle or the Sarah Palin of 2016, but I'm sure the Libertarian Party wish they could reverse the ticket and put Bill Weld at the top.  And that their platform didn't include the decriminalization of marijuana.

Why, exactly, do vice-presidential candidates debate?  Who cares what they think, or how they explain it?  The job consists of going to funerals, casting a tie-breaking vote every seven years or so, and waiting around.  And it's not as if we can pick the one we like better, they just come with the other one.

It must have been with some relief that Chris Christie rushed from one trainwreck to another this morning.  Apparently he has been tasked with preparing Donzo the Clown for his next "debate."  Bring a cattle-prod, Chris.  Your boy has the attention span of a concussed bee and the IQ of a drawerful of socks.  On the other hand, he has probably earned the right to wear that Purple Heart -- HRC cleaned his clock, oiled it, set it to Naval Observatory time and stuck it right up on his mantelpiece.  So his new strategy is to insult all non-Christians and yell about Monica Lewinsky.  That should work.

"Detached" was the word used to describe Ronald Reagan, especially in his second term, when Mommy and her astrologer were more or less running the Executive Branch.  How does that differ from "having trouble staying focused"? 

Trump claims/doesn't claim that global climate change is a "hoax" perpetrated by (who else?) the Chinese.  But nobody in Taiwan or southeast China thinks it's a hoax, as they stagger out from under the third typhoon in a month.  How many Katrinas and Sandys will it take to convince the pinheads?  I guess we'll find out.

When you pass a law, however idiotic, you have to provide for enforcement.  So I expect North Carolina to create a new force of State Toilet Police.  Stationed before every public restroom in their spiffy uniforms (I like lime green), they will check every person's birth certificate against her/his anatomy to make sure they pee where God intended.  It's a creepy job, but clearly someone has to do it.

It's just a microphone, Donzo.  What you want is Political Auto-Tune, where you spew idiocy and bullshit and reasoned speech comes out.  Hasn't been invented yet. 

 
   

Also the lectern was very very wobbly

El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago (thanks, Charlie!) would have done better if he had failed to show up.  I really expected Lester Holt to read a letter from the "doctor":  "Although Mr. Donald J. Trump is the healthiest, most high-energy person ever to run for anything, he is too tired from making America great again to come to your debate." 

The groundwork had certainly been laid.  First he claimed to have a letter from the NFL raising objections to the schedule.  (Lie.)  Then he wanted a debate without  a moderator, so he could yell abuse for ninety minutes while his minions chanted, "Lock 'er up!"  Then he insisted that the moderator be as clueless about reality-checking as Matt Lauer.  (Not quite.)  Then he stated, pre-emptively, that Lester Holt was a Democrat.  (Another lie.)  Then he spent the weekend cramming with his advisors Ronald McDonald, Col. Sanders and the Burger King.  (Burp.)  Meanwhile, he proposed seating Gennifer Flowers in the front row, which would really throw that bitch off her game, believe me.  (Yes.  She'd look down and think, "You're the skank who screwed my husband, and I'm running for president.  Beat that with a stick.") 

After a half hour of rope-a-dope, of course, it was all Hillary, who has been pronounced "stupid" by Sycophant in Chief Giuliani.  No, Rudolph, it might be smart to avoid paying income tax, dodge the draft, ditch jury duty, and all those other annoyances that go with living in a civilized country.  It's stupid to brag about it.  People might be reminded that they pay more so you can pay nothing, that their children die in wars while you "sacrifice" by putting up hideous buildings with other people's money.  You don't want that.

Chris Christie thinks Donald won, but Chris Christie's future plans are likely to depend on a Presidential pardon.  And Chris Christie is in a unique position to know how bad the food is in New Jersey prisons. 

It was a very bad microphone.  Made him sound like he was snuffling.  Made Howard Dean think of a certain drug that rich people use to keep up their energy.  But he was being sarcastic. 

The lights were in his eyes.

The auditorium was too cold.

Alicia Machado is fat. 

Emails.  Temperament.   Sean Hannity!

Democracy.

Just stop

As the demonstrations in Charlotte turned violent last night, Donald Trump had one of his inspired solutions:  Expand the dehumanization of black Americans policy of stop-and-frisk to the entire country.  Or possibly just Chicago.  Exactly how this would apply to a man who was reading a book in his car is not clear -- reading while black has not been a capital crime in North Carolina since 1865 -- but as Maj. Denis Bloodnok used to say,  "I admire your vacuity, sir." 

New York City, where Fourth Amendment violation began under the regime of Il Ducetto Giuliani, should begin by extending stop-and-frisk to Wall Street.  Throw a few hedge fund managers against the walls of the House of Morgan and go through their elegant belongings.  I'm willing to bet the police will find more felony-weight cocaine in an $800 briefcase than in the backpack of a kid on 109th Street.  And that's a good bust, right?  A promotion maker.  But wait, don't forget about Mrs. Fund-Manager on Park Avenue.  She probably has some pills in that Gucci bag that weren't prescribed by her doctor.  See?  You've taken two desperadoes off the street.  Much more important, you've demonstrated that the law applies to everyone, equally.

Yeah, I give it a week. 

Housekeeping

First a correction:  In a post on September 25, 2015, we predicted that John Boehner would soon be lobbying for the tobacco industry.  This week the tobacco company Reynolds American announced that Boehner had joined it, not as a lobbyist but as a director.  The Buttermilk Sky Organization regrets the error.

On December 9, 2015, we speculated that portions of Trump Tower had been purchased by "wealthy Middle Easterners."  Several publications, including the New York Daily News, have since confirmed that this is indeed the case, and that the owners include the family of the late Osama bin Laden.  The Buttermilk Sky Organization is happy to add, "Yadda yadda told ya so!  And what took  you so long?  We don't have a string of investigative reporters here, just our antennae waving at the Zeitgeist.  Get to work, New York Times!  Double down, Washington Post!  Even Cosmopolitan is asking the hard questions.  Apparently."

The BSO is considering a feature called Useless Judge of the Week.  Several days ago there was a hair-raising story out of Ohio about a woman who was abducted, taken to an abandoned house and raped.  She managed to call police and direct them to the house while the kidnaper was asleep.  They found the bodies of two other women in the house, and the alleged perpetrator led them to a third body.  The judge granted bail.  I know it is now customary to give no-TV-for-a-week sentences to (white) rapists, especially if prison might derail their athletic and/or college prospects, but this is frigging multiple murder.  It's a million dollars, but I suspect his online fans could raise that much in a few hours.  (Name something worthless that doesn't have fans.  I dare you.)  Will he get to keep the taser he used on the woman?  Never mind, he can easily buy another one. And won't she sleep well knowing he's back on the street.  Useless Judge of the Week, thank you.


   

One step sideways

Last week at GQ, Keith Olbermann posted 176 of the reasons Trump is unfit to be president, ranging from lies to quasi-treasonous acts to whiplash-inducing stupidity.  Well, one down, 175 to go.  Today Trump acknowledged being a dupe of the racist Birther movement, apologized abjectly, and withdrew from -- no, wait, I got that wrong.  Actually he accepted credit for forcing Barack Obama to release proof of his American birth, never mentioned dispatching investigators to Kenya to find the "real evidence," and blamed  the whole sad episode on -- deep breath -- Hillary Clinton.  (Yes, she invented Birtherism when she was done founding ISIS, poisoning the tap water in Flint, and causing all those earthquakes in Oklahoma.  Jerome Corsi is going to be pissed.)   The Leader then led the ever-compliant media on a tour of his newest assault on taste hotel, resulting in a free infomercial.  He may be back to 176.

It's all good news for the poor clerk in Honolulu who has spent the last seven years filling requests for the "long form" birth certificate, whatever that may be, but it doesn't make much difference to the rest of us.  Sane people have always called bullshit, while the Deplorables, after some initial confusion not that far from their customary mental fog, will accept The Leader's version as usual.  And just as events in North Dakota have reminded us that Native Americans have bigger problems than what some asshole in Washington calls his football team, so the killing of yet another child by the police in Columbus, Ohio, points to more serious concerns for African Americans.  Indeed, police violence has reached such a pitch, it has radicalized the millionaire athletes of the NFL, a truly remarkable development.  A statement as unarguable as "black lives matter" can raise the hackles of every racist, although no one has said "only black lives matter," much less "death to the police."  Racism appears to have the half-life of uranium, and it may be the most important issue in this election, if it can be said to be about any issues at all.  With four months and three days left in the Obama presidency, this changes nothing.*  Instead of a lengthy press conference, the Congressional Black Caucus should have acknowledged Trump's grudging and half-assed concession to reality in one sentence and gone back to work. 

If Donzo wants to knock another item off the Olbermann Indictment, I recommend the one about keeping a volume of Hitler's speeches beside his bed.  Nothing suggests he has the attention span or the reading skills to get through even one.



*Except to distract everyone from the mysteriously hacked emails of Colin Powell.  "National disgrace"?  Not like the Tsar of Twitter to let that go by in silence. 

Irredeemable

Hillary Clinton has a bad habit of apologizing when it isn't called for.  I think she picked it up from Bill.  The single most principled part of his life was his opposition to the war in Vietnam, and he spent his career explaining it away.  When Hillary described Trump voters as "a sorry assembly of ignorant racist fucknozzles and drooling imbeciles" (I'm paraphrasing), I knew it was a matter of time until she took it back.  Three hours, in fact.  Considering the demented vituperation the orange slob and his degenerate flunkies hurl at her every single day, this seems overly conciliatory.  Ladylike, to use an old-time word.  (But she doesn't look presidential!  But why doesn't she smile more?  How dare she insult the good American patriots who scream for her to be locked up and/or shot?  Didn't she co-found ISIS?)

We need you to own it, Hillary, or should I say "Hitlery Rotten Clitoris" as your decent, god-fearing opponents do.  Repeat it every day.  Galvanize your voters by telling the inbred, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing mud-pounders (paraphrasing again there) to go picnic in a minefield.  And the bloated grifter and his stomach-turning spawn and his zombie spokesmodels and pathetic clowns like Paulie Numbnuts Ryan who just can't say no when asked if they still support this psychopath.  Feel free to use the phrase "lying sack of shit" because you'll be trashed no matter what you say or how demurely you say it.  But whatever you do, stop bringing a rubber hammer to a gunfight.