Are you ready for some covfefe?

As the minutes tick down -- literally, CNN has one of those idiot countdown clocks on the screen -- the crazy accelerates.

LOCK 'IM UP!  According to fellow crewmen, President Queeg continues to ricochet between the childish hope that Robert Mueller will hand him a lollipop and a "no collusion" clean bill of health, and snarling rage at the likelihood of further indictments and guilty pleas.  "Sources" (take that as you please) say he will order Three-Fifths-of-a-Man Sessions to find some pretext for charging Mueller with bigly crimes of one kind or another, since he doesn't have anything like the guts to fire him.  For decades Trump ran his skeevy businesses on a foundation of lawsuits, real and threatened, and now he imagines he can make "my guys" in the Department of Justice indict people just as easily.  Criminal charges, however, require evidence, and that could be scarce with most of the FBI willing to see him drawn and quartered first.  We are fortunate that Trump is too stupid to keep from stepping on his own rake.

"'CAUSE I'M A DENTIST...AND A DISGRACE!"  A number of Congress members are bringing guests to the State Opening of Parliament of the Uniom tonight, undocumented aliens whose fate hangs in the balance of Trump's senile whims.  And Rep. Paul Gosar, (R-AZ), DDS, is pissed.  He wants them arrested for being all illegal in the royal presence.   (Really.  His Twitter account admits he's a dentist.)  Unlike the very fine people who threaten to kill reporters, they're apparently dangerous and probably terrorists.  Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO), on the other hand, is not doing the plus-one, as he says he wouldn't "subject" a guest to it.  Lots of no-shows, too, may want to  line up some seat-fillers so it doesn't look as sad as the inauguration.

"TRUMP IS OURS AGAIN!"  A Russian anchor on a Russian news program on Russian television actually said that after Trump refused to enforce the newest sanctions on Russia passed by Congress.  Say this for them, they're not subtle.  Why should they be?  A day earlier, Putin's principal opponent in the March "election," Alexei Navalny, was lock-him-up'ed on a Moscow street.  And poor Donny could only look on and wait for the day ( assuming Fox covered it).  He's been heard musing that another 9/11-type attack could bring him the popularity -- and dictatorial power -- he craves.  (I keep hearing Angela Lansbury plotting the presidential nominee's murder in The Manchurian Candidate.)

STIR CRAZY?  I'm no expert at this computer stuff, it's all I can do to copy and paste a picture, but I don't run a Rightzi website.  A woman in Texas created a fake Sean Hannity account and quickly snagged a big, pale fish -- Julian Assange, promising Sean dirt on Sen. Mark Warner, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.  Is his face red!  Well, vaguely pinkish.    I think the perfidious albino needs some Vitamin D.  The Texas lady would be a late contender for Nasty Woman of the Month, had we not already decided on...

NANCY SPECTOR, chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.  She did it with wit, panache, and a solid-gold toilet.  Now, if I did it right, here she is:







 

State of the Uniom

`

More sabotage by the deep state secret society!  FBI!  Disloyal civil service Obama agents!  Chemtrails!  

I have other plans, so let me know if his dentures fly out and land in Gorsuch's lap.  And only then.

Thursday Follies

This is great.

A bunch of Rightzi Congressmen, including Usual Suspects Gohmert, Rohrabacher and Steve King, are meeting with a Rightzi reality TV star and would-be Fuhrer named Tomio Okamura.  His stated program:  "We want to stop any Islamization of the Czech Republic.  We push for zero tolerance of migration."  Also the gassing of Jews, gays and Roma.  I know, I read it twice.  Then I looked closely at the photo.  If elected, he'll presumably deport himself to Japan.  Consistency, right?

The real George Soros, not the sinister Slenderman who lures children to the woods and makes them eat organic broccoli, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, "I consider the Trump Administration a danger to the world.  But I regard it as a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020 or even sooner."  Let the conspiracy theories gush forth, let the heads explode all over the white people's couch.

Clearly Soros is behind the vast conspiracy/coup against the Leader being plotted by -- no, wait for it -- the FBI.  Because the deputy director's wife ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia legislature as a Democrat, see, and there's this memo...look, I can't keep it all straight and I don't have to.  Forgotten are the Comey October Surprise and the hostility to Hillary Clinton; now they're being compared to the KGB.  (Not the Gestapo, Sean?)  You know, Putin's old outfit...oh, wait.

"Secret Society" is the password of the day over at Fox.  It seems that two FBI agents, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, exchanged a single email in which they joked about setting one up, and offering beefcake Putin calendars to members.  The Rightzis pounced on this as if it were Hillary's long-sought email ordering ISIS to attack the consulate in Benghazi.  That's what happens when you have no sense of humor or other higher brain function.

Keep an eye out for the blandly named "Council for National Policy."  It's a cabal of fundamentalist theocrats who want to turn American education over to the religion industry -- the "Judeo-Christian" one, of course.  Normally we could just ignore these nuts, but most of Betsy DeVos's relatives are active in the organization.  Already in Mississippi, a legislator named Credell Calhoun, who claims to be a Democrat, has introduced a bill requiring public school teachers to recite the Ten Commandments every morning.  Since surveys show few Americans are familiar with the Constitution, the time could be better spent reciting the Bill of Rights, or possibly just the Establishment Clause, which forbids the kind of crap Calhoun is pushing.  If it somehow becomes law, the little kids will giggle all day about "coveting thy neighbor's ass," while the older ones may wonder why the president gets a pass on "Thou shalt not commit adultery."  (Certain presidents, anyway.)  And in an open-carry, death penalty state like Mississippi, whatever will they make of "Thou shalt not kill"?  Better leave that can of worms unopened, Credell.  Let the churches peddle the Iron Age superstitions.  That's what they're for.

Unable to find anything they liked in the National Gallery or the Smithsonian, the Trumps asked the Guggenheim Museum to help them class up the White House by lending Van Gogh's "Landscape With Snow."  (I'm guessing this was all FPOTUS -- Donzo wouldn't know Van Gogh from Van Halen.)  Sorry, no, said the Gug, but how about Maurizio Cattelan's "America"?  It's solid gold, and it flushes.

Thoughts & prayers

While we were engrossed in the government shutting down and Stormy Daniels opening up, this happened:

January 4, Seattle:  a shot was fired into a school office window

January 6, Forest City, Iowa:  a school bus window was shot out

January 9, Sierra Vista, Arizona:  a 14-year-old boy shot himself to death in an elementary school bathroom

January 10, Denison, Texas:  accidental shooting in a classroom at the Grayson College Criminal Justice Center, no one hurt

January 10, San Bernardino, California:  bullet fired through a window at California State University

January 15, Marshall, Texas:  bullet fired into dorm room at Wiley College

January 20, Winston-Salem, North Carolina:  one student shot and killed at Greek Life event, Wake Forest University

January 22, Gentilly, Louisiana:  14-year-old shot in drive-by at Net Charter School

January 22, Italy, Texas:  girl, 15, shot by boy, 16, in Italy High School cafeteria

January 23, Kentucky:  15-year-old boy killed two and wounded more than 15 inside Marshall County High School

That last one actually made the national news.  The rest were just local events, like house fires and broken water mains.  Gun violence is as American as cherry pie.  Now tell me why any half-way intelligent Norwegian would want to move here.

Sunday wrap-up extravaganza

(in which we try to determine who's crazy, us or the rest of the world)

The Republicans shut down the government Friday because their president is a deranged moron and their Senate majority leader couldn't lead ants to a cube of sugar.  They have done little since then but blame the Democrats, at one point calling them "complicit" in any future crimes which may be committed by those raping, murdering Mexicans who haven't been walled out.  Also it's totally their fault that The Troops are not being paid.  That was too much for Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who wrote:  "I will not be lectured about what our military needs by a five-deferred draft-dodger.  And I have a message for cadet bone-spurs:  If you cared about our military, you'd stop baiting Kim Jong-un into a war that could put 85,000 American troops...in danger."  Duckworth is a woman, disabled (she lost both legs in the Iraq War), a Democrat, Asian-American, and her name sounds like a bird.  No way Trump will be able to resist exercising his twit-wit.

Dr. Rene Boucher pleaded guilty to assaulting a member of Congress, Rand Paul, which apparently became a federal crime in the years since Preston Brooks (D-SC) half-killed Charles Sumner (R-MA) on the Senate floor.  Of course, that was over slavery; this was a lawn maintenance dispute.  And so the Bowling Green Massacre limps to a conclusion.  Any thoughts, Kellyanne?

Pope Francis, on a visit to Chile, won the world's heart when he married two flight attendants on his plane.  In Santiago, his vehicle hit a mounted policewoman and her horse, and he stopped the motorcade and stood with her until the ambulance arrived.  And then he had to mess it up and lecture a roomful of cloistered nuns on the evils of gossip, comparing it to terrorism.  So only women gossip and it's bad and destructive.  Good to know.

Trump found time in his schedule ("Fox & Friends" is not on Saturdays) to address a rally of anti-choice crazies in Pennsylvania, assuring them that "states are allowing babies to be born from his or her womb at nine months.  This needs to stop."  I couldn't agree more.

Capetown, South Africa, is rationing water.  Those Chinese and their cunning climate-change hoax have caused a three-year-long drought, the scamps.  And Australia is basically the world's biggest barbie -- throw a shrimp on yer living room floor, mate!  Some day the survivors will look back on this century and try to laugh.

The two Koreas have agreed to put aside their differences at least until the end of the Winter Olympics next month, in which they will participate as one country under a special flag.  No one thinks this is a permanent solution, but it seems to signal that they will henceforth ignore the bellicose rants out of Washington and talk to each other.  That seems wise.

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed millions around the world.   The 2018 version has been far less lethal, so far killing some forty American children (no figures are available for adults).  But it underscores the lack of new antiviral and antibiotic drugs, not to mention a comprehensive flu vaccine.  The profit is in drugs for chronic conditions like diabetes, depression, psoriasis, hypertension, and of course "erectile dysfunction," as impotence is now known.   As of today, a couple of utterly unqualified but loyal Trumpanzees are in charge of the opioid crisis and the attorney general is obsessed with stamping out cannabis.  Even if this government were open for business, how do you think it would respond to another pandemic?  I mean, beside blaming Democrats and people from shithole countries.

Sharks are evil, but Nazis are very fine people.  Remember that.  Sweet dreams.

Poor butterflies

So you think your life is hard?

Larry Nassar was in court again as some of the women he raped and molested gave their victim impact statements.  Poor Larry was so upset he wrote a six-page letter to the judge, demanding that she end this ordeal.  She didn't.  Her response included the word "delusional."  Nassar will probably seek a new trial on the basis of the judge's gender bias.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has been getting letters and phone calls from an organization called Ozark Indivisible, which takes exception to his health-care policy, which is basically to destroy the Affordable Care Act.  He has begun sending them, and other opinionated nuisances, a letter threatening to notify the D.C. Capitol Police.  Who do they think they are, citizens or something?  Cotton appears to have borrowed this hollow bullying technique from Bill O'Reilly, who used to threaten critics with "Fox Security" -- the dreaded Foxsturme.  Bill doesn't work there anymore, but not because of his bluster.

Reporters persist in asking questions which displease both Trump and Hockeypuck Sanders, but the Trumpanzees are on the case.  They now mob these reporters like a tree full of starlings, screaming at Jim Acosta and April Ryan (so far) so they can't be heard.  And the others do nothing.

Does anybody suffer more than America's Christian majority?  Not according to the proclamation of last Tuesday as "National Religious Freedom Day."  But there's hope, in the form of the Department of Health and Human Services's new "conscience and religious freedom division."  No longer will employers be forced to damn themselves by paying for contraception, nor pharmacists fill prescriptions for the devil's birth control.  I feel freer already.  Now if the Supreme Court will just protect bakers and caterers from being dragged into endorsing those wicked same-sex weddings, the Rapture will be here before you can say "prosperity gospel."

Forget about the families that have already been torn apart by ICE, the DACA people waiting to learn their fate.  Won't somebody think of Sebastian Gorka?  He can't go home to Hungary without being arrested on a gun charge.  (Yes, he worked in the White House with an outstanding warrant -- what about it?)  Fortunately, he also has American and British passports in his collection, so he doesn't need to.

And what about Chris Christie?  No longer a governor, he was refused the VIP entrance at Newark Airport and had to go through security like any common slob.  What a world.

Tough words

There are days when we hardly know where to start, so we'll just double-glove and dig in, as Dr. Ronny Jackson did a few days ago.  Trump is "in excellent health," he said with a straight face, adding mentally "for an obese 71-year-old who lives on sugar and fat and takes no exercise."  Jackson wore his Navy uniform to signal that he must follow orders, like the doctor who performed the JFK autopsy.  We get it, doc.  For the prostate exam alone, you should get the Navy Cross.  And I see you also administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, where the subject has to identify a picture of a camel and explain what oranges and bananas have in common.  Perfect score?  Of course.  Wink wink.  Two hundred thirty-nine pounds, eh?  What, on the moon?

Larry Nassar is another doctor in the news, sentenced today for sexually abusing over a hundred girls and women on the US Olympic gymnastic team and at Michigan State University.  "I just want healing," he said.  He is already serving sixty years for possession of child pornography.  Considering how child molesters are regarded in prison, he'll be lucky to live six months.

The debate continues to rage about whether Trump called most of the world "shithole countries" or "shithouse countries."  It's a subtle distinction, but when you have the best words, you deploy them with exquisite care.  Thing is, the Republicans in the room either couldn't hear it or don't remember what they heard.  That includes the buxom blonde Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, whose ancestors clearly did not come from anyplace on the shit list.  She "did not hear that word," she assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and she was also stumped when asked if Norway is "mostly white."  Homeland security?  I feel more secure already.  And forget about Oprah -- Corey Booker opened his campaign for president today.  Look for it on YouTube, I don't do links.

"US Warned Jared Kushner About Wendy Deng Murdoch," was the very interesting headline in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.  From what I read before the paywall popped up, the intelligence community believed she was "advancing the interests of the Chinese government," i.e., spying.  She is also the ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch, who owns The Wall Street Journal, so this may be the most elegant piece of revenge porn I've ever seen.  Or Kushner is just a fool, or both.  This would have been around the time his sister was in China peddling US visas to the wealthiest, so there's probably a lot more to this than Robert Mueller has time or investigators to uncover.

You know why Puerto Rico still has no electricity?  The Jews.  Someone called Wilda Rodriguez revealed this in an op-ed in El Nuevo Dia.  You see, they control the government and all they care about is recovering the money Puerto Rico owes to mainland banks, so they're preventing the island from resuming normal business...no, wait, that makes no sense, does it?  The paper apologized today for this inanity, without explaining why they decided to publish it in the first place.  The resurgence of blatant, uncoded anti-Semitism is a shock to everyone who has been living in a cave for the last two years.

I see where the term "girther" has been created for those who don't believe Trump weighs less than Albert Pujols, or has grown an inch in the past year.  Let the fun begin.

  

This is not a drill

No, this is a mistake.  That's what Hawaiians found out after thirty-eight minutes of sheer terror this morning, of sheltering in closets and texting farewells to loved ones, that the "inbound missile" was a flock of seagulls or some such.  Sorry.  The current administration does not recognize Hawaii as part of the United States -- the attorney general once described it as "an island in the middle of the ocean" -- so there was no reason for "your favorite president (me)" to interrupt his golf game.  Again, sorry.

And that was far from the most awesome thing to happen since last Monday.

Back in the 1990s it was "How shall we tell the children?" the awful news that the president got oral sex from a lady intern in the sacred precincts of the White House, the very house where Kennedy pursued secretaries and Harding copulated with Nan Britton and who knows what the others got up to.  Now those poor, damaged children have children of their own, who will soon be looking up with wide eyes and asking, "Why the hell can Trump say 'shithole' without getting a time-out and a mouthful of Lifebuoy?"  Why indeed?  Instead of Daddy, little Dylanne should be asking Lindsey Graham and Paul Ryan and David Perdue and Steve King and Tom Cotton and all the other racist assholes who have no problem with the racist asshole.  If the racism didn't faze them, why should the gutter language?  It's all the fault of Dick Durbin and (of course) the liberal media, who made America look bad by reporting the remarks.  Probably treasonous.  It's their fault all the countries of Africa, in a rare show of unanimity, are demanding an apology.  Hah!  They'd have a better chance of getting Ivanka as their White Queen.  They have one, right?  Many people don't know this.

At another fine site, a commenter who goes by Joshua Norton observed, "Don't you just hate it when the compulsively lying serial harasser you supported turns out to be a racist?"  Which pretty well nails it, Emperor Norton.  People are still asking, "Is Trump a racist?"  But people are still arguing about Darwin, too.  We call them "fucking morons."

So much more.  Trump gave another interview to The Wall Street Journal, with three of his minders in the room.  This kind of incoherence was much funnier when Professor Irwin Corey did it, but then...launch codes.  The longer quotations are literally untranslatable to English, but there was one sentence that threw a shaft of sunlight into the fog of Trump family dynamics.  Asked about the Russia summit, he said, "My son had a brief meeting based on the fact that he thought whatever he thought."  Now say it as Vito Corleone.  If I were Sonny Don, Jr., I'd dress in something suitable for being thrown under the bus.

Two Corinthians walk into a bar....Through all the success and accomplishments of 2017, the evangelicals have stood by their messiah, who promises to put The Women in their place and let churches go full-bore into politics.  Hasn't he already saved Christmas?  Now comes the acid test for these men of piety, and her name is Stormy Daniels nee Stephanie Clifford, adult film star and recipient of $130,000 to keep quiet about her "relationship" with Trump back when his wife was pregnant and too disgusting for sex use.   I can hear it now:  "The Lord gave this man such a mighty instrument which is much bigger than Obama's and also so much testosterone, OK, he had no choice but to seek out scarlet women, but he has repented, believe me.  No, he didn't tell us to say this."  Yes, women, for another star of the adult films has come forward to say that she joined the party but didn't get the payoff.  This party is just getting started.

Pete Hoekstra used to be a dumb congressman from Michigan.  Now he's our dumb ambassador to the Netherlands.  He opened the relationship by announcing that the country is full of "no-go zones" (a favorite bugbear of the nut right) where non-Muslims travel in peril of their lives; and further, that at least one Dutch politician had been set on fire by Muslims, a fable possibly inspired by the British hate-tweet that caught his master's eye last month.  Some Dutch journalists demanded he back up his bullshit, refusing to take "no comment" for an answer, and yesterday Hoekstra admitted, "That was just wrong."  Since apologizing is a sign of weakness, he'll probably be fired.  The US ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, resigned yesterday, saying he can no longer represent a country whose president calls other countries "shitholes," so expect Trump to boast of all the salaries he's saving by having no ambassadors at all.  And he won't be cutting the ribbon for the new American embassy in London because he doesn't like the location (too far from Harrod's and the West End) and because "Obama sold the old one" in Grosvenor Square "for peanuts."  For the record, the embassy was moved because of security concerns, and the previous one was sold in 2008 during the Bush administration...what's the point?  He's not going because they won't let him ride in the carriage with the horsies and because the Brits don't want him.  Mayor Sadiq Khan reiterated that, and some neo-Mosleyites who glory in the name "White Pendragon" tried to make a citizen's arrest.  They do these things so well.

Standing next to the prime minister of Norway, a country he approves of (racially if not politically), Trump announced that we have delivered the F-52 fighter planes they ordered ahead of schedule.  Way ahead, for this particular aircraft exists only in the game "Call of Duty:  Advanced Warfare."  So he doesn't spend all day watching Fox News on those giant-screen TVs.

Look out, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) -- you're being primaried by Chelsea Manning.  As far as I can tell, she's the first transgendered felon to run for the Senate.  I don't know what her platform is, but it probably involves conditions in federal prisons.  Several felons are running for the House, all Republicans, including former Congressman Michael Grimm of Staten Island.  And speaking of the forgotten borough, there's a woman there named Lizzie Dunn who really has the courage of her racist convictions.  Police have determined that she threw acid in her own face and blamed an unspecified black woman who approached her at a bus stop.  When she recovers, Dunn will probably be offered a job in the White House.

Trump now holds "meetings" for the TV cameras to prove he's working really hard.  He opens with "Welcome to the studio," hugs himself like Ed Sullivan, and nods sagely at what each person says, even if it contradicts what the last person said.  I understand Putin laughs so hard he has to change his pants.

Follow in your books as we learn our next word in Croatian:  vukojebina (n.), the place wolves fuck.  In other words, a forsaken spot nobody wants to visit.  It was the closest they could get to "shithole."

Changing jobs

Goodbye, CEO of Breitbart, hello, men's grooming editor of StormFront.

"What aftershave is right for a book-burning?  Well, you should select something that's not too pushy, but still says 'I hate blacks, Jews and Muslims.'"

Exclusive! First results from Trump physical

c

Yes, it's funny that he doesn't know the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner."  (Don't they flash them on the scoreboard since the Robert Goulet embarrassment of 19--?)  Yes, it's cute that when he's alerted to it he pats his chest and wiggles around, like your great-uncle at the wedding who bounces in his chair when they play "The Hokey-Pokey" but doesn't feel like getting up.  And have we spent enough time on this particular distraction?

That isn't really an x-ray of the trumpian skull.  Can you spot the reason?  Answer below.

It's officially Silly Tuesday.  Joe Arpaio is running for the Senate.  Steve Bannon must campaign for him.   No, manage the campaign.  He may not have a job at Blightbart by then.

Julian Assange tried to save millions of trees and diminish the sales of Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury by releasing the entire text on WikiLeaks.  Nice try, Julie, now get back in your room.

Thousands of Salvadorans living legally in the United States may be deported to their gang-infested homeland because if you flee gang violence that means you're a violent gang-banger and also reasons.  Build the wall!

There was a fire on the roof of Trump Tower yesterday.  Let's hope they were able to save his fake Renoir.  ("No fake!  No fake!  The one in the Art Institute of Chicago is a fake!")

Winter Storm Grayson and now Hunter.  Where are they getting these names?  One of those pre-schools on the Upper East Side where they screen for sandbox skills but it's worth it because little Contumely will almost certainly be accepted at Yale?

Dr. Sebastian Gorka has obediently joined the chorus of Trumpanzees denouncing the Wolff book and asserting that the author never even set foot in the White House.  Then he mentioned the time he saw Wolff coming out of Reince Priebus's office.  In the White House.  Oh, doctor!

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) has introduced the Standardized Testing and Accountability Before Large Elections Giving Electors Necessary Information for Unobstructed Selection Act.  (Yes, the STABLE GENIUS Act.)  It requires candidates to undergo psychiatric testing under the auspices of the Department of the Navy before they run.  Probably won't get out of committee in this Congress, but as Mets fans used to say, "Wait'll next year."

Obviously that is not Trump's head.  It still has teeth.

And finally, our guest editorial from University of Alabama running back Bo Scarbrough, after the "Crimson Tide" defeated Georgia last night:  "FUCK TRUMP!"

Should replace "ROLL TIDE!"

No

I am an Old Fart.  I remember the night Rod Steiger won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the racist sheriff in In the Heat of the Night.  It was 1968, and the ceremony had been delayed (much to the annoyance of people like the host, Bob Hope) until after the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Change of all kinds was in the air, politics amped up by the assassination, and Steiger concluded his acceptance speech with the words "We shall overcome."  The next day, nobody suggested he should run for office, much less president.

Fifty years later, Oprah Winfrey got an award from the Hollywood Foreign Press people at the Golden Globes and made a speech that seems to have enraptured her followers.  Some have seen it as the opening salvo of her campaign for president.  Some have urged her to run.

Have we all gone bonkers?

Who thinks it would be a good idea to install another reality TV star in the White House?  Have we learned nothing?  It goes without saying that she would be better than Trump.  So would the animatronic Trump in Disneyland, or my left shoe.  "Better than Trump" is better than absolute zero.  We need to raise the bar -- not to limbo height, perhaps, but off the ground.  We are better than this, and if we aren't, time to change our name to West Russia and spend all our time playing Grand Theft Auto.

People, please.

And now, a history lesson

Genius?

Attended the prestigious United States Military Academy (West Point), where regardless of your parents' wealth, you had to be appointed by a member of Congress.

Won the Presidency in 1952 without ever having held, or run for, elective office.

Never claimed to be a genius.  Or "stable."

Saved Europe from Nazism.

Also loved golf.

Fired and Furious, or The Devil's Barcode

Given the size of his ego, it was a matter of time before Steve Bannon published some sort of book.   I just didn't think it would happen this soon.  But Bannon needs to distract attention from his record of failure, which climaxed with the Roy Moore debacle, so consider it the world's longest rage-tweet.  Unlike other tweeters, he figured out how to monetize it, but after all, that's the whole point of this regime:  Trumpism is corporatism.  And no, I haven't read it.  Waiting for the Netflix series.

The smart move would have been to keep him on the payroll in some capacity, maybe the "job" vacated by Ponderosa Manicotti or whatever her name is.  "Smart move" is not a phrase that occurs to anyone contemplating this Bedlam on Pennsylvania Avenue, however, and Bannon is most certainly outside the tent pissing in, as LBJ would say.  He doesn't seem to have the juicy stuff that Michael Wolff is purveying, but he did employ the attention-grabber "treasonous" to describe the now semi-legendary meeting of The Trumps and The Russians in the Fortress of Turpitude.  Would that Pelosi and Schumer were capable of such frankness.

The twelve days of "MERRY CHRISTMAS, GODDAMMIT!" are not even over, but a year of profound weirdness is already taking shape.  For example:

A terrorist attack on an Amtrak train in Nebraska was foiled last October.  You didn't hear about it because the would-be terrorist was one of the fine people who attended the "Unite the Right" fuckfest in Charlottesville.  Taylor M. Wilson was discovered messing with the controls of the train and detained by a conductor.  He was also found to be armed to the teeth and expressed an interest in "killing black people," according to the FBI.

The posse charged with looking into "voter integrity" has been dissolved, after chairman Kobach complained that most of the state attorneys general were big fat doody-heads who wouldn't provide him with information not publicly available.  He has failed to identify the millions who voted illegally (i.e. for someone other than Trump), but it is totally not his fault.  He is sad.

Chuck "Chuck" Grassley and Lindsey Graham want somebody to investigate Christopher Steele for compiling that very very bad, completely untrustworthy dossier which confirmed all the stuff Robert Mueller already knew about the unreported meetings and the freshly laundered money.  It's the season for investigations, apparently, because Devin Nunes is about to take a tenth (eleventh?) look at the Clinton Foundation and its slave colony on Mars.   And always emails!  Never stop investigating the emails.

Michele Bachmann may run for the Senate seat vacated by Al Franken, but she's waiting for the go-ahead from her god.  That's not me being snide.  She actually said that.  Possibly her god is busy persuading Roy Moore to concede, now that Doug Jones has been reluctantly sworn in by Mike Pence.  In other Moore news, one of the women who accused him of molesting her when she was an adolescent, Tina Johnson, has lost her house to fire.  Arson is suspected.

Trump marked the holidays with a medley of insults against other countries, including Haiti ("they all have AIDS") and Nigeria ("they'll never go back to their huts" once they've tasted America); egging on anti-government demonstrators in Iran; cutting aid to Pakistan, the country US forces need to traverse to reach Afghanistan; and ramping up tensions with North Korea after Kim Jong-un's New Year's speech suggested a willingness to talk to the South Koreans on the occasion of the Winter Olympics.  Who says he never does anything but watch television and play golf?  He's also disappointed that China continues to ship oil to North Korea.  Although he has no apparent problem when Russia does the same.

Most Puerto Ricans still lack electricity and clean water, but the Army Corps of Engineers is optimistic about March.  This March.

And now some good news:  Ringo Starr finally got his knighthood.  About bloody time.

Guest author

Today is the first day of the year, a blank slate full of unimagined (or all too easily imagined) possibilities.  A day to start off fresh and eager.  But also, paradoxically, a holiday when nothing gets done because everyone is inert on the couch, gazing at football or trying to process some weird parade that wastes millions of innocent rose petals.  So I won't even try to write something coherent, but will share this delightful excerpt from Alan Bennett's diary, a regular year-end treat in the London Review of Books:

"31 October, Yorkshire.  I'm sitting in the armchair by the fire this evening trying to work when there's a knocking at the door.  Before I can lever myself up, whoever it is knocks again, and indeed again before I get to the door.  Grumbling, I remember it's Halloween, a celebration that has always passed me by, as in Leeds in the 1940s there was Mischief Night and Bonfire Night and not much else, Halloween, like Mother's Day and Father's Day and indeed Valentine's Day, never heard of let alone observed.  Tonight it's a small boy, fair-haired and wearing make-up, but not looking particularly ghoulish.  Scarcely have I got the door open before he embarks on his spiel, which is so quick and so aggressive I can't make it out, except it ends with this scowling angelic child saying:  'Give me some money now.'  'Well,' I say, reaching into my pocket, 'that's at least direct.'  Then out of the darkness behind him comes the voice of the accompanying adult:  'He's Donald Trump.'  His role explained (and the make-up) all bluster has gone and the supposed Trump lookalike is wreathed in smiles.  He thanks me profusely for my 50p and the whole gang (all Trumps) go off giggling into the night."

Elsewhere Bennett remarks about the self-described Greatest President of All Time, "He seems to have no moral compass, and if he has a compass at all it's fixed permanently on self-seeking."  A very neat analysis, and a glimpse of the sort of welcome Twitler can expect if he persists in his childish wish to put Obama in the shade by playing golf with the Queen at Balmoral (which he seems to think is a country club).  Or crashing her grandson's wedding, which wouldn't surprise me.  Even the kids in Yorkshire have your number, Donzo.  Go to Moscow instead.