Angels in America

I thought February would never end, but tonight it will.  I thought this country would never wake up to the public health nightmare of private gun ownership, but there is at least a whisper of hope that it has.  Some of the credit goes to this eighteen-year-old woman.

She was the de facto keynote speaker at the NeverAgain rally in Ft. Lauderdale last week.  She earned an A+ in math by dividing the $30 million Trump took from the NRA by the number of gun victims in 2018 alone and told us the price of a human life in the USA:  $5,800.   When you're eighteen, you don't accept the lies about other people's "rights" and about how it's never the right time.  You call "BS" and she did.

There were many great contenders this month, including her mordantly funny classmate Sarah Chadwick, who tweeted:  "We should change the name of AR-15s to 'Marco Rubio' because they are so easy to buy."  But Emma Gonzalez has earned the title Nasty Woman of the Month.

Have you seen this man?

This is Joseph Mifsud, a/k/a "The Professor," who tried to peddle "dirt" on Hillary Clinton to George Papadopoulos, according to the Steele dossier.  And he's missing, according to his fiancée in Rome.  Isn't this fun?  Those of you on the social media can expect at least three theories about how Hillary has had him abducted/killed/tortured in the basement of a Roman pizzeria.  Go ahead and check.  I'll get on with the rest of our show.

I refuse to get involved in the dispute between NRA toadies in Atlanta and Delta Airlines, because both are worthless.  ("Go it, crappy airline!  Go it, Republiklansmen!"  Delta jumped on the bandwagon and announced it would stop giving discounts to card-carrying members of the Murder Lobby, and the state "government" announced it would stop considering some tax boondoggle the airline covets.  Who wants to fly with gun-humpers anyway?  People who don't mind changing planes in Atlanta on the way from Baltimore to Denver.

It was an up-and-down day for Jared Kushner.  His security clearance was downgraded to "don't trust this weasel with secret stuff."  At the same time his real estate company, Kushner Cos, announced negotiations to buy out Vornado for a controlling interest in 666 Fifth Avenue.  Looks like Slumlord-in-law came into some rubles.

The Justice Department says it's slightly closer to banning bump stocks like the one used in the Las Vegas terror attack Second Amendment affirmation.  That's our DOJ, always one mass murder behind.

Speaking of mass murder, Stoneman Douglas students who survived the shooting are getting death threats from the sort of panty-pissers who hide behind screen names like "LIBTARDSMUSTDIE," and complaints from Blightbart about how unfair it is that they can't be more openly mocked.  Hang in, kids, anonymous death threats are the valentines of cowards.

A grain of truth emerged from the CPAC fuckfest when one official observed that Michael Steele had become chairman of the RNC because he's black, "and that's wrong."  Steele pronounced himself shocked, SHOCKED, that there is racism in his party.  The fact that it took him this long to acknowledge the obvious proves, ironically, that he was an affirmative-action hire.

In all the chaos of Florida, Syria and the Olympics, there has been little news from Puerto Rico.  Electricity is still spotty, and the governor is still trying to get an accurate count of the dead, so it doesn't sound like normality is back.  Thousands of people are re-locating to El Norte, and after they secure work, school and a place to live, we must hope they register to vote.

Hey!

I think I had a bone spur.

I just remembered it.  It was a calcium deposit on the heel of my right foot.  Walking hurt like hell because its pointy edge pressed against the heel from the inside.

My doctor fixed it in his office.  Took about five minutes, most of which was waiting for the foot to get numb.  Then he inserted a syringe and wiggled it around, breaking off the calcium.  I haven't had a problem with it since 1974.

Small world.

The blame game

We all know what the problem is:  schools aren't concentration camp-y enough.  More guns, more guards.  Now...whose fault was it?  All right, sound off with your personal favorite scapegoats!

Rush Limbaugh:  feminists.  Poor Rush, struggling to stay relevant in the age of Breitbart and Storm Front like a hand-weaver flailing at the dark, satanic mills, reaches back to his default demon and all the girls who laughed at him in high school.  ("Wish I'd-a had me a gun!")

Rick Santorum:  single mothers.  Although I'm pretty sure Nikolas Cruz's parents were married, this has been an obsession of Ricky's since Catholic school.

Andre Bauer, former lieutenant governor of South Carolina (I had to look him up):  not enough people watching The Andy Griffith Show, with its wholesome Christian values.  Problem:  Mr. Griffith's show went off the air in 1968, and it's now shown several times a day on classic TV channels, as opposed to once a week on the network.  But school prayer!  OK, Andre, you've got me there.

David Clarke, former bling-toting sheriff of Milwaukee County:  some weird combination of Black Lives Matter and ISIS, bankrolled by George Soros.  I threw this one in for shits and giggles, though it's far from unique in the more squalid districts of Blogenheim.  (For just one example, some Twits are now attacking #NeverAgain leader David Hogg, for allegedly bullying Cruz.)

Wayne LaPierre:  socialists.  Because why not?

The Florida legislature:  pornography.  Just last month a man in Gainesville died while watching "Shaving Ryan's Privates."  Major public health problem.  Which brings us to

Jack Kingston:  HOLLYWOOD, with its violent movies and video games.  Remember the actor pointing his gun at the camera in The Great Train Robbery (1903)?  We should have stopped it then.  And the internet thing is crammed with violence, videos depicting Hillary getting hit with a golf ball, CNN being crushed by a train, Islamophobic snuff porn from the UK...who keeps re-tweeting this sick shit?

Every massacre brings another iteration of "Officer Krupke":  "The trouble is he's lazy, The trouble is he drinks, The trouble is he's crazy, The trouble is he stinks!"  But never, never "The trouble is he's armed like a Marine hitting a beach."

A terrible event like this calls for serious debate, compassion, eloquence and leadership.  And look what we have.

Donzo the Clown popped in his high-quality dentures and brought his freshly inflated Wife along (she didn't require separate transportation this time, AF1 being a very large plane).  They posed for pictures with the hospital staff, the first responders and even some family members, smiling as if it were the wedding of a child they thought they'd never unload.  They took a picture with a victim in the hospital, later to be used for fund-raising.  Then they dashed off to Mar-a-Leggomyeggo for partying and golf.  Disappointingly, there was no chorus of praise for all Donzo's hard work and being so presidential.  Some haters even criticized his shit-eating grin and thumbs-up gesture, which bring so much joy, believe me.

Back in Washington (what a dump) he pretended to listen to Stoneman Douglas students, wearing the thoughtful expression that says, "I understand what you say, I'm not demented or stupid.  Not demented.  Not stupid.  Understanding.  See how I nod?  Anybody else want a Coke?"  He starred in the annual CPAC smoker, ranting on long enough to earn a new name from Charlie Pierce, Combover Castro, smearing John McCain, reading song lyrics, hitting all the low points and drinking in the adoration of the Trumpanzees.  And then he told us whose fault it was -- anybody but his and the NRA's.  Not enough armed teachers.  "I'll do that thing with my schools that I do with my banks," he promised, because he's America's landlord/tsar, and bank robbery is a thing of the past.  He blamed the FBI for wasting so much time on his crimes instead of predicting those of Nikolas Cruz.  He blamed Scott Peterson, the school security guard, who heard automatic weapon fire and decided against entering the building with his sidearm ("a coward").  He blamed Scott Israel, the sheriff of Broward County, for whatever.  The sheriff's a Democrat.

And just when you think it can't get worse, where have you been for the past three years?  Today Trump proclaimed that he his own self would have taken down the bad guy, even without a gun, armed only with the amazingness of his electoral college triumph.  He's afraid to swim in the ocean because of sharks, he's afraid to eat in any restaurant he doesn't own and prefers mass-produced junk food because it's harder to poison him, he was scared shitless of being drafted and sent to Vietnam, he's afraid of other people's blood, and he once fled the room where a woman was nursing a baby.  But Cadet Bonespurs would have stopped an angry kid with an AR-15.  

In the words of Walter Neff, "Do I laugh now or wait till it gets funny?"

  
 

"I hear you."

You're supposed to write it on your hand.  Even Sarah Palin knows that.

 

Dementia

See if you can spot today's word.

"I think we need hardened sites.  We need to let people know.  You come into our schools, you're going to be dead.  If you harden the sites you're not going to have this problem.  We need a hardened school...Everybody agrees on a hard...we have to harden our schools, we have to make sure in a way that doesn't look like they're hardened.  But we have to let the bad guy know that they are hardened.  I'd much rather have a hardened school."

Impotent much?  Let's see how this would work.

1.  Ten-foot wall, barbed wire, guard towers, metal detectors.  (Mexico will pay for them.)  But wait, then the "bad guy" will know, and proceed down the street to the nursing home, the day-care center, the church, or best case scenario, Marco Rubio's house.

2.  Large sign:  "This is a hardened site."  Same problem.

3.  End public education.  (Betsy DeVos is already working on this.)

4.  Some other insane fantasy.

5.  Arm the teachers.  Not all of them, the twenty percent (!) who have been in the military and received weapons training, then become teachers.   This will necessarily include veterans with serious psychological problems like PTSD, the very people you want walking the hallways and patrolling the cafeteria with Glocks.  (Which is more dangerous, an armed biology teacher having a Fallujah flashback or an armed guard who decides not to enter the school while it's under attack?  Because that happened at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas.)

6.  Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Never, again

So many are expressing surprise, even awe, at the efforts by thousands of American high school (and younger) students in the struggle to end gun insanity.  So articulate!  So passionate!  So insulting.  Have we forgotten the children who stood up to police dogs and fire hoses to demand their civil rights?  The slightly older kids who were assaulted by construction workers and brutal cops when they opposed the Vietnam War?  College students murdered with impunity at Kent State and Jackson State?  Apart from actual survivors of Columbine, Stoneman Douglas and far too many others, the worst these kids have faced is sneering mendacity and anonymous threats from social media cowards, and organized bullies at Fox News, the NRA and the Republiklan cesspit.  And for a few, the horrific experience of being in the same room as Trump.   They're young; they'll recover.

The NeverAgains are getting a priceless lesson in the way their country works.  Money talks louder than blood.  Change the subject (it's not guns, it's mental illness/violent video games/pornography, for fuck's sake).  Laws don't work so don't even bother to pass them.  Scream "false flag" and "crisis actor" and something about a sinister cabal -- have these kids even heard of George Soros?  Dwell on the good job done by first responders, because who can argue with that?  Lie, lie, lie.  They didn't teach this stuff in my social studies class, and they should have, because we graduated into the years of Nixon totally unprepared for his bullshit.  (At least they made us study the Constitution; I'm not sure that happens anymore.)

These kids do not want your thoughts and prayers.  Fortunately, I know someone who does.  In 1972 he told his friend Nixon, "They're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff.  The Jewish stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain."  Yesterday he finally died, and now his rotting corpse will lie in the Capitol rotunda, where real heroes have rested.  Billy Graham took the legacy of Charles Coughlin and Billy Sunday and turned it into a billion-dollar industry.  Thoughts, prayers, and busy, busy maggots.  

Fake holiday

When I was a young 'un we had Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday, and it was fine.  Then some charlie decided to combine them into something called Presidents Day, because I guess fans of James K. Polk and Chester Alan Arthur and other mediocrities felt neglected.  Also another badly-needed long weekend in the middle of February for mattress sales and shoveling slush.  So I don't feel compelled to create a grand narrative, just some random rickrack from the bottom of the sewing basket.

If they can put a car in orbit, why can't they make an ice-dancing costume that doesn't pop open in the middle of a routine?  Not that these 83-pound women are notably zaftig, but it seems to make them self-conscious and then they lose points.  Duck tape?

I gave HBO's John Adams a try.  I really did.  I like Paul Giamatti, but he spends a lot of time coughing and whispering.  Couldn't Dr. Franklin have invented the throat lozenge?  It just isn't my period, all those wigs and candles and the French in their face paint.  This is why there was never  a John Adams Day, even in Massachusetts.  Although I'm glad his cousin Sam invented ale.
Years ago the Daily News was a dependably right-wing tabloid.  Tom Paxton wrote a song about it  ("Civil rights leaders are a pain in the neck, Can't hold a candle to Chiang Kai-shek, How do I know?  I read it in the Daily News").  But it's become the only New York paper that does not take Trump's bullshit.  They outdid themselves with this page one celebration of moral vacuity.  The only thing missing is the party at Mar-a-Legomyeggo celebrating the glory nights of Studio 54, when Trump thinks he earned a Purple Heart for evading HIV.

When the British created a Ministry of Loneliness, I pushed aside memories of Monty Python and told myself that this is a serious social problem.  Loneliness has measurable negative effects on the heart, especially in those widowed after long marriages.  It can't hurt to check up on them, though maybe not at Cabinet level.  Now I read of a Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia.  What the hell is going on with the Europeans?  Loss of empire finally setting in?  Too long between all-out wars?  Reality TV?

It now appears the Russian troll-farmers went to extraordinary lengths to get Al Franken out of the Senate.  I had no idea he was so important, or so threatening to their agenda of full control over this country's government.  Since Trump says that even brutes like Rob Porter deserve "due process," may we have Franken back again?

All KFCs in Britain and Ireland are closed because they ran out of chicken.  I believe this is a campaign to convince people that there is actual chicken under all the glop.

If the president of the NRA were named Ali al-Hussein, it would be on the AG's list of terrorist organizations.  Of course, its members could still buy assault rifles.

Location, location, location

This is Maria Thorne, a fifth-grade teacher in Key Biscayne, Florida.  The creepy guy behind her is
Paul Ryan, who saw no reason to cancel a fund-raiser in Florida this week.  Ms. Thorne introduced herself and said, "You're here celebrating the death of seventeen children."  She was kicked out.

I think we have found our Nasty Woman of the Month.

There will be blood

This is the flag Jordan Jereb and his white nationalist militia would like to raise over the "Republic of Florida."  "I'm angry.  I'm full of HATE," he wrote on Facebook.  Why do you care?  Because Nikolas Cruz, who was just arraigned for murdering seventeen people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, trained with them.  Cruz said he wanted to be a "professional school shooter," and I guess he is.  A classmate reports that he expressed hatred of Muslims and wore a Trump hat.  Get the picture?  So when Trump tweeted out his first response -- not the gassy platitudes he read off a Teleprompter today -- it went like this:  "Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem.  Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!"

So if you see someone sporting a MAGA hat, or buying a suspiciously large number of tiki torches, or lining up for a Trump rally, or watching Hannity, or getting a tattoo of Ann Coulter, don't hesitate:  Alert the FBI and mental health professionals.  Do not approach.  Do not engage.

In other words, I'm hammered and not in a good way.  A certain numbness sets in, and you notice all the coincidences -- Ash Wednesday, St. Valentine's Day (Massacre) -- while knowing in advance what will come.  It's all somehow Obama's fault.  We mustn't politicize it.  Laws don't work, he would have acquired an assault rifle anyway.  It's a mental health issue, but spending more money on public health programs, rather than less, won't help.  Why didn't the FBI stop  him, while investigating every basement typist venting his rage on social media?  Who signed that bill making it easier for the mentally ill to buy guns?  (Hint:  the signature resembled a chimp's EEG.)  Freedom.  Second Fucking Amendment.  This is where I came in, and I don't like the movie anyway.

Talk of gun control -- don't panic, it's just talk -- again fills the airwaves.  This can only be good news for the Remington company, which filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy just three days ago.  I'll pretend that isn't a coincidence.  Those Bushmasters will be walking out of the stores now, as militiamen stock up for the approaching coup (don't even ask).   See?  God closes a door, he opens a window.

Thoughts and prayers.  

German joke

As you can see, Trump is making the world respect us again.

Help needed

Can someone explain to me why everyone is so excited?

Rob Porter held down a sensitive job in the White House for months even though his FBI background check precluded security clearance.  1.  So what else is new?  2.  What danger did he represent, as opposed to, say, slumlord-in-law Jared Kushner, similarly uncleared?  Well, I keep hearing, Porter was susceptible to blackmail.  Really?

How does blackmail work?  Someone threatens to expose something that will destroy your reputation.  But if you work for Trump, you're as depraved as he is.  You have no reputation to destroy.

Porter was a wife-beating thug long before he was hired -- it might explain why he was hired -- but Trump has a gift for bringing out the worst is everyone.   John Kelly was a respected military man, and nobody gets the benefit of the doubt like a four-star general.  He was described as decent, courageous, even heroic.  He would bring maturity to the sandbox.  What happened?  A few months around Trump and he revealed the extent of the misogyny and racism he had concealed for decades.  He's the chief of staff; nobody ordered him to trash Rep. Frederica Wilson (and, by analogy, Sgt. Johnson's widow).  He chose to do it, to prove his loyalty as a courtier.  Instead, he proved his depravity.

So far, the only courtier who has held onto his dignity and self-respect is the ironically named "Mad Dog" Mattis, trying to put the brakes on the demented man-baby in the only way he can, by dragging his feet -- on the mustering out of transgender personnel (that one stinks of the evangelics), on the idiotic Big Parade, and most crucially, on the second Korean War man-baby is determined to provoke in time for the elections.  (What's a few hundred thousand dead compared to keeping Ryan and McConnell in power?  They knew what they were getting into.)  Will Mattis foul himself like all the rest?  Only time will tell.

Instead of endlessly arguing about what Kelly knew about the ex-wife's black eye and when he knew it, we should be trying to identify the most powerful person in the kingdom, the Trump whisperer -- the individual who has to summarize the Presidential Daily Briefing because he's too lazy to read it and too stupid to understand it.  This person is effectively running the executive branch and my money is on Number One Groupie Hope Hicks, who is apparently sleeping her way through the band.

And this is what we've come to.

March hair

Cadet Bonespurs (thanks, Senator Duckworth) has ordered a parade to show everybody how his missiles are far biglier than Little Rocket Man's.  The juddering sound you heard last night was Jim Mattis's eyes rolling back in his skull.  And all across Blogenheim people are appalled at the United States taking another step toward May Day in Moscow.

I for one think this could be an opportunity in a number of ways.  First, the roadways and bridges of Washington would need major work before they could support military vehicles, even if tanks are excluded.  All the talk about infrastructure would finally be more than talk.  Second, Mattis has proposed to hold it on Veterans Day, when many communities already have parades; what's wrong with honoring veterans?  Their ongoing problems with PTSD, unemployment and drug addiction would have to be discussed, as well as the endless wars that create them.  November 11 is a few days after the midterm election, when I confidently expect the Republiklan to be expelled from control of Congress.  Bonespurs will be fuming about "election fraud" and his impending impeachment, while Ryan/McConnell frantically try to finish destroying American institutions before January.

And make it extra long, please, so the lazy fat slob has to stand there saluting for hours with no chance to cram in a cheeseburger, tweet racist abuse, or watch Fox.  Ten or eleven hours should do it.  With a 72-year-old prostate, how often do you suppose he needs to make wee-wee?  Let's see, twelve sodas a day, morbidly obese, and maybe some of that global-warming-enhanced Indian Summer that makes it feel like August...who's got the Depends?

Here's your parade, Cadet Bonespurs.   Enjoy.

Monday is fun day!

     

This is Heidi Cruz, Goldman Sachs executive, veteran of the Bush administration, wife, mom, and threat to American sovereignty.  If her husband Ted had become president, she would by now have merged the United States into the North American Union along with Mexico and Canada, through the evil force of her personality and femaleness.  According to Landro Rizzuto, Jr., our next ambassador to Bermuda, which is a British territory surrounded by big water.  That was close, huh?  Also her father-in-law probably assassinated John Kennedy.  Wheels within wheels, people.

People who live in downtown Philadelphia may have thought they were witnessing a riot last night, as jubilant Eagles fans smashed streetlights and overturned a police car.  They must be reassured to
know, via Fox News, that it was "a celebration that went haywire."  No black people were involved.

Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier and white nationalist, is the Republican candidate for the House in the third district of Illinois this year.  The Illinois party has disavowed him, but is not running anyone against him in this suburban Chicago district, considered a safe Democratic seat.  Why waste money? Go with the Nazi white nationalist.

Six correctional officers have now been indicted for raping and abusing thirteen female inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in New Jersey over more than a decade.  But they're just prisoners, not cute gymnasts, so don't expect a repeat of the Larry Nassar dramatics.

Last week the groundhog saw his shadow and Michele Bachmann saw this in St. Paul.  So she is not running for the Senate.  Thank God.

Governing with heart

We've seen SOTU heckling before, but never booing.  Another first!

You can only work so much into a Castro-length harangue, so it's not surprising Trump forgot to mention yesterday's drop of nearly 400 points in the Dow Jones, the only economic metric the Republiklan ever heard of.  Apparently Amazon, JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway think they can do health insurance better, and investors in the existing companies went into a panic.  Sad.

Eric "Greasy" Trump was on Fox today voicing his displeasure with daddy's less-than-enthusiastic reception.  "When my father mentioned 'In God We Trust,' the guiding principle of this country, no one stood," he pouted.  Well, some people did, but conspicuously not his stepmother the FPOTUS.  Melania couldn't go to Davos because she had to spend the weekend getting them topped up with silicone for the big night, so maybe she was afraid of tipping over.  It's full-time work being a trophy wife at 47, especially when you can be prosecuted for lying on your visa application.  Sleeping in separate rooms is understandable, even commendable -- who wants to wake up with McDonald's ketchup in your hair? -- but all this separate travel is starting to add up.  She wouldn't even ride in the car with him last night.  By the way, Eric, when did "In God We Trust," added to the coinage in the 1950s, become "the guiding principle of this country"?  Unless it concludes "all others pay cash."  Maybe you should stick to running the family plonk factory, picking people up at the airport, and other Fredo duties, hmm?

Tres Gowdy, South Carolina hair model and relentless Torquemada of Benghazi, suddenly decided he doesn't want to be in Congress anymore.  I don't want him there, either.  Unity at last!  In case he misses government work, there's an opening at the Centers for Disease Control in nearby Atlanta.  The director, Brenda Fitzgerald, abruptly quit when it was revealed that she has been investing bigly in tobacco stocks, as well as in Bayer, Humana and Merck Pharmaceuticals.  No conflict of interest!  You're the conflict of interest!  So the CDC  has no director in the midst of a flu epidemic that is killing children and turning hospitals into MASH units.

As of tomorrow, FEMA will cease operations in Puerto Rico, where thousands of people in the rural mountainous areas are still without electricity and safe water.  Because -- get this -- giving out food and water is actually hurting the economy.  If these layabouts get everything free, they won't shop at supermarkets, according to the local FEMA director Alejandro de la Campa.  They spend their money on gasoline to run their generators to keep their refrigerators on.  If they have any money, because many are still out of work.  If they have generators.  Anyway, five months after Hurricane Harvey, FEMA is still in Texas because...well, hell, it's Texas.  Swimmin' pools.  Movie stars.  Electoral votes.

The DACA people who endured last night's love-in weren't arrested at the Capitol, but they're far from secure.  The Big Bad Bald Bastard, whose blog must be read, reports that a Native American named C.J. Bakken has an intriguing proposition:  Welcome these people onto the reservations (most are from Central America and Mexico and have some aboriginal ancestry), and grant them tribal membership in return for the right to tax their income.  Knowing how much Trump hates redskins, it could have the added benefit of making his head explode.

The White House Charm School had some advice for Nancy Pelosi:   "I think she should smile a lot more often.  I think the country would be better for it," said Mrs. Congeniality, Sarah Hockeypuck Sanders.  Then she went back to scowling at April Ryan, who is really uppity and should be home doing Miz Sarah's laundry.  It's not the done thing to comment on people's appearance, but when they hire a makeup artist at public expense, that makes their appearance fair game.  If anyone needs a gay friend who isn't colorblind and will take her clothes shopping, it's Sarah.  Someone who will say things like "Uh-uh, you want to cover up those elephant knees.  Two words, honey -- pants suit."  Stereotype?  Sure.  Sue me.  Yeah, Pelosi needs to smile and Hillary should learn to knit.

At least one public interest group wants Paul Ryan to explain why Trump was allowed to use his speech as a fundraiser.  Just when you thought we couldn't be any more embarrassed, the Trumpanzees were told that for the low low price of $35 they could see their names on the Trump 2020 campaign website.  No response from Ryan, who is preoccupied with the "cleansing" (his word) of all those hostile elements at the FBI.  My word, not to mention Stalin's, would be "purge."  I'm no big fan of what I grew up knowing as Hoover's Gestapo, but they've cleaned up their act and done some good work since the old bastard died, and they certainly don't deserve to be undermined by this confederacy of dunces.  Ironically, if Comey hadn't decided to make a late sortie against Hillary and her emails, he'd probably still be director and none of this shit would be flying.  I'm so sick of irony.

What could be worse than Ryan? you ask.  How about Paul Nehlen, who is primarying him?  Nehlen is the darling of Stormfront and recently treated us to a list of 74 Jews who have "attacked" him on the social media.  (Some have said, echoing Chaplin, that they aren't Jewish but will take the honor.)  It's never good when they start making lists.

In Russia news, Sergei Naryshkin, Putin's head spy, is paying us a visit.  Well, not all of us, but he dropped in on Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence.  Naryshkin was banned in 2014 over the invasion of Ukraine, but all is forgiven now.  I guess you heard, Trump is theirs again.

Stupid redux:  Kathleen Hartnett White has been re-nominated to be head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  The committee rejected her the first time, unimpressed by her theory that carbon dioxide is "the gas of life" (certainly true if you're a green plant) and therefore can only be a force for good in the atmosphere.  I'm not sure where she stands on the flat-versus-round earth controversy, but second time's the charm.

Trainload of Republiklan Congressmen hits garbage truck.  I think I'll leave that to The Onion,which gave us "World's Largest Metaphor Collides With Iceberg."