"Politics ain't beanbag"

...said Finley Peter Dunne in the person of Mr. Dooley.  And it follows that beanbag ain't politics.  So it is with relief that I turn on ESPN, the flagship of the cable sports network, on a Saturday afternoon in June, and find teams of college men playing with beanbags.  This is some serious sports stuff here, with uniforms and color commentary and people in the stands who have even less to do than I, and even brackets.  Like minor-league basketball.   They have to toss the beanbag into a hole, hence the deadpan name Southern Cornhole Championship.  (All right, it was the name that roped me in.  I'm only human.)  Florida seems to be the powerhouse here.  Why am I not surprised?

Thousands are protesting child abuse at the border, millions are mesmerized by the World Cup, but it seems there's a place for everything.

Beanbag.  I could do this.

Enemies of the people

No one could have seen it coming.

Trivial pursuits

In the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Lubold and Jeremy Page wrote, "Lasers have targeted pilots of American military aircraft operating over the western Pacific Ocean more than twenty times, U.S. officials say, following a series of similar incidents in which Pentagon officials said Chinese personnel used lasers against U.S. pilots in East Africa."

Satellite photos show furious activity at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in North Korea.  Military exercises with South Korea have not been re-scheduled.

Trump is angry about Harley Davidson responding to tariffs by announcing plans to move some manufacturing overseas.  He is threatening Rep. Maxine Waters because she advocates civil disobedience as a response to the atrocities at the Mexican border.  He is bloviating about his "Space Force," oblivious to aggression against the Air Force that already exists.  He is still enraged because his press secretary was ejected from a restaurant.  He's going to Helsinki to reassure Putin that his flirtation with Kim was just a summertime thing.  He's drooling over the chance to set back the Supreme Court by a century, or maybe that's just cheeseburger juice.  He doesn't see why a little thing like "due process" should inconvenience his ICEstapo.

I've left out a lot of the routine corruption, dishonesty and random mayhem because I'm tired.   Hillary Clinton warned us.  What part of "Trump lacks the temperament to be president" did you not understand?

Like a storm in the heavy summer heat, something must break soon.

Smile

I don't know where this was taken -- I'm guessing Paris.

Love the Nikes.

The personal is poltical

That phrase, which may have originated with Shulamith Firestone, was central to Second Wave feminism in the 1970s.  This is a good time to reiterate it, because the political is beginning to collide with personal lives in some intriguing ways, with intriguing results.

Having learned nothing from the experience of Kirstjen Nielsen, Sarah Huckabee Sanders took her family out to dinner last night (her husband made the reservation under his name).  Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, had the staff vote on whether they wanted to serve these people -- democracy, huh? -- and the result came out "no way," so she politely asked them to leave.  The White House spokesmodel and her supporters are enraged, but apparently you can do stuff like this based on something called conscience.  The Supreme Court just said so; it's like refusing to bake a cake because of your religious principles.  Ms. Wilkinson put it this way:  "This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals."  Refusing to feed the Sanderses is not going to bring down Trump,  but it's oddly satisfying.

Around the same time, George F. Will announced that he has left the Republican Party and urged people to vote for Democrats this fall.  Before you dust off Victor Laszlo's "Welcome back to the fight" speech, remember that Will's son Jonathan was born with Down Syndrome.  Cory Lewandowski's crude mockery of a ten-year-old Down Syndrome girl, currently imprisoned in Trump's baby Buchenwald, may have been the last straw.  Or perhaps I underestimate Will.

Jennifer Carnahan was at Trump's hate rally in her capacity as chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, where she was shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that there is racism in her party.  She was born in South Korea and adopted by Americans, but the rally attendee who called her "disgusting" almost certainly took her to be a Democrat spy or a journalistic enemy of the people.  Previously, as she tearfully confessed to Facebook, she had been called "dragon lady," "chink" and "a stupid Asian not even born in America," so it's difficult to say what her Lewandowski moment was.  She isn't quite there with abandoning the cult yet, but this is her last year in the chair.  An unwhite Republican walks a lonely road these days.

Speaking of Lonely Street, the July-August Politico has a heartbreaking piece called "Trump's millennials hit DC -- and DC hits them right back."  Apparently Metamucilini's Young Jerks are having trouble finding dates, or even apartments in the hipper parts of the capital.  They have marked their territory along the waterfront, where they come home from a hard day of screwing the poor, pop a brew and scroll through the dating websites, and people recoil in horror when they have to reveal their current employment.  Eventually these incipient Incels are going to figure it out and start sleeping with one another, but right now, well, "Trump's millennials."  How bright can they be?  I'm going back and read it again, just for smiles.

Oh, Sarah?  Try the Waffle House.  A white lady like you might not have to pay extra for the plastic cutlery.

 

Mr. Beans

I want to be a better person.  I do.  Schadenfreude is cheap and as easy to pick up as plastic cups beside the interstate.  But I'm only human.  So when I read that CNN's Dan Merica was in Minnesota to cover the Presidential Liesapalooza and Weekly Hillary Pillory, and he met a farmer who voted for Trump and now he's sad, what am I to do?  Mr. Farmer says he's lost a quarter-million dollars he expected to get for his soybean crop, so, you know, not a small homesteader.  "This isn't just numbers on a sheet or percentage of trade or dollar value.  This is multi-generational American families that you are now putting squarely into financial peril."   Turns out "trade wars" are NOT easy to win, if you're a poilu or a Tommy in the trenches.  And maybe voting for a vile, stupid racist and misogynist because you like the way he says "You're fired!" was not the best plan.  And if you think Hillary's a bitch, meet her good friend Karma.

So fuck you and fuck your soybeans.  Feed them to your brats.  Shove them up your ass.  I don't care.  When the bank takes your "multi-generational" farm, live in your truck.  Maybe you can swap soybeans for gasoline to keep the heater going this (Minnesota) winter.  Or drive it to Texas and get a job guarding terrified preschoolers.  Don't forget to vote!  It worked out for you last time.

Oh, and also fuck you and Trump for making me into this permanently enraged blogger pounding my rage into an inoffensive keyboard.  And fuck you.

Here's some emotional support.  Play it when Cory Lewandowski isn't available.
https://sadtrombone.com/


 

Over to you

James "Mad Dog" Mattis is the only current Cabinet member who is remotely qualified for his job, and the only prominent one who has never been subjected to threats, insults and semi-literate rage-tweets.  I assume this is because dictators and wannabes love the military and court it slavishly.  Unlike Tillerson/Pompeo, Carson, Sessions, Pruitt, DeVos and the rest, Mattis was not chosen for the express purpose of crippling and eventually destroying his department.  The military respects him and the regime needs him, so he gets away with a lot -- refusing to cashier transgender troops, dragging his feet on the idiotic tanks-and-missiles "parade" Cadet Bonespurs wants, quietly contradicting the Coward-in-Chief on issues from morale to preparedness.  He has not commented on the "Space Force" lunacy, but he really doesn't have to.

Now comes the acid test.  The latest Executive Scribble directs the Department of Defense to find space on military bases for the indefinite imprisonment of Central American asylum seekers, a purpose for which they are not equipped.  The military would thus be made complicit in the gulag system mandated by the regime's policies.  More important, the refugees would be out of sight of journalists and mostly out of reach of lawyers and others who might monitor their condition and assist in their cases.  Ordinary Americans, of course, can't just walk onto a military base.  Neither can NGOs like Doctors Without Borders or the International Red Cross, or others who might (and should) shame the jailers in the eyes of the world, assuming any of them can still feel shame.

Gen. Mattis must find a way to say "no."  We don't want our troops to be camp guards, and I don't believe they joined for that purpose.  Governors are withdrawing National Guard troops from the southern border so they won't be complicit in this atrocity.  The DoD needs to do the same.

Who needs Photoshop?

Melanoma unveils her outfit for the coming hurricane season.

Today's best laugh

When is Steve Bannon going to release his death certificate?

from AllHatNoCattle

Yeah, this is turning into my personal scrapbook.  You got a problem with that?

It's easier when they're ugly on the outside, too.

Here's your mayor, America!



Yes, Nancy Pelosi should smile more.

Well, how do you think a face like this gets a wife like this?

Dump Trump Hump Day

Last night on "I Am Too a Doctor, with Laura Ingraham," Jefferson "Three-Fifths of a Man" Sessions asserted that his policy of separating and jailing migrant families is nothing like the Third Reich because "in Nazi Germany they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country."  Not surprisingly, this is a lie.  Hitler himself said Jews were free to leave, providing they paid a stiff exit charge and took only what they could carry.  Few countries were willing to accept them, including this one.  Perhaps in addition to, or instead of, Obama, JeffBo would like to blame FDR for his own depravity.

Why is everybody picking on Corey Lewandowski, one of Trump's campaign managers not currently in jail?  Kids with Down Syndrome are funny, never more so than when separated from their mothers and locked in a cage.  They're at least as funny as a reporter in a wheelchair.  Don't you libs have any sense of humor?  Jeez, lighten up.

Kirstjen Nielsen -- these foreign names are lighting up my spell-check -- was relaxing in an upscale Mexican restaurant last night.  No, wait, that's not the joke.  She was set upon by shouting demonstrators saying really hateful things like "If the kids don't enjoy their food, neither do you."  When Trump harangues his mob in Someplace, Minnesota tonight, expect him to whine about how much people (especially him) sacrifice to serve in the government.  Nielsen left without dessert.

Alan Dershowitz, who was a respected law professor before he signed on with O.J. Simpson's Dream Team, expressed outrage that in America, people can be jailed before trial.  Not the thousands of Americans who sit in jail, sometimes for years, because they can't afford bail.  No, certainly not brown toddlers whose parents brought them here to escape horrific violence.  Guess.  Go on, guess.  POOR PAUL MANAFORT, who violated the terms of his bail, and who has more passports than the Toronto Blue Jays and more money than the Kansas public schools.  But his lawyers promised the judge he wouldn't witness-tamper any more!  What kind of country have we become?

I'll tell you what kind.  The kind where the "president" is forced to cancel the annual Congressional picnic because "It just didn't feel right to me."  Those poor kids look forward all year to spending time with their parents at the White House and eating barbecue, but just because everybody from Franklin Graham to Bernie Sanders says breaking up families is wrong...well, I don't know.  Hey, Paul Ryan, "Buddy" Carter, Steve King, Louis Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn et al., why not take them to a nice Mexican restaurant instead?

Melanie Trump came downstairs today to display her newly-enlarged boobs kidney procedure to the king and queen of Spain.  Then she complained to the Secret Service about an angry tweet from Peter Fonda proposing the kidnaping of bed-wetting anchor-baby Barron.  Has everyone lost all sense of humor?  And proportion?  I get it.  It's tough to be pushing 50 and have to compete with your feckless step-daughter, and all surgery hurts, even when the taxpayers are paying the bills.  Just shut up, OK, Melons?  And we'll stop asking to see that visa application where you lied about being a college graduate.

Shoes for industry!  And for ramping up pointless trade wars, too!  Hi, I'm Joe Beet.  Did you know Canadians come here and buy shoes and scuff them up so they "sound old" (direct quote) and wear them home to avoid yuge Canadian VAT?  Of course, this only screws Canada, so why Metamucilini cares is anybody's guess, but it's firmly lodged in his suppurating brain now.  A digression:  Remember Mr. Dick in David Copperfield?  He was a harmless loony who liked to fly kites and was obsessed with the severed head of King Charles I.  Whatever the topic of conversation, he managed to bring it around to his idee fixe.  Aunt Betsey looked after him and made sure he never became prime minister or anything.  Well, we've got out own Mr. Dick, in every sense.  Put him in front of a crowd for an announced speech about the economy, foreign policy, or even the fucking infrastructure, and eventually you'll hear about the electoral vote, steam-powered catapults, "beautiful clean coal," MS-13, the awesomeness of Putin, Crooked Hillary, and the ingratitude of football players who don't stand for the anthem.  Not a harmless loony.  And now it's Canadians buying shoes, probably made in China anyway.

Do busloads of Americans on Medicare still go to Canada to fill their prescriptions?  Someone might want to look into this.

Let's take a moment to send thoughts and prayers to Ann Coulter, who is having a no-good, very bad day.  If Metamucilini signs the royal decree reversing the crimes against humanity he ordered at the southern border, she is going to be very vexed and sad about America.  According to Coulter, all these people are "crisis actors" just pretending to be desperate asylum-seekers so Trump won't be allowed to "win."  She read about it in a New Yorker article no one else can find.  Thousands of people, mostly Spanish-speaking, some illiterate, provided with scripts and coaching just to make Trump look bad -- that Soros really is the Napoleon of crime, huh?

He signed it!  He's holding it up so we can admire that monkey-on-crack signature.  The babies will be released from "tender care"  (I couldn't make this shit up) and returned to their mothers and all will be well, because it's all the fault of the Democrats but it was necessary to protect the homeland and most of these kids are in gangs already but when The Wall is built -- did you hear that?  It sounded like "Auld Lang Syne."  Oh, no, not Guy Lombardo again.

It's World Refugee Day.  The current Secretary of State just promised, "We will help the world's most vulnerable."  And my irony-meter just burst into flames.

   

 

Attention must be paid

Last week the celebrated author, chef and television producer Anthony Bourdain committed suicide by hanging himself in a hotel room.  His apparently charmed life was shadowed by depression; his death made headlines, as they used to say, and dismayed his countless fans.  All week television "news" featured earnest discussions about seeking help, checking on friends, and the seeming paradox of famous rich people who are sad anyway.

Also last week, this obscure man from  Honduras, Marco Antonio Munoz, hanged himself in a cell at the Mexico-U.S. border.  After being forcibly separated from his wife and three-year-old son by the Department of Homeland Security, who know a threat to America when they see one, he "lost his shit" and was locked in a padded detention cell.  It never occurred to anyone to place him on a suicide watch.  He was 39.

Depression is a real thing.  So is the obscene cruelty of breaking up families to score political points and impress the imbecilic.  All day long, pharmaceutical companies advertise pills to lessen depression (which may cause "suicidal thoughts," they add, helpfully).  There is as yet no cure for Trumpism.  We need to find one, fast.

I thought someone should remember Marco Antonio Munoz.

It has happened here

The  Texas tent-lager is already open.

Feliz dia de los padres, muchachos.

Yes. His, too

Yaga, or A New Hope

I don't often disagree with Brother Charles Pierce, but this is what he wrote about yesterday's Old Man Yells At Cloud and Press event on the White House lawn:

"More than the now-customary untruths and self-congratulations, the president* looked and sounded awful, wheezing like a man coming off a fourteen-day bender during which he'd accidentally stumbled into a atahusca session on his way to KFC.  This is not a good time for the old republic."

I had to look it up.  Atahuasca, a/k/a yaga, is a hallucinogenic herb used ceremonially by the people of the Amazon basin.  But that's not important now.  The take-away is that if this obese 72-year-old crammed with who knows what pharmaceuticals really wants to be leader-for-life like the dictators he adores, that life may not be too long.  The mental decrepitude is obvious to all but his knuckle-dragging followers.  He needs both hands to drink a glass of water, or struggle down the steps of his plane.  A regimen of junk food and an aversion to exercise will unquestionably age you, as will doctors who don't tell you the truth.  (Whatever became of Ronny Jackson?  He disappeared like a fart in a hurricane.)  Those uncontrollable rages drive up the blood pressure, too.

In short, Brother Pierce, this is potentially the best time the old republic has seen for years.  A state funeral costs a lot less than an impeachment, even if you have to hire mourners.  It takes less time and the result is certain.  We just need to keep him raging and wheezing until the diseased old carcass gives out.  The conspiraciologists will go into overtime, but fuck them.

Where can I get a YAGA hat?      

Cognitive dissonance

Wherein we just throw it at the wall and see what sticks.

Trump says "thousands and thousands" of parents told him during the 2016 campaign that they would like the remains of their sons returned from Korea (although he failed to mention it at the time).  As has been pointed out elsewhere, these good people would all be about a hundred years old now.  The most likely explanation is that he has no earthly idea when the Korean War took place, but since return of remains was the only material concession he got from the vicious dictator who has won his heart, might as well play it up for his fellow ignorami.

The forcible separation of parents and children at the Mexican border continues, with several thousand warehoused in an abandoned Walmart (perhaps the very Walmart that Obama was planning to turn into a FEMA detention center after the conquest of Texas under Jade Helmet -- wake up, sheeple!).   "These people are underprivileged, so it's working out very well for them," chortled Barbara Bush, before she resumed haunting a house in El Paso.  The children get two whole hours of outdoor play every day and are being taught to say "We love Mr. Presidente Trump!"  There is absolutely no chance they will become anti-American terrorists when/if they get older.  Needless to say, this is a policy with biblical endorsement, but it's also the fault of "the Democrats" who control Congress.  Don't try to figure it out.  I did, and all I got was a sound like Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians emanating from my skull.

Speaking of Canadians, Justin Trudeau wins the brass figlagee with bronze oak-leaf palm for presenting Trump with a handsome framed photo of the whorehouse his grandfather operated in the Yukon.  Which somehow reminds me that, apart from a single silent appearance at a Cabinet meeting, Melanie has again become scarce.  Perhaps she plans to spend the rest of the year sulking in her room, reading Michelle Obama's speeches in search of something else to plagiarize.  When FPOTUS publishes her memoirs, don't be surprised to learn that she grew up on the South Side of Chicago and her brother is a basketball coach.
 
Perhaps I was wrong about Kim failing to lift Trump's phone, too.  ("He was very very friendly, he kept patting me on my ass.  Hey, where's my phone?  CROOKED HILLARY STOLE MY PHONE!")  The most recent royal tweets, while insane, have been correctly spelled, even hard words like "disciples," and lack the random capitalizations of yore.  This suggests that Trump has begun dictating, in the same way Mein Kampf was -- never mind.

Speaking of political prisoners, Paul Manafort is in the jailhouse now, his ten million dollar bail rescinded and his ankle monitor(s) removed, and all because he tried witness-tampering via email.  Not smart.  And we found out that James Comey, who was selling himself and his book as the finest exemplars of morality since Letter From a Birmingham Jail, used private email to conduct FBI business even as he stalked Hillary Clinton.  To paraphrase Barton Keyes (Double Indemnity), "You're no better than Trump.  You're just a little bit taller."

Of the sweet amour in Singapore, enough has probably been written, with the probable nadir Trump saluting a North Korean general.  (How did all those grieving parents feel about that?)   At  the end of the day, though, his heart belongs to Vladdy, and probably his balls, too.  After demanding that Russia be invited back into the G-whatever, he explained that Ukraine is part of Russia because everybody there speaks Russian.  You know, just as people in Sudetenland and Austria spoke German.  Of course, there are millions of Russian-speakers in all the old SSRs, because Russian was the only language taught in schools and used in public life.  But Russia only "went into" Ukraine because "they didn't respect Obama."  Yes, but...oh, there's that Guy Lombardo music again.

The grift that keeps not giving

It's only the fourteenth, but I think we have our Nasty Woman of the Month:  Barbara Underwood, the new Attorney General of New York, who has filed suit to dissolve the "Donald J. Trump Foundation,"  distribute its assets to real charities, and levy fines against the Trump crime family.  Apparently you're not supposed to use a charity to pay legal bills, hush money, campaign expenses, or to decorate golf facilities.  Who knew?  Nobody could have known this.  Crooked Hillary!  No collusion!  Fake laws!  NOBEL!  Underwood, 74, is a charter member of the "deep state" since graduating first in her law school class.  I recommend not fucking with her, but it won't do any good.  Happy birthday, Donzo.


 

Appease and thank you

North Korea bills itself as a "democratic republic," and every so often they find someone dumb enough to believe them.  This time it was our own Metamucilini, who agreed to end joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises in return for a vague handshake promise to end nuclear testing at some point, subject to no outside inspection or verification.  Also, did you know they have beautiful beaches suitable for commercial development, and you have to be an exceptional person to inherit a country at age 26 and take control of its hungry, restive inmates people?  This should finally end the tiresome habit of citing Neville Chamberlain every time someone caves in to the demands of a mendacious tyrant.  At least he got it in writing.  Also, I'm pretty sure he didn't bring his daughter along to scout sweatshop locations for her line of schmattes.

As if separating children from their parents at the Mexican border weren't cruel enough, the regime now proposes housing them in tents in the most forsaken part of Texas, subject to heat, sandstorms, rattlesnakes and poisonous insects.  The next question is who will run the place, the freshly pardoned Joe Arpaio or ex-Sheriff David Clarke.  Both are experienced commandants but Clarke has a slight edge, since a prisoner died of dehydration in his Milwaukee County jail.

It was something of a relief to read Donzo's tweet about Robert DeNiro.  It means Kim didn't get his phone along with his wallet and credit cards.

Apparently Robert Mueller is filling out warrants faster than Trump can sign pardons.  This could be the week we've been waiting for.

The 1920s had flagpole sitters. The 1930s had dance marathons.  We have Dennis Rodman.

Distractions? Very well, then, distractions

The Philadelphia Eagles were invited to a yuge UpAmerica event at the W. House to be honored for their Super Bowl victory, and probably so Trump could take credit for it.  But most of them declined to be used as props in the 2020 election campaign, so the party was cancelled.  More cupcakes for Donnie!  Ironically, they were just about the only team that never took a knee during the anthem last season, but clearly they hate the troops.  I still won't do the social media, but this nice woman does and I wanted to share.  The NBA championship will be decided later this week, but several players, including LeBron James, have already sent their R.S.V.P. to the W. House, and it's "no fucking way."
Sad!

Eric "Also Fredo" Trump runs the family whinery, and this is his latest lament:  "Every day you get abused by somebody.  And the next thing you know, you're being parodied on Saturday Night Live...My father's life became exponentially worse the minute he decided to run for president."

Funny thing, so did ours, Sleazy.  But this is not new.  SNL has been parodying presidents since Dan Aykroyd played Jimmy Carter.  All of them took it, and much worse, with a modicum of dignity, even when they didn't like it.  You make it sound like the work of sketch comedians is the equivalent of getting shoes thrown at you by an Iraqi journalist, or shot by a deranged Jodie Foster fan, or the torrent of racist shit that still rains down on Obama.  I'd tell you to grow the fuck up, but that doesn't seem to be an option in your toxic family.  So go cheat on your wife like a regular Trump.

A customer named Ashanea Davis was leaving the Target store in Southfield, Michigan, when she was stopped, handcuffed, and taken to a back room.  There, male employees forced her to strip to prove she was not wearing a stolen bikini under her clothes.  (She wasn't.)  It looks like those Starbucks knock-off-the-racism trainers have another job to do.

Thank the lordy Christian bakers won't be forced to provide cakes for events they disapprove of.  I predict this SCOTUS decision will stand until a baker with pacifist principles refuses to make dessert for a West Point graduation.  Not a door you want to pry open, especially since religion is inextricably linked to hate and violence.  Religion needs encouragement the way Trump needs calories.

Oh dear, Bill Clinton and James Patterson have made a book.  Since Patterson is notorious for handing the actual writing of his novels to a crew of ink-stained wretches he keeps in the cellar -- he does provide them with detailed plots and characters, I'm told -- I have no idea who put the actual words on the paper here.  Maybe robots.