Shondas

Her black coat was at the cleaners, along with his black tie.  Right?  This is not how you dress for a funeral.

But how would he know that?  It's the third time this year Trump has been uninvited to one.  The Bush family requested that he not attend the funeral of Barbara Bush, though Melania was welcome.  John McCain himself said he didn't want Trump at his funeral, probably in language he learned in the Navy.  Today the first victims of the Tree of Life massacre were buried.  The mayor of Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County executive, the governor of Pennsylvania and thousands of signatories to an open letter from Arc of Justice told Trump to stay away, for emotional as well as security reasons.  And so, having all the sensitivity of an Easter Island statue, there he is.

Making up the party was evidently a struggle.  Despite the old trick of telling A that B has agreed to something B knows nothing about, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and others all had previous engagements.  Ivanka and Jared went along to remind everyone that Trump has Jews in the family.  Nobody met them on the tarmac except the Secret Service agents with the big car and some demonstrators with signs.  Thousands of people were in the streets, and none of them were chanting "Build the wall!" or "Lock her up!"  They were singing.

When they got to the cemetery, Melania was carrying a flat white box.  For one awful moment I thought it was a pizza.  Crazy, right?  But then, that jacket -- "I REALLY DON'T CARE DO U" -- nothing is impossible with these people.  It turned out to be memorial stones, traditionally placed on the grave markers.  Because why take a chance on local minerals?  I'm sure they were purchased at some place that sells high-end garden supplies, steam cleaned and wrapped in tissue paper from Henri Bendel.  They shook hands with the rabbi and some stiff-faced mourners and flew away.  Trump has a big week of scaring the crackers and demonizing George Soros ahead, and Melania has to scold some cyberbullies and encourage kids to BE BEST.  As long as they have American great-grandparents, are reasonably white, and don't identify as transgender.

Look at the picture up there.  That's his solemn face, the one where he's thinking, "Don't wave, don't fist-pump, pretend to be sad, I wonder if I'll be home in time for Hannity, very sad, no collusion, I shouldn't have had all that Coke, does this Jewish church have a bathroom, sad, SAD."  From next Wednesday on, I want him to have that face for real, all the time.  Until it breaks.  And falls off.      

Man bites dog!

A white woman had the cops called on her.  By black people.

Deborah Cantwell of Greenton, Indiana, was upset when a black family moved into "her" neighborhood, so she left this charming note for them:

"No Niggers wanted in this neighborhood -- THIS IS A WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD -- some people find Niggers Stressful.  YOUR NIGGER KID IS NOT WELCOME."

So they called the po-po, who have charged her with intimidation and criminal mischief, and the judge issued a protection order, something about "stalking."  But it was totally worth it because Mrs. Cantwell says her blood pressure is much lower now.  She just needed to let off steam.

At least she capitalized "Nigger."  Many would not.

Dog whistles

You don't have to be a dog to hear these whistles.  And "corrupt" is a word the chancellor of Trump University should purge from his tiny vocabulary.




Republican mailer from Connecticut, where Lesser is running for the State Senate.  I guess they're saving the Christian baby-blood picture for next Monday.

Which side are you on?

It was an exceptionally bad week, even by the debauched standards of this Trump-infected society.  It's Monday, and we're finding out where, exactly, Americans draw the line.

Remember Matt Drudge?  His "Drudge Report" was purveying hardcore rightwing propaganda and outright bullshit long before Breitbart and other imitators.  The massacre in Pittsburgh apparently knocked his trademark fedora off, and he's especially peeved at a Fox News pundit called Kennedy and her companions who "laughed and joked their way through a discussion of the political impact of terror.  Not even 48 hours since blood flowed at synagogue?" he tweeted.  As the comedians say after a tasteless joke, "Too soon?"  I don't see Drudge renouncing the words that made him famous, or even acknowledging his role in creating the atmosphere of hate that prevails, but it's remarkable enough that he's even angry.  "Check your soul in the makeup chair"?  Ouch.

Three-fifths of a Man Sessions was boasting about his anti-refugee work to a meeting of the Boston Lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society when a clergyman got in his face.  "Brother Jeff," he said, "as a fellow United Methodist I call upon you to repent, to care for those in need.  Remember that when you do not care for others, you are wounding the body of Christ."  He quoted from Matthew the admonition to take in strangers; Brother Jeff thanked him for what he characterized as an "attack," but which sounds like an intervention.  At that point a Baptist pastor arose to second the Methodist's words, which is pretty amazing all by itself.  Something to keep in mind when the evangelicals form a phalanx around Trump/Pence and their latest outrage:  some Christians take Christianity seriously.

The show must go on, and the Hustle Hoochie of Pataskala, Ohio went ahead with its "Swastika Party" on Saturday night (free admission with a "haunted hoodie" or a Dead Acres tattoo).  But the Pittsburgh-based band Only Flesh drew a line and cancelled their appearance.  I don't know what a haunted hoodie is.  Do I want to know?  Anyway, good for Only Flesh.

Kellyanne Conway drew some sort of line when she fixed blame for the synagogue massacre on...atheists.   "The anti-religiosity in the country that is somehow in vogue, making fun of people who express religion.  The late-night comedians.  It's always anti-religious."  So it's all Bill Maher's fault?  She can't be talking about Stephen Colbert, a practicing Catholic.  The Pittsburgh killer's copious postings express no hatred of any religious group except Jews.  Kellyanne, could you possibly be blowing smoke to make your boss's accustomed callousness in the face of suffering appear slightly more human?  It's not working.  He could have cancelled his show on Saturday night, like Only Flesh.  But those crowds won't incite themselves.

David Horowitz was even more specific: "The hate is coming from people like this rabbi [Lynette Lederman, former president of Tree of Life] who insist on demonizing the president."  (My italics.)  Yeah, and if these Jews insist on causing the war, they'll all be exterminated, said someone or other...short guy, mustache...no, the name's not coming.  Besides, the murderer made it clear that he considers Trump way too soft on Jews, so he didn't kill eleven people to please the leader.  Sure enough, we read that Trump only mentioned anti-Semitism in one Tweet at the insistence of Ivanka.  She's a yenta, you know.

That may be the most twisted line of all:  Trump has Jews in his family, and Netanyahu plays him like a fiddler on the roof, fawning and praising so he can do what he wants to the Palestinians.  Yet Trump adores, and is adored by, actual Nazis like Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer.  Maybe they too consider him a hopeless kike-lover but useful for their purposes.  Maybe Zionism and Judaism are farther apart than the Israel lobby wants to acknowledge.  Is Trump a racist or merely an idiot?  The answer is both.

Maybe there aren't "very fine people on both sides."  That line was as clear as the tire tracks on the body of Heather Heyer, but Trump couldn't see it.  A shockingly large chunk of the media can't see the line between calling out a lying racist thug and mailing bombs to the people he hates.  Over and over, they demonstrate their fairness by demanding "civility" of Democrats while numbly repeating the raving hate tropes of the right ("reporting the news").  When Eric Holder revised the words of Michelle Obama -- "When they go low, we kick them" -- the media went nuts.  He was saying, "If they want to play dirty, we'll play dirty, too," but they acted as if Nat Turner had come back from the grave at the head of a zombie army of lynched black people, armed with Kalashnikovs and dirty bombs.  By the way, did you know a Bernie Sanders supporter shot Steve Scalise?  Oh, dear, Democrats mustn't even talk the talk, or they'll just force more lunatics to send them ordnance via the failing post office.

We are indeed through the looking glass, where all the lines are skewed.  

 

Mark the week

After a week of unusual awfulness, some folks are scurrying about trying to clean the Augean stable after the horses have bolted, which is the kind of metaphorical mishmash I've been reduced to.

Fox Business News, Fox's News's more presentable little brother, announced it will not re-broadcast a segment of "Dobbs Gone Wild," or whatever it's called, with Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch.  Farrell suggested that the "Soros-infiltrated State Department" was responsible for the caravan of scary people advancing on our sacred border.  He also employed the dog-whistle term ZOG, which every nationalist knows stands for "Zionist-occupied government" (Zionists are only fine people when naming streets after Trump).  But it already aired on October 25, two days before the attack on Tree of Life Synagogue, so, sorry.

Lou Dobbs is still on the air (or cable, if you like), but Megyn Kelly is not, a direct result of her defense of wearing blackface for Halloween.  NBC was shocked to discover that Kelly, who asserted on her previous channel (Fox of course) that Jesus and Santa Claus are "white men," seems to be a tad racist.  If only someone had done research before giving her a contract worth $69 million.  How could they have known?

Steve Stivers, Ohio Congressman and head of the National Republican Congressional Campaign, was offended that Chuck Todd would even question their ad linking Soros to "Wall Street bankers."  "Our independent expenditure arm is independent," he added, because he speaks fluent redundancy with a Trump accent.  Todd did not ask what they plan to do when Soros dies.  Or maybe the "globalists" have discovered the secret of eternal life.  (Tree of Life!  Wake up, sheeple!)

Earlier this week Kevin (not the actor) McCarthy sent a Tweet with a picture of Soros and references to Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, two other billionaires who contribute to the Democrats and just happen to be Jewish, urging his readers to vote so they can't "buy the election."  Today he's all sweetness and light about tolerance and stuff, complete with a biblical citation.  When interviewed, however, he couldn't help complaining that someone had thrown a "boulder" through the window of his Bakersfield, California, office and stolen office equipment, clearly the work of leftists and not some random junkies in search of stuff to sell.  If you can't quite place Kevin (not Charlie) McCarthy, he's the House Majority Leader, a  meaningless title because Paul Ryan is the real leader.

The Tireless Trump got past the unpleasantness in Pittsburgh quickly, haranguing two hate rallies in the Midwest and still finding time to offer expert advice on baseball.  Like everyone else who was paying attention, he was amazed by Dave Roberts's decision to lift Rich Hill after six-and-a-third scoreless innings in Game Four of the World Series.  I'm sure a white manager would have received a public scolding, too.  Aren't you sure?  Sure.

In Pittsburgh, Mayor Bill Perduto suggested it might be a good idea to "take the guns...out of the hands of those that are looking to express hatred through murder."  For this mild statement, he can expect a denunciation from the NRA and a Trump tweet making fun of his beard.

And yes, it's very poignant, but if one more Bright Young Thing points out that Fred Rogers used to live near the synagogue and describes it as "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," I will find you and I will make you watch all three Taken movies.

Not again

Even I, Cynic No. 1, didn't expect the story to change this fast.  I didn't expect to wake to the news that a mass shooting occurred in a Pittsburgh synagogue.  Just like that, no more bomber.

Did you see Chicago?  At the climax the whole city has stopped for the verdict from the murder trial:  ROXY HART ACQUITTED!  Roxy is ready for the interviews and job offers which will rain down on her, but no, another woman has shot somebody and the reporters are out the door.  She is already yesterday's news.

That's how fast the overflowing river of madness flows in the age of Trump, knocking us off our feet and covering us in raw sewage.  Eleven people are dead, several are hospitalized, four police officers were wounded, and Trump was accosted at the airport on his way to more incitements in the Midwest:  "Look at the violence all over the world.  The world is violent.  The world is a violent world."  See Donald talk.  Talk, Donald, talk.  "To see this happening again and again and again, it's just a shame."  Oh, oh, guns, armed guards, no need for gun laws, make death penalty happen faster.  Where is plane?  Fly, plane, fly.  To call Trump a baby is an insult to babies, like the one whose bris at the Tree of Life Synagogue (irony much?) was so hideously interrupted.

But wait!  The killer was no fan of Orange Hitler.  "Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist," he tweeted.  "There is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation."  The killer -- I refuse to name him -- was triggered by Trump's constant refrain about the caravan of "people from the Middle East" currently becalmed in central Mexico, and by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which has been re-settling refugees of every ethnic group since 1881.  Before entering the synagogue he wrote, "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.  I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.  Screw your optics, I'm going in."  So there's your theme, Fox, along with "Scalise Scalise so much violence on the left SCALISE!"  Yeah, Reagan was shot, too.  So was Reinhard Heydrich.  You got a point?

I'm tired.  I'm tired of these shit equivalencies ("Yeah, well, Mitch McConnell was driven out of two restaurants by mean, uncivil protesters, tone down the rhetoric, stop making people build bombs by criticizing The President").  Sorry, Leader Inbred's quest for Cuban food is not the story out of Kentucky. That would be the other crazy shooter of the week -- literally, this one has a history of mental illness so severe, he's not supposed to have guns -- who killed two people at a supermarket in Jeffersontown.  Earlier he tried to enter a black church, but since Charleston they've begun locking the doors.  "Whites don't kill whites," said the murderer -- I can't imagine where he got that idea.  The dead are Vickie Lee Jones and Maurice E. Stallard, both African American.  I know, Soros paid him to do it.  Probably thought hiring someone to attack a synagogue would throw Rush, Coulter and the other False Flag Police off his trail.  Jews are so cunning.

And if McConnell's too grand to carry a doggy-bag, he can tuck some ropa vieja into his neck-flaps and eat it when he gets home.    

       

"lives w/mom, has no furniture"

That laconic notation on a bankruptcy filing from 2012 might have been the epitaph of Cesar Sayoc, Jr., who failed at everything -- school, work, crime -- until he was arrested this morning in south Florida and charged with sending bombs to people and organizations demonized by Donald Trump.  What he had was a van covered in Trump stickers, in which he may have lived; a Twitter account because every lunatic does; and a lot of anger.  He also had a record of violent crimes, including threatening to bomb things, domestic assault and theft, which means he was "in the system."  After his fingerprints were recovered from one of the lethal packages, an investigation we were told might take months ended abruptly.  What he apparently didn't have was a pair of latex gloves and the wit to make the packages look different:  postal workers all over the country knew exactly what to look for, which enabled them to intercept three more addressed to Cory Booker, James Clapper and Kamala Harris.

In short, Sayoc  -- who may be known to Facebook as the more glamorous "Cesar Randazzi" -- had what Stephen Robinson called "the will but not the talent" to commit mass murder.  He may have fantasized about being Trump's knight-errant, carrying out the exploits that are maddeningly out of his reach.  If Putin or Kim or Duterte wants an enemy of the people expunged, it is done; why shouldn't Trump have the same power?  And if the legal and political structures of the United States, tottering but still in place, constrain him, I, Cesar, will step up.  He has a place in Florida; so do I.  He's a bankrupt; so am I.  We're both Republicans!  We can't spell!  If I had been born rich, who knows?  We're practically the same person.

Now that the MAGAbomber has been identified as Trump's biggest fan this side of Trump himself, and only the most deranged Rightzi can still yelp "False flag!" we can expect the story to change to "Nothing to see here, giant distraction from the important work of election-winning, move along, Cesar who?"  But the rage and the hate haven't gone away -- as I type, Trump is stirring up more of it in Las Vegas, scene of our worst mass shooting.  History has been changed by people just as insignificant and crack-brained as Sayoc:  Guiteau, Czolgosz, Oswald, Ray, Sirhan, and that's just American history.  The body politic is sick.  It does no good to treat an ingrown toenail and ignore the malignant tumor in the brain.

The unusual suspects

Well, the demon rats almost got away with it.  There's a fine line between clever and stupid, as Nigel Tufnel once observed, and they got close enough to touch it.  But they weren't clever enough to fool the great minds of the right.

For a while the bombs looked like the work of a devoted Trumpanzee -- the misspelled names(Brenan, Shultz), the confusion of CNN with MSNBC, and the apparent assumption that people like the Clintons and the Obamas stroll outside in their bathrobes to pick up the mail.  The "MAGAbomber" went right down the Trump Enemies List -- Barack Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, George Soros, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder, John Brennan, Robert DeNiro, Joe Biden -- so you look at the enemies he omitted, sheeple!  Where is the failing New York Times?   Why DeNiro and not "Alex" Baldwin?  WHAT ABOUT COLIN KAEPERNICK?

It's so obvious.  The flag could not be falser.

It's also a wonderful distraction.  Force the on-air talent to vacate the studio in mid-segment, as happened with CNN, and you have their undivided attention.  They will forget all about Jamal Khashoggi, murdered, dismembered and buried in the garden of the Saudi consul's residence -- and he was a fellow journalist.  They will barely nod in passing at the amazing news that the president* is a willful, stupid child who refuses to use a phone that can't be overheard by Chinese spies and therefore anyone else.  (But her emails!)

And they will totally overlook another major victory for Vladimir Putin and his long-range plan to Make Russia Great Again by dominating Europe.  At the urging of John Bolton, Secretary of State in all but name (because even this supine Senate would never confirm him), Trump is about to shred the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty signed in 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev.  It removed several thousand Pershing and cruise missiles from Europe, along with Soviet SS-20 missiles.  Now Putin will be free to put his back, while Trump whines that the Europeans are not paying enough for us to do the same.  "Do they really not understand in Washington what they are about to do?" exclaimed Mikhail Gorbachev (yes, he's still alive, and no, they don't).  "Trust, but verify," Reagan said then, quoting a Russian proverb.  And we thought he was senile.

There is no politics as usual, because usual is dead.  This is war.  Chuck Schumer should order jackets with DEMON RATS written in sequins.  October 24, 2018, is a date that will live in infamy.  It was sheer luck that nobody died.

News From Lake WTF

I have to talk to AT&T, which was the phone company for a hundred years so it's good enough for me.  This is the second Presidential Alert I have apparently missed, the one warning of the NATIONAL EMERGENCY posed by the "caravan" of brown refugees creeping up on Texas like some Honduran Blitzkrieg while being monitored every step of the way by a dozen media outlets, Mexican police, and for all I know CIA satellites.  When the vast majority of people turned out to be men in broken-down trucks and exhausted women with children, Trump gazed into his Magic Crystal (a gift from his good Saudi friends) and noticed that "unknown Middle Easterners" had been "embedded" in the procession.  Also sharks with frigging lasers on their heads and some Africans infected with Ebola.  So, scary.  Imagine what they left behind to take their chances in Trumpistan!

Texas can unclench, though, because their final destination* is MINNESOTA, and specifically all those tempting lakeside cottages vacant at this time of year.  So says Carol Shields, a 75-year-old retired accountant and Republican.  Ms. Shields is afraid she'll head up to the lake in early June, when the snow is mostly gone, and find fifteen or twenty Hondurans (and maybe a shark) lounging in her living room eating tamales and watching soccer on Galavision, while upstairs women are giving birth to even more brown babies who will soon overwhelm our White Culture.  (That's Rep. Steve King campaigning in Austria -- I don't have time to go into that shit now.)

Minnesota is the birthplace of a lot of really smart people -- Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, Ethan and Joel Coen -- and now I see why they got out as fast as they could.  And nobody would pay attention to Carol Shields and her babbling had it not appeared in The New York Times as the pendant to a story about Trump riling up the glue-eaters in an attempt to turn back the blue tsunami next month.  (Did you know there are riots against immigration in California?  Neither did anyone else except Trump, the termites in his head, and now every member of the QAnon Continuum.   I don't have time to go into that shit now.)  The Times is mortified to be called "elitist" -- frankly, that's why I subscribe in spite of everything -- and is forever dispatching reporters to places where you can't even get pumpkin-spice latte to take the pulse of Judy and Jerry Scratchcard, the Real Americans.  Carol Shields is as real as it gets:  racist, gullible, stupid and old.  I'll bet she spends her copious free time calling the police on black people for the act of mailing a letter or buying toothpaste.  Besides, it's the Canadians who will slip across that unguarded frontier and occupy our summer homes while we're fixated on Central Americans.  George Soros told me while I was picking up the checks for my Antifa vegan terror cell.

I may have said too much.




*I know "all destinations are final."  Don't be quoting George Carlin to me.


 

Scary time

Yes, it is.  Teabag Trumpette Amy Kremer gives us the quotation of the day.  It seems an occult book store in Brooklyn is hosting a spell-casting this weekend, and Amy is horrified:  "It's a scary time right now.  Now we've got witches that are placing a hex on Brett Kavanaugh."  No, they're trying to increase their foot-traffic with clever, free publicity, thanks, Amy!  The magick (I believe that's the preferred spelling) will have no more power than Pat Robertson's promise to turn away the wrath of Hurricane Florence through his personal relationship with Big Sky Wizard.  Of course, if Mr. Justice Gangbang reports for work on Monday only seven inches tall, I am prepared to apologize and publish a retraction, and maybe order a new copy of Drawing Down the Moon from Catland Books, 987 Flushing Avenue.

It's one of those days when there is an embarrassment of quotation riches.  Tucker Carlson whines that he can no longer dine out because of people "screaming 'Fuck you!'  It just wrecks your meal."  Where the hell is he eating, the New School cafeteria?  Tucky, you can go to an overpriced Maison de la Casa House (thanks, Bud Trillin) with tassels on the menu, or you can stay home and eat one of the frozen TV dinners that made it possible for you and your family to avoid work forever.  Or just grow a pair and don't let yourself get chased out like a common Ted Cruz.

Oh, the great "Judge" Jeanine Pirro has taken to calling Democrats "Demon rats."  Isn't that adorable?  Would it be uncivil to hope she patronizes Joan Rivers's plastic surgeon?

"I'm the president and you're not," was the most intelligible sentence uttered by Himself in an interview patiently conducted by Lesley Stahl.  She had asked why children have to be locked in cages or consigned to tents in the desert.  She also chased him all over the landscape trying to get straight answers about climate change ("scientists have a political agenda") and NATO ("I know more than [James] Mattis").  Watch it if you want to.  Closed captioning may help.

It's a scary time for journalists.  Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi who lives in the United States and writes for the Washington Post, went into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago and never came out.  (Wonderful things, security cameras.)  Khashoggi had been critical of his country's government and its crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, who has been quoted as saying slumlord-in-law Jared Kushner is "in [his] pocket."  It looks like s-i-l provides him with the names of dissidents and other troublemakers.  Jared's wife's daddy has promised to get to the bottom of this, but also believes "rogue killers" made him disappear.  A genie and a magic lamp are suspected.  Also, Saudi oil might suddenly get more expensive, if you know what I mean and I think you do, and no more playing with The Orb.  Get it?  The bully becomes the bullied.

"I'm the most bullied person in the world," pouted Melania Trump, and honestly, until the Brett-hex quote came along I was going to open with that one.  She went all the way to Africa dressed like the Englishwoman in a Tarzan movie who has to be rescued from the savages, she hugged some steam-cleaned children and looked at some animals, but were Americans grateful?  Did they nominate her for a Nobel Peace Prize or greet her at the airport like a championship team?  No, they criticized her for wearing a pith-helmet in former colonies like Ghana, for spending a fat ten minutes touring the places where captives were loaded onto slave ships, and for being an oblivious, privileged bimbo who married as much money as she could find and by the way, lied about being a college graduate.  See?  Criticism, bullying, harassment, assault, genocide, it's all the same word in Slovenia, I guess.

Sheldon Adelson gave $20 million to the Trump campaign, and it has come up cherries.  Adelson stands to make $25 billion a year if Japan grants him one of three licenses to open a casino there, and Trump ("I remember Pearl Harbor!") is working overtime to make it happen.  We don't know what Shelly said when Donny gave him the good news, but I'm sure he was suitably grateful.  And that's how you drain the swamp.

You may recall the specific Hitler Hootenanny (I don't) where Trump challenged Elizabeth Warren to prove her Native American ancestry.  He implied the DNA test was one of those disgusting gynecological procedures that real men don't want to think about; he also promised to pay a million dollars if she turned out to be "an Indian."  This week the Senator released the results, from a geneticist at Stanford -- she is, in fact, part Cherokee.  Apparently DNA, routinely used for everything from solving crimes to identifying the remains of soldiers, is "junk science," according to expert Kellyanne Conway ("I haven't looked at the test...I'm not interested").  Coincidentally, it seems that William Wages, brother-in-law of House Majority Leader and Raving Trumpite Kevin McCarthy, got a lucrative government contract by claiming to be part Cherokee -- a claim disputed by the Cherokee Nation.  And that's how you drain the swamp.

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, died today.  My comment has been deleted for its extreme incivility.  I hate Microsoft.

 

Lonely hearts

The London Review of Books is famous for its mordantly, often outrageously funny personal ads, some of which have been collected in books.  So when I read this one, I didn't know what to think:

"Our client is a very interesting and literary woman in her 60s living in London.  Her interests are the Arts especially literature and classical music.  She would love to meet a like-minded woman to share her interests with and is open to meeting someone either in London or abroad.  Contact Cleese, Parsons & Crun* 020 ---- ---- or email Suzanne @ ...I look forward to hearing from you."

Who puts in an ad like this?  (Interested in just about anything, will meet up anywhere.)  More to the point, who hands the job off to her solicitors?  Why is it so...dull?  Why is it making me so sad?

Of course, it's the LRB.  Could be a giant put-on, not someone who wants her personal life sorted out by lawyers.  Yeah, that must be it.

Another two years of this madness and my sense of humor will be as dead as Napoleon's horse.




*Not a real law firm, but it could have been.

Treason!

And nobody told him about the toilet paper on his shoe.

The Resistance is spreading!

Prize day

Congratulations to:

Dr. Denis Mukwege of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, Yazidi activist.  He is a gynecological surgeon who treats the victims of gang-rape in Congo's unending civil war.  She escaped from Islamic State, whose thugs repeatedly raped her, and works to free other Yazidi (Christian) women still in captivity.  They will share the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.  The committee's timing could not be better, as the United States Senate will probably vote tomorrow to place a drunken, lying rapist on the Supreme Court until he dies of liver failure.  Every single one who does so should be publicly shamed and shunned forever.

Rev. William Barber, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant.  The news reached him in Chicago as he was being arrested in front of McDonald's headquarters, leading a demonstration to demand a minimum wage of $15.  He also wants Medicare extended to everyone, leading some North Carolinians to brand him a "terrorist."  And now a "genius," too, and all while suffering from a form of spinal arthritis that makes even standing difficult.  What did you do today?

The family of Laquan McDonald, the seventeen-year-old who was killed by Jason Van Dyke of the Chicago Police.  A jury* has found Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder and sixteen counts of assault, one for each bullet he fired into the teenager.  It took years, but the family and supporters persisted.  May the McDonalds now find peace.

And Clarence Thomas, who will no longer be the most worthless piece of shit on the Supreme Court.  Have a Coke and a smile, Clarence!



*Eleven of the jurors were white.  It shouldn't be necessary to state that, but apparently it is.

Left behind

Charles P. Pierce writes:

"I was informed by reliable government sources that at 2:18 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, I would be receiving a text message from a notorious public sociopath.  It never happened.  Who do I call to report this?  Is someone in the Deep State using me for bait?"

I never got the big official message either.  When this became clear, I flashed back to the joke Woody Allen used to tell about his draft classification:  "In the event of war, I'm a hostage."  And in the event of national emergency -- whatever that may mean -- I am evidently a statistic.  Knowing that an eminent journalist was also unnotified makes me feel less lonely.  

Besides, this is a bunch who separate very young children from their parents and lose track of them; who tear up treaties like losing tickets at a racetrack; who pollute the earth with the mad abandon of dogs having their first encounter with snow; who respond to natural disasters like Laurel and Hardy without the well-meaning sweetness.  Why would anyone imagine they could make a phone call without fucking it up? 

Self-eating bacteria

I'd like to think -- no, I need to think -- that Donnie Degenerate stepped on his mushroom last night in Mississippi Goddam (as Nina Simone indelibly named it).  Turn off the sound, I implore you, and look at the slack-jawed faces around him as he mocks a victim of sexual assault.  They look a lot like their grandparents, in the foreground grinning into the camera while a body hangs from a tree behind them.  Deeper in the background, out of focus, you can just make out the marble statue of some seditious general on a horse.  So much beauty.

I had a feeling that, after being laughed out of the United Nations by real leaders, the bloated orange slob would seek emotional comfort food in the Incest Belt.  And that was just a warm-up -- wait till he gets to Texas to stir up the mob for Canada Cruz.  Staring at defeat, Teddy has chosen to forget that the slob called his wife ugly and accused his father of murder.  Teddy's a real mensch.  So the slob will warn another mob of mouth-breathers that young (white) men are the real victims when these tramps can ruin their lives over a little assault.  The slob has already forgotten that women have the vote.  

The three "mavericks" Flake, Collins and Murkowski, have pronounced themselves troubled, even "appalled," by their Leader's obscene performance.  Of course, what they say to CNN doesn't matter.  All that matters is what they say when the clerk calls their names and they have to answer "Yes" or "No" to putting the drunken rapist on the Supreme Court.  The excuses they make afterward will also be worth less than a spoonful of spit.  Mitch McConnell (R-Kinfucky) has promised to ram the vote through this week, so we'll find out if even one of them can withstand the twitter-storm, the Blightbart outrage and the wrath of Lindsey Graham (like being pecked by a day-old duckling but much funnier).  If Brett-bro doesn't get his candy because the orange slob couldn't keep his mouth shut, well, that will be the best joke of all.    

Twilight zones

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man...pit of man's fears...yadda yadda yadda…

Let's dip into the this-can't-be-happening file, shall we?

According to the CDC, the number of American babies born with syphilis is at a 20-year high.  Overall, the United States is ranked twentieth out of the twenty-one wealthiest countries for infant mortality; only New Zealand is worse.  (Really, New Zealand?  Say, didn't your prime minister just have a baby?)  So of course Melania Trump is off to Africa to spread her message of "Be Best" and show off her new double-D kidneys to Egypt and the shithole countries of Malawi, Kenya and Ghana.  She will enlighten them on the wonders of American health care and explain to the president of Egypt what the hell her husband meant by "I love the Bangles!"  (The only thing he knew about Egypt was the 1987 dance hit "Walk Like an Egyptian."  There is speculation that he believes it to be their national anthem.)

Melania's husband has decided he likes press conferencing even better than tweeting, because he is absolutely great at it and also wittier than that Kennedy guy, who by the way got plenty of pussy, believe me.  Today he was out in the rose garden charming the pants off reporters.  Like Cecilia Vega of ABC, who tried to ask about the Kavanaugh debacle and got the clever riposte, "I know you're not thinking.  You never do."  See, because she's a girl and the Republicans don't have enough problems with women, all of their own making.  Also the lying media, and she's probably from Mexico like Judge Curiel.  Then he made a fib about an unnamed senator "on the other side" who has done very very very bad things.  The details are filed with his "hundred" pictures of Comey and Mueller making out.

The most surreal moment of the week may have been Jeff Flake's appearance at the Global Citizen concert in Central Park.  Flake is being hailed as a conquering hero for arranging a slight speed-bump in the path of Brett "I Like Beer" Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, after voting to send his nomination to the full Senate like the supine Republican toady he has always been.  Now that he's leaving the Senate, Flake will even stand next to a Democrat under a banner that includes the word "global."  You're a fucking profile in courage, Jeff.

Kellyanne Conway is claiming to have been a victim of sexual assault.  If it's true it's terrible, and if it's a lie it's worse.  Sarah Sanders, anything to share?

Track Palin -- that's his legal name -- has been arrested for domestic violence assault and resisting arrest.  Apologists claim he suffers from post-traumatic stress, although he spent his Army career as a driver for visiting VIPs and never saw combat.   I think somebody didn't raise him right.

Timing is everything, and so there is an outcry because Roman Polanski has finally begun work on J'Accuse, another movie about the Alfred Dreyfus case.  Polanski has been a fugitive from American justice since 1978, when he pleaded guilty to one charge involving the rape of a young girl and then fled to Europe.  Since then he has directed Death and the Maiden, Tess, The Pianist and The Ghost Writer, among other films, without incident.  Maybe the problem is that Dreyfus was a man falsely accused of a crime.  Maybe Polanski suffers from post-traumatic stress, having barely survived the Holocaust as a child.  He and Bill Cosby have been thrown out of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, along with an actor named Carmine Caridi, whose crime was sharing "screeners" (the DVDs provided free to voting members) with a friend.  So that's where the Academy's red line is.  Where is the Senate's?

Speaking of actors, John Putnam, professional Herman Melville impersonator, has died at 82.  He will be missed.  I assume.

Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor imported by the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to be their beard representative in questioning Christine Blasey Ford, was spotted tossing back some brews with Chuck Grassley's staff in a Washington establishment.  Apparently she, too, likes beer.  She presented a five-page report stating that a "reasonable prosecutor" would not indict Kavanaugh, although the FBI has barely begun its investigation.  Then she collected her check and buggered off back to Joe Arpaio country.

Speaking of buggery...see, you thought I was going to move on Lindsey Graham.  Actually I would be glad if people pointed out what a piece of shit he is without going there.  Homophobia isn't attractive anywhere on the political spectrum, and we're supposed to be better than that.

I wish I could end this on a hopeful note -- it's only four in the afternoon, no way to know what crazy shit is still to come -- but will you settle for a goofy one?  Trump told one of his paste-eater rallies last week that we were this close to war with North Korea (not the Little Rocket Man taunts, not "my button works," but somehow Obama's fault), but he met Kim Jong-un and "we fell in love."  That's a direct quote.  Not The Onion.  I actually heard it in that feckless Queens whine, my own self.  "He wrote me beautiful letters," he went on, while the MAGAs muttered, "Did I just hear that?"  So no need to hold joint exercises or keep all those expensive troops in South Korea.  They fell in love.

I need a beer.