Law & Order: Witch Hunt Lynching

What's it called when you're on trial for stealing a bicycle, and you bribe one or more of the jurors to vote for acquittal?  Jury tampering.

What's it called when you're on trial for high crimes and misdemeanors. and you bribe one or more of the Senators who will hear your case?  I guess we'll find out.

Mischief nights

As you Samhain, so shall you reap.  Worst. pun. ever.

I don't know what Greenwich Mean time it is, I'm not good at those things, but I assume midnight is drawing nigh.  This was to be "Independence Day," the Day of the Deadline, when the Barely United Kingdom would throw off the shackles of Europe and begin paying more for Italian cheese and Belgian chocolate.  It isn't happening because the prime minister had no more success ramming a Brexit agreement through Parliament than his predecessor and, with much sulking, was forced to beg the EU for a three-month extension.  This was after the Supreme Court, which most people didn't even know they had, ruled that no, he could not just break up the House like a cocktail party he was tired of hosting.  Probably another general election will happen in December.  Britons are tired of all the voting, but they become equally restive if a campaign lasts more than six weeks, baffling as that is to Americans who never get a break from campaigning.  So far, BloJo has achieved a level of governmental incompetence that makes Theresa May look like Queen Elizabeth I.

Good Queen Bess would have been much amused by the antics of Republican congressclowns in the New World, squealing and squawking about the impeachment "cult" (very Halloweenish) and vowing to make civil war if the House proceeds to do its Constitutionally mandated duty.  Louie Gohmert (R-CSA) was shocked to discover that the Capitol Police are armed with loaded weapons which they have pointed at no elected official ever but just you wait.  It's all very, very funny.  Grave, I mean.  There's more of gravy than of grave about Louie, but the House voted to authorize an impeachment investigation by the relevant committees without a single Republican.  Even the fourteen or so who are quitting Congress were too frightened by the prospect of a nasty tweet to step over to the right side of history, and that's just silly.  Sad.  I'm all mixed up today.

My congratulations to the world champion Washington Nationals.  I am starting a GoFundMe to buy Trump season tickets.

No racist! No racist! You're the racist!

The term "racist" picked up a negative connotation sometime in the last century.  I think the Third Reich ran it into the ground, first bragging of being "blond beasts," then incorporating the concept of racial purity into its legal code to give it an official veneer, and then the heaps of corpses.  After that, nobody wanted to be called a racist, especially if they were.

In America, racists talk about their "customs," their "heritage," their "history," to excuse everything from separate drinking fountains to public statuary to murder.  Lately they have resorted to projection.  (I'm not a racist.  You know who is?  Barack Obama, because he keeps talking about race and making white people feel bad and then they get angry...)  It's an offshoot of the "outside agitators" trope:  Our people were real happy until Communists/Yankees/Union troops put ideas in their heads and stirred up trouble.  You always wonder if they really believe it.

But the mark of the racist is indelible:  He perceives the world instinctively in racial terms.  The Nazis rejected modern physics because Einstein was a Jew.  The United States imprisoned without trial thousands of Americans whose Japanese ancestry made them inherently disloyal.  Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn't be impartial in the Trump University fraud case because his parents were born in Mexico.  Congresswomen Omar and Tlaib should "go back to their own countries."

A new level of stupid was reached when Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified about the Trump-Zelensky shakedown call.  Vindman, the NSC officer in charge of Ukrainian affairs, listened to the call in his official capacity and because he is fluent in Ukrainian (but can he understand Trumpese?). After he testified to the House Intelligence Committee, the Trumpanzees began poo-flinging because Vindman, a decorated veteran of the Iraq war, was born in Ukraine -- or as Brian Kilmeade puts it, he "has an affinity to the Ukrainian people."  You just can't trust immigrants, Purple Heart or no.  Twenty years of military service?  He was just waiting for his chance to betray the president by telling the truth.  Also, I heard he might be a Jew...

Today the Speaker laid out the procedures for now-inevitable impeachment, so expect a lot more of this.  When the law and the facts are against you, pound the ethnicity.

One hundred decibels

As I write, a large and dangerous wildfire is burning in Los Angeles county, one of several in the state where the October Holocaust is becoming an annual tradition.  And as always, the threat to the homes of celebrities has been singled out to help trivial-minded Americans focus on the disaster.  (LeBron James?  Arnold Schwarzenegger?  How many other houses do you suppose they own between them?)  So it was no surprise that Trump Booed at Baseball Game is getting more attention than all his crimes and misdemeanors -- the Schadenfreude is delightful but the lack of civility is making Joe Scarborough cry.

All this is covered here by Charles Pierce better than I ever could.  Those abstract and brief chronicles the late-night comedians surpassed themselves -- luckily, Colbert wasn't on one of his frequent vacations.  I haven't seen any rage-tweets yet, but Trump has probably convinced himself the ruckus was aimed at his courtiers Lindsey Graham and Matt Gaetz, or at the First Escort, or that everybody in the ballpark was paid by George Soros.  Probably a televised Cabinet meeting will be called, so the other grifters can take turns telling him they'd rather sit at his table than at the Last Supper.  Maybe a Mississippi Hatenanny will soothe the hurt.  Or a commando raid on whoever took over from al-Baghdadi.   We will have to hope that the haste and lack of planning don't cause any SEAL casualties, but so what?  They knew what they were signing up for.

Take me out of the ballgame!

Patton Oswalt

✔ @pattonoswalt

Imagine being so hated that on the day you announce that the LEADER OF ISIS HAS BEEN KILLED ON YOUR ORDERS a stadium full of baseball fans still boos you. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1188624504110682112 …

Aaron Rupar

✔ @atrupar

Replying to @atrupar

Here’s video of Trump getting booed at the #WorldSeries

133K

10:08 PM - Oct 27, 2019

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24.7K people are talking about this

And to add insult to insult, the bosses in Moscow claim he made the whole thing up.

And now, a bit of fun

Things that made me laugh inappropriately:

A pallbearer at Elijah Cummings's funeral looked right at Worm-face McConnell's worm face and refused to shake his hand.  I never saw a smile freeze over like that before.

Trump the Trivial spent much time explaining that he couldn't throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Game Five tonight because the Secret Service would make him wear body armor (what, no helmet?) and it would make him look "too heavy."  Other reasons he didn't cite:  the crowd would boo so loud, the dugout roofs might collapse; the Nationals didn't ask him, choosing to honor Chef Jose Andres instead; he probably couldn't climb onto the mound without wheezing.

Part-time White House spokesmodel Stephanie Grisham told reporters that John Kelly had to go because "he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president."  There are so many ways to interpret that, you almost need another beer.

Late on October 16, cybersecurity expert Rudolph Giuliani called an NBC News reporter, apparently by accident.  The reporter has a voicemail recording of America's Mare talking about someone named Robert and saying, "We need a few hundred thousand."  (Robert is believed to be one of his operatives in Turkey.)  And that's why they call it Stupid Watergate.

Harvey Weinstein showed up at the fifth annual Women In Entertainment summit in Hollywood.  Three women who objected told him to leave and were themselves ejected.  It's not so funny but it will probably be cited as an example of toxic narcissism in the next DSM.

James Mattis must have found his testicles in an old suit because he killed at the Al Smith Dinner, mocking Trump's junk food addiction and bone-spurs cowardice.  Unless he's also planning to chat with Adam Schiff and his friends under oath, it doesn't mean much.

Tulsi Gabbard is not running for Congress again (she says) but will devote all her time to dethroning Hillary Clinton and making sure Marianne Williamson is not the flakiest candidate in the Democratic presidential field.  She believes she can win, and that there is already a city in Oklahoma named for her.  Awaiting Susan Sarandon's endorsement.

And the toxic Trump name is being taken off as many sites as possible.  There is also talk of selling Washington, D.C.'s Trump Trivago, home of the hundred-dollar martini.  So much winning!

Felicity Huffman got time off for good behavior, having spent nearly a week in the toughest minimum-security facility for women that California has (no pool or health club).  She fought the law and the law won.  Is a sentence like this worth all the paperwork?  

Shiny objects

All prizes are political, except athletic ones.  Usain Bolt is the fastest man on earth (that we know of) over a hundred meters, and that's that.  But most of the others are the result of somebody's opinion.  Prizes exist to celebrate, to rectify wrongs, to call attention, and it seems mostly to cause arguments and break up friendships.  I think I like those best of all.

Benedict College, a historically black college in Columbia, South Carolina, decided for some unfathomable reason to present its "Bipartisan Justice Award" to the most shamelessly racist president since Woodrow Wilson.  It's unlikely Trump would even have noticed, much less called attention to it, had not Kamala Harris refused to participate in the school's "Second Step Presidential Justice Forum" and arranged to appear at a separate event.  Now it's a thing.  And now even non-alumni have heard of Benedict College.  Maybe Morehouse should set up a Strom Thurmond scholarship.

This is just a local slap-fight compared to the 2019 Nobel in literature, which went to the Austrian writer Peter Handke.  How controversial was it?  Think Elia Kazan's Oscar.  I admit to being unacquainted with his work other than that twee movie Wings of Desire, but that's not what started the fight.  Handke was an enthusiastic supporter of Slobodan Milosevic and his genocidal regime in Serbia, going so far as to suggest that the Muslims of Sarajevo killed themselves to make Serbia look bad.  (Not even the loons who came up with "crisis actors" have implied that the Sandy Hook children shot themselves to pieces so Obama could grab all the guns.)  For this reason, and not for his (I'm sure) nice prose, Jonathan Littell called Handke an "asshole," while Salman Rushdie proposed him for "International Moron of the Year."  That's just the warm-up.  Hari Kunzru accused him of "shocking ethical blindness," while the Slovenian writer Miha Mazzini suggested that he had "sold his soul."  Then Slavoj Zizek raised the crazy stakes by denouncing the literature Nobel for Handke while promoting Julian Assange for the peace prize.  Sweden, if you're listening...

A feminist writer could get a whole essay out of the way Olga Tokarczuk has been treated.  She won the 2018 literature prize, which was held up by a sleazy sexual harassment case involving the husband of a committee member.  When her prize was finally announced this year, it was of course overshadowed by the Handke controversy.  Then people complained that Tokarczuk, a Polish poet and novelist, was white (although every article commented on her dreadlocks).  We were promised a less Eurocentric writer, critics whined.  To pile on the distractions and disrespect, somebody trolled the Irish writer John Banville with a phone call telling him he had won.  The Guardian sniffed that nobody had heard of her (outside Poland) until she won the Man Booker last year.  Worst of all, I can't make this fool Blogger post a picture of her; go and look.  

The Nobel Prize in Literature has always been political.  Knut Hamsun of Norway was hot for Hitler.  Luigi Pirandello re-gifted his gold medal to Mussolini.  Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn were pointedly honored when they couldn't even be published in the USSR.  Winston Churchill?  Well, they wanted to recognize him for something and Peace wouldn't do.  And I really see what the "Eurocentrism" critics mean:  of four African-born winners, three have been white (Coetzee, Gordimer and Lessing).  So the committee can't argue that they're crazy about Peter Handke's writing even though his politics are just crazy.  They will have to live with this one.








 

Panic and confusion

This morning I went to check the political blogs, which is something I do to make myself feel queasy before lunch (it's a weight loss technique).  Here's what I saw over at Crooks and Liars:  ILHAN OMAR'S REPUBLICAN OPPONENT HAS WARRANT ISSUED FOR HER ARREST.

Nothing surprises me anymore, not even a bunch of Republican Congressmen rioting in defense of their completely innocent and endlessly persecuted Dear Leader.  Remember when disabled citizens gathered outside McConnell's office to protest the gutting of the Affordable Care Act, and were arrested and hauled away?  Literally, handcuffed to their wheelchairs?  Adam Schiff "conferred" with the Sergeant at Arms, but nobody laid a hand on these chuckleheads.  They even got an "attaboy" from Trumpelthinskin, who is excited by violence as long as the bodily fluids don't splash on his polished boots (yes, Himmler reference, got a problem?).  I hope the Speaker is only waiting for the casket of Elijah Cummings to depart the Capitol before throwing her shoe at them.  Because this is worse than party operatives shutting down the Florida recount two decades ago.  The more Republicans get away with, the more they will dare.  Brattiness is their super-power.

Which brings me back to that headline.  Minnesota isn't Texas, but I thought it was at least possible that someone found a judge who would issue a warrant based on the hateful gibberish spewed about Rep. Omar  (She  works for ISIS!  She married her brother!  She killed Jimmy Hoffa!).  Turns out it was just a badly-worded headline.  The warrant was issued for her opponent, noted local shoplifter Danielle Stella, who missed a court appearance for, I'm sure, a good reason, like somebody put a Muslim curse on her and turned her car keys into a Rubik's cube.

So, lunch.  Does anyone want to split a tuna on rye?

Old Man Twitter

As the walls and the investigations close in, Field Marshal Bonespurs becomes steadily more demented.  This morning he woke up and -- well, read it yourself:

"...All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here -- a lynching.  But we will WIN!"

Not even a "high-tech lynching" such as Clarence Thomas was subjected to, when the Senate Judiciary Committee (Joseph Biden, chairman) reluctantly listened to Professor Hill's accusations before confirming him.  In Trump's bottomless bucket of self-pity he can see the torches and hear the gathering, snickering mob.  If this were a real lynching, of course, there's no way he would win.  He would die hideously, most likely innocently.  Not surprising that he has no idea what lynching entails.  We learned last week that the Emoluments clause of the Constitution does not exist.

Did one of his keepers point out how insulting this is to the memory of thousands of Americans who were lynched in reality?  What do you think?

Did his Dixie lapdog (whose state proudly hosted 156 lynchings between 1882 and 1930) suggest that the choice of words was a little on the stupid side?  Here's Lindsey Graham:  "This is a lynching in every sense.  This is un-American."  Hold on, un-American?  Why, because they also lynch drug dealers in the Philippines and "witches" in Uganda?  "Mob rule is what lynching is all about."  That mob is the House of Representatives, the people we elected.  I know the Republicans have no use for democracy, but have some for the English language.  Some diehards wistfully recall the days when Graham had a backbone.  Turns out he and McCain were propping each other up.

"Without due process or fairness or any legal rights," sobs Trump (through an interpreter -- it's obvious He DIDN'T write this Tweet!).  Yes, a president could be impeached for just anything, like getting a blowjob.  Or for treason, bribery, obstruction of justice, violation of campaign finance laws, perjury, inciting violence, slander, and bringing the United States into disrepute and contempt.  (We don't impeach for stupidity.  Harding died in office and Bush II walked away.)

Expect the self-pity party to continue, and escalate.  Having shat on lynch victims, by next week Trump will be whimpering that the mean Democrats are trying to rape him.  At least that's an activity of which he has personal knowledge.

Give it up for the comedy stylings...

If Hillary Clinton really wrote this, she should have a column at The Onion.

It's not the heat, it's the humiliation

Another bad week for the stable genius.  Every week, it's like the last days in the bunker for that other genius, who also knew more than his generals.

After abandoning the Kurds (and a well-stocked American base) to the invading Turkish army, Commander Bonespurs wrote to his friend Erdogan suggesting that he might not want to do what he had been encouraged to do to all those "terrorists," concluding, "Don't be a fool!", a letter Erdogan understandably threw in the trash.  "I told you that idiot would change his mind," he probably told aides.  "And now I have to talk to the other idiot."  Sure enough, Pence arrived to broker a "cease fire" which was nothing of the kind, didn't stop the bombing, and required the Iraqi Kurds to go somewhere else (unspecified, but you can be sure it doesn't mean the United States).  So Erdogan got everything he wanted except Fethullah Gulen, who has taken refuge among the Amish if he knows what's good for him.  It's the season for treachery.

As visions of emoluments danced in his head, Trump announced that the next G7 would pump some cash into his flatlining Miami resort.  But before the staff could start bringing the kitchen up to code,
some of his Best People persuaded him that one more impeachable offense might create a deluge that even Moscow Mitch could not hold back.  Or as the inevitable shitter-twitter put it, "Based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility," six leaders and their support staffs will get a reprieve next June, just as the House prepares to vote on the Articles of Impeachment.  It should be quite a party, with Trump lobbying frantically for his boss Putin to be re-admitted and Ivanka circulating among the adults, trying to look like she knows the difference between the IMF and the World Bank.   Biltmore is lovely in spring.  Michael Jackson's Neverland?  Area 51?

Maybe not impeachable -- although that branch of law breaks new ground every few hours -- but post-removal Trump should be charged with kidnapping.  The Department of Homeland Security has not only ignored court orders to reunite families separated at the Mexican border, it is actively making the separations permanent by encouraging private adoption agencies to turn over (and probably sell) migrant children to American couples.  One of them, Bethany Christian Services, is known to have ties to the Prince/DeVos crime syndicate.   At adulthood, these children will probably find themselves in the same legal limbo as the current "Dreamers," brought here as children but at least spared the sickening brutality of Trumpism.  Like many aging German citizens, they will be trying to trace the birth parents from whom they were stolen.  It never ends.

"Acting" White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney publicly admitted that Trump gangstered the Ukrainian president by holding up the funds voted by Congress unless he dug up something on the Bidens.  Apparently "Acting" Mick didn't understand that the microphones and cameras were recording all his words and relaying them to people who own "televisions."  This did not stop him from lying about his admission in front of similar microphones and cameras.  It was really about "concerns" that Ukraine might have corruption in its government, which we certainly cannot countenance.  Oh, and Hillary's emails were investigated for the seventy-fourth time and the Pompeo State Department admitted (grudgingly) that there was no impropriety.  This is not over.

During one of his yelling-over-the-rotors briefings, Bonespurs explained why keeping his campaign promise to bring the troops home did not apply to the thousands still in Saudi Arabia:  The Sauds pay us.  He sees this as the future of American commitment to allies, i.e., the highest bidder.  So now we know why Japan is thinking of abandoning its highly understandable opposition to nuclear weapons, while Kim Jong-un (who has, remember, "a beautiful vision" for his country, continues to improve his.  Future generations, if any, will not forgive us for the Trump Debacle.


 


This is how you ever-so-subtly flip the bird to two NASA astronauts who are performing the first all-female space walk, and have just corrected you in front of sniggering flunkies.  Note line of womens who have been ordered to stand behind you to correct misconception that you have contempt for all females who are not dumb fuck-toys.  First Harry Dunn's parents and now this -- really got that "being presidential" thing nailed.

The soul of our democracy

Here is what you need to remember about Elijah Cummings, who died this week:  in his hospital bed he signed subpoenas related to the impeachment inquiry.

Here is what you need to know about the Trumpites:  they are challenging the validity of the subpoenas because "Signatures on Two Subpoenas Don't Match!"  Not that they respond to subpoenas anyway, like common citizens, but maybe Ilhan Omar slipped into Johns Hopkins disguised as a nurse...

Trump and his defenders belong in prison.  Elijah Cummings belongs to the ages.

Information please

These things were all the most important story of the week, if not of all time, and then they dropped off the radar.  So tell me:

Venezuela.  On the brink of civil war.  Food and medicine shortages, riots every day, might have to send in the Marines and secure all that oil.  So?

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Naval Auxiliary or whatever kept pulling over oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.  Very big deal, could lead to war.  What happened?

Central California had a major earthquake.  Not a peep in over two months.  Everybody all right?

Is Greenland for sale yet?

Rep. Steve King was about to be censured or kicked right out of Congress for his principled defense of rape and incest.  If he's still there, he's been unusually quiet.  Could somebody go and check?  Look in the barber shop, too.

Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was photographed in blackface for his college yearbook.  Shock and outrage, resignation imminent.  By the time Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama was found to have done the same, it was fine.  Did everybody just get tired of being angry?

Boko Haram.  I assume they're still a thing and the girls are still missing.  Well, women now.

Yemen.  I forgot this one until I got an email from Medicins sans Frontieres asking for money.

How is Justice Ginsberg?

Is the Amazon rain forest on fire, being clear-cut, or both?  On second thought, don't tell me.

How many people in Flint have lead-free tap water?

How many years did Trump-loving pipe-bomber Cesar Sayoc get?

Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?

That's enough.  It's late.  Wasn't there something about an asteroid?

 

Doughy guys

You've seen the whole picture -- Nancy Pelosi ("I don't consider her

the Speaker") lectures a roomful of old white men on the Syria debacle,

and three of them look like they got caught masturbating in Sunday

school.  The dumb one has decided to brazen it out.

I'm starting to believe the White House photographer is Anonymous,

if not Whistleblower.

A world elsewhere

Harold Bloom died on Monday.  He was probably the staunchest defender of the Dead White Male literary canon we had left.  He even wrote a thick book called The Western Canon, and countless books about his idol Shakespeare.  In fairness, he also co-wrote The American Canon, admitting to a smaller pantheon Ursula K. LeGuin, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neal Hurston, Thomas Pynchon and others.  He had no use for literary theory, especially the Marxist kind, and for that I am grateful.  He also had no use for Harry Potter.  Better children should not read at all than they should read tripe.

Bloom was perhaps the last of a sort of writer-critic who showed up on the New York Times bestseller list and on talk shows beyond BookTV (you know, "This week, live from the Tuscaloosa Book Festival!").  Like Gore Vidal, he and his views were entertaining and often outrageous.  Sometimes he just made stuff up, as in The Book of J, which asserted that the author of the section of Torah known as the Yahwist was a woman.  Well, how can you prove or disprove that?  Few people are in a position to argue with a man who read it in the original Hebrew.  If you're a Sterling professor at Yale, none dare call it bullshit.  Literature has always cherished opinionated mountebanks (in the kindest sense), and Bloom was Samuel Johnson without the Dictionary and the more disturbing physical ailments.

Another day

After a while you run out of ways to describe the SAPFU clusterfuck that one vicious, senile moron has created in the Middle East.  No one should be surprised, because he began his reign of error by announcing that his utterly unqualified slumlord son-in-law would be in charge of bringing peace to the region  --  saying, in effect, "Go fuck yourselves."  Then he rushed off to Saudi Arabia because they let him play with their toys and told him how important he was, just the person to help them with a certain troublesome journalist employed by the Washington Post.  It went downhill faster than Lindsey Vonn after that.

Here's a brief recap, in case you've been lucky enough to be lost on Mount Fuji without wifi all week:

The US shares a large military base in Incirlik with Turkey, which includes fifty nuclear weapons.  At this hour, they are described as being "held hostage" by the Turkish government, which knows how easily the stable genius can change his "mind."  No sign of that.  As the Italian president looked on like an unwilling guest at the Mad Hatter's tea party, he explained, "There's a lot of sand they can play with," whatever that means.  Then he explained that Islamic State, again running amok, is actually afraid of the PKK Kurdish defense force and that the Kurds are "no angels."  In other words, Erdogan told him PKK is a terrorist organization, which has long been the Turkish line.

Then he began slobbering about Nancy Pelosi, Comey, McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and -- you knew  it was coming -- Obama, who probably tried to rig the election against him -- just read it here, I can't paraphrase anymore.  Apparently communists were also involved.  At least President Mattarella didn't have to smile politely as Trump praised his "amazing Italian lawyer Rudy."  Not in front of the cameras anyway.

Then he shared with the world a week-old letter to Erdogan.  He actually urged him, thug to thug, to stop committing crimes against humanity and "make a deal," adding, "Don't be a fool!"  Officials of the Energy and State Department are huddled as I type, trying to figure out how to secure the nukes before Trump gives them away.  Erdogan has always wanted his own nuclear arsenal.  Clearly, no deals are being made; Erdogan is no more impressed with Trump's statesmanship than Kim Jong-un.

No, I'm sorry, there is actually more.  Last August nineteen-year-old Harry Dunn was riding his motorbike in Northamptonshire when Anne Sacoolas, wife of an American diplomat, struck and killed him.  Security video shows she was driving on the wrong side of the road.  Sacoolas returned to the US, claiming diplomatic immunity, and refuses to face British authorities.  It's rather impressive that Trump took time out from all his other self-created crises to meet Dunn's parents and actually made their suffering worse.  It wasn't only that he refused to commit to sending Sacoolas back to the UK.  He actually had her in the next room and was ready to stage a meeting between her and the parents, as on some sleazy reality show.  Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn declined.  Then he described his meeting as "beautiful in a certain way."  The parents used the words "bombshell" and "ambush."  Around that point I lapsed into a fugue state, so I probably missed the official tweet describing them as "nasty" and boasting that he's the best comforter, believe me, far better than Obama, but the Lying media...

I wanted to write about other things.  I'm too tired.

Lara's scheme

Dear Mrs. Eric,

I may call you Lara, mayn't I?  Good.  I see where you justified Big Daddy's treacherous abandonment of the Kurds by saying that "the average American" (which can mean anyone who doesn't enjoy your view from the heights) doesn't even know who they are.  Two minutes online will supply all the information you need .  Did you know, for example, that the military commander Salah ad-Din, a/k/a Saladin, who kicked some Crusader ass in the twelfth century, was a Kurd?  I love Google.  But I wouldn't  expect you to risk your manicure or your precious ignorance that way.  Typing is hard!  And really, that's not what this is about, is it?

This is about making sure Rat Boy stays in the will.  News alert:  There's nothing but debts.  Big Daddy has been living off loans, crimes and selling his office -- what the Constitution calls "emoluments" -- since he bankrupted his last casino.  All that dies with him.  After the reading of the will, expect to exit the attorney's office into the arms of some big, tattooed guys named Sergei.  Russian moneylenders don't take you to court.  They take you to an abandoned warehouse.  Rat Boy and Junior are not qualified for much, and you can't expect a man to deliver pizza with two shattered kneecaps.

What I'm saying, Lara, is you should be putting away a few dollars out of the housekeeping money every week instead of scuttling over to Fox to impersonate Kellyanne Conway.  Maybe learn to use Excel or look into Uber.  The hours are flexible and the money is adequate.  I'm not sure you're cut out for nursing home work.  Even the gravy train doesn't run forever, and one day you'll step off into Shit Station.  Wear boots.

The porn is as high as the elephant's eye

Over the weekend, some lucky donors at the Trump Bedbug Palace in Miami were treated to an artificial video in which Dear Leader, his bone spurs miraculously cured, shoots his media and political enemies (and by extension, the Enemies of the People) in the style of some spy movie I haven't seen, and in a church.  This is what Republicans need before they can achieve orgasm in 2019.  The people who made it have lost a contract to do something similar, I suppose, for the Bernie Sanders campaign.  Why do Democrats hate free speech?

Sometimes you have to be able to read the signs.  Columbus Day must have been replaced by Indigenous Peoples Day, because the Trumpites used the occasion to greet Elizabeth Warren with their "Pocahontas" slur.  In what almost seems a coordinated action, the UK's Daily Mail recognized her front-runner status by accusing her of stealing some recipe years ago.  Interesting, huh?  The Mail is a racist rag which swoons hourly over Prime Minister BloJo, first cousin of the Mail On Sunday which is being sued by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.  A recipe?  I'll bet she dyes her hair, too.

Hey, Donzo!  Look who won the Nobel Peace Prize!  Not you!  Abiy Ahmed Ali, prime minister of the "shithole country" of Ethiopia.  It's in Africa, Donzo, like Gambia and Zambia and Nambia.  To reiterate:  NOT YOU.

We now know her name.  Atatiana Jefferson was gunned down in her bedroom during a wellness check by Officer Aaron Dean.  The Ft. Worth police promptly released a bodycam photo of a handgun somewhere in the house.  This is Texas -- it wouldn't matter if she had had a grenade launcher.  Dean quit before he could be fired and is free on bail (like Amber Guyger) though charged with murder.  The lights were on, the screen door was shut -- I'm going to speculate that it was a hot, humid night -- and Jefferson was playing video games with her eight-year-old nephew.  Nothing puts a law officer in fear for his life like a black woman and a black second-grader armed with the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

During marathon testimony before Congress, Fiona Hill quoted John Bolton as saying, "Giuliani is a hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up."  And that's your job, right, Bolton?  Trouble in paradise.  Hill was the NSC's senior director for Europe and Russia, and the House is fascinated by how the hand grenade got the ambassador to Ukraine fired because she wouldn't take part in Operation Biden.  Mob lawyers used to be a lot smarter.

As expected, the atrocities have begun in the Turkish invasion of Syria.  The general secretary of the Future Syria party, Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf, was "neutralized," as the Turkish government says, along with eight other unarmed civilians on Saturday.  It is not clear if she was raped, stoned and/or beheaded, but who cares?  According to Erdogan's orange-faced enabler, a few sanctions will soon stop the onslaught, so let's pay attention to the real crisis:  WALL!  Besides, Liz "Spawn of" Cheney (R-WY) says it's all the fault of Schiff and Pelosi and their giant witch hoax impeachment.  And yeah, the Russian air force got a tad too eager and bombed a couple of hospitals, but soon Mike Pence will go to Syria and make sure the Christians are OK.  OK?

US forces abandoned their base in Manbij, Syria, so fast, they left a lot of cool stuff behind.  Enjoy some video of Russian mercenaries trying on the CO's slippers and smoking his cigars.  Is this kind of fuckery supposed to happen?  We have no video of British troops in the 1812 White House eating Dolley Madison's dinner, so...

Holiday guest editorial

Discuss.  I'm off.

Wellness check

Do not call the Ft. Worth police if you notice that your neighbor's door is ajar.  Unless she is white.  Do Texas police get any kind of training, or are they just shown all the Death Wish movies?

Today in puppet news:  It looks as if the 1993 Open Skies Treaty will be torn up on orders from Moscow.  The regime is hoping that the impeachment and the betrayal of the Kurds will distract everyone from one more outrage.

In a time of torchlight parades, concentration camps and synagogue shootings, it was inevitable that books would be burned.  Congratulations to Georgia Southern University for being the first.  Go Eagles.

If Elizabeth Warren becomes president, a lot of people will go into physical shock, as when a starving person gorges on chocolate until he dies.  Not only is she astonishingly smart, she's also funny and she doesn't care who knows it.  Real humor, ladies and gentlemen, not feeble taunts and playground nicknames.  At the LGBTQ forum on Thursday she was the star of the show, responding to that gotcha question that if you believe marriage involves one man and one woman, "Then just marry one woman...assuming you can find one."  Thank you, Los Angeles!  And really, there is no other answer; all she added was the Jack Benny timing.  When someone speaking for the superstitious tries to corner her on choice she should respond, "If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one."  Don't tell me what you believe and I won't tell you what I believe, and we'll get along fine.

Evangelical koan:  What could separate a lying, treasonous adulterer from his adoring disciples?  Why, abandoning Syria, with its significant Christian minority, to a rejuvenated Islamic State.  The faith-based have joined farmers, workers and many others in the dawning realization that they have been well and truly punked, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.  It's a while since I read the New Testament, but I distinctly remember a story about a guy who got mugged and left by the side of the road.  None of his own people would help, and he would have died there had not a despised Samaritan come along.  I think the storyteller meant that we're all supposed to help one another, not just people who look like us or share our beliefs.  Maybe the Prosperity Gospel crowd has a different testament.  They don't seem too interested in all those (probable) Catholics in the ICEstapo camps, either.

But they will baptize your ass with extreme prejudice.

So many questions

Why would Pacific Gas and Electric assume that depriving about a million Californians of electricity would prevent wildfires?  When the power goes off, people without generators resort to nineteenth-century forms of illumination like candles, or fire up the barbecue to cook their meat before it spoils.  And the state is on fire anyway.   PG&E assumes it can't be sued, and that's what counts.

Why did Trump and Giuliani ask Rex Tillerson to pressure the Justice Department to drop a money-laundering investigation into Reza Zarrab, a gold-trader and Giuliani client suspected of evading sanctions on Iran?  Wouldn't it make more sense, even to these two numbnuts, to strongarm Jeff Sessions?  If they did, and he told them to kiss both sides of his ass, I may have to revise my opinion of Sessions about .006 percent upward.

Why don't we have morning zoo guys as funny as Lexus and Vovan (real names Alexei Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuzetsov)?  They called Lindsey Graham pretending to be the Turkish defense minister and got him to call the Kurds a "threat" to Turkey.  He also implicated Trump in the Zarrab case.  Clearly Lindsey's ready to lead his master's defense in the Senate.

Why, months after Peter Strzok left the FBI, is Trump still obsessed with his relationship with Lisa Page?  Is there no one who will tell him this is exposing-yourself-at-the-playground-level creepy?

Why does Deutsche Bank not have Trump's tax returns?  Any legit bank wants to see your tax returns before they'll give you a car loan, but a handshake is enough for this serial bankrupt?

With all due respect to Preet Bharara, why should I give a tin-plated fart what George Conway thinks about anything?  His own wife doesn't care.

Do Marsha Blackburn and Jodi Ernst get their hair cut at the (taxpayer subsidized) Senate Hair Care Services barber shop?  I ask because some intrepid girl reporter from the Moonie Times thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should, just like the rest of the guys.  Instead of that, she went to a private salon, spent her own money and even left a tip, and was not a bitch to the people who work there.  Her sentence was to be compared to Eva Peron, or Eva Gabor, or one of those other foreign tarts.  As if on cue, Trey Gowdy emerged from seclusion to remind us why no one should patronize government barbers, no matter how cheap:

Fun with the First Amendment

So many people are having their free speech stolen right out of their mouths, it's a disgrace.

The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Atlanta Braves 13-1 yesterday.  You might think that was because of the six earned runs Mike Foltynewicz gave up in the first inning and the Braves' lack of hitting thereafter.  You would be wrong.  It happened because the liberal socialist PC police have discouraged fans from performing their tomahawk chop with accompanying "war chant."  Apparently some people consider it racist, like the red-face team logo.  Political correctness gone mad.  Next thing you know they won't let some C-list celebrity sing the national anthem.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who is theoretically running for president, says she may boycott the next primary debate on Tuesday to protest the DNC-media conspiracy against her.  She is polling at 0.5 percent, so I would like the party to explain how the hell she was invited at all.  Please show your work.  Rep. Gabbard is best known for being a Bashar al-Assad booster, so it might have been fun to hear her talk about that.

Mayor Jacob Frey of Minnianapolis, as Trump pronounces it, tried to deprive the Dear Leader of his right to free speech, as if anyone could.  He wanted the city reimbursed for the expense of a campaign event, instead of acknowledging what an honor it was.   It's now clear that there was plenty of speech between Trump and Erdogan -- one could almost call it a plot -- and the bombing began before the Kurds even had time to get their children out of danger.  The word "genocide" is being used more and more.  That double-stuff Trump Tower in Istanbul came at a high price in blood, but it's only the blood of Muslims.  Where were they during the Tet Offensive?

One vanity candidate ends his campaign, another pops up.  It's like Wack-a-Billionaire.  Hardly had Howard Schultz returned to whatever he does post-Starbucks than Tom Steyer began running commercials about all the great stuff he'll do for the working class to save them (and his own bankroll) from the sinister plans Elizabeth Warren has for them, like taxes on the rich and health care for the rest.  Steyer was an early proponent of impeaching the motherfucker, so in a sense the country has caught up with him.  He can afford a lot of free speech, especially the kind you buy from TV stations.





 

Many men will run away

I seem to remember that last June the leaders of several Western democracies and Donald Trump gathered in Normandy to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Allied invasion.   Trump hates any event where he has to share the spotlight with real leaders, so he spent most of his time spewing abuse at Nancy Pelosi.  I can't remember how she had chafed his enormous ass that week; it hardly matters.  The adults signed a D-Day Proclamation at the bottom, while Trump's imbecilic scrawl appears at the top.  This is how he honored the Americans buried behind the beachhead.

Trump has no idea when the Second World War occurred, or why, or why it matters, but the single word Normandy lodged among the spirochetes in his very good brain.  Today, as Turkey and its Russian supporters unleashed hell on the Kurds in Syria, he explained that we don't owe them a thing because -- I swear -- "they didn't help us with Normandy."  Once again, he was right to pull out US forces because he is never wrong.  He asked President Erdogan to take it easy.  Not his job to tell other countries what to do, unless they might have something he can use to shit on a Democrat, or Ivanka, Inc., needs another sweatshop.

Only last night Lindsey Graham was all puffed up, declaring that Congress will just about sanction the daylights out of Turkey if they persist.  After sleeping on it, Senator Purtymouth decided that his Republican colleagues should be forced to sign a loyalty oath to their Dear Leader.  Lindsey, if they have to sign an oath, it sounds like Moscow Mitch is not really in control of things.  Was it that mean old Mitt Romney who upset you?  Did you lose your list of nerfball questions for Giuliani?  Have a lie-down in the hammock, honey, this is only going to get worse.

Now let me see...who benefits the most from NATO infighting?  What a lovely birthday present for Putin.  For Christmas, maybe we could sell him Alaska at the 1863 price.  When you start selling people out, it's hard to stop.



 

Anonymous redux

Remember the anonymous op-ed?  In the New York Times?  September 5, 2018?  "I am part of the resistance inside the Trump White House," etc.  Despite feverish speculation and even more feverish in-house investigation, the author was never identified.  A year later the stakes are much higher -- half the country supports impeachment, according to the latest poll -- and the Great and Powerful Trump is more obsessed every hour with unmasking and punishing the individual known as the Whistleblower.  He wants polygraph testing on everybody in sight.  If that doesn't work, maybe waterboarding.  America has experts in both techniques.  Too bad they're equally useless in getting at the truth.

Then the 38-year-old mayor of Minneapolis got fresh with Dear Leader, demanding that the Trump campaign pony up $500,000 to cover the cost of security for this week's hatenanny.  In order of mounting dementia he was denounced as a "lightweight," a "liberal" and a member of the "radical left" (I don't do Twitter, by now he could be a Bolshevik).  His response:  "Yawn.  Welcome to Minneapolis where we pay our bills, we govern with integrity, and we love all of our neighbors."  Translation:  Stay home, short-fingered vulgarian.  We know about all the other cities you've stiffed on police overtime and venue fumigation.

More bad news:  "China has long pursued the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.  We have no intention of intervening in the internal affairs of the United States," said Geng Shuang, spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry.  So no Biden dirt for you even if we had some, he meant.  Oh, and don't let your private citizens comment on the violence in Hong Kong, if you want the National Basketball League to keep making money here.  The general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, had tweeted support for the demonstrators; either the team or the league made him delete it.  Eight hundred million viewers is a lot of eyeballs to sell to advertisers.

Don't put the truth serum away just yet -- more backtalk from the National Security Council.  No spine?  Got "rolled" by Turkey?  How many NSC officials does Soros have on his payroll?  How do you expect Trump to keep his Enemies List up to date if you insist on anonymity?  Very very unfair.  It's simply not true that he got nothing:  there are two Trump Towers in Istanbul.  The same anonymous NSC official says the US should support creation of a Kurdish state, adding, "It would be another Israel in the region."  But would they call their capital Ivankastan?

When you see this picture -- the cheesy grin, the Taco Bell version of Mexican food -- your impulse is to change the page rapidly.  A hero who didn't spotted a stockpile of Sudafed in a handy drawer, enough to induce hallucinations and insomnia in an entire division.  At the very least it's a drug law violation.   At most, paranoid psychosis.  Sleep well.  He doesn't.

Did Moscow Mitch get his wife Elaine Chao a cabinet job so she could direct millions of federal dollars to Kentucky?  It would be irresponsible to say so, wouldn't it?  So I'll let Business Insider do it for me.

If you need a laugh, just search the words Florida Man.  Here's quintessential FM Matt Gaetz explaining that "kangaroo courts" were invented by Captain Kangaroo.  Right after Bunny Rabbit was indicted for insider trading.

 

Homelands

Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazis brutalized and murdered all the Jews and Roma they could get their hands on.  In 1948 a Jewish homeland was established in the Middle East, putting an end to state-sponsored genocide attempts.  The Roma, however, are still scapegoated and harassed all over Europe.  There is a lesson here.

For all we hear about the global corporate economy, nationalism has not died.  Marginalized peoples are not safe until they have a state of their own.  The Tutsi of Rwanda, the Uighurs of China and indigenous groups everywhere have faced extermination or forced "assimilation," usually because somebody coveted their land and its natural resources.  Again we are reminded of the probable fate of the Kurds.

When the modern-day Middle East was mapped a century ago by a few European statesmen (and Woodrow Wilson), the Kurds were divided among Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, where they have usually struggled for cohesion and survival.  In 1990 they were an integral part of Operation Desert Storm, which drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait and protected the oilfields of Saudi Arabia.  That phase of the forever war ended with Saddam Hussein still in power; George H.W. Bush encouraged the Kurds to rise up against him and promptly abandoned them to his vengeance.  In spite of this, Kurds joined the allies a generation later to free Iraq and Syria from Islamic State.

Well, it's 2019 and time to betray the Kurds again.  Trumputin spent most of the morning on a series of tweets that read like psychiatric case notes, whining about how much money it costs to keep troops in Syria, how other countries take advantage of us, how he personally destroyed Islamic State (you know how lazy Obama is) and how great a tactician he is, the gist of which is that he wants to remove the troops and let his good friend Erdogan do whatever he wants in the region.  (And while Turkey wipes out the Kurds, Russia consolidates its hold on Syria.)  It's all good, including this final outburst of demented egomania:

"...If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I've done before!).  They must, with Europe and others, watch over...the captured ISIS fighters and families....THE USA IS GREAT!"

"...The endless and ridiculous wars are ENDING!  We will be focused on the big picture, knowing we can always go back & BLAST!"

Nothing excites a coward like violence someplace else.  This particular coward is on record as believing he can destroy Afghanistan in a week, because he has no idea how big it is and because he's been itching to nuke something since election night.  (The relative lack of grammatical mistakes suggests this was actually written by another coward, probably Miller.)

Ever drop a rock on an anthill?  That's what it looked like.  Lindsey Graham says he talked to Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, and that doesn't happen often.  He's ready to introduce sanctions on Turkey if they invade Syria.  Susan Collins twisted her hankie and called the withdrawal "terribly unwise."  Ben Sasse finger-wagged, "Erdogan should carefully consider his privileged status as a NATO member.  The American people don't partner with genocidal regimes."  (I passed some water through my nose when I read that -- good one, Ben!)  Even Brian Kilmeade expressed reservations from his couch.  But the biggest and funniest squeal came from Pat Robertson, who says Trump may lose "the mandate of  heaven" if he abandons the Kurds.

Too late.  There is video purporting to be an air strike on the Kurdish-controlled border crossing between Syria and Iraq.  Erdogan doesn't believe in letting the grass grow under his feet.

United Nations, if you're listening:  Kurdistan now.

Do they know it's Friday?

I finally caught up with the Burkman-Wohl Comedy Hour, which all the networks inexplicably ignored.  Never mind, this is why we have the Internets.  The boys are getting much better at this.  After striking out with their Mueller and Buttigieg non-shockers they remembered to hire someone to play the role of Accuser and provided him a script with vivid details (lime-green strap-on dildo!).  All I would criticize is their failure to include a big name for the three-way.  (AOC?  Rachel Maddow?)

The one thing Senator Warren's campaign needed was a memorable slogan, and thanks to Jack and Jake it has one:  "#Cougar2020" is trending, as the kids say.  The Senator tweeted, "It's always a good day to be reminded that I got where I am because a great education was available for $50 a semester at the University of Houston (go Cougars!).  We need to cancel student debt and make college free for everyone who wants it."


Make sure Burkman and Wohl get free tee shirts.  You can't buy publicity like this.

Over on the Fox News website, where Trump will never see it because he doesn't know how to use a computer, Andrew "Real Judge" Napolitano writes that Trump's July 25 shakedown conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky "manifested both criminal and impeachable behavior."  He goes on, "Trump also suggested that his impeachment would produce a second American Civil War.  This language is a dog whistle to the deranged."  I suspect Napolitano's employment at Fox may be nearing its end, but he has a chance to be the first judge ever to appear on Dancing With the Stars, so it's not all bad.

If you were distracted by real life, or comatose, or just refused to pay attention, the last three miserable months of Trump are laid out by Eliot Weinberger in the London Review of Books.  Perhaps British readers will learn from our disastrous mistakes.  Nah, they already have an actual democracy, and very few of their readers were voting for BloJo anyway.  The same September 26 issue also has an article on Enoch Powell, the father of modern British racism.

"A John LeCarre novel starring the Marx Brothers" is how Charlie Pierce describes the Ukraine Follies.  Gee, I wish I'd said that, everybody's repeating it around the club.  "Nobody will trust American diplomats again for a very long time, nor should they."  A sober reminder that whoever becomes the forty-sixth president will have a bigger task than hiring exterminators for the White House and moving Andrew Jackson back to the cellar.  Mr. Pierce is not at all certain this country will recover from its experiment in reality TV government.  You know, I was watching the hearings back in the summer of 1973 when Alexander Butterfield was asked if there were tapes of conversations in the Oval Office.  I remember the pause -- it's about to hit the fan -- before he said, "Yes."  Now imagine Nixon and the guys standing on the lawn, yelling "Perjury is a very hard rap to prove!  A million dollars -- we can get that!  Rose, you'll have to erase some stuff before we hand over the tapes!"  Why is this taking so long?

High winds and rain in Alabama.  Better late than never, OK?

The conscious of the nation

In less than two hours, the dynamic duo of Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl have promised to introduce the "ex-Marine body builder" who has been having an affair with Elizabeth Warren.  Right there in Jack's driveway (the announcement, not the affair), where he previously introduced the woman who was assaulted by Robert Mueller, or would have if she had shown up.  Jack was so focused on his bombshell revelation that day, you'll recall, that he didn't even remember to zip his fly.  Then there was the young man who was attacked by Pete Buttigieg, who also turned out to be non-existent.  But this time, well, to quote their announcement, "These charges will shock the conscious of the nation."  So I can't stir from my computer, since I consider myself almost completely conscious.  I'm just not sure I can still be shocked.

I can be pleasantly surprised, as for instance when a Texas jury found Amber Guyger guilty of murdering Botham Jean in his own home last year, since he was a black man and she was a white police officer.  The crucial details -- own home, unarmed, wearing only underwear -- clearly made this case different from countless others, not to mention her failure to perform even perfunctory first aid as he lay dying.  After the verdict was announced, as Guyger was being led off to spend her first night in jail -- incredibly, she had been free on bail -- the dead man's brother Brandt Jean embraced her and expressed forgiveness.  This may have influenced the jury to sentence her to ten years out of a possible ninety-nine, in spite of her racist tweets introduced by the prosecution.  Weirdest of all, Judge Tammy Kemp, who is black, then gave Guyger a hug and a Bible.  What, no Spingarn Medal?  So she will do probably five years and she won't be allowed to vote in Texas.  I have no right to tell people who they can and can't forgive.  Stephen Robinson does it better.

Over on the lawn of the vermin-infested White House, Trump started the day with another episode of "If You Think That's Impeachable, Watch This!"  Now he wants the Chinese government to invent some dirt on Hunter and/or Joe Biden.  Because why wouldn't they help him spend another four years erecting tariff barriers and soliciting trademarks for himself and Princess Ivanka, while impeding their quiet diplomatic efforts to rein in Kim Jong-un?   If China demurs, Trump can always ask those shithole African countries to join his campaign.  I'm assuming Prince Bone Saw and Brazilian Mussolini are already on board.  He's also telling people that both Pence and Pompeo knew all about the Zelensky phone call; in fact, Pompeo was listening on the extension.  So that's two more thrown under the bus.  (Chief Brody:  "You're going to need a bigger bus.")

Fox News has dispensed with the services of Todd Starnes, who only last week informed viewers that Democrats are not only un-Christian but almost certainly worship Moloch, a god you don't hear much about anymore.  I guess "Moloch" sounds a little too much like "Murdoch."  Some older Foxters may have become confused.

Rudolph Giuliani has been visiting Paul Manafort in prison, for reasons which certainly have nothing to do with Ukraine.  He probably wanted to bring Big Paulie a Bible and some pastries from Veniero's.  And talk about a pardon.  Mmm...Veniero's cannoli taste just like freedom.

"Go big or go home" was the advice some Wisconsin dairy farmers got from their Secretary of Agriculture "Sonny" Perdue this week.  In other words, if small farmers can't compete with agribusiness, fuck 'em.  Oh, and thanks for your support.  Made all the difference in the Dear Leader's epochal Electoral College victory.  Remember to vote before y'all go out to the barn and blow your brains out next November.

It only took nine months but Trump has unveiled his nickname for the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee:  Shifty Schiff.  I doubled over, too.  He also says Schiff is not fit to carry Pompeo's "blank strap," because he is very presidential and would not use a coarse word like "jock," even while calling Whistleblower's complaint "bullshit."  Also he will no longer call him "Adam Schitt."  Dignity, always dignity.  Speaking of which, have you heard about the moat with the alligators and the poisonous snakes?  And "hereby ordering" border guards to shoot asylum seekers (legs only)?  If you put this stuff in Japanese manga, the publisher would turn it down.

Boris Johnson has his own slimy Stephen Miller-type henchman called Dominic Cummings, and between them they evicted twenty-one MPs from the Conservative Party for voting the wrong way, not very smart considering how shaky their majority already was.  I wonder if Republicans who vote against Trump in the few remaining primaries will be similarly purged.

The hour has come and gone with no sign of the Burkman-Wohl comedy hour.  Should I turn on Fox?

No.  I shouldn't.