Springtime for Twitler

"Take a knee" means something different to police.  Matt McKnight shared video of Seattle police arresting two men in the act of looting a T-Mobile store.  They are wrestled to the ground, and then police kneel on their necks.  That both appear to be white is beside the point.  Is this a standard practice taught in police academies?

How about driving police vans into crowds?  This echo of Charlottesville happened in New York City, whose mayor says it's the people's fault for standing in the street.  It was "upsetting," DiBlasio added, "and I wish the officers hadn't done that."  Do you know Susan Collins, mayor?

In Louisville police rammed and destroyed bottled water set out for marchers.  In Salt Lake City they knocked down an old man who was standing by the road.  In Minneapolis they fired paintballs at people standing on their porch while shouting, "Light 'em up!"  And everywhere reporters were assaulted and maced.  I suppose all those officers were "in fear for my life."

What do we do when we are in fear for our lives?  "Nine one one, what is your emergency?"  "A cop shot my nana with a paintball."  "What is your location?"  "Uh...never mind."

Welcome to Trumplandia.  You're on your own.

Just what we want

Pandemic, race war, mass unemployment, collapsing dams, vote suppression, homicide hornets...I feel like something is missing.

"So you think we can have a slightly enhanced hurricane season?  That's just what we want, that's just what we want."

Do I have to tell you?  Homeland Security and FEMA officials had to brief The Leader on the coming summer, and his response was typically inappropriate.  He did add, "Let's see, hopefully that won't be the case," but it was too late.  He takes a senile pride in being number one in coronavirus cases and covid deaths, and the Resolute desk barely conceals his arousal at the violence sweeping the country.  Putin must wish he could have found a less stupid reality TV star to do his bidding -- Mama June, say, or The Situation.

Trump's not exactly using Twitter to "glamorize violence" today, but he can't stop talking about it.  Usually he only gets this excited when Princess opens a new sweatshop in China.  He decided we need a lesson about one of the more shameful episodes in our history:  "Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey will never be mistaken for the late, great General Douglas McArthur [sic] or great fighter George Patton...Get tough and fight (and arrest the bad ones).  STRENGTH!"  True, Mayor Frey would never mount a white horse and burn an encampment of hungry veterans in violation of orders from his superior. (All right, who told Trump about the Bonus Army?  Barron?)  Even Bill Kristol thought this was nuts:  "Not to over-interpret Trump's idiocy, but the president of the United States is basically salivating at the thought of using the U.S. military in American cities."

But they are arresting the bad ones.  That's how we know that most of them are what Orval Faubus and Bull Connor used to call "outside agitators."  The governor and the public safety commissioner say eighty percent of those arrested came from outside Minnesota, and many have links to "white supremacist groups and organized crime."  Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul thinks they're using the murder of George Floyd "as a cover to create havoc."

Taking their cue from Trump, the police know who to go after:  the press.  Like Derek Chauvin, they aren't even a little shy about having their pictures taken.  Omar Jimenez of CNN was on the air when he and his crew were arrested; they were freed after Jeff Zucker phoned Governor Walz in a rage.  In Louisville, Kaitlin Rust was live on WAVE when a police officer began firing pepper pellets at her.  Linda Tirado, author of Hand To Mouth:  Living In Bootstrap America, was hit with a "rubber bullet" and has lost the sight in her left eye.  So buy her book now.  It's the least we can do.

Wise guys and Proud Boys don't come to town to steal televisions and break windows.  You can be sure their agenda is more Reichstag Fire, creating the conditions for some kind of "national emergency" proclamation involving martial law.  No big, just enough to cancel the elections Trump increasingly dreads and intern a few thousand "troublemakers."  I hope I'm wrong, but this is uncharted territory.  I wonder if our First Amendment is strong enough to stand up to their Second.

 



 

FYI

A commenter who goes by Our Man In Redneckistan posted this over at Wonkette.  I share with thanks.

WTF Friday, Part ?

I would give almost anything for a day not completely Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole mad.  When was the last one?

After three nights of demonstrations that left one man dead (possibly shot by a shopkeeper) and a police station and library burned, former officer Derek Chauvin, last seen with his knee on George Floyd's neck, was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.  It sounds like the Hennepin County attorney is already lining up lesser and lesser-still charges to give the jury a choice.  Earlier today he insisted it was too soon for an arrest because of "other evidence that doesn't support a criminal charge."  I guess he changed his mind.  Now his problem will be finding twelve people who haven't seen the appalling video.  The preliminary autopsy report contains the intriguing phrase "no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation," so the Floyd family has arranged for a private autopsy.  It's pretty certain he didn't die of covid.

The death of Breonna Taylor on March 13 got little attention because of the pandemic.  That ended last night, when demonstrators in Louisville memorialized her along with George Floyd.  This one is even worse, because she was killed in her own home by police who broke in with a "no-knock" warrant at the wrong address.  They shot the EMT eight times.  No police arrested or charged.  In Louisville*, seven people were shot.  Demonstrations in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Houston and other cities were angry but nobody died.

There is, of course, no crisis that Trump can't aggravate and inflame.  Last night he was issuing threats to Minneapolis's "Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey" about how he would "assume control" (whatever that means) if the city was not brought "under control," and concluding with a quote from a long-ago Miami police chief:  "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."  This caused Twitter to flag him for violating policy regarding "the glorification of violence."  By now there must be complaints of censorship from Herr Twitler, but I'm not motivated to go looking for them.   Trump hates censorship.  So why did his campaign try to get Nick Anderson's cartoon pulled from the online retailer Redbubble?  Definitely not because it compared him to Jim Jones and his Trumpanzees to the cult People's Temple.  Definitely not.  Copyright issue.  It seems you can't draw a MAGA hat without the express written consent of the hypocrite-in-chief.  After some prompting from First Amendment types, Redbubble told them to schtup mud.

There were no buses promising jillions of dollars in savings when America threw off the shackles of the World Health Organization, as with Boris's Brexit Lie, but mark your calendars, we're free at last.  And what better time than the middle of a hundred-year pandemic?  Watch out, UNESCO, you're next.

Laura Ingraham is having a Pulitzer week.  On Wednesday she devoted her hour to an in-depth investigation of whether Joe Biden farted during an interview.  (Conclusion:  yes.)  Last night she assured her black viewers, if any, that Trump can feel the pain of police brutality because he has suffered so much at the hands of Robert Mueller and the FBI.  Once again the name of Rosa Parks emerged from her mouth because nobody was there to slap her silly.  So when Trump called the Minneapolis protesters "thugs" it was a gesture of brotherhood and not a signal to his cult.

Don't get mad, get elected:  Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, is running for the Miami-Dade County Commission.  Hillary Clinton is raising money for her.  Don't worry, Trump will get around to it.  He's busy tweeting abuse of China, Minneapolis, Joe Scarborough and Twitter.

Mitch McConnell doesn't see much of a future for himself or his party:  He's pressuring federal judges to retire this year so he, uh, so Trump can appoint younger, worse ones.  Glass half full?




*I didn't know which Louis was the Louisville Louis, but apparently it was the unlucky one.  A protester broke off the right hand of the giant statue of Louis XVI last night.  Evidently the head wouldn't come loose.  Maybe next time.










 

License to kill

In the midst of Executively Ordering that terrible vengeance will befall Twitter if they demur, even a little, about his lunatic posts, Trump found time to re-tweet (and presumably endorse) this psychopath declaring, "The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat."  Over to you, Mr. Dorsey.  Will you add, "Get the facts on murdering Democrats"?  May I suggest attaching a clip of the JFK motorcade?

This country is full of idiots who take their cues from Trump on self-medicating with hydroxychloroquine, bleach, and now probably insulin; on treating all women as sex toys; on blaming coronavirus on anyone who looks Asian; on investing in assault weapons instead of face masks; on terrorizing reporters, government officials who stand up to him, and even healthcare workers he basically accused of stealing supplies.  How do you think this incitement to murder will play with the Trumpanzees?

The Pennsylvania Legislature didn't need much prompting.  Rep. Russ Diamond tested positive for covid and let his Republican colleagues know, including Speaker Mike Turzai, but nobody bothered to alert the Democrats.  Particularly pissed is Rep. Brian Sims, who recently donated a kidney.  He thinks Turzai and Diamond should resign over this little mix-up.  Another reason to kill dislike Democrats -- no sense of humor.  


 

 This is Bob Kroll, president of the Minneapolis police union, at a Trump rally last year.  He gets it.  He doesn't need some minor politician in a rented cowboy costume to tell him that the blacks hate Trump and vote Democrat and what he should do about it.  He and his brothers in blue (and red) know how to handle uppity perps.  The National Guard is in Minneapolis because they handled George Floyd.  "The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable.  The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around," Kroll told the rally.  No arguments there.  And no wonder that Twitter is lit up today with #Ivehadenough.

We have all had enough.  And I'm afraid we're going to get more.  This is shaping up as the worst summer since 1861.

The Great Depression

I thought the Census Bureau had its hands full just counting Americans, but they apparently make time to ask about our feelings and who should host the Oscars and issues like that.  This is how we know that a third of the population reports signs of clinical anxiety or depression.  I'm no mental health professional, cod knows, but I wonder if self-diagnosis might be a little imprecise.  Maybe you just got laid off, or watched a particularly depressing Lifetime movie, or ate some bad cottage cheese.  (You can't tell with cottage cheese, it always tastes like compost.)  The doorbell rings and instead of your Thai food or the hand sanitizer you ordered a month ago, it's somebody who wants to collect census information.  How many children still live with you or bring you their laundry?  Do you identify as European, Caucasian, White or Other?  Do you have a nagging sense of non-specific dread?  What do you think, Census Person?

Anyone who is not depressed is not paying attention.

Trump is right!  Voting by mail is liable to fraud.  A postal worker in West Virginia was caught changing party preferences on ballot applications from Democratic to Republican.  Last July a Republican operative in North Carolina was charged with fraud in a get-out-the-vote move.  I'm confused -- it sounds like Joe Biden should be the one complaining about corruption here.

Instead, Trump is still shit-raging about all the illegal ballots being illegally sent out to illegals in California (which he lost bigly), only this time there's pushback.  Twitter still lacks the gumption to close his account, or even that of his lapdog Rubio, but it does append a link inviting readers to "Get the facts about mail-in ballots."  The nerve!  Treating a documented liar like a documented liar.  Naturally he's even more apoplectic about that, so expect an added link that says something like "Get the facts about the First Amendment."  I think Trump should boycott Twitter.  That would show them.

As we close in on 100,000 dead, the CDC has more good news:  the Covid antibody test is wrong about half the time.  If only we knew which half.

When does Trump need a "very full report" instead of sharing what his "gut" tells him?  When reporters ask him about the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  The mayor dismissed four officers and called for at least one to be charged, but Trump's attitude can be understood from this gem in 2017, a speech calling on police to "not be too nice" with suspects, ha ha.  We learned today that Mr. Floyd was arrested for resembling someone who may have passed a counterfeit bill in a deli, so not really a desperate character.  Maybe black people should just stop looking like one another, which confuses the police.  A demonstration last night in Minneapolis was broken up with stun grenades and tear gas, just as the armed uprisings of white covidiots in Lansing were not.

Depressed yet?  Here's another one for Minnesota:  Trump is pushing the MyPillow guy to run for governor in 2022.  Two words to make the laughter die in your mouth:  Jesse Ventura.

India and China have moved troops to their Himalayan border.  This posturing by two nuclear powers is the ninth most-read story in the Guardian, well behind a review of a Netflix series about Jeffrey Epstein.

The newest Senator Kelly Loeffler will not be investigated any further by the Justice Department for insider trading.  Or to put that in Rightzish, she has been totally exonerated.  The joyous news came just as her husband Jeff Sprecher's million dollar check to America First Action (Trump) cleared.  As I recall, the Constitution spells out two impeachable offenses (treason and bribery) and leaves the rest (high crimes and misdemeanors) to the imagination.  Covered!

Larry Kramer, playwright and activist in the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, has died of pneumonia at 84.  Who will be the Kramer of covid?  He wanted people to get angry about needless suffering and death.  I'm angry enough to make a suggestion.  Every fool who won't wear a mask and even attacks people who do needs an indelible mark -- a tattoo, a microchip -- so he won't get a ventilator when the time comes.  For you, Larry.

We all know who the real victim of this global pandemic is, and it is Donald J. Trump.  Everyone let him down, even Melania.  Read Gabriel Sherman and --- get angry.  Anger is better than depression.  Larry Kramer taught us that.  Why didn't the Census ask if we're angry?

The fog

A vortex of crazy has been detected in the Southeast.  Prepare to evacuate when orders are given.

CNN sent Natasha Chen to report on beachgoers Saturday.  On Tybee Island, Georgia, she and the mayor were harassed for wearing facemasks.  Chen traveled up the coast to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where another fool yelled an ethnic slur and blamed her for causing the pandemic.  He requested that she leave "his" country.  Chen was born in California.

Another female reporter, Gaynor Hall of WGN-TV, was on air when she was grabbed by a man who yelled, "Fuck her right in the pussy!"  Evidently a Trump tribute act.

The vortex also manifested in Frankfort, Kentucky, where Governor Andy Beshear was hanged in effigy by some Memorial Day celebrants who disagreed with his coronavirus policies.  Wimps.  This guy in  North Carolina has offered to kill anyone who makes him mask up.  And this guy in New Mexico, a Republican county commissioner, concurs.

Joe and Jill Biden laid a wreath at a cemetery in Delaware yesterday, and both wore face masks.  Over at Fox, Brit Hume and Terry "Get a Brain" Moran decided this was as ridiculous as Michael Dukakis that one time he put on a helmet and climbed into a tank.  Of course, millions of other Americans were not wearing helmets that day, and thousands had not died of Covid, but they still found it hilarious.  Because pandemics are funny as hell.

Trump says he is all finished with his course of "hydroxychloroquine" and now wants something else to take.  At a press conference to announce Medicare changes (and court the older voters who are having second thoughts), it suddenly occurred to him:  "I don't use insulin.  Should I be?  Huh?  I never thought about it."  When he finds out you have to inject it, he'll be on to another miracle elixir that does not require ouchies.

Maybe Biden needs insulin.  He has been diagnosed with the dementia shuffle by some medical experts at Gateway Pundit.  You remember them -- they warned five years ago of Hillary Clinton's impending death.  Or was it her alien baby?  Anyway, it might distract from Trump's inability to balance his bone spurs on his shoe lifts and stand still for ten seconds.  The resemblance to Hitchcock is becoming more pronounced.

Where will the vortex appear next?  The RNC is shopping for a convention venue that won't be in "Shutdown mood" come August and Brian Kemp was first in the door, promising that Georgia would love to host thousands of virus-carriers from all over the country, no tests, no masks, no problem!  Help us burn an effigy of Anthony Fauci  in front of the CDC.  Y'all come!

Infrastructure Week

When a police officer killed Eric Garner with an illegal chokehold, the grand jury (i.e. the Richmond County, New York, district attorney) did not indict him.  The justice system is based on deterrence -- make an example of a criminal so others at least hesitate to do the same thing.  The system doesn't work if you don't use it.

Something to keep in mind as you watch this video of a black man being "arrested" by a white officer in Minneapolis.  He was not deterred from handcuffing the man, pressing his face into the pavement until his nose bled, and kneeling on his neck as he begged for his life.  He died of a "medical incident," whatever that means, apprehended in the act of -- forgery?  Unarmed.  In front of witnesses, one of whom made the video.  The officer is on paid administrative leave, so no need to start a BlueLivesMatter GoFundMe for him just yet.  Rush and Hannity will let you know when.

White people (some of them) were starting to examine their consciences for signs of racism.  It's almost as if the last several years have given them permission to relax and let their hate flag fly again.  Sometimes the results are more satisfying, as when a man asked a woman to leash her dog, which was digging up bushes in Central Park.  (There's a place for dogs to run unleashed, but this wasn't it.)  In response, Karen pulled out her phone and said, "I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life."  Christian Cooper made this video of her doing that, but this time no one was arrested.  Instead Karen (real name Amy Cooper, no relation they both hope) may lose her job.  If not for the atrocity in Minneapolis, she would be today's Worst Wypipo in the World.

For all his big talk, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey does nothing to deter hate and lies on his platform.  Some accounts have been closed, but it doesn't stop others from opening.  Dorsey will have another chance -- Timothy Klausutis has asked him to delete Trump's tweets demanding the arrest and probably execution of Joe Scarborough in the 2001 death of his wife Lori.  Not all the thousands of idiot conspiracy theories, personal insults, semi-literate rants and threats against individuals and countries, just the one he's currently obsessed with, despite Lori Klausutis's death being ruled accidental.  (A heart problem caused her to lose consciousness and fall, striking her head on a desk.  The desk happened to be in the office of her employer, then-Rep. Scarborough.)  Dorsey probably thinks that if he deletes one set of Trump lies, people will expect him to get rid of them all.  Next thing you know, his most prominent user will move over to 8Chan with the other neo-Nazis.  Don't look for trouble, Jack, or you might be the subject of semi-literate rants on your own damn platform.  How ironic.

I would respect YouTube more if they had removed Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans to deter others from promoting nonsense about climate change, but it was a simple copyright issue.  Moore is therefore free to visit Bill Maher, CNN and anyplace else that will have him, and talk about how the scientists are all wrong and the fossil fuel purveyors are right.  Additionally, he can now complain about censorship.  Moore apparently wants to replace John McCain as our official Maverick, someone who once took a principled stand about one thing and will ride it like a mobility scooter for the rest of his life.

Nothing deterred Americans from crowding the beaches, parks and eateries yesterday, in a sort of Masque of the Red, White and Blue Death.  Like cranky children they're tired of being told what to do and how to avoid possibly mortal illness, so they just decided to ignore the stinky old coronavirus and have fun.  As usual, two movie lines jostled in my head.  Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws) watching an overloaded boat head out of the harbor and muttering, "You're all gonna die."  And Greta Garbo (Ninotchka) bringing her comrades news of the Moscow show trials:  "There are going to be fewer but better Russians.")  And somewhere in there, the title song from Mel Brooks's little-known The Twelve Chairs:  "Hope for the best, expect the worst, You could be Tolstoy or Fannie Hurst..."  What is wrong with me?


Update:  The man who died in Minneapolis was named George Floyd, and four police officers have now been dismissed.











 

Hitler's alligator

Some days you start at the periphery and work in to -- what?  As we know, things fall apart, the center cannot hold.  Everything is flying away from galactic central point at the speed of thought and one day our insignificant little star, the sun, will gutter and go out like a Gwyneth Paltrow crotch candle.  So, Jupiter.

Jupiter was the Moscow Zoo alligator who died today at 84.  He was born in the United States in 1936 and given to the Berlin Zoo.  It was bombed in 1943 and for the next three years he wandered the streets (or possibly sewers) presumably living off Berliners.  British troops discovered him in 1946, which must have been quite the Two Ronnies sketch, and gave him to the Soviets as fast as possible, and they sent him to the Moscow Zoo.  (He was treated a lot better than most Germans in Soviet hands.)  I've seen The Third Man about a hundred times and I know Jupiter should have been repatriated (was he born/hatched in Jupiter, Florida?), but what the hell, we had lots of gators at the time.  I guess they fed him well because most gators live to be around fifty, though there's one in Belgrade who claims to be in his nineties.  Says he knew Gavrilo Princip but the numbers don't add up.  Anyway, Jupiter RIP.

In other animal news, senior economic adviser Kevin Hassett went on CNN to offer cheerful predictions of recovery and to say the quiet parts out loud, referring to the American workforce as "human capital stock," which sounds like something Smithers would say to Mr. Burns.  Any day now they'll be heading back to work, marching in lockstep like the shift workers in Metropolis, making America greater than ever, so much greatness.

Aboveground the Leader was busy, golfing away like a man half his weight age, then back to the Shite House for some insult-tweeting about female Democrats, followed by random abuse of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Joe Scarborough and Jeff Sessions.  Then it was time to attack the media for questioning the appropriateness of playing with toys in the middle of a pandemic and on a weekend supposedly devoted to war dead.  His newest re-tweet ghost writer is somebody called John Stahl, a loser who failed to get elected to the House from California and has a nice line in trash-talk that saves Donzo a lot of time.   And the death toll from Trumpvirus inexorably closed in on 100,000.  Laid a wreath and sent the First Escort out to lay another one.  Working!

Trump continues to maintain that Jeff Sessions was "not mentally qualified" to be attorney general, meaning he was willing to perjure himself but not to derail the Mueller investigation.  He has no qualms about Mike Pompeo, who showed up on a right-wing fringe channel in Australia to threaten the government over a road-building partnership between China and the state of Victoria.  Within hours the US Embassy had to clean up the mess caused by the Secretary of State's verbal diarrhea, which is how we live now.

Is Twitler itching for the howls of the mob?  What do you think?  He spent a significant portion of the day railing at the Democratic governor of North Carolina for suggesting that a packed crowd of sweating, drooling, orgasming Republicans in the Spectrum Center might be unwise, and threatening to move the August hatesapalooza to a friendlier state no longer in "Shutdown mood."  I'm sorry, Governor Cooper, when he's right, he's right.  Jam them in there ass-cheek by swollen jowl, just in time for the late-summer surge.  Coronavirus is licking its lips.  (I know, viruses don't have lips.  Go with me.)  I see the arena has a homicide hornet over the door, so maybe you could release a few thousand of those, too.

The rest of the news is just nuttier than squirrel poop, as Juanita Jean would say.

Queen Elizabeth once hid in a bush in the Buckingham Palace garden to avoid talking to her awful guests the Ceausescus.  I've always said they don't pay this woman enough.

The "Beast of Corfu," described as a serial rapist, was chased off a cliff by pursuing police.  I think I saw this in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

"A hospital in Trinidad and Tobago has admitted a monkey was discovered inside the building, but angrily denied a snake was with it, too."  Read it.  You know you want to.

The World Health Organization has concluded that hydroxychloroquine is too dangerous for further clinical tests.  No problem!  The Department of Veterans Affairs has already tested it on 1,300 patients, some of whom are still alive.  But people who take it for lupus and other conditions are facing a shortage and paying more, because doofuses are somehow obtaining it without prescriptions.  (Jury's still out on what Trump is being fed by his doctor, who will lie on command but will probably draw the line at assassination.  The most popular theory is Flintstone vitamins.)

You think you're bored?  This idiot is shooting letter carriers with paintballs in Washington, D.C., and Maryland.  I didn't get a stimmy check either, but I'm not taking it out on them.  Idiot.

You think you want to eat in a nice café again?  The CDC warns that the shutdown has caused food shortages for vermin, making them more aggressive than usual.  Rats!  In my room!

Foreign entanglements

"Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics."

The Washington Post?  The Nation?  The Hightower Lowdown?  Haaretz?  Charlie Hebdo?

All right, I'll tell you.  That's from The Lancet, which has been writing about science and medicine since 1823 and which, based on the current issue, would rather be covering topics like "Sustainable care for children with cancer" and "Diabetes and brain health."  They have never weighed in on an American election before, but these are strange times.

The Lancet saw data on 96,000 coronavirus patients all over the world and found alarming results concerning increased death and heart arrhythmia in those treated with hydroxychloroquine.  They published these results and got a huffy letter in response.  The letter was supposedly from Trump, but letter-writing is not his style and really, does anybody believe he ever heard of The Lancet?  So probably Miller.  (Now that they have virtually endorsed Joe Biden, expect angry if confused tweets and calls for this "foreign interference" in the election to be investigated!!)   Just to get it out of the way, ten years ago they retracted the infamous article by Andrew Wakefield linking vaccines to autism.  I saved you some time, Tucker.

Trump continues to insist that he takes the stuff, and he's fine.  The philologists are still poring over this one:  "I tested very positively in another sense so -- this morning.  Yeah.  I tested positively toward negative, right.  So.  I tested perfectly this morning.  Meaning I tested negative."  He also tied his own tie and recognized a picture of Ivanka when it was shown to him.  How far up does the doctor shove the swab?

Since Trump's tests are as "perfect" as the shakedown call with President Zelensky, he was entitled to break both Michigan law and factory protocol and go maskless in the Ford plant in Ypsilanti yesterday.  It was predictably weird.  Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly line, but he adopted it with enormous success, building an industry and putting cars within reach of middle-class Americans.  During World War II he re-tooled faster than anyone thought possible to build jeeps and tanks, and now Ford is making ventilators and personal protective equipment to meet the demand that is sure to follow the premature reopening and surge in Trump virus cases.  So there's a lot to praise about the system Ford built, but Trump chose to bring up the old man's support for racism and eugenics:  "The company founded by a man named Henry Ford -- good bloodlines, good bloodlines -- if you believe in that stuff -- you got good blood."  We've heard this before, usually Trump crediting his excellent health and razor-sharp intellect to "good genes" and occasionally "German genes."  Ford, who spent much of his wealth promoting anti-Semitism, would certainly be an AlwaysTrumper, his heart gladdened by the very fine people with the Tiki torches.  Oh, and Trump also believes he was once Michigan Man of the Year (no such thing) and promised to punish the woman-governed state in various nasty ways.

So today he's yelling for "houses of worship" to open at once, mostly because somebody showed him polling that suggests his evangelical base ("I love the poorly educated!") is starting to abandon him.  "A perceptible and predictable float-down," says Ralph Reed.  Nothing to get hung about, says campaign aide Ken Farnaso, for Trump is "the most pro-life president we've ever had" if you ignore the 97,000 dead people.  I believe eugenicists like Bill O'Reilly call it "thinning the herd."

In closing, here's old Henry Ford being honored with the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938, probably not for hiring black men to build his Model Ts.


Eat your heart out, Donzo.

 

 

Freedom

America is reopening, and the domestic terrorists are leading the way.  A man with an assault weapon shot three people at the Westgate Entertainment District in Glendale, Arizona, while an "active shooter" at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station had to be "neutralized" over in Texas.  Yesterday in Aurora, Colorado, a man shot a Waffle House employee who told him "No mask, no service," and I'm not sure what category to put that in, Covid Freedom or Second Amendment Freedom.  Two people were shot on Bolivar Peninsula, Texas, where hundreds gathered for "Go Topless Jeep Weekend," which sounds highly Texan.  In all these cases nobody died.  Our shooters are a little rusty after the long layoff.

In South Dakota, three Sioux tribes are now operating checkpoints to keep outsiders from carrying coronavirus onto their reservations, and it seems to be working.  Their rate of infection is much lower than that of the Navajo tribe further west.  This does not sit well with Governor Kristi Noem (are you sure her name is not Karen?), who has initiated legal action and now wants the federal government to do something about these uppity redskins.  She sent a four-page letter to Trump, who has yet to complain of its length as he did with Captain Crozier's; he probably hasn't read it, either.  

Memorial Day was moved to the fourth Monday in May so people could enjoy a three-day weekend.  This year it has been designated as the big Ignore the Coronavirus Day when all patriotic Americans will pour into public places and hope for the best.  Wishful thinking worked for fourteenth century Europe, didn't it?  Meanwhile Covid is racing across the South like Grant's army.  For one example, Alabama Governor Ivey says, "We cannot sustain a delayed way of life," which is pretty funny since a significant portion of the state acts like it's still 1860.  Additionally, the mayor of Montgomery notes that there is one ICU bed available in the city's two hospitals.  Who will be the lucky winner of a ventilator?

But all the news is not grim.  Behold the 75-foot statue of Elon Musk intended to lure Tesla to Tulsa.  Why not just change the name of the city?  If I'm not mistaken, a long-ago game show resulted in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.  Speaking of skeevy entrepreneurs, Martin Shkreli will not be getting out of prison to go and cure coronavirus, according to a judge who called him "delusional."  So at least for now, there won't be a Shkreli, Idaho.

Black Americans are dying three times faster than white Americans from coronavirus, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the haste to re-crowd the public spaces.  "We still have a long way to go," says the director of WHO, reporting that the global infection number has passed five million.  But what's the point of being the Exceptional Nation if you can't make it up as you go along?

As bad as the pandemic is here, you can believe (even without much daily coverage) that it's worse in the poor, war-ravaged parts of the world.  But even in Cameroon, people have to choose to believe charlatans like Frankline Ndifor.  Laying on of hands or shooting up with Clorox will kill you with equal efficiency.  The difference between faith-healing and snake-handling is that only one is contagious.

May 25 is also Towel Day.  Always know where your towel is and DON'T PANIC.

 

Full of woe

This used to be called Hump Day, back in the time of legends when people went "out" to work in "offices."  Now it's just Wednesday.

When we last heard about the good folks at Hobby Lobby, they had just learned that their precious scraps of Dead Sea Scroll were actually shoe leather.  Now it turns out the authentic antiquities they buy are hot, like the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet looted from the Baghdad Museum while the victorious Americans were being distracted with candy and flowers.  The Green family are out $1.6 million plus a $3 million fine, which is a lot of yarn and plastic beads.  Might want to talk to some legitimate dealers before they wind up with a fake Renoir.

In other art news, Trump will not be unveiling the official portrait of Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House, as has been done since 1980 -- hardly a venerable tradition but a nice display of respect.  For his part, Obama says he doesn't care to visit until the place has been swept for bugs, both six-legged and Russian.  If that painting turns up with a Sharpie mustache in the style of Adolf Hitler, it won't be much of a mystery.

Another inspector general shown the door, this one at the Department of Transportation.  He was looking into an enormous grant to Boone County, Kentucky, by Secretary Elaine Chao, a/k/a Mrs. Moscow Mitch.  Some are saying political favoritism was involved, but I guess one of them won't be saying it anymore.

In the deliriously corrupt state of Georgia, the governor just up and cancelled an election for state Supreme Court because the seat was in danger of being filled by a Democrat.  Finally Brian Kemp will get his diploma from the Vladimir Putin School of Government.

Trump.  Proud that USA leads world with 1.5 million coronavirus cases.  May not understand that sickness and death are bad.  May throw parade when (not if) 100,000 die.  Wants to cut funding for states that allow voting by mail.  Knows democracy is bad for Republicans.  Still won't wear a mask tomorrow while lumbering around a Ford factory in Michigan, because it would muffle his blaming Governor Whitmer for today's dam failures.  Last year the US birth rate was the lowest in 35 years.  No tweets yet blaming Obama or Roe v. Wade, but it's only 3:30 EDT.  Enough about Trump.

In WTF news, a salvage company has been given permission to cut into the hull of the Titanic and recover its Marconi telegraph, an artifact the world has managed to do without for (counts on fingers) 108 years.  It sounds like quite a job.  Perhaps James Cameron will make a movie.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted of the crimes of September 11, says he has renounced terrorism, specifically "Osama bin Laden as a useful idiot of the CIA/Saudi."  I'd say this calls for another investigation, eh, Lindsey?  Lindsey?  Hello, switchboard?  Something wrong with Senator Graham's phone.

But his emails!  The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee has opened an investigation into Hunter Biden and Burisma.  I did not see that coming, as I have been in a medically induced coma.  (I wish.)

The Satere-Mawe people live in the Amazon and are getting as much help from Bolsonaro (the Samba Trump) as the Navajo are from the Great Orange Father.  So they have turned to bark, honey and native plants to create natural remedies.  Probably less dangerous than Hydroxybonermagic 3000 (thanks, Evan).

The National Guard's coronavirus deployment will end on June 24, one day before thousands of members would qualify for retirement and other benefits.  We love our front-line first responders!  We just don't want to spend good money on them, when it could go for...

WALL!  What, you thought they forgot about that?  Fisher Sand and Gravel snagged a $1.3 billion contract to build just 42 miles of it after the CEO slobbered over Trump on Fox News.  The company already had a $300 million contract that was being investigated by the Defense Department's inspector general, but I assume he or she has also been purged fired.

Is it too early to offer congratulations to Senator Jeff Merkley?  It looks like he'll be running against a gen-you-wine QAnon foot soldier in the shape of Jo Rae Perkins.  She has pledged her love to "God, President Trump and Q!" so Oregonians have six months to familiarize themselves with the fruitiest conspiracy theory since the Protocols and vote accordingly.  By mail.

"I don't want to get down in the mud with these guys," said Joe Biden in response to Junior Trump calling him a pedophile.  Allow me, Mr. Vice President.  Don't be too hard on the Trump boys.  They grew up watching their father boink their sister and they're seriously messed up.  What?  What?  We've all seen the grope shots.  And with great respect for Mrs. Obama, this election is too important to go high when they go low.  High doesn't work.  Hit hard and often.  You'll have less mud on you if you throw it back.

The undiscovered country

Once again Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated why she is Speaker of the House and I am a badly-dressed blogger listening to Pink Floyd as I type.  She's just a superior person who said this to Anderson Cooper:  "He's our president and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group -- morbidly obese, they say.  So I think it's not a good idea."

Oh, well played.  His "age group" is six years younger than she is, and the expert use of "they say" throws a favored verbal tic back at him.  And he does look like he buys his suits from the Homer Simpson Collection.  Also, so much concern from someone who says she prays for him.  He must be flinging presidential crap at the walls this morning.

Unable to dislodge the Speaker from what's left of his brain, Trump chose to go after Fox News in general and Neil Cavuto in particular, whining, "We miss the great Roger Ailes."  Ailes -- now that's morbidly obese -- would never let one of his drones criticize The Leader, not even one with a history of serious illness and a certain familiarity with drugs and clinical procedure.  (Just to show there were no hard feelings, Trump also tweeted his joy that Fox's Morning Morons had out-rated Joe Scarborough, who he is pretty sure murdered somebody.)

The (Deep State) FDA has provided a list of possible hydroxychloroquine side effects, but the most significant are psychosis, delirium, confusion and hallucinations.  But it does not specifically mention repetitiveness.  ("The frontline workers, many many are taking it.  I happen to be taking it!  I happen to be taking it!  I'm taking it!  Hydroxychloroquine!  Right now, yeah!  Couple weeks ago I started taking it!")  Now that's what an articulate president sounds like, Mister Obama.

For those who cherish efficiency over dignity, a company in Colombia has introduced a cardboard hospital bed which converts into a cardboard coffin, guaranteed to hold a patient up to 150 kg.  Fine for the average Colombian, but probably not for Americans.  Of whom more than 90,000 have now died from Trump Disease.

Charlotte, North Carolina, may want to order a couple hundred of these corrugated mom carriers in advance of the Republican convention scheduled for August, because the hoax will have ended by then and if it isn't, so what?  Anyway, no one will ever describe it better than Evan Hurst:  "The Republican National Convention is a special place.  It's like a NASCAR rally had a baby with Ted Nugent in the dumpster behind a Cracker Barrel and they decided to never bathe the baby."  That's in a normal year.  Will we ever have another?

It's Mental Health Awareness Week

Consider yourself aware.

Trump says he's gobbling hydroxychloroquine like M&Ms, probably just to spite Dr. Bright.  For once, I hope he's telling the truth and his fat-clogged heart is about to begin dancing the macarena.

A soccer team in South Korea decided to brighten up their empty stadium by positioning inflatable fans in the stands, and had to apologize when they turned out to be sex dolls.  This is a sore point in a country whose citizens were forced to serve as "comfort women" for Japanese troops during World War II.

William Barr, the only cabinet member with his own gravitational field, more or less admitted that his "investigation" into the Russia investigation is grade-A horseshit for political purposes only, and will not lead to criminal indictments of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Robert Mueller or anyone else.  Now the cable newsertainment shows can stop deploying the word "Obamagate" as if it has a basis in reality.  But they won't.

Because using the Justice Department as a  political hit squad is fine; criticizing Trump in the course of a commencement speech is "a political drive-by shooting," according to Karl Rove, who is apparently still alive.  And if "drive-by shooting" is not enough of a racist dog-whistle for the cult, Obama was also found to be not "articulate," the Jim-Crowing-with-faint-praise term for a person of color who does not talk like Hattie McDaniel playing Mammy.  He uses a Teleprompter!  No white real president would do that.

Now we know why Steve Linick is no longer State Department inspector general, and it's only partly because Pompeo used staff to run errands for him and his dog.  Linick was also investigating some hinky arms dealing with Jared's good friends/creditors in Saudi Arabia, based on what Chairman Eliot Engel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee called "Trump's phony declaration of an emergency."  The emergency facing the Sauds is the flatline price of oil, and the possibility that their checks may start bouncing if we wait too long to close the deal.

In honor of mental health awareness, let's close with Florida man Brian Hitchens, who admits he learned the hard way that Covid is real.  It happens sometimes.  If he and his wife recover, they're still not out of the woods -- they can expect retaliation from those who still insist it's a hoax.  Only on Twitter, I hope.

Top of the world, Pa!

Dr. Rick Bright lost his job because he wouldn't promote hydroxychloroquine, Trump's magic potion of last month, for Covid.  Turns out he was absolutely right.  The "game changer" is actually more of a "life ender," even if you don't take the related chemical designed to disinfect aquariums.

It was hard to hear Trump apologizing to Dr. Bright because of all the truck drivers blowing their horns on Constitution Avenue during Friday's Rose Garden Picnic of Lies.  He immediately decided the racket was a salute to him -- "a sign of love" was the actual vomit-inducing phrase.  In fact, the truckers were protesting low shipping rates.  It's not at all pathetic, is it?  Also, of course there was no apology.

Instead, he pitched another miracle cure, the vaccine that will be available in January but only if he is re-elected, or re-appointed, or just refuses to leave.  Moncef Slaoui is the Big Pharma guy chosen to run the program by all-around expert Jared Kushner, so everything is under control.  Trump put his tiny finger on the problem:  "When you test, you have a case.  When you test, you find something is wrong with people.  If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases."  Damn!   He's right!  And we wouldn't need vents or vaccine, and they wouldn't be dead.  Stop the tests (except for the White House).  Problem solved.

And now on to important stuff:  There's a Space Force Flag to go with the "super duper missile," which is the way big grownup presidents talk.  Let's see those illegal space aliens start some shit now.

Trump does not like inspectors general, those Deep State operatives constantly making trouble for his henchmen.  Out they go!  Who will replace them?  Lindsey Graham is being cloned at this hour.  Senator Collins wants you to know she has "long been a strong advocate" for IGs and co-authored pre-Trump legislation (which means it doesn't apply to him) to require some presidential justification for removing them.  But as long as he learned his lesson back in February, her "conscience" is clear.  Perhaps Maine will be the first state ever to have two Independent senators.  That would be something, huh?

In today's crazypants news, an Alaska state legislator named Ben Carpenter compared the health-screening stickers required to enter the capitol to yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.  There seems to be some confusion on the right, with half the Trumpanzees calling everyone they disagree with a Nazi and the other half decorating their pickups with swastikas.  Maybe call a Kloncilium and sort this out, brothers.  And maybe stop comparing Governor Gretchen Whitmer to Hitler because she won't let you go to the mall.  Hitler would have shot you in the street and burned down your favorite biker bar.  Watch the History Channel, he's on it every week, you fat whining imbeciles.  Speaking of which...

Trump has never been invited to deliver a commencement address, ever, not even at the fake military school his parents hoped would teach him to make his bed and distinguish his right foot from his left.  He likes to barge in on the real military academies because they can't stop him.  So he was predictably enraged when Barack Obama was asked to make a virtual speech to thousands of graduates who are missing their ceremonies.  The envy, it scalds.  Must take back his Noble Prize!

Here we go:  Junior Trump has already given up on Tara Reade and decided to call Joe Biden a pedophile instead.  Not to be outdone, little brother Eric says coronavirus is a fiendish Democratic plot which will "magically disappear" when it fails to end his father's reign of peace and prosperity.  And the dead -- well over a hundred thousand by then -- shall be raised incorruptible.  If these two were not so loathsome, they would be pitiable in their need for love from someone who doesn't know what it is.

Not forgotten

I have spent several days watching documentaries about the 1918 influenza pandemic.  They vary in quality and breadth, but all agree on two things.  The H1N1 virus took advantage of a perfect storm of circumstances -- a protracted war, displaced populations, people on the move between continents, no understanding of viruses, malnutrition in Europe especially, medical helplessness, news censorship.  And the pandemic has been largely forgotten.

No longer, of course.  Books were written to take advantage of the centenary, as publishers are wont to do, and now readers devour them for clues to our own future.  "Spanish flu" came back and back until 1920, which is not encouraging.  The advances made by science, from electron microscopes to personal protective equipment, are of limited value in the face of populist stupidity.  I think I know why there are so few monuments to the victims:  where we could claim to have "won" the war (and there is no doubt that American forces turned the tide in 1918 against the last great German offensive), in no sense did we "win" the pandemic.  It just...went away, as silently as it had appeared.  It's hard to hold a victory parade for that.  Instead of orderly cemeteries like the ones in France, poppies waving row on row, many flu victims were buried in mass graves in their own country.

Art is supposed to be our coping mechanism.  I can't tell you how many analyses of Camus's The Plague I've come across, arguing about whether it's really an allegory of fascism.  Some readers have reached back to Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, a more straightforward account of bubonic plague from a time when we hadn't figured out the whole rat-flea vector of Yersinia pestis.  Of 1918, which killed between fifty and a hundred million people depending on your source, art is skimpy.  Tin Pan Alley seems to have exhibited little or no interest.  I found two blues recordings, Blind Willie Johnson's "Jesus Is Coming Soon" and Essie Jenkins's "1919 Influenza Blues."  The essence of both is that the world is ending and you'd better repent.

There is a harrowing account of the influenza experience by Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Porter herself barely survived).  It's mentioned in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel (does anyone still read Wolfe?).  I'd be happy to hear of contemporaries who had something to add.  Hemingway was busy writing about the war, Fitzgerald the Jazz Age, Stein whatever she was writing about, but if they dealt with the Spanish Lady I missed it.  Maybe someone will publish a new study showing that Eliot's Waste Land is really about the post-flu world.

With all the film expended on the Great War from J'Accuse to Paths of Glory, you'd expect someone to remember the flu.  Maybe a vast ward of young men struggling for breath or corpses piled in corridors was too awful for movie audiences.  Or awful in the wrong way, unheroic and bad for morale.  In one of his greatest poems, Wilfred Owen describes a soldier who took too long to put on his gas mask and died "guttering, choking, drowning."  He bitterly recites "the old lie" he was taught in Latin class:  "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."   Like that, but worse somehow.  No wonder we have no monuments on the National Mall to the 675,000 Americans who died from the virus.  And now another virus is teaching us history.

Conspiracy, or breathing together

A wounded, cornered trump is extremely dangerous, so maybe it's good to see the Shite House oozing conspiracy theories like a burlap sack of body parts.  Some of them are absurd and some of them are  sad and creepy, but the sheer volume suggests an advanced form of Political Deficit Disorder.  Maybe he needs to increase the Adderall intake.

Orchestrated by the Office of Science Denial, a division of the Reality Resistance, attacks on Anthony Fauci have risen to a shriek.  Because the information he tried to give the Senate did not match the official fantasies, Fauci is being denounced for thoughtcrime, which in this context means having actual thoughts, probably based on "facts." Was he elected to anything?  Did the Electoral College overrule the voters and put him in charge?  No in thunder! cries Tucker Carlson, and therefore don't listen to the man with the education and the half-century of experience, listen to the infallible gut of the Leader.  "Is Tony Fauci right about the science?  Do we have any particular reason to think he is right?"  Tear the mask off the next person you meet and share your COVID saliva -- for FREEDOM.

Distraction, distraction, needs more distraction...let's look in on the freshly-minted "Obamagate."  It's "worse than Watergate."  It's "the worst crime ever committed."  An outrageous plot to defame the lamblike Michael Flynn, foreign agent and perjurer, and undermine the glorious Trump presidency.  A conspiracy so immense that Lindsey Graham says he won't investigate it.  Wait, what?  What can he mean by "Be careful what you wish for?"  Could Lindsey Graham have a vestigial conscience?  Is he part of the conspiracy?

Of course the Russians were working for Hillary Clinton!  People are saying so!  The big Trump Tower meeting with all those unpronounceable names was to warn Donzo Jr. of the great big plot to make Putin's favorite Secretary of State president.  To thank her for supporting Ukraine.  Don't you watch OANN?  Perhaps Putin too is part of the plot.  To bring down the greatest president of all time requires a lot of wheels within wheels.  The fake pandemic is just their final desperate gambit.

Yes, fake.  Although Mike Pompeo already explained that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan though he is not allowed to back this up with actual information, Alex Jones explains that it isn't really a thing at all, just another -- yeah, conspiracy -- to harvest body parts from people, especially little babies, as part of a "global eugenics plot" being run by Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia.  Those nurses are raking in the cash, too, for keeping their mouths shut.  Is there a secret tunnel between the governor's mansion in Richmond and Hillary's pizzeria of death in Washington?  There is if "people" say there is.

And that's why I feel like the three gentlemen at the top.  The end.  When is dinner?

It's all too much

Six Russians being treated for Covid died when their ventilators burst into flames.  The model in question was one sent here in April to "help" with the pandemic.  Russia has now passed Italy and moved into fourth place in overall infections.  Putin's approval rating fell to a historic low of 59%.  Trump dreams of having one that high, although all polls are "fake."

Trump wants Joe Scarborough investigated for murder.  He also wants to change the presidential succession, because he was awake all night in a cold sweat considering the possibility that he and Whatsisname might get sick and die:  "Crazy Nancy would be a total disaster, and the USA will never be a Communist Country!"  Well, that's half right.  Try "hereby ordering" that Ivanka is next in line.  See what happens.

A sewer must have backed up, because Rudolph Giuliani has popped up again, this time predicting that James Comey will be tried for treason and executed.

Unfair!  Trump likes to be photographed in factories because he's still grinding his dentures over that New York Times article about his laziness.  He was all set to visit a place in Pennsylvania that makes personal protective equipment, but he refuses to smear his orange clown makeup with a mask.  They withdrew the invitation to avoid contaminating the place with Katie Miller germs and whatever else makes him sniff and wheeze.  Elon Musk plans to reopen his Tesla plant next week, defying California quarantine rules.  I think I know how he can get some free (bad) publicity.

Our last two stories concern Doctors Without Borders, and there's nothing funny about them.  Gunmen disguised as police murdered sixteen people at their maternity clinic in Kabul, an atrocity that even the Taliban don't want to be associated with.  The organization has also dispatched a team to the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.  Their per capita infection rate is higher than New York's and their national government is as broken as Afghanistan's.  For indigenous people, this pandemic is not very different from the one in 1918-1920, or from the waves of smallpox, measles, tuberculosis and other diseases which wiped out their ancestors.  The Sioux are closing highways to keep outsiders off their land in South Dakota, even as Gov. Kristi "Let 'Em Cut Meat" Noem threatens legal action.  She actually said, "We are strongest when we work together," winning today's Brass Balls With Oak Leaf Cluster.

Eighty-one thousand dead.

Obamagate Netflixgate Billingsgate

After three-and-a-half years of being blamed for everything from COVID-19 to excessive golfing, Barack Obama had had enough.  He didn't activate his Twitter account for an afternoon of primal screaming, not that anyone would blame him.  He didn't call in the media and rant about unfairness.  He made a conference call to members of his administration, urging them to work really hard to elect Joe Biden.  He used the words "absolute chaotic disaster" to describe the present regime's coronavirus clusterfuck, and he warned that dropping the charges against Michael Flynn threatened the rule of law.  Measured, calm, articulate -- you remember what a real president sounded like.

Obama must have known someone would leak the call.  Maybe at some level he wondered what effect it would have on Depraved Donnie, still "lava level mad" because someone may have breathed viruses onto his lunch.  Yesterday we found out:  a single "word" OBAMAGATE! to alert the Trumpanzees to STAND BY FOR VERY IMPORTANT COMMUNIQUE.

This was followed by a retweet from someone called Michael Nothem, who uses an umlaut I can't reproduce because I'm not writing in German.   Nothem went on to accuse Barack Hussain [sic] Obama of being "the first Ex-President to ever speak against his successor."*  Outrageous.  Other retweets followed, festooned with phrases like "cosmically preposterous" (can I steal that?) and "Sally Yates is the real blackmailer" (no, thanks), and a pitch for a book by someone called John Solomon which will rip the lid off...well, whatever.  Along the way Trump found time to repeat his attack on Columbia University for handing out Pulitzer Prizes to these so-called journalists who consistently fail to praise him.

He was just getting his tiny thumbs flexed.

Adam Schiff (something very bad is about to happen to him), Chuck Todd, Gavin Newsom, Joe Biden, after a while he was just retweeting himself retweeting somebody else.  If Hitler had a Smartphone in the bunker it would read like this, but with more umlauts.  And more capitalized nouns.   And then...

"HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!"

Help us, coronavirus, you're our only hope.




*Wrong.  For only one example, Theodore Roosevelt was scathing in criticizing Woodrow Wilson for hesitating to take the United States into World War I after the sinking of the Lusitania.

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Facebook does not like this picture of Governor Brian Kemp

and accused murderer Gregory McMichael.  But this is not Facebook.

All of them, Katie

Katie Miller, who lies for Mike Pence and lies with Stephen Miller, has tested positive.  Why this is good:  Because she is around a terrified Trump every day, maskless like all Real Americans.  Why this is bad:  Because she had casual contact with Anthony Fauci, Stephen Hahn the FDA Commissioner and CDC director Robert Redfield, all of whom are in two-week quarantine.  This leaves Deborah Birx and that kid with the lawn mower to stand beside The Leader during his performances of the heath scene from King Lear, now cut back to whenever he feels like it.

Maybe she was infected by the still-unnamed food steward, or by one of the eleven Secret Service members who are also carrying the coronavirus around.  Or by someone else.  Or maybe it's a complete mystery:  "Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time, and then all of a sudden she tested positive...this is why the whole concept of tests aren't necessarily great...today, I guess, for some reason she tested positive..."  I'm familiar with this phenomenon:  Year after year my grandmother tested negative for cancer and then one day, there it was.  She never would tell us why she waited until Stage Four.

It's just over 52 years since Martin Luther King died while fighting for sanitation workers in Memphis, but if you think conditions have improved in the South, you probably haven't heard about New Orleans.  When they passed out leaflets demanding PPE, a raise to $15 an hour and servicing of broken trucks, workers were fired and replaced by convicts, Dixie's favorite source of free labor since 1865.

Elsewhere in kudzu country, our friend Kelly "Sticky Fingers" Loeffler is in the news again.  The New York Times reports that Senator Kelly -- who's "all about Georgia!" according to her latest relentless round of ads -- got a parting gift of $9 million from her husband's company, which runs the New York Stock Exchange.  It sounds extravagant but don't forget, she had to split with Brian Kemp to get the appointment.  Prove I'm wrong.  At any rate, it's pretty clear Kelly is all about Kelly.

And as Donald Barthelme would say, there's brain damage in the north:  At a parade in honor of nurses in Darby, Pennsylvania, an armed man drove an SUV (why is it never a Honda Civic?) into a crowd of first responders.  I'm guessing the extreme right edge of Blogenheim has moved from "It was created by Chinese scientists" to "Nurses are causing the 'panic-demic' so they can make big overtime money and stay in hotels free."

Oh, wait!  I just found them.

Very likely/somewhat likely

When last we encountered Brian May, he was blaming Covid on the consumption of meat.  Now he has been hospitalized after a bizarre gardening accident.  Isn't that how one of Spinal Tap's drummers died?

A Nevada politician said, "We're not stupid.  We're Americans," and it was not the mayor of Las Vegas.  However, it is the mayor who is the object of a recall campaign triggered by her jaw-dropping interview with Anderson Cooper.  It was started by Doug Polk, described as "a former professional poker player" who presumably knows when to fold 'em.

First Sarah Palin, now this.  Alaska only seems to attract attention for dumb stuff.   On April 22, the Matanuska-Susitna School Board voted to ban five "controversial" books from the English curriculum.  Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is very unpatriotic about the Vietnam War; Catch-22 implies that the United States military might not be filled with very fine people; Invisible Man and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings caused racism by describing it, and The Great Gatsby -- hell if I know.  Rebellious students who still want to read these books and decide for themselves can apply to the band Portugal. The Man for free copies.  

Brendan Leipsic has been dumped by the Washington Capitals for posting "misogynistic, demeaning, vulgar and profane" language on Instagram.  (When Trump does that, it's analyzed as serious political discourse.)  Also, he wasn't a very impressive player.

A member of Mike Pence's staff has tested positive for coronavirus.  The White House -- lock it down or burn it down?

Clinging to his job by his thumbs, Trump4Ever campaign manager Brad Parscale compared his operation to the Death Star.  First Captain Bligh, now this.  Are they watching the same movies we are?  Should we all be snorting Adderall first?

Egged on by Trump, attacks on Asians and Asian-Americans have spiked, but the Justice Department is too busy trying to rehabilitate the treasonous Michael Flynn to do anything about it.   Meanwhile Bryant "Corky" Messner, running for the Senate in New Hampshire, wants to get even by keeping Chinese students out of American universities.  Chinese students pay tuition up front in cash.  Have you asked the universities how they feel about this?  Live free and die, Corky.

Airsick bags handy?  "President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with [sic] gentleness.  His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity.  It is evident that he loves his country, his people and his job."  That's Tara Reade drooling over Trump's puppet-master.  Also, her lawyer Douglas Wigdor donated $55,000 to the Trump 2016 campaign.  Case closed.  And you can stop bringing up Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford, too.

You know how some people put on a big front, and then one day it turns out they were living paycheck to paycheck just like you?  Neiman-Marcus has filed bankruptcy.

It's not just our "immigrants" and their dirty habits:  Covid is also running wild at meat processing facilities in Ireland.

If you want to know how Vladimir Vladimirovich really "loves his country, his people and his job" in this time of crisis, The Independent has a devastating look.  It's a lot worse than three defenestrations.

I imagine the British had a big do planned for today, the 75th anniversary of VE Day.  Instead they will sit home and remember how they stood against Hitler alone, apart from Canada, New Zealand, India, Australia, the West Indies, Kenya, Rhodesia...

Trump, who hires "the best people," says he made the "very weak and very sad" Jeff Sessions attorney general because "he came to see me four times, just begging me.  He wasn't, you know, to me equipped to be attorney general," but if Trump has a fault and he doesn't but if he somehow did, it's too much compassion.  "I do not and will not break the law," responded Sessions, who perjured himself at his confirmation hearing when he said he had never met with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The anti-lockdown rioters have links to the far right.  Bill Barr is Trump's bagman.  In other breaking news, it's not good to put rocks in your pockets and jump in a river, lake or pond.