Mayday, mayday

Canada has banned 1,500 types of assault weapons in response to the murder of 22 people in Nova Scotia last month.  I didn't know there were that many kinds.  Also, I can find no evidence of armed thugs demonstrating against the new law in provincial capitals.

Right across the border in Michigan, armed thugs rioted in Lansing because anti-coronavirus measures keep them from getting more tattoos and drinking in bars.  Nobody was even whispering about taking their bang-bangs away, just for the day.  Instead, they got approval from the nation's alleged chief law enforcement official, who called them "very good people," like the Nazis in Charlottesville.  They had previously rioted in front of the governor's house, with signs that said "Tyrant Bitch."  (The governor is a woman, which enrages them even more.)  State legislators wearing bulletproof clothing is perfectly normal in Trumplandia.

Will this be repeated when Trump loses to Joe Biden?  "I'm not fucking losing to Joe Biden," he screamed while threatening to sue his campaign manager.   Lawsuits and threats of lawsuits have been Trump's main business model for years, but it wasn't Brad Parscale who told Americans to shoot up with disinfectant.  He merely observed that the daily assaults on the press, science, common sense and basic decency were having a negative impact on the polls.  It's his job, for the moment.  I predict that Parscale will soon hand the keys to someone who has already brought peace and a sword to the Middle East, and has put COVID-19 on a paying basis.  Jared, take it away!

Fans of English footballer-turned-conspiracy-loon David Icke will be disappointed that Facebook has removed one of his pages asserting that COVID is linked to 5G mobile technology.  This has led to many 5G towers being destroyed by other loons.  There are still plenty of places you can read his interesting ideas about lizard people, Jewish world domination, the legalization of rape by Muslim men, and how viruses are not spread by physical contact.  I believe they are known as the Dark Web.

As you can see here, the other states are laughing and pointing at Georgia only a week after the restrictions were lifted.  It seems coronavirus, which is a lot smarter than Brian Kemp, was waiting to pounce.  Matt Kim and his mohawk are the official face of Don't Do It, Stupid (notice that the barber is wearing a mask but no gloves).  As one Italian mayor shouted at someone who ventured out, "No one will see your hair, [Italian term of abuse]!  Your coffin will be closed!"

If you're lucky enough to have one.  In Brooklyn yesterday, corpses stored in ordinary trucks were discovered outside the Cleckley Funeral Home.  "Bodies were coming out of our ears," said the owner, in one of those sentences you can never forget.  The "last responders" are unable to keep up with demand, and New Yorkers are being temporarily interred on Hart Island, last resting place for the city's unidentified and unclaimed.  Graves are dug by inmates from Riker's Island, a reminder that COVID is spreading unchecked in every prison, jail and detention camp.  In federal prisons, coronavirus has been found in seventy percent of inmates, so it's probably similar in the state systems where there isn't even testing.  Corrections officers and other employees are at considerable risk and -- say it with me -- lack personal protective equipment.  The country that accounts for most of the world's COVID deaths also has the largest prison population.  Imagine that.

Workers at FedEx, Walmart, Whole Foods, Target and other companies that are profiting during the pandemic remembered that May 1 used to belong to labor.  They are joining nurses in mass walkouts to protest lack of PPE.  Meat plant workers, on the other hand, have to work or lose their health insurance, which they will probably need if they return to work.

You know who might be returning to work in the White House?  Mickey Flynn!  If his lawyer can't convince a judge that he was entrapped into pleading guilty, Trump will just pardon him and give him his old job back as Russia liaison national security adviser.  Easy-peasy totally sleazy.  Served not one hour in prison.

Steve Herman, on the other hand, may not be back because he pointed out that Karen Pence was lying when she said no one told her husband to put on a surgical mask at the Mayo Clinic.  Nobody puts Mother in the corner.  Herman works for -- wait for it -- Voice of America.

We love our veterans.  We say so loudly on Veterans Day, Memorial Day, July Fourth and every other remotely patriotic holiday we can think of or invent.  And so, while VA hospitals still lack PPE, testing kits and ventilators, the Administration is committed to supplying them with body bags.  Thank you for your service.

The Senate will re-convene on Monday, even though Brian Monahan, doctor of Congress (I didn't know either), says he doesn't have the fifteen-minute tests for coronavirus, probably because the White House is using them to test Trump every time he makes a phone call or has a poop.  (There's a grand article by Fintan O'Toole in the May 14 New York Review of Books about Trump's germophobia and dislike for handshaking in contrast to his lack of concern for every other person on earth.)  A hundred people, many over 70, crowded into a small room -- what could go wrong?

We forget about the rest of the world unless casting about for someone to blame (China, WHO, those dirty immigrants).  Riots in Lebanon suggest what our future may look like.  Imagine if Trumpanzees were hungry, too.

Vladimir Lizard?