This is not a test

Here is a prescription from an actual doctor:

"The more stress he's under, the more he feels the walls are closing in, which is going to happen.  It's unavoidable if we want the November election to go our way.  He needs to be piled on.  He  will never get better and may get worse."

Actually I can't decide if that's a prescription or a warning.  Mary Trump is not a medical doctor and "he" is capable of so much death and destruction.  Putting Uncle Don under more stress could cause a Face In the Crowd moment where he lumbers around the Rose Garden hurling clumps of sod at Yamiche Alcindor and screaming "SHIT! SHIT!" or it could lead to the end of life as we know it.  Nuclear codes, remember?

The last laugh

Anthony Baxter is about to be vindicated.  After four years of furious litigation by the Trump Organization, his documentary You've Been Trumped Too will soon hit half a dozen streaming platforms.  It continues the story of Molly Forbes, originally told in You've Been Trumped, whose family farm was deprived of water so Trump could build his now-collapsing Turnberry golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland.   Baxter was even jailed briefly, because the UK lacks the press freedoms we take for granted.  Required viewing for those who wonder why Trump is so detested in Scotland.

It's too soon to celebrate, but the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia is taking another look at the bizarre circumstances of the decision to drop charges against Michael Flynn after he twice pleaded guilty to lying about his relationship with Russia.  Bill Barr says he had nothing to do with the DOJ's decision, so it's a certainty that he's lying, too.  Lock him up?

The worst thing Herman Cain did was market terrible pizza, so I'm not celebrating his death from covid at 74.  He tweeted a picture of himself maskless at the intimate Trump gathering in Tulsa last month though as a cancer survivor he must have known he was at high risk.  We can't be sure he was infected in Tulsa, but he signed the waiver like every other attendee so the Trump campaign is in the clear, and that's all that counts, right?  But it's not just #BlackVoicesForTrump that's a man down -- Bill Montgomery of Turning Point USA also died of covid this week age 80.  It has to be worrying for Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-CrazyPeople), who got the bad news yesterday.  Rejecting Dr. Immanuel's succubus theory, the Padishah Emperor says he caught coronavirus from the mask that mean Nancy Pelosi made him wear.  I look forward to celebrating his death.

Today those anonymous uniformed federals are supposed to start clearing out of Oregon per an agreement between Gov. Kate Brown and the DHS.  But the outrage is by no means over and has even gained one of those pseudo-military names:  Operation Legend.   Gauleiter Barr promises to keep fighting "violent crime" (peaceable assembly) in Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City and -- Albuquerque?  Really?  Not New York, where the "Finest" have now turned to kidnapping?  Not Los Angeles, where more than fifty cases of police brutality are under investigation?  Albuquerque?

As Americans prepare to face eviction and hunger and a disease without a cure and the Republicans in the Senate haggle over a new relief bill that doesn't provide enough money for the F-35A fighter jet or provides too much for those lazy Americans ($200 a month, down from $600), Trump as usual puts a warty finger on the real problem:  No money for a new FBI building.  He really does not like the present one, it's a bad building, it's the reason people don't want to stay at the Trump Trivago Hotel across the street, he's very good at money laundering real estate and he wants a brand new building right now!  As the economy collapses and the market staggers and martial law is unofficially declared, what could be more important?  All I wanted was a new name on the old one.  It's not like the FBI is renting overflow space in a Virginia strip mall. 

Remember how Vladimir Putin assured Trump he didn't interfere in the 2016 election?  He also didn't put out a contract on American troops in Afghanistan.  Topic never even came up.  Why would it?  Also he's not involved in this year's election.  Putin says it.  Trump believes it.  That settles it.  It should be a bumper sticker.

But with or without, this election will be "INACCURATE" and "FRAUDULENT" if Americans are allowed to vote by mail, and should be postponed until people can "properly, securely and safely vote."  (Stop laughing.)  In other words, Joe Biden continues to open his lead and could turn even Ohio, Georgia and Texas, so it's time to panic.  I love the smell of panic in the morning, especially since there are about eleven reasons the election will come off on November 3 as planned.  Whether the Trumpanzees will accept the outcome is another matter.

Can we skip the racist bullshit for just today, until John Lewis is laid to rest?  Oh, well.  Yesterday he went to Texas to brag about rescinding yet another Obama reg, this one about fair housing.  Those good people in the suburbs need not worry about low-income housing near their pools and patios, driving down prices because those people.  This led Sen. Chris Murphy to tweet, "Our president is now a proud, vocal segregationist."  Right on cue, Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh took a carefully screened call from a cab driver who could not believe the number of "Black Lives Matter" lawn signs he was seeing on his daily rounds.  On lawns, you understand, not in the ghetto.  Rush knows the problem is (as always) women:  "millennial college-educated white women...becoming nothing more than hoods...your average ne'er-do-well in the 'hood -- white women."  Rush is so happy when he can hate hoods and bitches in the same sentence, he forgot he more or less promised he was dying.  Also, who says "ne'er-do-well"?  Horatio Alger?

On a lighter note, David Perdue and Lindsey Graham seem to be using the same "consultants."  Fresh from enlarging Jon Ossoff's nose, they have darkened Jaime Harrison's skin to where you can hardly make out his features and thrown in a picture of "Hollywood" Kathy Griffin, who once posed with a fake severed Trump head that apparently made Barron cry.  Some variation on "leftist anarchist Hollywood elitist" has become a popular Rightzi tag for "Biden supporter," which explains why the Q Qrazies want both Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson to die, and why they recently took Greek citizenship. 
Check out the proportions of the Harrison/Griffin picture -- are we supposed to think of King Kong and Fay Wray?  Subtle.

Then there's this Texas economist named Vance Ginn who has done the numbers and decided it's fine to open the schools because most of Texas's covid dead are elderly and/or Hispanic.  Racist and ageist -- why isn't this guy the governor?  And what's his obsession with British royalty? 

The Reagan Foundation asked the RNC and the Trump campaign to stop using St. Ronnie's image in their fundraising, but they never asked them to stop honoring Nazi war dead.  In a sequel to "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg," Donzo's ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra visited Ysselsteyn, a cemetery containing many Waffen-SS graves.  Hoekstra likes to cover all his hate bases -- he also claimed there are "no-go zones" in Dutch cities, which is code for "places where scary Muslims enforce sharia law," and is also bullshit for which he had to apologize.  (Until you've insulted your host country, you're not a real Trump diplomat.)




I don't look to the heavens for signs and portents, but they say a double rainbow appeared as John Lewis lay in state on the steps of the Capitol for the last time.  I'll take it.






 

No kidding

I need a vacation from the news.  When your internal response to every story is "yeah, and?" you are too cynical to do this.  

Hundreds of Americans have received unsolicited packages of seeds from China and have been warned not to plant them.  Does the Department of Agriculture think we've never seen a scifi movie?  I wouldn't plant mystery seeds from my Uncle Bob, who was an eminent organic chemist and dedicated gardener.  

The man with the umbrella who was filmed breaking windows during protests in Minneapolis has been identified as a white supremacist and member of the Hells Angels.  I could have told you that.  (Not the Angels part, he wasn't in club gear.)

David Perdue (R-GA) is one of that gray mass of senators who are distinguished by nothing but their reliable awfulness.  He's not out there day after day trying to out-Trump Trump like Cotton or Johnson, he just does as he's told.  So it was unsurprising that when he looked at his poll numbers and decided it was time to Willie Horton his opponent Jon Ossoff, he used the weariest trope in the anti-Semite playbook, enlarging his nose and picturing him next to Chuck Schumer with the words, "Democrats are trying to buy Georgia!"  The ad was deleted after protests, but the next one will doubtless feature George Soros and a six-pointed star.  (They even used that against Hillary Clinton.)

It looks like the Trump campaign is in violation of numerous campaign-finance laws ...I wasn't asleep, I just dozed for a second!

Holy cow!  Trump wasn't asked to throw out anything at Yankee Stadium next month -- he invited himself!  He was jealous of all the attention Dr. Fauci got at the Nationals game, not to mention the record-setting sales of his Topps baseball card.  (It's selling for two hundred dollars on eBay.)  Donzo's going to need three scoops of ice cream on his chocolate cake tonight.

In other Fauci news, a reporter asked why he wasn't present at any of the Trump "briefings."  Response:  "He has a very good approval rating and I like that...so why don't I have a very high approval rating?  Nobody likes me.  It can only be my personality, that's all."

Or it could be his habit of re-tweeting utter bullshit.  Like this video of Dr. Stella Immanuel, who starts by pitching hydroxychloroquine and then veers into deep crazy.  Self-billed as "physician, author, speaker, entrepreneur, deliverance minister, God's battle axe and weapon of war," she says masks are unnecessary, that malaria/lupus drug cures covid, Congress is run by reptilians and endometriosis is caused by women having dreams about demon-sex.  Scariest of all, she is licensed to practice (medicine, not that other stuff) in Texas.  At least she doesn't prescribe injections of Janitor In a Drum.  Junior Trump RTd her "press conference" and got a twelve-hour timeout from Twitter, but they don't have the guts to suspend his daddy.  Daddy called Immanuel "very impressive."  The only surprising thing about all this is that we have run out of home-grown frauds and begun importing them from Cameroon.

The attorney general went before the House Judiciary Committee and lied about everything except his name.  Is it dinner time yet?

"I'm not sure I could have done any more" about the pandemic, Trump told a news station in North Carolina on Monday night.   That's not an admission of failure, he's proud of himself.  "We've done more than I think any administration has done...nobody even challenges that."  Since the virus only entered human society last year -- oh, what's the point?

One hundred fifty thousand dead in the richest country of all time.  No kidding.

 

Coward bunker, dude!

As any glassy-eyed Q-believer will tell you, Trump keeps his promises.  He said he would build a wall, and he is -- a thirteen-foot "anti-climb" barrier around the White House to keep out asylum seekers and everyone else.  The White House already has a fence, bullet-resistant windows and more armed guards than the average army base, but Field Marshal Bonespurs is afraid a protester will get past all of them and burgle his hamburgers while he hides in the cellar.  He's about a week away from proclaiming the place "Fortress Ivanka" and ordering it held to the last defender. 

And say this -- he's consistent.  He flew to New Jersey yesterday to play golf with Bret Favre, but he won't drive up the street to pay respects to John Lewis, lying in state in the Capitol rotunda.  That's what Joe Biden meant when he called Trump "the first racist president."  He wasn't letting all the others off the hook, but at some point it became bad form for racists to parade their racism in public.  Dog whistles and deeds for Nixon and Reagan, thank you.  Even George Wallace became positively conciliatory near the end.  Trump is all id -- he couldn't hide his contempt for uppity black people or women if he tried, and because he is perfect, why try?  It's almost admirable.  Racists admire him to the point of worship.  They know the real deal when they see it. 

Back on planet earth, an interesting database of extremist violence was published today.  It turns out that "left-wing extremists" a/k/a Democrats are barely on the scoreboard.   This is breathtaking in a country where assault weapons are easier to access than abortion.  I keep picturing the damage a Kalashnikov could do to a DHS stormtrooper.  It helps me cope.  But of course, as Nixon used to say, that would be wrong.

For some reason the Yankees invited Trump to throw out the first pitch at their August 15 home opener.  Although there will be no fans to boo him as at the World Series, he says he'll be too busy pretending to fight the Trump Flu.  This is a great relief to officials in New York, which requires a two-week quarantine of people coming in from covid hotspots like Florida and the White House.  National Security adviser Robert O'Brien tested positive yesterday.   Hiding data from the CDC and slowing down the testing doesn't seem to work.   Maybe a new magic cure? 

One thing that has given me comfort through our long national nightmare is the knowledge that Jacqueline Onassis did not live to see the White House, on which she worked so hard, re-decorated as a Slovenian bordello.  The tacky gold drapes alone would have put her in the ICU.  Serving junk food to guests in the original Styrofoam -- I can't even.  And now comes the news that the First Escort is turning her attention to the Rose Garden and the house itself.   Maybe leopard-skin upholstery and lava lamps for the bunker?  And why wait until it's almost time to pack?  The press release says she "studied architecture" ("You own big gold tower, Mr. Donald?  OK, we do bouncy-bouncy now") adding, "though she did not receive her degree" (but...but...her visa application says college graduate!).  Here's my theory:  Having paved over Michelle Obama's vegetable garden and put up a parking lot tennis pavilion, she wants to leave an unholy mess for the Bidens to deal with.  Mel, you'll be lucky if we let you keep the taxpayer-funded kidneys.

Death panels

Be careful what you wish for.  Back in 2008, vice-presidential candidate and scourge of wildlife Sarah Palin warned that the healthcare legislation being proposed by Barack Obama -- what would become the Affordable Care Act -- would necessarily lead to "death panels" rationing care and determining who would live or die.  And only twelve years later, here we are.  Starr County Memorial Hospital in Texas is so overrun with covid cases that it has formulated "critical care guidelines," i.e., triage.  This impoverished county had no cases at all for a while; now it has over seventeen hundred and people the doctors judge to be too sick will be sent home to die.  There are several reasons for this, but Obamacare isn't one.  For a start, somebody thought one hospital was perfectly adequate for a mostly-Latino population of 64,000.  Throw in a novel coronavirus, inadequate testing and a governor itching to get the economy back to "normal," and you have a real-life MASH episode. 

Texas isn't even the sickest state -- that would be California, followed by Florida.  They both surpassed New York yesterday.  More hospitals, healthcare professionals, testing stations, but there's no reason to think they won't soon have their own death panels.  The exceptional nation is exceptionally screwed. 

As in Weimar Republic-level screwed.  Elsewhere in Texas (Tyler), Congressional candidate Hank Gilbert held a rally today and his campaign manager was assaulted by supporters of the incumbent Louie Gohmert.  The purpose of the rally was to protest violence by organized storm troopers in Portland, violence which is threatened for other cities with Democratic mayors and/or significant non-white populations.  Only two years ago, this is not how legislators were chosen. 

Trump's faithful are going to get whiplash if he doesn't pick a position on China soon.  One minute he blames them for coronavirus, plays diplomatic tag with their consulates and accuses them of stealing our trade secrets.  The next minute he praises the wisdom of their prison camp solution to the Uighur question and flatters them by imitating their Hong Kong crackdown.  I'm starting to think  his supporters may not be politically serious people.  They wanted misogyny and racism and they got pandemic and unemployment with a side of blithering incompetence.  It must be like finding organic broccoli in your KFC bucket.

Am I hallucinating?  Chad Wolf turned up on Fox News to hint that it might be time to arrest the mayors of "Democrat run cities" for the crime of Who Cares, We'll Fill In the Charges Later, and Fox thoughtfully provided a map of these rogue cities with the names of their mayors.  (No phone numbers or pictures of families?  No wonder Trump prefers ONAN now.)  The map does not include Austin, Texas, where Garrett Foster was shot after being hit by a car.  Or Phoenix, where the Democratic Party headquarters was destroyed by arson.  Having the storm troopers as backup is energizing local police, who are beating and gassing everyone within reach. 

We can look forward to a hundred days of this.  Trump always wanted tanks on the streets, and it isn't even the Fourth of July. 

Convention disappears -- like a miracle!

Despite many perfectly fine suggestions (the Lobbyists, the Monuments, the Bureaucrats), the Washington football team has chosen to be called the Washington Football Team.  Maybe they want to see how the election plays out, maybe they're in search of a corporate sponsor (the Washington Depends?).  The point is, the old racist name has been pried from Dan Snyder's warm, sticky fingers.  Progress!

All quotations are attributed to Churchill, Oscar Wilde or Yogi Berra, so I don't know which one said that impending death focuses the mind wonderfully.  (Dorothy Parker?  Mark Twain?)  So does impending defeat, apparently, because after only seven months, four million cases and nearly 150,000 deaths, Trump has decided that acting serious about covid can only improve his poll numbers.  He is backing away from the demand that children be crowded back into classrooms right now, and has even suggested that people other than himself might think about wearing masks.  Yesterday he made the ultimate sacrifice and announced the cancellation of the Republican National Convention, which would have combined a Roman triumph with a really good Olympic opening ceremony.   So many people wanting to be there, with tears in their eyes no doubt, that you would never have noticed the absence of so many prominent party members and donors.  "I have to protect the American people.  That's what I've always done," he went on, his large orange face as straight as he can make it.  Protect us from what?  "From the China virus or the radical-left mob that you see in Portland." 

Too late for Gary Tibbetts, a staff member of Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), who died of covid in a Manatee hospital.  Right now, Florida is ground zero for coronavirus because its governor is a slavish Trumpanzee who just got the rug pulled out from under him.  Abbott, Kemp, Doocy, you're next.  Lifting restrictions and refusing to make masks mandatory will soon be your idea and yours alone.  Just remember, no one has died or been disabled by the "radical-left mob" that lives in Trump's head.

Speaking of shifting alliances, Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland angered that "radical-left mob" when his police used tear gas on them.  Last night he joined them on the street and was himself gassed by the federal troops who have invaded Oregon.  This time he called it an "egregious overreaction."  I'd say "Tear Gas Teddy" has been well and truly woke, even before Stephen Miller pronounced him a "secessionist."  By next week he'll be painting BLACK LIVES MATTER in front of the federal building, still standing despite all the violent graffiti.

Here's how it's done in two of Trump's favorite countries.  Ruslan Kostylenkov was beaten and sodomized by Putin's secret police for opposition to the regime, after which he "confessed" to being an anarchist.  Meanwhile, police in Jerusalem used high-pressure hoses (euphemistically called "water cannon") to break up an anti-Netanyahu demonstration.  Israel (population 9 million) has more than 58,000 coronavirus cases and many people blame government mishandling of the pandemic.  The response of the Knesset has been legislation allowing a state of emergency, mostly to end the protests by "radical-left mobs."  Small world.

If Trump heard of Zimbabwe he would probably call it a "shithole country," but he should be impressed with the way it reins in the press.  Reporter Hopewell Chin'ono was investigating government corruption -- yes, apparently it goes on even after Robert Mugabe -- when he was arrested for promoting demonstrations that police say will turn violent, although they aren't scheduled to happen for another week.  Not surprisingly, covid profiteering is involved.

Anthony Fauci had a mixed Thursday.  He threw out the first pitch at the Yankees-Nationals opening game, provoking many witticisms about "flattening the curve."  Then he found out that certified  conspirologist Judy Mikovits is suing him for creating coronavirus at Ft. Dietrick, mailing it to Wuhan to be weaponized, and then raking in the rewards that come from killing thousands of people worldwide.  Why a lawsuit?  It sounds like the crime of the century.  Why hasn't Mikovits shown her evidence to the Justice Department?  Or at least tweeted about it so Trump can RT her?  What's her game?  I demand an investigation.  Maybe I should sue her.  (Dr. Fauci is still getting death threats, as are his wife, their daughters, and probably a lot of random people named Fauci.  This batshit can only make them more frequent.)

The Senate passed a $740 billion defense bill yesterday 86-14, which is a lot of Republican support for a requirement to rename bases currently named for traitors -- even Fort Bragg, where soldiers trained to fight "beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible."  (The others are here.)  There are many American generals who could be honored instead.  I nominate Smedley D. Butler, at his death in 1940 the most decorated Marine in history.  He would be better known today if he had not given a speech, "War Is a Racket," in 1933, a year before he derailed a right-wing coup aimed at installing him in place of Roosevelt.  Fascinating man.  I wonder what he would have said about a $740 billion defense budget.  Since he was a Republican, probably something pithy.

Robert E. Lee High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, will be re-named for John Lewis.  See?  That wasn't so hard.

Stephen Miller, who organizes Trump's ravings into texts he can read off the Teleprompter, is not just a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified dispenser of hate.  He's also a covid denier.  His grandmother Ruth Glosser, a retired neuropsychologist, died July 4 of covid-19 according to the death certificate.  Miller, who certainly was not there because the family long ago sat shiva for him, calls this "categorically false."  Because nobody dies of "the sniffles," by Trumpean decree, I guess.

UFOs -- are we at the crossroads?

The majesty of the law

Bruno Dey was convicted of a mind-boggling 5,232 counts of accessory to murder in Hamburg, because he was a guard at Stutthof concentration camp in 1944-5.  "How could you get used to the horror?"  Judge Anne Meier-Goering* asked him.  But he's 93 and uses a wheelchair, so she gave him a two-year suspended sentence.  It's the price of longevity -- you get nailed for what others got away with.

Trump fixer Michael Cohen is about to be re-released after Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled that he was the victim of retaliation.  Being a felon doesn't mean you lose your First Amendment right to publish inside dirt about your most notorious client.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska has unsealed a load of documents from a 2015 civil suit against Ghislaine Maxwell, potentially containing famous names.  It's a win for the Miami Herald, which sued to have them unsealed.  Meanwhile, a 2015 Trump interview with Sean Hannity suggests that bad things are in store for Bill Clinton ("nice guy," Trump calls him, months before demanding the incarceration of his wife), Prince Andrew and other lucky habitues of Jeffrey Epstein's "cesspool" island.

The ACLU is suing the Department of Homeland Security, the Portland Police Bureau and the U.S. Marshals Service for attacking medics who were assisting demonstrators.  But who will sue on behalf of the people they were helping? 

Michael E. Horowitz, inspector general of the Justice Department, is investigating the use of violence by federal thugs against protesters in Portland and Washington, D.C. (the teargas/Bible atrocity).  For five points, how much longer will he be inspector general?




*Yes, I too was reminded by the judge's name of Hermann Goering's wisecrack, "If one bomb falls on German soil you can call me Meier."  It's how my mind works.  I'm having therapy.

Life comes at you fast

 Mark Dawson is almost certainly not the first writer to buy his own book -- four hundred copies! -- to nudge it up the best-seller list, but boasting about it on his podcast was perhaps not a good idea.  The Sunday Times has demoted him from its Top Ten.  This is bad news for Junior Trump, whose latest literary effort has been bulk-purchased by the RNC, like the last one.  (His ghost writer must be faster than Barbara Cartland.)  I guess there's a significant discount if you buy by the pound.  Called Liberal Privilege, it contrasts his hardscrabble youth with the sheltered upbringing enjoyed by people like Joe Biden.  Look for it in your goody-bag at the Jacksonville plague-fest.

Maksym Kryvosh hijacked a bus and took thirteen hostages in Lutsk, Ukraine, demanding that a number of government officials admit to being terrorists.  In the end, he settled for a Facebook post by President Zelensky which said, "The film Earthlings from 2005.  Everyone should watch it."  It's a documentary about animal rights narrated by Joaquin Phoenix.  No humans were harmed in the resolution of this crisis, despite a 500-page manifesto which someone will eventually have to read. 

Nadim Shamma-Sourgen will publish his first collection of poems next year.  Sample:  "Baddies love their baddie friends/Even very baddie ones/Policemen might arrest them/But they'll still have their love."  Cut him some slack, he's four years old.  Could you even read at four?

Trump tried to pressure the British government to steer the 2018 British Open to his failing golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, according to the American ambassador.  It didn't happen, leading to his calling Prime Minister Theresa May "stupid," among other things.  Probably have better luck with Boris Johnson, who is desperate to do a trade deal with almost anyone as no-deal Brexit approaches.

Some workmen lifting a manhole cover discovered Rudolph Giuliani relaying a long-debunked story about Ilhan Omar being at a terrorist training camp, featuring video from before she was born.  Should she sue him?  Or put it down to the ravings of a pathetic old drunk?  In other fake video news, the Trump commercial depicting urban violence in Unnamed City With Democratic Mayor turns out to be a pro-democracy demonstration in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2014.   They pulled it off Wikipedia.  Oops.

A large portion of the Ohio Republican Party was arrested yesterday for "public corruption racketeering conspiracy," including the speaker of the House.  Two bankrupt nuclear plants were involved, so there's something here for everyone.  Hey, Kellyanne, order more pardon pads, willya, honey?

I've been successful so far in ignoring the "presidential campaign" of Kanye West, or Ye, as I call him.  After a stranger-than-usual appearance in South Carolina, his wife Kim Kardashian thought it necessary to explain on Instagram, "As many of you know, Kanye has bipolar disorder."  Waiting for your excuse, Melania.

Despite getting at least three of its devotees on the ballot and recruiting Michael Flynn, the QAnon  Continuum has a lot of work to do:  Twitter has shut down its conspiracy sites for fear of instigating violence.  Twitter is part of the Deep State!  Does Trump know?  He should close his account immediately.

Back when the Department of Homeland Security was new, Paul Rosenzweig was a "senior policy official."  He's disturbed that "Trump is morphing DHS into his private little rogue, secret army."  Back in 2001 I thought the whole notion of "homeland" security was undemocratic, as was the PATRIOT Act authorizing even more domestic spying.  It was suspicious that the bill was all ready to be passed unread before the first plane hit the World Trade Center.  When something like this falls into the hands of totalitarian monsters, what do you expect? 

In its continuing game of diplomatic tag, the US ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, of all places.  Last night the fire department was called because consular staff were burning papers in a courtyard, which is what you do when you expect invading troops to surround the place.  Trump is again calling covid "China flu" because he has washed and sanitized his hands of the whole "sniffles" problem, as the death toll passes 142,000.  In about a month, farmers in Iowa and Nebraska will be trying to market a fuckload of soybeans and wheat.  We'll see what happens then.

Last year the New York Times published The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones's essay on the entangled roots of slavery and the future United States, and it lit a fire under racist asses that continues to flare up.  Last week in Philadelphia, racist ass Mike Pompeo lectured a group of diplomats on how wrong it is to even imagine that slavery was integral to getting this country off the ground.  He has started something called the Commission on Unalienable [sic] Rights and they've already reported back -- it seems the only rights you need are property and religious liberty.  Of course, classifying humans as property is exactly what Hannah-Jones was writing about.  Did he read the piece or just look at the pictures?  As for religious liberty, I seem to remember it's linked to free speech, a free press and free assembly -- and now we're back to DHS goons in Portland.   "These days, even saying that 'America is fundamentally good' has become controversial," Pompeo pouted.  No country is "fundamentally good," you ass.  An exceptional teenager wrote that about "most people" in 1944, just before she was hauled off to Bergen-Belsen.  Some people are good.  Countries are morally neutral.  When good people predominate, they do good things.  When they don't, children die in squalid camps and protesters are disappeared off the streets. 

Absolutely everything is on the World Wide Internets, including the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which Trump is still bragging about.   So he probably does not have Parkinson's.  Happy now, haters?  He would have done even better on an American test.











 

Bitches get stuff done

When the San Francisco Giants came up to bat in a pre-season game with the Oakland Athletics, Alyssa Naaken was coaching at first base, the first time a woman has appeared in a major league baseball game.   It should also be noted that manager Gabe Kapler and several players took a knee during the national anthem.  It's a real shame most of us have more important things to worry about than sports.

Like Rep. Maxine Waters, who knows how swiftly a traffic stop can escalate to "shots fired."  When she saw a Black motorist pulled over by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, she stopped to witness (and record) the event.  The deputies threatened her with a ticket for being in the wrong place, or something, but what matters is that nobody died.   I can see this becoming a regular event.  Not always the Congresswoman, obviously, but other concerned citizens could decide it's important to keep an eye on things.

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) did not agree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's views on the connection between poverty and crime, so he confronted her on the Capitol steps and informed her that she was "disgusting" and "out of your freaking mind," because that's how members of Congress debate.  As she walked away he was heard to add, "Fucking bitch," because that's how Republicans talk to women.  On Twitter AOC observed, "Hey, 'bitches' get stuff done."  She will still be getting stuff done next term, when Ted has resumed his veterinary practice.  Maybe a bitch will bite him.

Ghislaine Maxwell hid from the law so skillfully that the judge refused her bail, but she has one supporter:  "I just wish her well," Trump said today, using crime-family code for "if she keeps her mouth shut."  Too bad her trial is scheduled for next July, when he will be in no position to pardon or commute.  But you know, thoughts and prayers.

"As an upper-middle-class white woman in the whitest city in America, I couldn't stand by any longer," said Jane Ullman, explaining why she joined hundreds of "moms" standing up to Trump's storm troopers on the streets of Portland.  It was the killing of George Floyd that radicalized her and the brutalization of protesters that brought her out.  

Liz Cheney is chair of the House Republican Conference and normally of no interest, but today some of the deplorables decided she has to go because of insufficient enthusiasm in supporting Dear Leader.  She actually said she believes Dr. Anthony Fauci.  "We already have one Mitt Romney, we don't need another," tweeted Junior Trump, forgetting in the excitement that he is not actually in Congress and never will be.  I love it when they fight among themselves.  Like these guys arguing about how to make the next covid relief bill somehow benefit the rich.  

Margaret Sanger, who went to prison for dispensing information on contraception, will have her name removed from the Planned Parenthood of Greater New York clinic because she was a supporter of eugenics.  A quick search reveals that other supporters included Helen Keller, W.E.B. DuBois, Clarence Darrow, John Maynard Keynes, Linus Pauling, George Bernard Shaw and Alexander Graham Bell, so get out your markers and start purifying the past.  Anybody up for another round of Balance the Bad With the Good?  Good.  I'd prefer to spend my time getting J. Edgar Hoover's name off the FBI headquarters.  He was a total shit.

It is what it is

It has come to this.  As the DHS Wolf pack continues to terrorize Portland, a group of about thirty women formed a human barrier to protect protesters, chanting "Feds stay clear, moms are here!"  Of course they were tear-gassed, because that is the standard response to any public activity that does not involve overweight white men with guns threatening Democratic officials.  It was both thrilling and terrifying, depending on one's memories of Buenos Aires under the junta and Berlin under the Nazis.  (Several of the women are pregnant, but I searched in vain for outraged responses from the "right to life" crowd, who can be very selective about the precious babies they kill for.)  They need to recruit a lot more moms and so do other cities, because the goons are not going away.  (They appear to be deploying to Chicago.  Moms?)

In the sweaty Chris Wallace interview Trump continued to insist that the Confederate flag is not racist because "it represents the South" -- the old white South, of course -- and that no military bases (where the sedition flag has now been banned) will lose the names of traitors "on my watch."  The one he keeps bringing up is Fort Bragg, so I got some information together which he apparently does not have:

1.  It is in North Carolina.

2.  It honors Braxton Bragg, a commander so hated that one of his men tried to kill him by rolling a shell under his cot.  In Vietnam this was known as "fragging." 

3.  Information is scanty, but some say his mother went to prison for murdering a free Black man, unlikely in that time.  Anyway, he never talked about her.

4.  Regarded as a lousy general.  I'm no fan of Al Sharpton but he would be an improvement, though I'm still holding out for Thelonious Monk.

There's so much crazy in the Wallace interview, Tina Fey should develop is as a sitcom.  I think my favorite bit came in mid-defense of Bragg:  "We won two world wars, two world wars, beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible.  And we won them out of Fort Bragg."  That magical name was on every soldier's lips, along with "Betty Grable."  Sweet macademia nuts, who talks like this?

Here comes the money shot, inspired by a question about Joe Biden's mental acuity:  "Let Biden sit through an interview like this.  He'll be on the ground crying for mommy.  He'll say, 'Mommy, mommy, please take me home.'"  Not a mental picture you want to create for the million-plus who have read Mary Trump's book, with its vivid picture of the most dysfunctional family in the tri-state area.

As the death toll mounts, Trump had steadying words for the stricken nation:  "It is what it is."  One day covid will just go away.  All pandemics do.  That, and the glorious WALL to keep out Mexicans, is the end of the problem as far as he's concerned, although for the sake of the base Kellyanne Conway promises the daily "briefings" will resume tomorrow.  The servile governor of Missouri, Mike Parsons, obediently takes up the party line:  The kids will return to school, and "if they do get covid, which they will -- and they will when they go to school -- they're not going to the hospitals...They're going to go home, and they're going to get over it."  And that's an order.  Glad he's not my governor.

My governor has been busy picking a candidate for the seat of John Lewis, not yet buried.  It's reality TV star Angela Stanton-King, an auto thief pardoned earlier this year by Trump.  (It was the same pardon dump as Michael Milken and Rod Blagojevich, so you may have overlooked it.)  When not grand-theft-autoing she likes to express seriously anti-LGBT opinions.  Her only chance in the Fifth is to convince voters she's related to Martin Luther King.

From the where-are-they-now-and-who-went-and-found-them file -- it was a matter of time before John "Nipple-clamps" Yoo joined the Trumpers.  His assignment is to poke around in the recent Supreme Court decision on immigration and find a way to apply it to things like health care, tax policy, and dispatching Sonderkommandos to American cities.  Should be an interesting four months. 

Ugly Americans

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being treated for a recurrence of liver cancer and Joni Ernst is overjoyed.  If RBG would just hurry up and die, Trump can appoint a third Supreme Court justice, one who will make sure we resume praying in school, voting only with permission and traveling to Canada for abortions and birth control.  As Merrick Garland knows, lame-duck presidents are not allowed to do this, but Joni is pretty sure an exception can be made for the greatest president of all time, including the future.  (The other Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, who prevented hearings on the Garland nomination in 2016, thinks they should at least be consistent, but he's an old grumpy-pants who should just die, too.) 

At least Joni isn't crowing publicly about the death of Rep. John Lewis.  Who would do that?  Mister Nice Blog turned over a rock at Breitbart so we could all see the MAGAts.

Rev. Robert Turner was outside the Tulsa City Hall on Wednesday, demanding reparations for the victims of the 1921 Greenwood massacre.  White demonstrators screamed at and physically assaulted him, using language that hasn't changed since the 1960s.  They were there to complain about a city council ordinance requiring face masks in public, but racists can always multitask.  After nearly a century, the city is looking for probable mass graves, which the plague people doubtless consider a waste of taxpayer money.

Is it possible that the federal government has resumed executions so Trump can brag about his "law and order" cred to his dwindling fan base and make them forget how many criminals he has pardoned and commuted?  I hate being so suspicious.

At a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, it took four police officers to throw Joshua Wilson out of his wheelchair, damage the chair and handcuff him.  They later claimed he had a gun.  Joe Friday would be proud.

Marco Rubio wanted everyone to know how well he knew and loved John Lewis, so he tweeted this picture of himself with Elijah Cummings.  Everyone point and laugh.




Ellen Rosenblum, attorney general of Oregon, has opened a criminal investigation into the invasion of her state by DHS thugs with generic uniforms and unmarked vans.  The US Attorney for Oregon has also called for an investigation. 

"What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass asked in 1852, and went on to excoriate the celebrations of freedom, independence and other forms of hypocrisy.  To Vauhxx Booker of Bloomington, Indiana, July 4, 2020, will always be the day two white men tried to lynch him in the woods.  Sean Purdy and Jerry Cox brought along their Confederate flags and threatened to kill him  in front of witnesses.  Booker is a member of the Monroe County Human Rights Commission but it took public protests to get the two would-be killers indicted.  Douglass would have understood.

Those lovable McCloskeys, last seen standing their ground in front of their spacious St. Louis home, have inevitably become the stars of a Trump campaign infomercial hosted by Kimberly Guilfoyle.  Wait till they find out about Joe Biden's plan to fire all the police and abolish the suburbs.  Your gates will not protect you! 

Happy Friday fun time news

Voting by mail has worked without problems for years in states as politically diverse as Oregon and Utah, but it's impossible to manipulate by the usual means (demanding photo ID, closing polling stations, accidentally mislaying power cords, intimidating minority voters, etc.), so the Republicans hate it.  Leader McConnell has said out loud that it spells defeat for him and his cult.  Trump rants about it regularly, claiming idiotically that people (Democrats) will photocopy "millions of ballots" because he does not understand bar codes.  (His family's last attempt to vote by mail went hilariously wrong.)  A few people have tried to justify his panicky complaints by requesting ballots for live pets and dead relatives, but there are no instances of the ballots being returned.  The few confirmed cases of fraud, oddly enough, have all involved Republicans, like Rep. Steve Watkins of Kansas, who got indicted today. 

It's not clear if Senator Elizabeth Warren had heard of Watkins's legal troubles when she tweeted that her dog Bailey is voting for Biden, though it is clear she was joking.  Desperate to distract from the multiple catastrophes caused by Trump's malfeasance and stupidity, Steve Guest, who luxuriates in the title Republican National Committee Rapid Response Director, responded rapidly, "Elizabeth Warren endorses voter fraud, says her dog will be voting Democrat."  This led to a cascade of merry tweets wherein Ted Lieu, Mark Hamill, Mia Farrow and others posted canine endorsements of Biden and ridiculed the silly human with no sense of humor. 

By any estimate, there is a lot of unfunny stuff going on, from the still-spreading pandemic to the storm troopers in Portland, but Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House minority leader and part-time Steve (that's what Trump calls him) knows what the most important problem is.  He says he will soon introduce legislation to protect out nation's wonderful statues of dead traitors and slave drivers, which "Democrats" want to tear down because they hate our "rich history."  This one is, of course, DOA, but you can't have too many distractions as your party leader wobbles toward November with a 38 per cent approval rating. Maybe McCarthy could bring back "Satanic Panic," which began in his district back in the 1980s. 

When the weather clears enough for Air Force One to land safely in New Hampshire ("Live Free Or Die Tryin'"), Trump should invite Dianna Ploss to be his opening act.  The right-wing radio host was on her way to work when she passed a group of men speaking Spanish.  Naturally, she stopped and demanded to see their papers, as you do, and filmed herself in the act.  Did you know that people who don't speak English (or maybe are bilingual) are doing actual work possibly paid for by taxes?  In a blast from the past Ploss identified this as "communism."  At that point a Black man politely asked what she thought she was doing, and he soon became part of the show, sneeringly labeled a "social justice warrior."  And that's when she made her mistake and posted the whole encounter on Facebook, and now her job at WSMN has gone away because CANCEL CULTURE!  The station says it won't tolerate racism or hatred, so apparently they never tuned in to her show. 

In Georgia ("Florida With Less Citrus"), Governor Brian Kemp not only won't make masks compulsory, he's suing Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta because she has.  With 106,000 cases and 3,100 deaths, Georgia is number five for new infections but could catch Arizona anytime, because their governor is also a moron.

In normal times it attracts attention when paramilitary thugs without badges or ID grab people off the streets of American cities and drive them to jail in unmarked vehicles.  These are far from normal times, so hardly any attention has been paid to Portland, Oregon, where DHS thugs (acknowledged by Acting Secretary Chad "Chad" Wolf) are roughing up "rioters" because the police won't.  Neither the mayor nor the governor wants this but they're Democrats who don't love America enough.  Besides, Trump's campaign needs some testosterone-soaked video for the ads that will run in places like West Bumpstock, Arkansas.  "A major American city is being softly Pinochet'd in broad daylight," writes Charlie Pierce, who fears worse to come.  He's seldom wrong.

All right, that's about as funny as Justice Ginsburg's cancer, which has returned.  Try this:  The UK tabloids must be seething because Princess Beatrice was married in a small, private ceremony at Windsor.  That must be why the Guardian story reads like a palace press release and omits the name of the bride's father.   Did they keep it small and secret because of covid, or because Prince Andrew's legal troubles require him to stay out of sight?  Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

More amusing, here's Chris Wallace, somehow still employed by Fox News, giving Trump as hard a time as any reporter is ever allowed.  It's like he wants to prove he's Mike Wallace's son after all.

Our laid-back neighbor Canada is a confusing place.  By law it prohibits "inciting hatred against any identifiable group," but it has at least two monuments to Ukrainians who joined the SS during World War II and participated in the Holocaust.  We know this because one of them was vandalized in a cemetery in Oakville, Ontario.  Some Ukrainians (and Russians, Lithuanians and others) joined the SS to get out of hellish POW camps, some out of nationalism, some because they hated Jews.  In other words, it's complicated, and I'm happy to let Canada sort this one out.  But don't vandalize cemeteries.  It's trashy.

At the daily White House briefing, K-Leg referred to Lori Lightfoot as "the derelict mayor of Chicago," provoking the response, "Hey, Karen.  Watch your mouth."   Oh, it's on.  No one should be surprised -- last May Mayor Badass said, "I will code what I really want to say to Donald Trump.  It's two words.  It begins with 'f' and it ends with 'you.'"  Because mayors have to be polite.   

A Finnish company is optimistic about a breathalyzer test for coronavirus.  They say it's fast, it's cheap, and it's more accurate than a nasal swab.  We'll know it works if Jared Kushner tries to corner the market.

I watched Mary Trump on Rachel Maddow's show last night and I'm 95 percent sure she was adopted.  For one thing, no one else in that family looks like Judy Collins.  The complete sentences, the obvious intelligence -- she's the Marilyn Munster of the Trumps.  I hope that gives her comfort.

Bikers and boaters

More than 138,000 Americans have died of covid out of three million infected, but we as a nation have turned a corner.  That's because the CDC turned all the statistics over to HHS, which made them go away, just like a miracle.  No more lockdowns, no more masks (unless you look good in one), no more ice cream trucks full of dead people.  The 32 million are unemployed no more, thanks to Ivanka's "Find Something New" campaign -- they're all designing handbags and writing code -- and every sport will soon PLAY BALL!  Why didn't Obama solve problems like this?  Now, pack those kids onto the school bus.

The last days of the Trump Reich are proving to be a lot more amusing, for twisted, bitter observers like me, than the beginnings.  Despite periodic attempts to resuscitate it, the National Socialist German Workers Party died with Hitler, and one can only assume the husk of the Republican Party will die with Trump.  Accounts of their final days are chillingly similar, what with the loosening grip on reality, the fits of screaming rage, the physical deterioration, the refusal to accept responsibility for the approaching blue wave/Red Army, the paranoia and the self-pity.  For most viewers, Downfall (Der Untergang) was a cautionary tale, not a training film.  (As if Trump would read subtitles for two and a half hours.)

Confronted with uniformly terrible polling, his response is weirdly touching:  "Look at the lakes...thousands of boats with Trump signs, American signs....You look at what's going on, you look at bikers..."  They have no time to talk to poll takers, they're out on the water and rolling down the highways, OK?  And he hasn't forgotten his people, like the charming McCloskeys of St. Louis who pointed guns at protesters walking past their house:  "They were going to be beat up badly -- if they were lucky, OK?  If they were lucky.  They were gonna be beat up badly and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down."  Which is why the St. Louis chief prosecutor, who happens to be a Democrat and a Black woman, is now getting death threats.  And she hasn't even filed charges against Bonnie and Clyde yet.

Let's see, is there any part of the federal government not fatally damaged?  The postal service remains bloody but unbowed.  Enter Trump donor Louis DeJoy.  This successor to Benjamin Franklin put his finger on the problem:  too much efficiency.  Don't worry about delivering all that mail, it's perfectly fine to leave some (like Amazon packages) for tomorrow.  No need to be so anal about those Social Security checks and birthday cards -- Nana will still be there, covid permitting.  People who want to vote by mail are not real biking, boating Americans anyway.  Besides, we can't abolish it -- it's in the Constitution.  (Article I, Section 8, Number 7)

What do you have to do to get kicked off the Death Star?  Brad Parscale knows.  (Do you know who was sacking generals even as Zhukhov closed in?)  Parscale had the "juggernaut" Trump campaign "firing on all cylinders" (the Death Star ran on internal combustion engines?) last May, but now he's one of the 32 million.  It's time to publish your book, Brad.

We must be in Civil War 2.0, because families are being torn apart.  James Murdoch, son of Rupert, donated $615,000 to the Biden campaign, as did his wife Kathryn.  Meanwhile,  I'm a Trump, Get Me Out of Here by Dr. Mary sold nearly a million copies on its first day.  To quote the author when asked what she would say to Uncle Don, "Resign."

Interesting times

The queen of England is now in the liquor business.  Buckingham Palace gin, made with ingredients from the palace gardens, sold out within eight hours of launch.  (The bottle is most attractive.)  Profits go to the Royal Collection Trust, which oversees the queen's priceless art collection and the public aspects of her various residences.  Forty quid is steep, but it's for a good cause.  This is not a time to hit the government up for more money just because the plaster is cracking on the ceilings of Holyrood House.

"Satire is dead, as of the second week of July 2020," writes David Von Drehle in the Washington Post.  I seem to remember the death of satire being announced during the administration of Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon, and again in the days of George W. Bush.  (It's pretty hard to beat "Is your children learning?")  Based on yesterday's Rose Garden free-associative breakdown, however, that was clearly the bunny slope of incoherence.  Based on only a partial transcript (thanks for the paywall, Newspaper of Record), I can confirm that Trump wandered over China (the supposed topic of the presser), coronavirus, how Obama and Biden used to bus murderers in from Central America, crime in Chicago, how police kill more white than Black people, Confederate flags, and apparently Biden's plan to abolish windows (the architectural feature, not the Microsoft OS).  In other words, Infrastructure Week.  No, really, he's in Atlanta to talk about federal pork projects he never got around to when Republicans controlled both sides of Congress, and certainly not because he and Sticky Fingers Loeffler and even David Perdue are in serious danger of losing the state.   Satire is on life support.

Satirize this:  Jair Bolsonaro, the "Trump of the Tropics," is quarantined at his presidential palace in Brasilia, and he doesn't like it.  He caught covid because "masks are for fairies," and yesterday he was trying to feed a rhea when it bit him.  He wants another test.  The bird could not be reached for comment.

Elsewhere in South America, refusing to mask could be fatal.  In areas of Colombia controlled by drug cartels, at least eight people have been killed by gang members for trying to leave their homes without a face mask.  This seems extreme and ineffective:  Colombia reports over 5,000 new cases a day.



Also kicking satire in the jimmies:  the CEO of Goya Foods praised Trump last week, triggering a  boycott.  Today Princess tweeted this photo captioned "Si es Goya, tiene ser que bueno."  I assume she asked one of the maids how to say it in Spanish.

The Department of Health (!) and Human Services (!!) sent an encyclical to all hospitals instructing them to stop sending covid data to the Centers for Disease Control as they always have, and to instead send it to HHS's own database.  Nobody can understand why, unless it's somehow connected to Trump's theory (aired again yesterday) that less testing = fewer cases.  Or possibly the op-ed by Peter Navarro, the alleged trade expert, attacking Anthony Fauci, which was so unhinged that even President Unhinged disavowed it.  Fauci's response:  "I can't explain Peter Navarro.  He's in a world by himself."  And today it's a very chilly world.  Of course, HHS has no power to order hospitals to do anything. 

The supposed topic of the Rose Garden Ramble was "Getting Tough With China," or "Communist China," as he has again taken to calling it. (Not "leftist anarchist Antifa Democrat China?")  The reporters were so stupefied by the heat and the bullshit that no one asked why the administration had just lifted its ban on selling silencers (suppressors) to foreign buyers.  Did it represent anything other than a gift to the firearms industry?  That's a question the Germans are asking, too, as they investigate the assassination in Berlin of a Chechen asylum seeker last August.  And such a coincidence that former gun lobbyist Michael Williams is now a "deputy assistant" to Trump.  I'm pretty sure Russia can manufacture its own suppressors...but the Taliban? 

Governor Doug Ducey still has not made masks mandatory in Arizona, but several counties have run out of space and ordered ice cream trucks to store the dead, 2,528 as of today.  The mayor of Phoenix Kate Gallego says FEMA has denied her requests for help with testing.  Apparently it's not an emergency yet.  When does the weather get hot enough to destroy the virus?

I read an excerpt from Mary Trump's book and I may have to buy it, if just for the seriously geeky cover photo of Uncle Don.  It reads good, as they say, and it seems to be full of jaw-dropping stories.  Also she was screwed out of her inheritance and deserves financial vengeance.  I'm just not sure it's a good idea to accept the rotten-childhood defense for this seriously fucked up individual, just because he has the power to end life on earth based on the voices screaming in his head.  Lots of people had rotten childhoods and went on to lead valuable lives -- I'm hearing a lot about Frederick Douglass, for example, and I'd rather spend the time and the money on David Blight's new biography.  Let me think about it.

Secrets and lies

Trump has a lot of lawyers doing his bidding, but with the possible exception of Alan Dershowitz they're all as dumb as cream cheese.  Michael Cohen is back in prison because he broke the terms of his house arrest for a French meal.  Bill Barr didn't get the memo and called the Roger Stone conviction "righteous."  And now Rudolph Giuliani has revealed that Trump's taxes are all done being "audited," which was always the lame excuse for concealing them.  But then he caught himself and blurted out an even crazier excuse:  they must be protected from "Soros-elected anarchist district attorneys."  With a little time and some Adderall he could have worked "Antifa" and "kung flu" in there.  C+, Rudolph.

Trump knows who did the pandemic to him, and it's ALL OF THEM.  He passed along a tweet from epidemiologist game show host Chuck Woolrey identifying the plotters:  "The Centers for Disease Control, media, Democrats, our doctors...I think it's all about the election, and keeping the economy from coming back."  He forgot the Houston Chronicle and yesterday's 43-page obituary supplement.  Probably most of those people were frightened to death by Black Lives Matter.  (Elsewhere in Texas, a baby boy died of covid, despite Senator Cornyn's belief that children are not affected.)

America's own game show host thought of another reason he should be voted for:  Biden is boring.  Re-tweeting a portion of a Biden speech he demands, "Is this what you want for your President???  With no ratings, media will go down along with our great USA!"  Actually we survived eight years of a highly intelligent and charismatic president who rarely tweeted.  When he did, he managed to avoid threats, bluster, demented conspiracy theories, personal attacks, childish nicknames, whinging self-pity, easily disproved lies, racism, misogyny and incitement to violence, not to mention self-aggrandizement, bad spelling and tin-eared howlers like "HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!"  Biden lacks charisma but I think he can manage the rest.  And the media Trump cares so much about will survive, especially with plenty of juicy criminal prosecutions to cover (see "Soros-elected anarchist district attorneys").  I can't wait.

Meanwhile, Biden isn't the only one beating Trump in the polls -- Americans trust Anthony Fauci over him when it comes to disease.  In response, the courtiers "leaked" a memo using selective quotations to prove Fauci --  "Dr. Doom and Gloom" -- has been wrongly wrong.  Debbie Birx is shopping for more scarves and Jerome Powell is as effective as a sitcom dad, so Fauci has become the focus for Trumpazoid abuse.  It's not clear what he would gain by lying, but sure, blame him and China.  All better now, apart from the 137,000 dead.  That's what it took to get Trump into a damn mask for less than an hour, and the media can't stop talking about it.  What will they do the first time he climbs into a condom?  (Although Florida has more coronavirus cases than most countries, Fox talker Dan Bongino issued a warning to the compulsory-mask fascists:  "You can take your mask mandate and shove it right up your ass."  Well, you can, but unless you talk through your ass...oh, wait.) 

Eppur si muove, Galileo is supposed to have muttered after endorsing the Catholic Church's position that the sun revolves around a stationary earth.  Nevertheless, it moves.  Showing him the rack was certainly persuasive, as it always has been for dumb dictatorships.  If we survive this and other trials -- hey, a boy just died of bubonic plague in western Mongolia -- truth will prevail.  I have to believe that, or the blue imps will come back.

News from all over

Stung by a scalding rap collaboration from Kid Cudi and Eminem, Trump finally put on a mask as he visited Walter Reed hospital to have his meds adjusted.  Dr. Anthony Fauci remarked, "Why didn't I think of that, yo."

LeBron James says he will not wear a "Black Lives Matter" jersey when play resumes because his ideas on social justice cannot be boiled down to a slogan.  The Lakers star faces a two-game suspension for excessive nuance.

Our Clown of the Week is Rep. Glenn Grothman, (R-WI), who was addressing the Wisconsin Republican Convention yesterday (masks optional).  "It's time to talk about Donald John Trump!" he said, but before the hymn of praise could begin, he was racked by a cough that forced him to loosen his tie.  Beat that for a cold opening, Saturday Night Live.  As is customary at Republican events, attendees had to sign a waiver in case of resultant intubation or death.

Pope Francis is "very distressed" that Hagia Sophia is to be converted from a museum back into a mosque, despite the fact that it has not been a Christian church since 1453.  Imagine how the curators and tour guides must feel.

Robert Mueller wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post reminding us that Roger Stone is still a criminal.  In response, Lindsey Graham jumped off Trump's lap and peed on Mueller's leg.  Then there was another empty threat about "forcing" him to testify before the Judiciary Committee only seven months late.

Remember Elaine Duke?  Of course you don't, she was Acting Secretary of Homeland Security between Kelly and the other guy.  She says Trump's response to Hurricane Maria was to ask, "Can we sell the island?  You know, or divest of that asset?"  When informed of this, the people of Puerto Rico with one voice shouted, "Trade us to Denmark for Greenland!  Oh, please!"

You knew it was coming:  the political obituary.  Kristin Urquiza knows exactly who to blame for her father's death at age 65, and their weapons were incompetence and indifference.

One hundred fifty Minneapolis police have filed disability claims since the killing of George Floyd, citing post-traumatic stress disorder.  Not since Heinrich Himmler worried about his SS men being traumatized by having to shoot women and children has there been such a tragedy, for sure.

Remember Walter Palmer, the schmucky dentist who killed Cecil the Lion?  He's at it again.  Junior Trump must have told him the Mongolians will let you shoot anything for the right price.

Ready for our close-up

Sorry, New Hampshire, tonight's Portsmouth rally has been delayed by rain.



Defund the police.  Start with their chemical weapons.





America's "classiest" (Franklin Graham) First Lady has been seen at a lot of campaign events.  Forget the tax returns, I'd like to see the revised pre-nup.



Remember this?  Not so frosty since Boris got in.