National Rake-stepping Day

It's a paradox:  Trump holds the law in utter contempt unless he can use it to benefit himself, chiefly through the bankruptcy filing and the nuisance lawsuit.  Thanks to his deft maneuvering, Mary L. Trump's intimate portrait of Uncle Don, Too Much and Never Enough, will not be published on July 28.  Simon & Schuster is bringing it out on July 14 instead.  And probably printing more copies. 

Out of court, Trump's favorite tactics are the baseless accusation and the self-pitying demand that someone, usually a woman or person of color, "apologize" for something.  Today's contestant was NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, because a noose (actually a doorpull) discovered in his area of the Talladega Superspeedway was determined to have been there for months.  Wallace didn't complain about it but many drivers and track personnel demonstrated support for him, which disgusted the Racist in Chief; he needs Wallace to grovel for "just another HOAX...That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!"  Actually, the Tampa Bay Times reports "notable ratings increases" since the decision to ban the Confederate flag, but Trump has no use for facts. 

There was an actual HOAX! over the weekend, but Trump has yet to comment.  A funster calling herself/himself "Left Behind USA" made use of social media to announce a gathering in Gettysburg to "burn flags in protest of thugs and animals in blue."  This attracted Rightzi militia types bent on protecting said flags and thugs, but you know what?  It was all in fun.  There is no Left Behind USA!  There was only a man named Trent Somes in a scary Black Lives Matter shirt, come to pay respects to a Civil War ancestor.  The patriots surrounded him and he had to be rescued by DHS police.  Similar incidents have been reported in Idaho, South Dakota, Michigan and New Jersey.  Who can it be?  Why is it so easy to prank the stupid?  

Looks like Trump and Fox News are pffft, as Walter Winchell would say.  Out of some impulse to report news -- maybe it's the "news" part of the name -- they keep announcing polls that show Biden leading with every demographic but lobotomized fundamentalists.  In other words, "phony suppression polls."  Turn off Fox, he tells the cult, and get the truth from One America.  Which seems ungrateful considering how much work Fox put into cropping Trump from this picture of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Melania Knaus, as she then was.  But then they retracted it and apologized, which is a thing only weak losers do.  

 

To cheer Daddy up, Junior tweeted this.  Do you like it?  I can't stop laughing.

Last February, when the world was beginning to cope with covid, Trump blandly assured us, "A lotta people think it goes away in April, with the heat."  Because viruses cannot survive high temperatures, which is why they try to avoid human bodies with their 98-degree temperatures.  Well, it's July and the daily case load is exploding in Texas, Arizona and Florida, all fairly warm places.   The new strategy is "we need to live with it," because it's just unconstitutional to tell people, "Put on the fucking mask and shut up."  Stop the testing, which only makes the numbers look worse, and stop talking about it.  If only the government could crack down on journalists and healthcare workers the way Egypt does.  Blaming doctors is not enough -- we tried that.

Having put Bubba Wallace in his place, Trump turned his rage on the Washington football team and Cleveland baseball team, both moving toward non-racist names.  Unable to claim them as part of our "heritage and history," like mad old white generals on horseback, he accused them of being "politically correct."  "They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness," he screeched (Red Sox?  Orioles?  Padres?), adding bizarrely, "Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very angry right now!"  Thanks for noticing.  Native Americans are very angry right now but sports franchises are low on their agenda, after miserable healthcare, pollution of their water by oil pipelines, and the continuing presence of Borglum's tacky carvings on their sacred land.  I don't know about Senator Warren or why you reflexively bring her up whenever someone says "Indian."  Perhaps you could seek professional help with that after January 20.

Is it possible coronavirus has done something nice?  It's given Justin Trudeau an excellent excuse to stay home instead of coming to Washington to discuss NAFTA II.  The White House was a vermin-infested plague pit even before it became a covid petri dish.  Back in Ottawa all he has to contend with is the occasional loony smashing through his gate with a gun.  Maybe see you next year, prime minister, eh?