Twenty-nine days

 News for making us happy:

Some people can identify a Grateful Dead song from the crowd noise before a note is played.  Dr. Salvatore Cerchio is like that with blue whale songs.  That's how he found a previously unknown blue whale population in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar three years ago.  He found some cousins singing the same song off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea.  The whales are probably hoping he won't give them away to hunters or those pain-in-the-ass tourists.

Trump, his campaign and the Republican Party are being sued by the NAACP on behalf of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and three Detroit residents, for "a coordinated conspiracy to disenfranchise Black voters" under the Voting Rights Act and the Third Force Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act.  I wonder how many other Reconstruction laws are still in force.

As expected, Trump has turned on Mitch McConnell for acknowledging Joe Biden's victory, claiming that only his tweet saved the Kentucky homunculus from certain defeat.  In a message to Republican senators he showed that he has internalized the Titanic trope:  "He was the first one off the ship."  

Mitch has been busy wrangling the covid relief bill through the Senate, not that even one Senator read the whole 5,593 pages.  Not to worry, Charlie Pierce brings us the highlights this morning.  It covers vital matters like the selection of the next Dalai Lama, tax breaks for racehorse owners, and making sure no money goes to ACORN, which ceased to exist ten years ago.  As you decide what to spend your $600 on, be warmed by the knowledge that Israel is getting half a billion.  For defense.

More cannibalism in the lifeboats:  On Newsmax -- is it a cable channel?  A podcast?  A treehouse?  I don't know -- Mike Lindell started to air the Dominion voting machine garbage and Sebastian Gorka told him to stick a pillow over it.  Probably because Newsmax backed down, like Fox News, after that terrifying letter from the Smartmatic lawyers and they don't want a problem with Dominion.  (Biden should hire those sharks for his Justice Department.)  

The next Secretary of Education will be Miguel Cardona, currently education commissioner of Connecticut.  Before that he was a public school teacher and superintendent, so probably he doesn't own even one yacht.

Everyone thought it was polonium in his tea, but Alexei Navalny got an FSB officer to admit it was Novichok in his shorts.  Navalny is all better now, to the annoyance of Putin mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov, who accuses him of having a "persecution complex" and "comparing himself to Jesus."  "And the rest, of course, is an expression of Freud.  The fixation on the crotch area."  Freud, Jesus -- what's wrong with Dostoevsky?

The Kansas City Star has become the latest newspaper to apologize for decades of racist reporting.  How nice.

Trump's not interested in the Russian hack or the covid death toll or any of that other stuff but that doesn't mean he spends all his time plotting sedition.  He signed a executive order requiring that new federal buildings be "beautiful."  This means only "Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts or Art Deco."  Hey, Donzo, have you met Prince Charles?  I read The Fountainhead (I was bored) and even Ayn Rand thinks this is nuts.

No matter how bad things get in America, we will never experience Christmas panto, much less the "car park panto" the Brits are getting.  Watching faded sitcom stars enact dreary old stories and shouting "He's behind you" at the windscreen -- poison my pudding now.

Seventy-three West Point cadets have been accused of cheating on a final exam in calculus.  If you don't understand how such a thing could happen, remember that cadets are appointed by Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Gym Jordan, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Jody Hice, Ted Yoho, Devin Nunes, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, etc., ad nauseum.  And next class, Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene.  They'll be cheating on Introduction to Hygiene.

Et tu, Marion?  Now Pat Robertson has decided Trump is of no further use to the superstition industry.  "You've had your day and it's time to move on," he told Trump via his TV show.  Trump lives in "an alternate reality," added the man who says he believes in talking snakes and zombie carpenters.  And don't even think of running in 2024.  Let the blog say "Amen."