And this happened

 Got a gender-reveal or divorce party coming up?  (Sorry, no quinceaneras.)  Book now to get Donald or Melania Trump as your entertainment.  Allow six weeks and do not go to endlessgrift.com, as you will be re-directed.  If you choose the Former First Escort, you are responsible for the music and special costume(s).

Alexei Navalny is on a hunger strike after being sleep-deprived and denied medical care in prison.  In view of the way he was poisoned the first time, he should probably stop wearing clothes, too.

A memorial service for G. Gordon Liddy will be held Saturday in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. 

Archegos Capital Management, a New York-based hedge fund, has mysteriously lost $20 billion.  (Those kids on Tik-Tok again?)  Investment banks all over the world are hemorrhaging money.  So sad.

Michael Regan thinks the Environmental Protection Agency should resume protecting the environment.  To that end the new administrator has 86'd forty Trumpites from its "advisory boards."  In the words of Theodore Geisel, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!"

Devoted as always to profit and having it both ways, Georgia-based Delta and Coca Cola waited until the bill was signed by Brian KKKemp to deplore the state's new Jim Crow voting law.  I'll think of them the next time I order a Pepsi on a United flight.

Vaccine "passports" are proof of covid immunization intended to facilitate travel.  Naturally, Marjorie Taylor Guam has claimed her daily five minutes by pronouncing them "Biden's Mark of the Beast" and says companies that require them are involved in "corporate communism" (not to be confused with "liberal fascism").  I hope the cookies those nice National Guard people brought her contain carfentanil.

Ooh boy, Matt Gaetz is having himself a bad week.  Charges of taking a 17-year-old across state lines for icky purposes, getting muzzled by Tucker Carlson, and now his father is being investigated over some mysterious men and a hostage in Iran.  Matt better take that job with Newsmax before it evaporates like his political career.  So sad.  If Trump were smart he'd file the paperwork to turn Mar a Lago into a church and offer asylum to all his felonious followers -- for a price, of course.

Back from re-education camp in Delaware, Major bit somebody else and either he or Champ was a very bad boy in front of the Diplomatic Reception Room.  Twenty Congressional seats the other way and we'd be looking at impeachment.

A member of the Ndrangheta crime family was arrested by Italian police after someone recognized his tattoos on his YouTube cooking show.  And now I love YouTube even more.

Monday in America

 I'll be the first to admit that it's gotten harder to blog without the daily tsunami of outrageous bullshit from the White House to fuel my anger.  Some days I don't even want to turn on the computer.  But this weekend has left a cornucopia of crazy.  To note but a few:

Cancun Cruz is Swift Boat Teddy Now! should be a Jimmy Rogers song.  Canada's gift to Texas strapped on body armor and found someone to take him out in a boat bristling with machine guns in search of a photo-op to make people forget poor Snowflake at the front door of the Cruz manse, whining (probably).  He brought along a bunch of other Republican senators with fuck-all else to do, and together they sought the elusive CARAVANS OF TERROR arriving from Central America, where it's even worse than Texas.  They found cartels.  They found human traffickers.  I think they found Hunter Biden's laptop with Hillary's emails on it.  Too bad they didn't find the nine-year-old girl before she drowned trying to cross with her mother.  This is what happens when a bunch of idiots confuse the Rio Grande in 2021 with the Mekong in 1970 and waste the time of the Border Patrol.

Brian KKKemp looks like a moron and talks like a moron, but he's just bright enough to know he can't steal another election if people can vote.  He positioned himself beneath a painting of a fine old Georgia plantation and signed a bill that bans most forms of voting in the state and even puts the legislature in charge of counting the votes instead of the secretary of state (charitably, we could construe that as protecting the Raffensperger family from death threats if the numbers are not to Trump's liking).  As other states race to disenfranchise their poorer, less-white citizens, expect more governors to follow KKKemp's example, maybe with pictures of lonely Indians or drunk Mexicans in place of Tara.

What do you do when a five-year-old acts up in kindergarten?  If you're Miss Karen you call the St. Petersburg police.  America's law guardians seem to be competing to see which force can overpower, handcuff and traumatize the youngest child.  A few cities like Los Angeles are trying out a system of sending mental health professionals to try to talk down adults in crisis instead of sending police to kill them.  In the long run, if employed in cases of brattiness, it could save money on lawsuits and tiny handcuffs.

Michigan Republican chairman (and former ambassador, if you can believe it) Ron Weiser doesn't like having three women occupy the highest elective offices in the state.  He called them "witches" who need "burning at the stake" (with votes, of course), which is exactly the way he would have talked had Gretchen Whitmer, Dana Nessel and Jocelyn Benson been men.  Because when a woman complained about two Republican congressmen who voted for impeachment, he replied, "Ma'am, other than assassination I have no way of voting out, OK?"  This amused the mob audience at the North Oakland Republican Club.  Very violent place, Michigan.    

I was under the impression that "Meth -- We're On It" was the brilliant slogan of South Dakota's just-say-no-to-tweaking campaign.  Now I'm not sure.  Senator Steve Daines of nearby Montana was part of the Cruz junket to the border and his reasons were a little different from most of the other Republicans':  "Twenty years ago in Montana meth was homemade.  It was homegrown.  And you had purity levels less than 30 percent.  Today the meth that is getting into Montana is Mexican cartel."  Even Mike Lee had to conceal his laughter.  Steve, you should have said something last year.  I'm sure Trump would have Hereby Ordered tariffs to protect American meth.  I'm equally sure the little girl and her mother were not meth mules.  The cartel would have given them plane tickets.

The propaganda outlets have been needling Joe Biden since November 6 to hold a press conference ("What's Biden Hidin'?")  So last week he did and now they're yapping because he used notes and didn't trip on his way to the lectern.  It will take a while to get used to coherence and the absence of racist abuse, but I'm in it for the long haul.  I also thought there would be at least one question about the pandemic.  You remember.  The dead people?  The vaccines?

Have you heard about the GRINCH act?  Rep. John Joyce (R-PA) has come up with the Guarding Readers' Independence and Choice bill because he is so enraged at the Seuss Foundation's non-governmental decision to stop publishing six books from Mr. Geisel's High Racist period.  The bill would deny federal money to states and local authorities which ban books, and I for one am thrilled.  Bipartisanship at last!  Banned Books Week is coming up in late September, although I suspect putting To Kill A Mockingbird, Heather Has Two Mommies, Of Mice and Men, Slaughterhouse Five and Invisible Man back on the open library shelves and in the backpacks of American students is not exactly what Joyce has in mind.  On a related note, God's Own Party is pushing a bill to make the Bible (KJV, presumably) the "official book" of Tennessee.  I hope the GRINCH Act discourages them from banning The Origin of Species again.

Are you ready to laugh?  Trump is so miserable he's crashing weddings at his plague-ridden resort.  He's issuing Official Statements on his "45th President" letterhead that everyone ignores.  He's threatening to launch the mother of all social media platforms as soon as he finds someone to create it without seriously expecting payment or credit.  He's proposing to visit the Mexican border and cause more problems for everyone who has to work there.  And of course he's still claiming he won.  Here, enjoy the comments ("Full LaMotta!") and the Elaine Stritch bonus track.

Good news!  They moved the ship.

Stuck

 The movie currently playing in my head is The Wrong Box (1966), specifically the scene where some removal men are attempting to extract a grand piano from the home that Michael Finsbury (Michael Caine) shares with his irascible grandfather.  After watching them try to muscle it out the door the ancient butler (Wilfrid Lawson) observes, "Do you know what that is?  That is stuck.  That is what that is."

It takes very little to constipate a planet.  Since last week an enormous container ship has been stuck in the Suez Canal after running onto a sandbar and turning sideways, or whatever the nautical term is.  Other enormous ships are backed up for miles; some have peeled off to circumnavigate Africa instead.   In the shipping business, I am told, time is money, so expect to pay more for stuff made in Asia (what China makes, the world takes).  This is the sixty-fifth anniversary of Nasser's seizure of the canal and of NATO's failure to do anything about it despite Article 5, so if you hear ghostly laughter from the direction of London it's not an ancient butler:  "Not our problem, old man."  It's up to Egyptians to move the Ever Given (ugly ships have ugly names) before the entire world economy grinds to a halt.  They could try unloading some of its 220,000 tons of stuff, but how to get a gigantic crane onto sandy ground?  They're already dredging sand from around the steerage, but it could take weeks.  My guess?  They'll blow the thing up.  It's Japanese-owned and Panamanian-flagged, leased by a company in Taiwan, so the lawyers can live off this until the next century.

Do you remember when Barack Obama decided to keep Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his Cabinet?  It was supposed to provide continuity or signal his willingness to work with Republicans or something.  Didn't work, of course, because Moscow Mitch had already stated his intention of crippling the Obama presidency.  Joe Biden talks unity but he's under no illusions about the gang who tried everything up to and including the January 6 putsch to keep him out of the office we elected him to.  No Trump collaborators were invited to apply for jobs in the new administration and most have melted back into the private sector (rightwing propaganda outlets mostly) or are hoping their pardons will cover future criminal charges.  Most, but not all.  There is an active cell of Trump fifth columnists working to impede or sabotage most Biden initiatives.  For example, there are still a couple of weasels called Andrew Saul and David Black at the Social Security Administration holding up stimulus checks by refusing to hand over records to the Treasury Department.  (This was the Trump tax-returns technique until a judge had enough and told them to cough up or go to jail.)  Judge Amit Mehta is livid that Michael Sherwin, another Trump hire as acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, decided to chat with Sixty Minutes about pending indictments of Oath Keeper thugs who took part in the coup  attempt.  In legal circles this is called corrupting the jury pool.  It's almost as if Sherwin doesn't want them convicted of sedition.  

The worst, most visible offender is Louis DeJoy, who seems to think Trump made him postmaster for life like some unqualified Federalist Society judge.  His plan -- his ten-year plan, thanks very much -- for completing the destruction of the postal service is so appalling that a group of House Democrats paid him the compliment of the DEJOY Act (stands for Delivering Envelopes Judiciously On-time Year-round, clumsy but effective).  Here, enjoy a sampling of complaints from Americans who don't care if the post office makes a profit as long as they don't have insurance policies cancelled over checks lost in the mail, or have to pay late fees on credit card bills, or are at risk of losing small businesses over missing or delayed packages.  It's not just a matter of Aunt Mary not getting her birthday card.  And the Sedition Party don't care as long as they can convey the message that Government Can't Do Anything Right.

Alejandro Mayorkas just fired a bunch of Trumpers from the Department of Homeland Security advisory board, in a move to improve immigration policy that the Washington Post calls a purge.  Good.  Bring on the Swiss Kriss.  If Louis Armstrong did ads for it, it's good enough for removing Trump toxins.

What's wrong with me?

(First of a series, probably.)

I awake to the news that an AR-15 with a sociopath attached has killed ten people in a Boulder supermarket.  The sociopath's name is Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, he was born in Syria, he left a social media post referencing Allah.  

My first thought:  Here we go again.

My second thought:  Maybe the Asians will get a break for a while.

Earlier this month the NRA celebrated its victory in getting a judge to overturn Boulder's ban on "commonly-owned rifles (AR-15s) and 10+ round mags."  Yippee.  How many other sociopaths went shopping?  In Boulder and elsewhere in Colorado, like the charming town of Rifle (let it go) where Rep. Lauren Boebert's bar and grill with fully armed waitstaff and no damn masks welcomes you.  Rep. Boebert made with the thoughts and prayers and then sent out a fundraising tweet, as you do.

It looks like Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa decided to arm himself last week.  His brother calls him "paranoid."

Ted Cruz is fed up.  Not like normal humans but in a Ted Cruz way:  "Every time there is a shooting we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders," he groused to the Judiciary Committee.  Only prayer will stop these murders according to Cruz, and he has a bottomless bucket to fling:  "I believe in the power of prayer.  The contempt of Democrats for prayer is an odd sociological thing."  So stop asking Ted to give a shit or do his job, and unleash the sociologists to find out why Democrats keep trying to take guns away from paranoid Syrian immigrants and "soft-spoken" Christians like Robert Long.  (In case you forgot already, the Atlanta "sex-addicted" spree killer.)

In all the excitement you probably missed this cute little story out of Ted's home state of Texas.  Outside Idalou (let it go) Larry Lee Harris of Arizona decided that three trucks filled with unarmed Texas National Guard were involved in human trafficking (a recognized Q obsession) and forced them off the road.  He then pointed a gun at the guardsmen and demanded to search their vee-hicles, which were in fact delivering covid vaccine to the town of Matador.  No one was hurt and Larry Lee has been returned to his ZZ Top tribute band.

Calling it "a normal we can no longer afford," Barack Obama said, "A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country."  The poor man obviously hasn't seen the Gun Violence Archive.  Covid hasn't put a dent in shootings; it has only relocated them away from movie theaters and outdoor concerts.  It has also distracted the newsertainment people, who prefer video of syringes in arms to bodies on gurneys. 

No matter how many times they show him the video -- and now I'm thinking about Alex's "therapy" in A Clockwork Orange -- Ron Johnson can't see any insurrectionary violence, at least on the Senate side.  You know, where they were yelling "Hang Mike Pence!"  Maybe he should get his vision checked by someone other than Rand Paul.

Kristi Noem knows the problem isn't covid or guns or racism or climate change or fill in the blank.  It's keeping transgender athletes out of women's sports.  She's gonna ride that one to the White House, probably.  No doubt god comes into it somewhere.  

Want to pay even more for even slower mail?  Louis DeJoy will make it happen.  Exactly why has Biden not extracted this thumb-head from the USPS?

So in conclusion -- and by the way I am fed up with people who start every sentence with "so" -- why am I alternately suicidal and filled with rage?  What's wrong with me?

A very very very fine House

 The Senate gets to confirm judges and cabinet members and all that, but anyone can see the House is where the action is these days.  We may re-name it the Fun House.  Or the House of Horrors.

Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA) you already know about, the committee-free scamp who has little to do but put on dazzling displays of bigotry and ignorance.  (Her theory about space lasers causing wildfires is perfectly innocent because she had no idea the Rothschilds were Jewish.)   But after that and the Guam business and the anti-LGBTQ stuff and her general uselessness, Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) introduced a resolution to throw her out, now with more than seventy co-sponsors.  Pretty impressive for a freshman.

Mad Marge's latest effort at representing her district was to join eleven other chuckleheads to oppose the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Capitol Police who saved their worthless asses during the January 6 coup attempt.  They didn't like the language in the resolution, which referred to the insurrectionists as "insurrectionists" and described the Capitol, somewhat floridly, as "the temple of our American Democracy."  But mostly it was the implied criticism of those law enforcement-loving white patriots so dear to Trump and Ron Johnson.

After the murders in Atlanta but before the assault on a 76-year-old woman in San Francisco's Chinatown (she kicked his ass), the House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the sickening wave of violence against Asian-Americans since Trump starting ranting about "Kung Flu."  Chip Roy (R-TX) apparently didn't get a copy of the agenda, because he decided it was the right place to complain about how the people of south Texas are being "absolutely decimated" by events at the Mexican border, and how people whose property was destroyed during last summer's demonstrations need justice (without mentioning the victims of Kyle Rittenhouse), and something about the Chinese Communist Party.  (The CCP hasn't had this much attention from Republicans since Nixon went to Beijing in 1972.)  Then it got weird:  "There's an old saying in Texas about 'find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree.'...Round up the bad guys.  That's what we believe."  First of all, it's a Toby Keith lyric, not the wisdom of Sam Houston.  Second, you really want to bring back lynching?  If the Republicans got control of the House this armadillo turd would be the committee chairman.  Now think about that.

Without any help from these specimens but with bipartisan support the House passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would allow a million agricultural workers to obtain green cards and live here legally and permanently.  Who could object to that in a big ag state like California?  Darrell "Arson" Issa, of course.  Because the children of said farmworkers might not agree to remain in a permanent state of peonage, picking our strawberries and lettuce, and choose instead to become teachers and lawyers and members of Congress.  Issa's always looking out for the real Americans.  Just be sure to lock your car.  

With feral cats like these to herd, it's almost possible to feel a twinge of sympathy for Kevin McCarthy --  unless you know about his bad-faith effort to get Eric Swalwell removed from the Intelligence Committee.  He doesn't give a damn about this country and its security, he just wants to distract from Devin Nunes's involvement with the Russians (and maybe retaliate for Greene's punishment).  And I haven't even mentioned Paul Gosar's assumption of Steve King's role as leader of the white nationalists.  You remember Gosar --- even his family thinks he shouldn't be in Congress.  

They're not wrong.

A really bad day

"Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did," Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office said.  He was describing Robert Long, who shot eight people at three Atlanta area massage parlors last night.  Long was arrested without being harmed by police and he bought his weaponry ahead of the current bill to tighten background checks, so one could say he had a pretty good day for a killer.  He won't say if his victims were chosen by race as attacks on Asians spike across the country, but he acknowledges having a "sex addiction."  Maybe if he weren't the son of a Baptist clergyman he wouldn't feel guilty for the normal urges of a 21-year-old, but that's my own speculation.  I'm going to speculate further that the murder of some rub-and-tug girls probably won't arouse the same degree of outrage as nine worshipers in a Charleston church.  We shall see.

Sex addiction is apparently a problem in Utah, too, and legislators are attacking it with a requirement that all tablets and phones sold in the state have software that blocks access to porn sites.  (As defined by who? we ask innocently.)  The bill awaits the signature of Governor Cocks Cox.  See how complicated it can be?  People lumbered with such software by their employers or other institutions have found it impossible to read about breast cancer, anal fissures and other medical topics flagged by the antiporn algorithms.  And after all, Utah is not China.  What's to stop people smuggling in devices from wide-open states like Nevada as travelers once slipped copies of Ulysses past US Customs?  If this becomes law it will just mean more work for the ACLU.  I guess I have to increase my monthly contribution.

 John Magufuli, the authoritarian, evangelical, critic-torturing president of Tanzania, has died at age 61.  Did I mention he also denied the severity, even the existence, of coronavirus?  His death is attributed to "heart complications," but complications of what remains unclear.  Sometimes poetic justice speaks in iambic pentameter.

Stella Keating, a transgender 16-year-old, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the new Equality Act.  As Rush Limbaugh is still dead, it will be up to one of his hate heirs to call her a slut. 

And speaking of hate, Mad Marge was brutally "ambushed" by members of the Guam National Guard, sent to give her a basket of cookies and a "book" (with words) about the island territory.  Kevin McCarthy is livid at the "politicization" of the military, what with defending female servicepeople from attacks by Tucker Carlson and now this atrocity.  Somehow they're being cancelled and the violence must end.  No more cookies.  Stop laughing.  It's very serious.  What's next, oranges? 

 

  

End of an empire

 I like to keep up with all cultural trends.  No, I don't, but my curiosity was whetted when one particular song was credited with the "weakening of American society," which happens every few years, so I experienced "WAP" featuring Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.  I hope I copied that right.  The video involves two voluptuous young women in an expensive-looking house discussing their sexual needs in lubricious detail.  I wasn't shocked to my core like Candace Owens but perhaps she isn't old enough to remember Madonna's "Hanky Panky," which paled beside some of Peggy Lee's early work, not to mention Bessie Smith...the point is, we've been here before and our flag is still there.  Owens has enlisted in Tin-tray Tucker's Culture Army now that she is no longer invited to the White House to speak for all Black people, and she has decided this silly song means "the end of an empire."  Sure.  And now a word from MyPillow.

Mitch McConnell is also displaying a taste for Trumpian hyperbole, warning that if the Democrats take away his beloved filibuster the Senate will resemble "a hundred car pileup" with "scorched earth" and laser sharks.  Some people can't adjust to the loss of power.  For instance, he couldn't even stop four Republicans (Graham, Murkowski, Sullivan and Collins) from voting to confirm Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior, which makes this Pueblo woman the boss of oil and gas drilling on public land, among other things.  Oh the horror, etc.

That acrid smell is Republican hair on fire because thousands of migrants, many of them children, are arriving at the southern border to the usual panicky cries ("They're terrorists!  We have no room!").  I guess time will tell on the first claim, since naturalized Americans tend to love this country better than most of us jaded natives, especially if you treat them better than the last bunch did.  As for the second, Montana recorded more deaths than births last year and it wasn't exactly teeming with people to begin with.  (Rich Hall says it's a place where a policeman will pull you over just because he's lonely.)  So there's one state with the VACANCY sign lit anyway.

Shocker No. 1:  Having promoted Trump in 2016, Russian intelligence tried to keep its stooge in office last year, using Ukraine as a front.  Clever, huh?  If only he hadn't worked so hard at being loathsome.

Shocker No. 2:  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wants to see the long form of the FBI background investigation on Brett Kavanaugh and has asked Attorney General Garland to look into this and get back to the Judiciary Committee.  I know, he seemed so honest and sincere.  He likes beer, too.  What could they possibly be hiding?

Former state representative Charles Booker says he may run for the Senate next year against Rand Paul.  If he wins, there will be two Black men in the Senate named Booker.  This is alarming news for Ron Johnson, who already thinks they all look alike.

Trumpian financial genius Larry Kudlow is still banging his cheap drum for tax cuts.  "The way to get upper-income people to pay more in taxes is to lower their tax rate," he explained to Laura Ingraham.  Another way is to raise their tax rate and prosecute them when they don't pay.  My way is better.

Old timers and Catholics may recall "meatless Friday," when you got really tired of fish sticks.  Colorado Governor Jared Polis has suggested "MeatOut Day" for March 20, a challenge to go vegetarian for one lousy day.  In childish response Governor Pete Ricketts announced "Meat On the Menu Day" for Nebraska, calling Polis's initiative "an attack on our way of life."  And so here we are back at the end of empire -- salad and sexy women and taxing the rich.  See you on the boat deck. 

Spring forward

 I'm a little punchy today because I had to get up at 2 am and set my watch ahead.  Pick one, OK?

But seriously, folks, it's a good sign when we can worry about other countries more than this one.  For instance, what in hell is up with the Brits?  On March 3 a 33-year-old woman named Sarah Everard was kidnapped on the street in London and her body was found in the woods of Kent.  A policeman, Wayne Couzens, was charged with murder.  Last night a vigil on Clapham Common was violently broken up by police, allegedly for violating pandemic lockdown rules.  It was like watching American police attack BLM, but most of these demonstrators were white.  There are calls for the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Cressida Dick, to resign.  Even Home Secretary and Iron Lady-wannabe Priti Patel, who has no problem with holding asylum seekers in decrepit army barracks, wants an investigation.  

Then there's the shocking discovery of racism in the Royal household, nearly ninety years after a former king was seen hanging out with Hitler.  No need to rehash Oprah's Interview of the Century or Piers Morgan's big flounce-off from some breakfast-time show.  Over in France Charlie Hebdo reminded everyone of why it's such a beloved institution with a cartoon of the Queen kneeling on Meghan Markle's neck.  I suppose the message is that racism is racism whether you're a duchess or a truckdriver, but the effect was to trivialize both Markle's emotional pain and George Floyd's murder.  Nice job, mes amis.

Maybe the British are just stir-crazy and angry from trying to navigate the tier system of rolling lockdowns.  They certainly seem more fascinated by their shit than anyone should be post-potty training, and by shit I mean shit.  There's important information buried in the article (of course you should see a doctor if there's a lot of blood) but it's easy to get sidetracked by the do-it-yourself bidet kit and the inevitable Gwyneth Paltrow discursion.  Can you imagine Ingrid Bergman or Myrna Loy...never mind.

The Biden-Harris administration is on a roll, with the Rescue act its big Act I finale.  (For just one example, thousands of airline and airport workers got a message that said "That furlough?  Never mind."  A furlough is a temporary layoff where you don't get unemployment and the company doesn't have to pay you, either, because "furlough" sounds better than "screwing.")  And that trillion dollars plus is going for all kinds of good stuff like daycare and vaccinations and everything but states funding tax cuts, very very unfair, won't someone think of the people who leave huge estates?  At least seven Republican senators are so unhappy being in the minority that they're going to retire rather than be bullied and ignored.  Do I hear eight?  Two things that never go away are herpes and Trump, and there was a flare-up this week when Jane Mayer's article in The New Yorker delved into the Manhattan DA's investigation of the Trump Organization and its skeevy practices.  Not everyone enjoys the minutiae of legal procedure, so for the rest of us there was a boggling account of Trump attending a shivah for the mother of his CFO Allen Weisselberg.  According to Weisselberg's former daughter-in-law, he hit on her after disparaging the house in Wantagh ("It's embarrassing!") and sharing pictures of himself with naked women on a yacht.  He probably complained that he couldn't adjust his hair because all the mirrors were covered.  This is why the McCain and Bush families didn't want him at funerals.  

Speaking of appalling behavior, remember when Roseanne Barr wrote that tweet comparing Valerie Jarrett to an ape and then claimed Ambien made her do it?  And Sanofi, the French company that makes Ambien, pointed out that "racism is not a known side effect of any known Sanofi medication"?  I wonder if they also make a drug for diabetes.  Because Oklahoma sports announced Matt Rowan was heard calling a high school basketball team "n------" because they offended him by kneeling during the anthem to protest racism.  They won anyway, while Rowan ascribed his racism to a blood-sugar spike.  He should get his meds adjusted, as should Ron Johnson.  The Wisconsin senator says he wasn't afraid on January 6 because most of the rioters were "people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement."  You know, white people.  Had they been BLM protesters or those damned elusive antifas, he would have taken shelter with all the other...wait, what?  Why are there no pictures of RonJon greeting the Prod Boys as liberators, with flowers and sweets?

You don't suppose all the enslavement, brutality, racism and murder of the last four hundred years were  caused by white people's faulty metabolism, do you?  This is so easy to fix.  Some insulin, a piece of candy, and we've got ourselves a civilization.  

Spring is a time of hope. 

      

Irish sex

 Got your attention, didn't I?  Let me quickly add I'm referring to the definition by George Carlin:  In the dark, under the covers and get it over quick.  (Molly Bloom was only half-Irish.)  It was a fine week in many ways (covid relief bill passed and signed, more Cabinet members confirmed, millions vaccinated, no insurrections), but there's always something...

The Oklahoma legislature voted to legalize lynching.  Why do so many people believe lynching always involved a tree and a rope?  It's now fine to drive your car at protesters (think BLM or antifa) if you are "fleeing a riot" and can convince the DA of your "reasonable belief" that your life was in danger.  If said protesters get in your way and you don't hit them, they can still get a fine and a year in jail.  Vehicular fascism has become a popular pastime all over the country since the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, so expect other states to get busy indemnifying murderers.

The Biden administration is trying to make it easier for women to serve in the military by continuing to fund a maternity flight-suits program begun under the previous bunch.  Tucker Carlson, who has never been closer to combat than duking it out with Harris Faulkner for the last bear claw in the break room, says this is outrageous and we might as well surrender to China right now.  Tammy Duckworth's response begins "Fuck Tucker Carlson" and only gets better from there.

All the living former presidents and their wives made a video urging Americans to get vaccinated.  All but one.  Can you guess?  Yep, he was too busy claiming credit and blaming China.  The loser just can't help being a lying racist.

Lauren Boebert has yet to be kicked off Twitter, so she released a gem demanding, "Madame Speaker, tear down this wall!" followed by the sound of a gunshot (made by her?).  Boebert, who gave a guided tour of the building to some "constituents" on January 5, is incensed that there is still a fence around the Capitol.  Since the House passed two bills to expand gun-sale background checks, I imagine she's a little peeved about that, too.

Republicans continue to soil themselves as the For the People Act (H.R. 1) advances, because it might nullify all their hard work in restricting the franchise to "quality" voters, as defined by state Rep. John Kavanagh of Arizona.  Mike Lee (R-UT) is more explicit about the bill:  it was "written in hell by the devil himself."  That good, huh?  If lobbyists can write bills, why not the devil?  Well, Mike?

I keep missing The Steve Bannon Comedy Hour only in part because I wouldn't know where to find it, so I didn't hear Mike Lindell describe the covid vaccine (presumably all of them) as "the mark of the beast."  Mike, have you met Mike?  Mike's new platform is going to put YouTube out of business, which will be hard on those of us who depend on it for British panel shows and free music.  Yes, now you know.

Marjorie Taylor Qreen has no committees and nothing to do but put up moronic signs and make a nuisance of herself.  She likes to force adjournments so the grownups can't get any work done, and David Cicilline (D-RI) proposed a rule change to stop her.  Her response was to refer to him as "Representative Mussolini," because he's a big mean dictator who won't let her have fun and also Italian.  Cicilline responded, "I'm an Italian and a Jew," which must have blown her tiny mind.  You can be both?  She's still trying to process the information about Guam.  The governor, Lourdes Leon Guerrero, offered to send her a book, which is just cruel.

Some D-list celebrity named Woolery apparently started the rumor that Nancy Pelosi spends $2,000 of your hard-earned tax dollars on booze every time she flies home to San Francisco.  Fifty-two thousand dollars a year, America!  Except that the Speaker doesn't fly home on a commercial flight every week, nor does she drink alcohol.  Which can only mean one thing:  SHE'S SPENDING IT ON ICE CREAM!

I love the smell of right-wing desperation in the morning.  Any time, really.

  

Can you feel the hate?

 I just finished reading Nell Irvin Painter's learned yet immensely entertaining The History of White People, so I was probably the least surprised person in the country to learn that Republicans are having a hard time smearing Joe Biden the way they did Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and every other Democrat who isn't a straight white man.  That's why Fox News interrupts its interminable culture wars coverage every time he forgets somebody's name.  Is he senile?  Has he lost his marbles?  Well, he's eight years older than I am, and if it wasn't for IMDB I wouldn't know who I was watching or sometimes the title of the movie.  They tell me it's not uncommon.  I can't even remember the names of people I used to work with, never mind met in school.

It's all they have because their old white base doesn't respond to attacks on old white men, even Catholic ones.  As Professor Painter explains, there was white and then there was white, which definitely did not cover everyone who happened to come here from Europe.  At the top end were the Anglo-Saxons like Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even the Celts couldn't compete for genetic superiority (see any Thomas Nast cartoon of the ape-like Irish).  Germans were reluctantly admitted to this company, but the arrival of Italians, Slavs and Jews lit a fire under the early nineteenth century nativists, leading to the American Party ("Know Nothings"), anti-Masonic violence and eventually a rebirth of the Klan.  (Why Freemasons?  Nobody quite knows.  Many of the Founders were Masons, including George Washington.)  As recently as 1928 Al Smith was attacked from Protestant pulpits for being Irish and a Catholic.  Sadly for the Republicans, those days are gone.  

So when they aren't running the Grandpa Joe playbook, the Republicans avoid attacking Biden directly and try to pick off the women in his administration, particularly women of color like Deb Haaland, Neera Tanden, Vanita Gupta and especially Kamala Harris.  Did you know she got on the phone and talked with the Norwegian prime minister all by herself?  Who does she think she is?  We still aren't allowed to know what Trump and Putin chatted about because the translator was required to turn over her notes, but we know Trump went ballistic (in front of Prime Minister Theresa May, no disrespect there) when a call from The Boss wasn't put straight through to him.  

Biden, the oldest, whitest candidate the Democrats could come up with last year, has so far been -- dare I say it?  Teflon.  His bitey dog and his refusal to do Jen Psaki's job, too, are about all they can latch onto.  The Tara Reade "scandal" fizzled like a wet match.  Outrage over Dr. Jill Biden calling herself Dr. Jill Biden lasted about five minutes.  The Congressclowns don't have the power to order a half-dozen Hunter Biden "investigations," and it's driving them crazier than Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Unlike his predecessor Biden doesn't tweet fifteen times a day about Dr. Seuss or Meghan Markle; he just passed a covid stimulus bill that an overwhelming majority of Americans support.  And it helps that there's a tempting target called Andrew Cuomo just now.  Susan Rice burning sage in her office to cast out the essence of Stephen Miller is just good fun.

Anybody calls Joe Biden "senile," just remind them of this Republican holiday coming up in April:  

  

Reagan once addressed his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, "How are things in your city, Mr. Mayor?"

Time to clear out the drawers

Karens of color have been sighted in San Francisco.  Uber driver Subhakar Khadka, who is from Nepal, picked up three women in his personal car, which is how Uber works.  They took umbrage at his request that they mask up, yelled racist slurs, coughed on him, grabbed his phone and finally pepper-sprayed him after getting out.  There is video, and it's ugly.  You don't have to be white to act like an asshole. 

It helps, however.  The shooting death of Breonna Taylor in her bed has moved the Kentucky legislature to action.  They are in the process of passing a bill to criminalize "unreasonable noise" or causing "annoyance or alarm" by shouting at police.  Making physical contact is not necessary -- all the cop has to do is claim you hurt his feelings by calling him a fat cracker.  It's not clear if this would cover editorial cartoons or pointing and laughing.  

Kenneth R. Hubert of Marionville, Missouri, describes himself as a "right-wing nut-job," but so far all he has done is threaten violence by email and phone.  Recipients have included Rep. Steve Cohen, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, President Obama and a federal judge in Montana.  He does the whole medley:  racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia, as well as abuse for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.  Judge David P. Rush thinks he should sit in jail until his trial in May, the First Amendment be damned.

Speaking of multi-tasking idiocy, Marjorie Taylor Greene was a contestant at CPAC ("Our motto:  Leave no cretin behind") and had this to say about foreign policy:  "We believe our hard-earned tax dollars should just go for America.  Not for, what?  China, Russia, the Middle East, Guam, whatever, wherever."  Yes, Guam, where America's day begins.  Did they applaud, or just cheer?  Louie Gohmert will have to take up crystal meth if he wants to remain head of the Real Dumb Caucus.

He attacked and hurt a human and he's been sent away for further training.  Major the White House dog, of course.  Who did you think I meant, Piers Morgan?

A meteorite landed on a driveway in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire.  Please recalibrate and try again.

John Schnatter was the CEO of Papa John's Pizza until he was heard on a conference call using the "N" word like a Mark Fuhrman impersonator.  He says he has struggled for nearly two years to remove that word from his vocabulary.  (He said it to OANN, which undermines his claim not to be a racist.)  If it's still a battle after twenty months, maybe his problem is racism plus Tourette's.

Got another one!  Here's Republican state legislator Joseph Chaplik pointing out that nobody wore a mask in the 1980s during the AIDS epidemic, so why should we gotta now, huh?  Ladies and gentlemen, the next governor of Arizona.

Do you believe in magic?

 For all our supposed rationality, we can't shake off our ancestors' belief in the supernatural, whether sparked by Harry Potter or some religious cult.  Look on your cable TV menu.  There's something called the Travel Channel, which used to be about vacations and cruises and such.  Recently I noticed that it's wall-to-wall yetis, haunted houses, UFO "evidence" and a show called "Beyond the Unknown," which really makes no sense.  None of it makes sense, but somebody is watching it.  There are sponsors.

I wasn't surprised to read, in the highly rational Guardian, that Irish feminists have adopted the sheela-na-gig, a medieval depiction of a woman proudly displaying her vulva, as a "symbol against misogyny" as they memorialize the women who were abused by Catholic Church institutions like Magdalene laundries.  These startling stone carvings are all over Ireland, including churches, and probably were meant to invoke easy childbirth from whatever goddess prevailed before Christianity was introduced.  

In an interview with Jonathan Swan, Lindsey Graham attributes similar supernatural powers to his own dark lord.  "There's something about Trump.  There's a dark side.  And there's some magic there.  What I'm trying to do is just harness the magic."  Lindsey, the sorcerer's apprentice, sees Trump as someone who can make the Republican Party "bigger, he can make it stronger, he can make it more diverse.  And he also could destroy it."  Or presumably turn Graham into a newt.  They've got the golden idol, it's time for the sacrifices.

The Dalai Lama, who is 85, received a covid vaccination at a hospital in Dharmsala, India.  When he is reincarnated, will his new body be immunized?  I really don't understand how this works.  I suppose it won't matter if he becomes a butterfly.

All feminists could learn from democracy protesters in Myanmar.  "Women, who are front and center in these protests, have strung up their htameins, the traditional sarong worn in Myanmar, and their underwear and bras on clotheslines around protest zones.  Soldiers and police are reluctant to walk under them because of superstitious beliefs that these women's garments can sap them of their masculinity and bring bad luck."  I wonder if that would work in Minneapolis, where police are already being terrified by crowds carrying flowers and Black Lives Matter signs.  

Yes, it's International Women's Day.  Burger King stepped on its Whopper with an especially maladroit tweet, but it was eclipsed by a Baptist preacher named Stewart-Allen Clark of Malden, Missouri, who put on a Wonder Woman jersey to hide his gut and to deliver a sermon about wives' responsibility to be thin and attractive or hit the road.  They should in fact aspire to be "trophy wives," and not surprisingly, Pastor Clark's idea of a brass figlagee is Melania Trump.   Can't afford daily botox and kidney enhancement?  Get a second job.  The pastor is on leave following the completely unexpected uproar caused by his interpretation of the Gospel According to Weight Watchers.  No doubt Tin-tray Tucker will have a homily about how he was cancelled by the feminazis.

Which reminds me:  This is the first IWD since the death of Rush Limbaugh, whose death certificate lists his occupation as "GREATEST RADIO HOST OF ALL TIME," evidently his wife's idea.  I think Jean Shepherd, Bob Fass, Studs Terkel, Long John Nebel, John Henry Faulk, Fred Allen, Bill Watson, John Gambling (both of them), Don Cornell, Martin Block, Milton Cross, Rosko, Allison Steele, Larry Josephson, Garrison Keillor, Major Bowes, Steve Post, Delphine Blue, Phil Schaap, Stephanie Miller and about 700 other people might have something to say about it.  But she's free to carve that on his headstone, which I understand will be a granite urinal. 

All I know...

...is what I read in the papers, said Will Rogers.  Then he would riff on the news for the splendid Ziegfeld Follies audience.  Lose the lariat and Rogers was the first observational stand-up.

The papers don't necessarily involve paper now, but the news is just as bizarre.  Let's go in.

Greg Abbott blames the spread of covid in Texas on "illegal immigrants."  What do you expect from a Neanderthal?

Benjamin Netanyahu is angry about an SNL sketch which suggested Israel is only providing vaccine to "the Jewish half" of its population.  Because he has nothing better to do than complain about American television shows.  Like confer with his lawyers about his upcoming corruption trial.

Richard Barnett is also angry that he can't get out on bail.  All he did was sit in Nancy Pelosi's chair, steal papers from her desk and shit in her wastebasket while grinning for the camera.  Outrageous.  He would have missed today's "real inauguration" had it occurred.

About that.  The House cancelled its session and the National Guard ringed the Capitol, but like all of history's previous Second Coming events, Trump II has been postponed until March 20.  Please hold onto your tickets.

Sixty Minutes showed why it's the Cadillac El Dorado of news magazines by scoring an exclusive interview with Jacob Shansley, the Q Shaman.  I won't spoil the surprise, but he thinks he should receive leniency because he prevented the other rioters from stealing muffins out of the Senate break room.  I'll bet Ted Cruz never puts money in the jar and leaves a mess for Susan Collins to clean up.

Speaking of the Cruzer, he's pretty sure Joe Biden ordered the banning of six Dr. Seuss books.  I would have gone with Barack Obama or AOC but that's why Ted's Ted.

"Yes, I know it could take ten hours but the American people deserve to know what's in it," says Ron Johnson on why he wants it read out loud.  "And so do I.  Reading is hard!" he didn't add.  Twenty years ago Congress passed the PATRIOT Act without even opening it.  Maybe Biden should have called it the USA! USA! LICK COVID NOW!! bill.  

No wonder Elaine Chao was so quiet during her term as Secretary of Transportation.  She was busy forcing employees to work on projects celebrating her father and his shipping company.  Which is sort of transportation related even if he is Taiwanese.

If you don't watch The Steve Bannon Comedy Hour on some internet site, you missed the birth of a new word.  Six-gun Lauren Boebert came up with "transvexhikes" (apparently she was going for "transgendered," but who knows?).  It's harder to pronounce than "covfefe" but only time will tell if it has the same pizazz.   What do you get when you cross a Boebert with a Gohmert?  I'll bet it's as dumb as a brick.

Did you know the moon has a blue tail?  Like a comet but cooler.   Something to do with meteor showers.  The universe is a very interesting place.

What is he hiding?

 

Zach Parkinson says Joe Biden has broken all records for not holding a press conference.  There's a graph!

I wonder why.

Fundamental values

We're smarter and better looking, but that's not why I love the left.  It's because despite being under constant attack, we don't hesitate to smack one another upside the head for being wrong.

Angered by Gov. Greg Abbott's absurd, wrong-headed and cruel decision to lift covid restrictions in Texas (with only 7% of residents vaccinated, 48th in the nation), Keith Olbermann tweeted, "Why are we wasting vaccinations on Texas if Texas has decided to join the side of the virus?"  I understand his exasperation, and so did many people who called him out.  Texas didn't hold a referendum, this is the work of one craven politician fighting for survival after a winter storm and power disaster that killed twenty-five people in Harris County alone.  Many more will die in a wide-open state that eschews masks if they don't pick up the pace on vaccines.  I'm sure Olbermann didn't intend that.  Besides, there are plenty of other Republican governors equally careless of human life.  Why ship vaccines to South Dakota or Missouri or Florida?  All the responses from the liberals (I assume) who follow Olbermann's tweets are instructive, but Dr. Lucky Tran nailed it:  "Health is a human right.  Doesn't matter where you live or who you voted for.  I know we are living in a political hellscape, but please let's keep this fundamental value intact."  

In the heart of the hellscape, hell goes on.  The Republicans alternate between insisting Trump won the election and trying to keep people from voting, which only seems contradictory to non-simpletons.  The Brennan Center reports that at least 106 bills to restrict democracy are pending in state legislatures.  For instance, Georgia wriggled out of their grasp, electing two Democratic senators and awarding its electoral votes to Joe Biden.  This led to unpleasantness for various state officials, including Trump-inspired death threats.  The legislature lost no time in passing a law that makes everything about voting more difficult; in an especially sadistic twist, it's currently illegal to give "food and drink" to an elector (voter) standing for hours in the Georgia heat.  Of which there will be many more due to other restrictions on early voting and mail voting and even dropping another person's ballot in the few remaining boxes.  Not to mention the probability of machines malfunctioning, as they did in the 2018 election.  It's the same all over.

Fortunately Congress has a cure, and it's named for Georgia's greatest Congressman ever:  The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore all the provisions destroyed by Shelby v. Holder by bringing back federal supervision, since apparently racism still exists no matter what John Roberts says.  Now all they have to do is slip it past Joe "DINO" Manchin.  

Meanwhile the war on democracy continues at every level.  In Ankeny, Iowa, there was a special election for the local school board and someone brought a pipe bomb.  I can't imagine what they do when a vacancy occurs on the city council.  Napalm?

Of course, you're still free to elect any sort of idiot you want.  For instance, the Texas 13th will probably keep Ronny Jackson next year despite revelations that he was very drunk and a li'l bit rapey on a trip to the Philippines with President Obama.  We're lucky Obama enjoys excellent health and never needed to call on this slob.  What did I tell you about doctors in politics?  All together:  "Howard Dean is the exception that proves the rule."  Write it down.

It must be Gratuitous Insults Wednesday:  Joe Biden called the decision by Mississippi and Texas to lift covid restrictions "Neanderthal thinking" and Timothy L. O'Brien's new biography of Trump compares him to Al Capone.  On behalf of all our Neanderthal ancestors, I am outraged.  

Update on the Golden Trump that was the hit of CPAC:  It was actually made in China.  Like the MAGA hats and his neckties and the schmattas that Ivanka sells.  But some Republicans thought Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo wouldn't be tough enough with China.  Unlike Wilbur Ross, who was on the board of Huaneng Invesco (Beijing) until 2019.  I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.

What's going on?

 The US will not sanction Saudi Arabia over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but will sanction Russian officials for the attempted murder of Alexei Navalny?

Has anyone received mail lately?  I ask because my February credit card bill never arrived.  And Louis DeJoy seems to think his work should be rewarded with further employment.  I suggest he learn the job from the ground up, by sewing mailbags for five to ten years.

Corporate America is a mysterious place.  Joe Hebert, who is 19, has a business called West Coast Streetwear which re-sells clothing.  He bought $132,000 worth of limited-edition sneakers from Adidas and Nike, using his mother's credit card, and sold them for a profit of $20,000.  Now his mother, Ann Hebert, has had to resign as general manager of Nike's North American division after working there for twenty-five years.  Because even a breath of scandal is unacceptable if you sell overpriced sneakers.  I guess my question is, how sharp can Joe be if he has to use his mother's credit card?  

Trump didn't spend all of January trying to overthrow the federal government.  It seems that America's sweethearts received a covid vaccine before leaving the White House.  Since they both had the disease, which is supposed to confer immunity, it probably represented one last chance to get something at someone else's expense, which is pretty much their life plan.  It's also remarkably brazen after a year of lying about everything from masks to social distancing.  I wonder if they remembered to get one for that tragic child Barron.  

The Roman Catholic Church remains a death cult fixated on a supposed Next World and on making life here as nasty, brutish and short as possible.   The Archdiocese of New Orleans, flouting the pope, says Catholics should not get the highly effective single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine because production involves cells cloned from a fetus which was aborted half a century ago.  (Ah, the heady first days of Roe v. Wade, when women were getting abortions just for the sheer excitement of it!)  And because there's always someone nuttier, the bishop of Tyler, Texas, says they should avoid all three vaccines and just -- pray, I guess.  To make things worse for Tyler, Greg Abbott can't wait to drop all the mask requirements and re-open the whole state, where people still lack water, never mind vaccine.  Pray hard.

Oh.  France is investigating the sexual abuse of more than 10,000 children at the hands of the Catholic Church.  But tell us more about how cloned cells are "morally compromised."

They're censoring Dr. Seuss!  "They" being Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which sounds like a foundation set up to deal with his books after his death.  Even Ted Geisel would have trouble explaining this in rhyme to the likes of Junior Trump, but the company reviewed the books and decided six of them contained material which was offensive to some people.  In addition to being our greatest writer of books for young children, Geisel was a political cartoonist during World War II, when even the president occasionally referred to one of our opponents as "Japs."  Whatever he was thinking when he drew stereotypical African and Asian characters, his own publisher made a free-market decision to stop bringing out more copies -- kind of like Simon & Schuster dumping Josh Hawley.  Oh, won't somebody think of the children.  And if you think If I Ran the Zoo is racist, wait till you read about Dr. Doolittle.

Adults should read Nell Irvin Painter's The History of White People, an astonishing account of how ideas about which Europeans were really, acceptably white evolved over the centuries.  Especially the owners of the British holiday park chain Pontins, who got caught circulating a list of Irish surnames whose owners are not welcome.  The object of their policy is Travellers, a nomadic group similar to Roma.  Pontins will tell you it's not racist, they're just...unruly.  They leave a mess.  They break things.  Sort of what Fred Trump told his son about not renting to "the colored."  And no one is more indignant than Boris Johnson, who used to write about "piccaninnies" and "bumboys."  Professor Painter would understand.

 

I blame The Onion

It was said that irony died in 1973 when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.  Maybe that's true.  I certainly thought some clever prankster was putting us all on when Golden Trump appeared at last weekend's CrapPAC.  But "American ex-pat" Tommy Zegan insists he crafted it in sincere tribute -- and in Mexico -- and delivered it at his own expense.  It's fiberglass painted in Trump's favorite color, and it can be yours for a cool $100,000.  

Another ex-president was just convicted of corruption and sentenced to three years, one of which Nicolas Sarkozy will spend in jail.  Be of good cheer, Cy Vance, it can be done.

Madison Cawthorn is a big fat liar!  He lied about his friend leaving him to die "in a fiery tomb" after crashing the car.  Then he lied about the disability preventing him from taking up an appointment to the Naval Academy (he had already been rejected).  I will never believe anything a Nazi-lover says again, including "I have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life."

He published a book, he started a podcast, and now Michael Cohen is selling Trump merchandise, sort of.  The hottest item is an orange prison jumpsuit which can be customized with your name, a snip at $59.95.  Of course it's tasteless, but Cohen has been disbarred and Trump probably owes him money.

A year ago Andrew Cuomo was the hero of the covid epidemic; his press conferences were carried on CNN and his apparent command of the situation led many to wonder why we couldn't have a competent president, or at least a sentient one.  Now it appears that he concealed data about deaths in New York nursing homes, and he is also accused of sexually inappropriate behavior to a female journalist.  He's one undocumented nanny away from having to resign.  In politics nothing stands still.

Kristi Noem opened her 2024 presidential campaign by dodging Margaret Brennan's questions about South Dakota's non-response to covid.  She's lucky there was no time to ask about the state's weird anti-drug campaign, whose slogan is...I just can't.  Next time bring the flame-thrower, governor.