Urgencies and emergencies

Four seditious senators named Boozman, Blackburn, Cotton and Hagerty will have to produce some Trump-level lies to explain why they won't vote for the infrastructure bill.  And they won't even though the Hernando de Soto Bridge connecting their two states at Memphis is going to be closed for months after a routine inspection revealed a massive crack in a support column.  Even the Mississippi is currently closed to traffic, with more than seven hundred barges backed up, echoing last month's Suez Canal traffic jam.  Nobody wants a repetition of the 2007 collapse of the I35-W bridge in Minneapolis, which injured 145 people and killed thirteen.  The American Society of Civil Engineers issued its report card a few months ago so you can check your local bridge, dam, water source or toxic dump in C- America and decide if you feel lucky.  Well, do you?

America has more important things to spend public money on, like the tireless search for election fraud.  Colorado ("Like Florida but with snow!") nabbed another miscreant:  Barry Morphew has admitted mailing a ballot in his wife's name because he's sure she would have voted for Trump if she hadn't disappeared in May 2020.  He has also been charged with her murder so I guess we'll never know.  So what's that, nine?

All the other striking news today involves animals.

Lots of mysterious sea creatures have washed up on American beaches this year.  Sorry, Sidney, no kraken, but there is some video of giant squid.

A woman emerged from a supermarket near Rome and had her groceries stolen by a herd of wild boars.  Farmers have been complaining of boars raiding their land and causing road accidents.  The boars are also a problem in Greece.  Climate change is partly to blame (warmer weather = more boar babies).

Chicago is addressing its rat problem by releasing hundreds of feral cats from animal shelters.  It is not clear if Hennessy was attempting to join them when he jumped from a fifth-floor apartment; probably he was trying to escape a fire.  (He's fine.)

Canada used to be proud of beavers, portraying one on its nickel.  That was before they began chewing through cables and helping themselves to fenceposts and lumber to build dams.

India, Victor Cuevas's Bengal tiger, is still missing in Houston while Cuevas deals with a 2017 murder charge.  Police think India is being passed around a series of "safe houses."  Pet tigers are some kind of Texas status symbol, it says here.

In a tweet Meghan McCain accused Marjorie Taylor Greene of "behaving like an animal" without specifying which one.  McCain was referring to Greene's obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on one recent occasion following her around and screaming at her.  AOC was unimpressed, remarking that she has ejected more obnoxious drunks during her time as a bartender.

Noto, Japan, spent $200,000 meant for covid relief on a giant statue of a squid.  I have to say, it's impressive.  Add a sushi cafe, sit back and wait for the tourists.