Everybody just sit down

First of all, Simone Biles does not work for you.  Purely by accident her timeline has intersected with ours, allowing us to gawk at her miraculous gymnastic skills.  Only she can decide when she is unable to perform to her own satisfaction and to withdraw from competition, as she has.  Doughy middle-aged white men whose claim on the public's attention is based on nothing but their overused mouths will therefore stop complaining that she has somehow let down her team or the country or western civilization.  

Basilico's restaurant in Orange County, the Alabama of California, will only serve the diseased.  According to a sign in the window, diners must prove a negative (i.e., that they are unvaccinated) before sneezing on the salad bar, for public health is now "treasonous anti-American stupidity").  That's Basilico's in Huntington Beach.  Try the clams corona!

As Michael Fanone testified about his near-death experience during the Trump putsch, his phone was recording a death threat from a brave patriot who forgot to leave his name.  "This is what happens to people who tell the truth in Trump's America," Fanone told Don Lemon.  This and more.  Laura Ingraham cleverly devised a medal ceremony for the four officers based on their "performances," while Trust-fund Tuckums described the "Dems" bringing on "carefully selected police officers."  (I think he was disappointed not to hear from the one who lost an eye.)  Lemon may be regretting his decision to stick up for the TV dinner heir when a customer named Dan Bailey confronted him in a Montana shop and called him "the worst human being known to man."  Has Mr. Bailey never heard of Mitch McConnell?

Everybody told the chuckleheads to get the vaccine, the chuckleheads refused, the virus took hold in a more contagious and deadly form (evolution!) and now the masks have to go back on, even in Congress.  The usual gang of idiots and their leader Kevin McCarthy are sputtering with rage, as usual, and the Speaker is tired of their games.  "He's such a moron," she told reporters, who reported it.  I suppose Dr. Ronny will demand a cognitive test for her.

A tennis player named Daniil Medvedev who has been blaming his sluggish performance on the heat in Tokyo was displeased by a reporter's question about the well-documented cheating of so many Russian Olympians.  Like a true Russian he responded by demanding that the reporter be thrown out.  That reporter should be careful what he drinks and eats.

It looks like Steve Green and Hobby Lobby got burned again.  In 2014 Green bought a clay tablet from a dealer and put it in his Museum of the Bible.  He really should have shown it to someone who reads Akkadian first.  The tablet is a fragment of the epic of Gilgamesh, probably looted in 2003 after the "liberation" of Iraq.  Since the poem is older than the Bible and may be the source of the Noah flood myth, it's the last thing an evangelical Christian would want to display.  And now it's going home to Baghdad.

We warned the British about turning their government over to a bloated reality TV clown but people have to learn through experience.  Beset by spiking covid, climate-change-induced floods, Brexit-induced economic hardship, Ealing-comedy levels of corruption and stubborn unemployment, Boris Johnson is ready to address street crime by putting miscreants in "fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs" to perform various kinds of unpaid labor.  Echoing Trump, he calls it "a kind and a loving thing to do."  Community service has been around for a long time, but the chains recall a grim period in history.  Did I forget to mention tone-deafness (to put it mildly) about race?

Are you a fool?  With money from which you would like to be parted?  Then Jared Kushner's new investment firm could be right for you!  Headquartered in Miami, Affinity Partners will also have an office in Israel for "regional investments" (money laundering) in the Middle East, which owes its peace and security to Kushner's expertise.  

And speaking of bizarre life forms, these organisms have lived in Siberian permafrost for 24,000 years, give or take a century.  Scientists don't know if they pose a threat to us as the ice melts.  Should have thought of that before we melted it.

Represent!  Joe Biden said vaccine refuseniks are "not nearly as smart as I thought you were" and Brian Kilmeade rushed to defend his fellow imbeciles.  "More of his insulting comments," he huffed.  Biden's not even a clever phrase-maker.  Remember "low-IQ Maxine," "horse face" Stormy Daniels, "Nervous Nancy,"  "crooked Hillary," "pencil-neck" Adam Schiff, the golden age of Don Rickles Trump insults.

Boodles is a real Mayfair jeweler and career criminal Lulu Lakatos, 60, just got five-and-a-half years for relieving them of 4.2 million pounds in diamonds.  Who do you like for the movie?  Maggie Smith or Judi Dench?

Simone Biles was one of Larry Nassar's many victims and he is supposed to be making financial restitution to some of them.  The Justice Department is now trying to find out why the Bureau of Prisons let this waste of space spend thousands of dollars on himself and only $8.33 a month in criminal penalties.  His prison account got $2,000 in covid stimulus money from the federal government for some reason.  For other, KKK-related prison news that may cause you to grind your teeth to the point of gum damage, try this.

A broken country, a broken world.