Midsummer madness

 As Detective Ed Green observed on Law and Order, "White guys should not shave their heads."  So when I saw two ugly bald white guys monopolizing the news, I turned it off and spent a couple of days contemplating the universe.

It didn't help.  One of them, I note with satisfaction, is the latest member of the Trump gang to be indicted, Tom Barrack.  When not organizing the inauguration that promised "American carnage" (promises kept!), he found time to lobby for the United Arab Emirates, obstruct justice and lie to the FBI, allegedly.  US Attorney Richard Donoghue had the evidence last year but for some reason left it up to the new administration to bring charges, sparing himself many raging tweets and possibly a Twitter-firing.

U.B.W.G. No. 2 was of course Jeff Bezos, the richest man there has ever been, who went sixty miles into the sky in a penis-shaped rocket called New Shepard, a reference, I assume, to a real astronaut, Alan Shepard.  He chose the anniversary of the first moon landing for this less-than-impressive feat and he came down dumber:  "We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space."  No, what we need is a warning visit from Klaatu and his friend Gort.  Bezos thanked all his customers and his exploited employees for their "support," and then he mitigated this whole festival of autofellatio about one percent by giving a hundred million dollars to Chef Jose Andres and World Central Kitchen.  That will feed a lot of people, but think how many more could eat without the Branson-Bezos rivalry, a new definition of "ego trip."  

Maybe Trump was right -- I know, please keep your seats -- when he said of Brett Kavanaugh, "I saved his life."  Making allowances for hyperbole, we now learn from the New York Times that the FBI got "4,500 tips" about Kavanaugh and turned some over to the White House but -- surprise! -- nobody followed up.  Either he put drunken moves on 4,499 women other than Christine Blasey Ford or there is more being concealed.  

Brisbane has won the 2032 Olympics and the country is already in an uproar.  At the announcement press conference John Coates, chairman of the Australian Olympic Committee, turned to the Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and ordered, "You are going to the opening ceremony."  He meant the one in Tokyo this Friday, where most spectators are excluded and athletes are testing positive for covid every day.  Since the cast-of-thousands opening ceremony with torch-lighting and mass marching was basically invented for the Nazi games of 1936, this seems like an excellent opportunity to scale it back, but I guess NBC and its sponsors won't hear of it.  Coates went on to explain to the elected leader of Queensland, as he never would to a man, that she needs to "get along there and understand the tradition parts of that, what's involved in an opening ceremony."  Assuming Palaszczuk is in office eleven years from now, and that the premier takes an active role in planning the five hundred acrobats forming a pyramid while dressed as Crocodile Dundee or whatever they decide to go with.  (This just in:  Ken Kobayashi, director of the opening ceremony, was sacked when somebody remembered a dumb joke he made about the Holocaust in a 1998 comedy skit.  Here we go.)

As Croc might say, "That's not cancellation.  THIS is cancellation."  Five speech therapists in Hong Kong were arrested for sedition after publishing a series of children's books about sheep trying to protect their village from wolves.  The security police say they "stir up the public's...hatred toward Hong Kong's government and judiciary" and incite violence.  I'm guessing Animal Farm is also unobtainable.

There's more than one way to skin a cat or fleece a Trumpanzee, goes the proverb.  Meet Magacoin, "the digital currency for the MAGA community."  And you can meet the suckers subscribers, too, because flimsy security revealed all their email addresses, passwords and other personal information to the Guardian, and presumably to others.  Surprisingly, the largest share is held by Marc Zelinka, a used-car salesman from Colorado who dreamed it up after reading a life of Charles Ponzi.

The man on the right seems shocked, but most people welcome Scabby the Rat when he appears at the scene of labor disputes.  Not the snowflakes at Lippert Components, who make RV parts in Indiana.  They filed a complaint against the International Union of Operating Engineers, calling Scabby so intimidating as to be "unlawfully coercive."  The NLRB ruled that Scabby has First Amendment rights and so does the union.   They had to think about it for three years.  I hope Lippert and the IUOE have settled their differences by now.

Gender-reveal assholes Refugio and Angela Jimenez have been charged with manslaughter in the death of firefighter Charles Morton.   They tried to ignite a smoke bomb to tell everyone the good news and set fire to San Bernardino National Forest, destroying 20,000 acres last September.  Morton was burned over, a horrible way to die.  The article does not reveal the sex of the baby because nobody cares.

Insurrection apologists picked up a new ally when Osama bin Laden's niece Noor showed up on One America News Network to regurgitate all the seditionist talking points from "false flag" to "upstanding American citizens" engaged in "mostly peaceful protest."  She's big-time for Q, no surprise there.  Does no one in that family have a normal job?

Poor stupid Rand Paul doesn't know when to shut up.  After being gutted and stuffed last week by Anthony Fauci ("If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you") he just keeps blustering, falling back on the story about some Fauci-Wuhan conspiracy and threatening to send a letter to the Justice Department.  He's going to be ever more isolated as Mitch McConnell, Steve Scalise and even Sean Hannity urge vaccine on the numbskulls.  When Hannity says, "I believe in the science of vaccination" you may as well give up, no matter how much you hate needles, "Doctor" Paul.

After two months of joint fundraising, the Daily Beast reports that Statutory Gaetz and Margie Greene have lost $342,000, according to a filing with the FEC.  Damn California communists!