Wild, weird week no. 465

A California man with multiple knives, a machete and a bayonet was arrested in front of the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington.  To make the job of the Capitol Police easier, Donald Craighead decorated his truck with a swastika and "other white supremacist symbols" and apparently drove three thousand miles without a license plate to attend next Saturday's Trumpsapalooza.  In a statement of thanks to police the DNC executive director Sam Cornale considered it necessary to add, "DNC employees are real human beings who fight tirelessly for a better America."  Tourists like Craighead are the reason the Capitol is again surrounded by barbed wire.

Christo is dead but people are still wrapping things up.  These women came all the way from Brisbane to see the Arc de Triomphe but no!  (Actually I don't know where they are from, maybe down the street.  It all seems rather silly though.)

 Salesforce advised all employees that it will help them and their families relocate if they do not want to live under the anti-choice law of Howdy Arabia a/k/a Texas.  This follows similar announcements by dating apps Bumble and Match.  Lyft and Uber have said they will cover the legal expenses of drivers who are charged with crimes under the Driving Somebody Who Looked Pregnant To a Clinic law.  Cheer up, Greg, maybe Hobby Lobby will open a store somewhere.  How's that rape-abolition thing going?

Thomas Stemen slipped up behind Katie Peters in a Churchton, Maryland, supermarket and stabbed her in the buttock with a syringe containing his semen.  He just got ten years for assault.  In Texas she would get ten years for going to the police.

"I don't intend to die on the Court," says Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, but he also won't retire.  I don't know what he has planned but it should be exciting.  Meanwhile Sister Barrett told the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville -- yeah, that McConnell -- that "this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks."  (Laughter.)  It's not hard to see why SCOTUS's approval rating has dipped below 50 percent.  

George Bush got a lot of positive response when he warned about domestic extremism at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, but the implied criticism has triggered the Orange One.  "The World Trade Center came down during his watch!" Trump raved.  "He shouldn't be lecturing anybody!"  (Whenever Trump talks about that day he focuses on buildings -- how he saw them fall, how he immediately decided he now owned the tallest building in Lower Manhattan.  It's as creepy as Hitler's paintings of Vienna with no people in them.)  How does Trump know that when Bush said, "So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment" he wasn't talking about "antifa" or Black Lives Matter?  Guilty conscience much, Donnie?

Anthony Blinken was testifying about Afghanistan to the House Foreign Affairs Committee when Scott Perry (R-PA) decided to ask him about the FBI investigation of Hunter Biden.  This is why Republicans cannot be trusted to run a fruit stand, and why the last thing the country needs is a "big strong Republican Party" no matter what Nancy Pelosi says.  We need one we can drown in a bathtub, and that is not a metaphor.  Tomorrow Blinken will face the corresponding Senate committee and some idiot will probably ask about Central American caravans or Ivermectin.

Intriguing article in today's Atlantic, "How Hollywood Sold Out To China."  The people who make movies tailor them to please the rulers in Beijing so they can reach China's vast audience.  If you're surprised, I recommend Ben Urwand's The Collaboration:  Hollywood's Pact With Hitler.  In the 1930s studio heads, most of them Jewish, tailored their movies to please Joseph Goebbels and reach the lucrative German market.  Plus ca change...