Hello, Cleveland!

 

As the days dwindle down to a precious few, we could all use a pick-me-up.  Who doesn't have troublesome dreams, evil forebodings and aversion to society?  Especially this society.

Trump wouldn't shift his ass to Virginia to campaign for Trump-clone Glenn Youngkin (who might lose) but he couldn't pass up a chance to be racist.  So he and what's-her-name showed up at the Astros-Braves game to participate in the "tomahawk chop" despite calling for a baseball boycott only weeks ago.  Next season the Cleveland team becomes the Guardians, leaving Atlanta to insult indigenous Americans alone.  And now he will take credit for the Atlanta win because why not?

Ado Campeol has died.  He invented tiramisu.  I don't care for tiramisu.  

Domestic terrorist Jenna Ryan is from Texas, whence she flew to Washington last January 6 in a private plane.  She calls herself "a real estate broker, self-help coach and media personality."  The media part  involves things like livestreaming herself beside a smashed Capitol window threatening to come after reporters next.  She threw in a plug for her real estate business.  (We can't even have a coup without a crummy commercial.)  She also tweeted that she has "blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail."  Prosecutors are asking the court for sixty days.  I'm sure they meant to say "years."  I hope they meant "years."  And one more for being an "influencer."  Could we bury that word under an Iceland volcano?

Theodore Chuang is the judge Ryan should be smirking at.  He just gave two members of The Base nine years (including "terrorism enhancement") for plotting to wreck power and rail lines, murder a Virginia legislator and free Dylann Roof.  They're sorry now.

But that's Maryland.  Over in DC, Judge Emmett Sullivan is tired of whining Proud Boy Christopher Worrell and his so-called medical problems as he awaits trial for the insurrection.  He's demanding surgery on his pinkie (which he declined before the riot) and treatment for cancer (for which he wants a "second opinion" before starting chemo).  The Department of Corrections "is running a jail, not a hotel," says Judge Sullivan.  Send Chris a copy of One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich.  I'll bet he's not vaccinated against covid either.

"Drive defensively" was cops' laughing advice to passengers as the Biden-Harris bus was attacked last year by a mob of Trumpanzees in San Marcos, Texas.  The SMPD only serve and protect the folks they approve of and now they're getting sued.  Why they aren't also getting prosecuted only Merrick Garland knows.  Texas is a time warp back to the assaulted Freedom Riders of sixty years ago.

"Let's go Brandon" is the coy and clever way to say "Fuck Joe Biden" for people who would never ever say a swear, nudge nudge, and now Southwest Airlines ("As slipshod as Ryanair without the charming accents") is investigating one of its pilots for letting his freedom of speech leak into his job.  Maybe better to take the train.

War on Halloween in DeSantis Land!  A woman in Hollywood wanted to dress as a condo building project but was told -- by police! -- that it would be considered a protest for which she lacks a permit.  Remember when Congress could make no law prohibiting the right of the people peaceably to assemble in seasonal costumes?  Good times.  Pass over those ambition pills.  I'm feeling poorly.

 

 

Mislike me not

Only weeks after everyone else I stumbled into the hornet's nest of Bright Sheng, the University of Michigan and a 56-year-old film of Othello.   After reading wildly varying accounts of the outrage from the Daily Mail, the World Socialist Website and several in between, one question remains unanswered:  Why is a professor of musical composition screening Othello for a class?  I assume he requested Verdi's Otello and the library sent the wrong DVD.  He turned it on, stepped out for a smoke, and returned to find a large puddle where all the snowflakes used to be.  It's just an assumption.

Tom Bartlett writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Bright Sheng's first couple of apologies didn't go over well," as though the need to apologize were self-evident.  But apologize he did, for the atrocity of forcing music students to watch a white actor play a black man while wearing makeup.  He apologized for "the graveness of my action" and assured the dear students that he understood how it feels to be the object of racism.  In the end he lost his class anyway.  Sheng was around thirteen when the Cultural Revolution rolled through his native Shanghai and probably experiences PTSD.  Maybe he thought that if he didn't grovel someone would cut off his head and use it for soccer practice.  We're getting close on some campuses, and a lot of other places in this country.  I like to think I would have said, "Oops, wrong film" and moved on.

The only reason to apologize for this movie is Laurence Olivier's hammy performance in the title role, featuring some accent never heard on this planet.  (He does the same thing in The Merchant of Venice but let's not even go there.)  Even great actors give lousy performances.  It would make even less sense without the makeup, since Othello's color is referenced about once a page.  Otello, now, that's a different matter, because in opera there is one overriding concern:  can you sing?  If you can and you're built like a linebacker, you can still play a tubercular courtesan or a teenage geisha.  That's why we've averted our eyes all these years and just listened to Ramon Vinay, Mario Del Monaco, Jon Vickers and Placido Domingo instead of leaving Verdi's masterpiece on the shelf for 150 years while waiting for Russell Thomas to be born.

 There is enough real racism in this country -- in this world -- without searching for it in a half-century-old film of a four-hundred-year-old play.  Derek Chauvin did not psych himself up by binge-watching Shakespeare before he murdered George Floyd.  Yutes of today, keep your eye on the ball or you'll wake up one day to find that you can't vote, you can't have an abortion, you can't even protest because that's been criminalized, too.  If you don't believe me, look at the legislature of any state controlled by Republiclowns.  If this movie, or The Jazz Singer, offends you so much, better plan on staying in school forever.  Reality is going to offend the living fuck out of you.

More of the same

 

Pope Francis is meeting Joe Biden.  I'll bet he looks happier than he did here.

Facebook has changed its name to Meta.  That should fix everything.  In a related story, North Korea will be called Happytown.

Acknowledging the plaintiffs' claim that the FBI screwed up the background check and allowed Dylann Roof to buy the gun he used at Mother Emanuel, the Justice Department settled with the victims' families for $88 million.  Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee immediately demanded that Merrick Garland come back and be abused some more.  (It's all right to call those people "victims" because they were studying the Bible when they were murdered.)

Some of the servers at Hooters are unhappy about the revealing uniforms they have to wear.  Evidently they expected to be dressed like Margaret Thatcher.  

Mark McCloskey is still running for the Senate in Missouri and in answer to a question about abortion he told a charming story:  He says he has a client who was raped by her uncle at age 13 and gave birth to the baby and she has had a wonderful life, even went to graduate school!   Apparently lawyer-client confidentiality means even less to McCloskey than the right of women (and girls) to make decisions.  Or it could just be bullshit.

The point is not that Ted Cruz defends the right of people at school board riots to throw Nazi salutes.  The point is that he does so to rage about FBI SWAT teams bursting in to stop them, which is pure moonshine.  Board members are not asking to be defended against silly hand signals from the 1940s.  It's the death threats, stupid.

What the actual

First things first:  We have a new date for the Trump Restoration!  On November 23 Pillow Mike promises to initiate yet another marathon presentation of all the evidence for "the biggest cover-up for the biggest crime in history."  Mike has his very own digital internet thing called Frank.com but nobody watches it so he announced the big news on the podcast of Old Contemptible Bannon.  And Bannon was pumped.  He is on the record as a devotee of chaos to destroy the "administrative state" (i.e. American democracy) but that doesn't mean Pigpen has forgotten about the little people.  He wants to break up families, too!  At the dinner table!  "What I love about this, they said hey, if you just get Trump out...you can start having holidays again without arguing at the table and at each other's throats.  But Mike Lindell comes in and he's going to go...on a marathon so you can go back and have fistfights!  The family squabbles!  Lindell, you're a genius!"  Pigpen was raised by feral hogs.  And Pillow Mike still has his sights fixed on the Supreme Court, which he believes has magical powers.  God bless us, every one.

The mainstreamers have covered the shooting on the set of Rust from every possible angle but one.  Unless you read Erik Loomis at Lawyers Gun & Money you would never know the movie was being made by a non-union crew.  All the problems were in evidence, including long commutes, non-payment of workers and safety concerns that had already led to a walkout.  It wasn't only the inexperienced "chief armorer."  "Bosses don't care about worker safety.  Unions do," Loomis wrote.  "When employers who don't care about workers hire scabs, people die.  And yes, Alec Baldwin is a producer on the film and thus one of the bosses."

The two men shot and killed by whitewing hero Kyle Rittenhouse are not victims, or anyway are not to be referred to as such at trial.  "The word 'victim' is a loaded, loaded word," ruled Judge Bruce Schroeder (as in "loaded AR-15"?).  Because the defense plans to introduce evidence that the -- dead guys? -- were engaged in "arson, rioting, looting" although they can't very well defend themselves, and that made it perfectly all right for the adolescent vigilante to kill them.  The prosecution said nothing because they were already composing the appeal.  

The trial of the three men who lynched Ahmaud Arbery is not going much better.  There is no allegation of "arson, rioting, looting" which had to be redressed by armed civilians.  Arbery was jogging on a leafy street in suburban Brunswick when Travis and Gregory McMichael and William Bryan decided he needed to be citizen-arrested for a burglary committed at some point in the past, by someone.  Arbery was probably unaware of the law giving them this authority because it was passed in 1863, when Georgia was not technically part of the United States.   Of course, it's not really about burglary, which may be why jury selection is taking so long.  I'm just saying don't be surprised if these good old boys celebrate their acquittal with Kyle and his mom, maybe at Mar-a-Lago (sorry, no comps, cash bar only).  I wonder if the judge will let Arbery be called "the victim."

Elsewhere in the Peachpit State, a US Marshal and a Clayton County police officer have been indicted in the 2016 killing of Jamarion Robinson.  Robinson was no Ahmaud Arbery; there was a warrant for his arrest when he pointed a gun at the officers and fled.  The grand jury seems to have been startled by the fact that the two shot him 76 times, which may be a state record.  Fulton County DA Fani Willis has yet to indict Donald Trump but she got this case moving after her predecessor tried to bury it.  Elections matter.

Every week another senior member of the administration has to go up to the Capitol and subject themself to the incoherent ravings of the Sedition Senators.  Today it was Merrick Garland's turn to be insulted and confused.  C-Span has the whole four-and-a-half hours he won't get back but there's no reason for the rest of us to waste our time.  Today they were outraged that former Deputy AG Andrew McCabe will be getting his full pension after all (you may recall that Trump fired him hours early to save our Great Country a piddling amount of money because he is a jenius at business, and also spite).  They were furious that the DOJ might respond to school board members pleading for protection from violent Trumpanzees, and Tom Cotton thought the attorney general should somehow fire/prosecute/assassinate Anthony Fauci for conspiring with China to make covid.  It was like that, interspersed with Democrats wondering politely when they can expect some action on the mob that tried to kill them last January.  At least Garland had a good laugh at the absurd Johnny Kennedy.  (Parents of "special" children, please don't name them Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde or John Kennedy.  They feel pressure to be witty and it's just...sad.) 

Can you handle one more legal item?  This one is safely in the past, mostly.   A memo surfaced written in 1952 by William Rehnquist, then a clerk to Justice Robert Jackson, Jr., while the Court was considering the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.  Not  surprisingly, Nixon's future Chief was on the wrong side of history, citing the essential correctness of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) which upheld the constitutionality of segregation.   Two years later Justice Jackson voted with the Warren Court majority despite the memo.  Why did he hire this white supremacist?  I don't know, good grades?  Maybe Jackson repented after Nuremberg, where he was the lead US prosecutor.   But as the man said, the past is never dead.  Rehnquist rammed through Bush v. Gore in 2000.  His death on September 3, 2005, resulted in the only good joke about Katrina:  "That's no hurricane.  It's Satan coming to collect Rehnquist's soul." 

Mort Sahl died yesterday.  I will write about him and other cultural topics tomorrow.  

 

So that happened

 

Junior Trump took a break from propping up the informal economy of Colombia to introduce his witty new shirt mocking the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.  Does Daddy love him yet?

Joseph Ladapo visited the office of Florida state senator Tina Polsky and she asked him to put on a mask because she has cancer and is about to start radiation therapy.  Ladapo, the freshly appointed Surgeon General of Florida, refused, suggesting they go out into the heat and humidity instead.  I think I can predict how Polsky will vote on Ladapo's confirmation, unless he succeeds in killing her first.

Ladapo's patron Ron DeSantis is coaxing anti-vax police to move to Florida for a $5,000 "relocation bonus."  Because the coronavirus needs all the help it can get from two-legged moRons.

Last week in the House (of Pain), Rep. Jim Banks  (R-IN) complained that the Speaker had not appointed him to Rep. Bennie Thompson's insurrection investigation committee.  Kevin McCarthy had submitted his name, knowing he would disrupt and subvert the committee's work, and Nancy Pelosi rejected him for the same reason.  Nevertheless, Banks has been sending letters to federal agencies in which he identifies himself as the ranking member; this was pointed out by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who really is the ranking member.   Banks may have been inspired by the Seinfeld episode where George quits his job but keeps showing up, pretending that he was joking.  Or he may just be delusional like Trump.

Unlike Florida, California is attempting to keep as many residents alive as possible and has instituted stringent rules about vaccination and masks.  The In-N-Out chain of burger restaurants took exception to this, resulting in the temporary closure of its branch in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.  Ever in solidarity with stupidity, Mike Pence went all the way to California to pose with a burger and fries.  And to thank In-N-Out for helping pay for the effort to recall the tyrant Newsom.

Sleep well, Seattle -- the Lego ring has been broken up.

While the Biden agenda stalls, Congress will take up a resolution introduced by Rep. Ilhan Omar to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Prince.  Welcome 2 America!

Alitalia is bankrupt and ceased operations on October 14.  Last week several dozen former flight attendants stripped to their underwear in the middle of Rome to dramatize their demand for extended  unemployment benefits.   I wonder if that would impress Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema.

Does Liberty University discourage students from reporting assaults on campus?  Shocking, shocking.

Couy Griffin, who founded Cowboys For Trump (his day job is Commissioner of Otero County, New Mexico) was arrested for participating in the January 6 coup attempt.  Commissioner Snowflake did not like his treatment in jail -- he was kept in solitary for nine days, probably to protect him from other inmates who objected to his racism.  Anyway, he has turned on Trump.  Trump lied to him!  Trump was "in charge of the law" for four years but failed to lock up even one political opponent!  Not even Hillary!  What kind of democracy is this?  Again...a county commissioner.

Unsurprising but well sourced article in Rolling Stone about the planning meetings between members of Congress, White House staff and patriotic tourists which preceded the January coup attempt.  All the usual suspects:  Gosar, Greene, Brooks, Cawthorn, Gohmert, Boebert, and Biggs.  Condoleezza Rice should read it before she urges America to "move on" even though the violence made her cry.  Never looking back or holding anyone responsible began at Appomattox and is the key to our present near-failed state, Madam Secretary.  

I would not call myself a JFK conspiracy theorist -- really, who has the time? -- but I share Charlie Pierce's incredulity that the Biden administration has delayed yet again releasing records as approved by Congress in 1992.  This time the excuse is the pandemic, which prevented the National Archives from huddling with the State, Defense and Justice Departments about possible harm to -- say it with me -- NATIONAL SECURITY.  After 58 years.  The can was kicked down the road to 2022* when probably global warming or an impending war with Belgium will be cited.  If they're waiting for Mark Lane or Mae Brussell to die, that has already happened.  If Oliver Stone promises not to make a sequel, may the dwindling number of us who actually remember Kennedy finally learn our own damn history? 

*December 2022.  After the election.     

Thursday potpourri

 A few days ago I had occasion to research the other woman who died in the January 6 coup attempt, Rosanne Boyland.  Because she was carrying one of those DONT TREAD ON ME flags when she fell, Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia, was assumed to have been trampled to death by other devotees of Q and/or Trump.  Who doesn't love a good cosmic joke?  But three months later the DC medical examiner ruled that she died of "acute amphetamine intoxication" because reality is prosaic.  It helps to explain why she has not been elevated to the status of Martyr Ashli Babbitt and remains literally unsung:  Boyland was bombed on speed.  

You have to wonder how many of her fellow tourist-patriots were flying that day.  Two of them, men in their fifties, died of "hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease," a fancy way of saying heart attack.  Some of these people were climbing the walls, literally, while others posted video of themselves committing federal crimes.  Many assaulted police.  This is not normal, even for Trumpanzees.  Neither is urinating or defecating in a public building.  Try it at the post office and find out.  It can't be  adrenaline alone.

A few years ago the German writer Norman Ohler published Der totale Rausch:  Drogen in Dritten Reich (English title:  Blitzed:  Drugs In the Third Reich.).  It's an eye-opening -- literally -- study of the extent of amphetamine use by everyone from Hitler to Wehrmacht foot soldiers.  The reason the German army moved so fast across western Europe was, quite simply, they never slept.  The whole society was on speed.  Under the brand name Pervitin it could be purchased without a prescription.  Nor was it confined to the Reich:  In 2002 American pilots deployed to Afghanistan were still using, with official sanction.  It only came to light when two of them faced court martial after mistakenly killing four Canadians and wounding eight.  

I have to wonder if the violence of that day and the violence surrounding it -- at Trump rallies, at school board meetings, polling places, hospitals, on planes and in stores -- is also fueled by amphetamines.  They're easy to acquire, as long-haul truckers know.  Habitual use can lead to the kind of psychosis that makes Q believers incomprehensible to normal people.   Pervitin was not responsible for the Nazi atrocities, as Ohler suggests -- they were, after all, government policy --  but I'll bet it made it easier to shoot babies like clay pigeons.   A scary time grows scarier.

Well, that was dark.  Let's have some fun.  Is it too late to replace Merrick Garland with Jamie Raskin?  Because yesterday he knocked the heads of Gym Jordan and Statutory Gaetz together like Moe from The Three Stooges when they tried to disrupt the House Rules Committee debate on the contempt citation of Pigpen Bannon.  (The full House voted for it.  Lock him up!)  Raskin has no kumbaya for these odious creeps and neither has Rep. Norma Torres:  "This is not about somebody paying to have sex with a young girl or somebody not protecting people that are under their jurisdiction.  This is about our democracy."  Run and hide behind Big Bad Marge, guys, she's got your numbers.  When does Clooney's documentary about Ohio State drop?

Gaetz was back in the House last night whining about a single death threat he claims he got on Twitter and why won't the Justice Department do something about it.  That's not a death threat.  This is a death threat.  

If you want to see Rudolph Giuliani impersonate Lincoln, it's here.  Let's be charitable and assume he's auditioning for the sequel to Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire.  Oh, it's Vampire Hunter?  Never mind.

With two months to go, 2021 has seen a record 117 bills introduced in 33 states to curb the rights of transgender people.  Only yesterday Republican senators turned a judicial appointment hearing into a ghoulish celebration of hate.  Dave Chappelle is not the problem.  He's a symptom.

Among others (scorecards available in the lobby) Trump is being sued by Eddy Grant for using his song "Electric Avenue" in a silly campaign ad without permission.  His current set of lawyers, Dodge & Hyde, tried for dismissal by claiming -- you'll love this -- "Plaintiff's claims against Donald J. Trump are barred, either in whole or in part, by Presidential absolute immunity."  No, said US District Judge John G. Koeltl, they certainly are not.  Not even if he's perpetually president in his own deranged mind.  No one is absolutely immune to anything.  There is no vaccine for the principle that everybody is subject to the law.  Trump is now 1-98 in the courts, even the ones where he and Scrotum-Face McConnell handpicked the judges.

Candace Owens has a daily TV show and she has to fill the time with something, so today she called for the US to invade Australia and free its captive population from the "tyranny" of covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  Australia could not be reached for comment.

John Hinckley, Jr., now well enough to rejoin society, has released his country songs on Spotify.  That's it.  I have no jokes.  Although it's time to lay off Hunter Biden for selling his paintings.

Happy Halloween!

 

 

First responder

 Trying not to overthink it.

Five people died in a 35-minute "rampage" last week in Konsberg, Norway.  At first we were told they were killed with a bow and arrows by an "Islamic extremist."  Today we are informed that they were actually stabbed, and the perpetrator was motivated by "illness."  I don't know if it's comforting or disturbing to live in a country where the police have so little experience of violent crime that they don't even know how to describe it.  

Hal Uhrig, the lawyer who defended George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, has himself been charged with witness tampering and solicitation of perjury.  He can no longer say, like Lamar Parmentel in The Big Easy, "I only represent sleazebags."

Kanye West has officially changed his name to Ye.  I don't give a ck.

A gang that kidnapped seventeen missionaries in Haiti is demanding $17 million in ransom.  One is an infant of eight months.  Jesus Christ, these people brought their kids?  When they get back to Ohio the social services should take them away.

The story of the neighbors who listened and did nothing as Kitty Genovese was assaulted and killed in Kew Gardens, Queens, in 1964 has been debunked as mostly an urban myth amplified by the press, but the 40-minute rape of a woman on a Philadelphia commuter train this week is all too real.  We know because other passengers pulled out their phones and recorded the whole crime without even trying to intervene.  The Delaware County district attorney is considering charges against the amateur cinematographers.  

I'm starting to think Pete and Chasten Buttigieg adopted twins in part to draw some of the festering hate away from the rest of the Biden administration.  The family is an obsession of the Rightzi media, attacked over everything from paternity leave to how babies are doomed without the touch of a real breast-owning female mother.   It's good of the Buttigiegs to act as lightning rods in these fraught times.  I assume they have no plans to raise Joseph as "a monster" no matter what Mad Cawthorn says.

Speaking of madness, Trump was deposed in the first of many pending civil suits, this one brought by protesters who were assaulted by his goons in 2015.  Scratchy after four-and-a-half hours under oath, he was in rare form yesterday.  Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a gastroenterologist as well as a Senator, proposed that people in power over a certain age be required to pass a cognitive test.  No response from Speaker Pelosi, Senator Feinstein or Justice Breyer but Trump immediately decided it was aimed at him and began raving that "Wacky Bill Cassidy can't walk down the street in Louisiana...the great people curse him."  (Cassidy voted for impeachment.)  Then he told the Washington Examiner he would have prevented the January 6 riot if only he had been allowed to march to the Capitol with his peeps.  It's all the fault of the Secret Service.  Then he noticed that Colin Powell had died and decided to sour the usual encomia by calling him a "classic RINO" who "made big mistakes on Iraq," even whining about how he was "treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media."  Could Powell replace John McCain on Trump's list of military hate objects?  Wait till he finds out his great friend Prince Bone Saw of Saudi Arabia presented him with a bunch of cheap knockoffs during his 2017 visit.

It looks like a lamp from a 1940s New York police station they picked up on eBay.

For someone who owns a lot of (mortgaged) golf properties and loves the "beautiful" history of racism and slavery represented by Confederate statues, it's surprising Trump hasn't splashed out on one like the Lee statue removed from a Dallas park which has surfaced at a country club in Terlingua, Texas.  Some places are giving them away, which is within Short-Fingers's price range.

Here's someone who needs no cognitive testing.  A magazine called The Oldie tried to give the Queen its "Oldie of the Year" award and she told them in the most dignified way possible to fold it in thirds and insert it in the pink mailbox.  Please.

Always look on the bright side of life

 Police are resisting vaccine mandates all over the country and in some places resigning rather than be immunized against a disease that has killed more police than guns.  Why is this good?  It makes it easier to identify Trump followers who wear blue uniforms instead of red caps and who, based on the actions of Capitol Police officer Michael A. Reilly, could prove untrustworthy in a future insurrection.  Additionally, it's the right time for mayors to do to the cop unions what Reagan did to the air traffic controllers.  That's how Governor Calvin Coolidge came to national attention when Boston police struck in 1919.  Mayor Lightfoot, are you up for it?

This time it's bound to work!  Marc Lore, who made far too much money as a Walmart executive (the starting pay is $12 an hour), wants to build the ideal city Telosa, described as "a mash-up of equality and capitalism."  He is scouting locations, as they say in the movie business.  I suggest the Amazon basin, soon to be denuded of forest by Bolsonaro policies.  That's where Henry Ford established Fordlandia in 1929 to produce rubber for his cars, "the by-products of his real business, which is the making of men."  There might still be some access roads and sewer pipes left, along with a few ghosts and a couple tons of hubris.  

Right-wing funster Dennis Prager says he has covid, and says he meant to contract it, and says his superior white man immune system will keep him from harm without any vaccines.  At the moment there is no reason to believe anything he says.

Vanessa Bryant is suing Los Angeles County for emotional distress, claiming that sheriff's deputies shared photos of the helicopter crash that killed her husband Kobe Bryant and their young daughter.  Attorneys for the county have demanded that she and co-plaintiffs undergo psychiatric exams to prove they were damaged by this callous act.  I can't think of a more certain way to get the jury on Mrs. Bryant's side.

Last Thursday Robert Durst was sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder in 2000.  On Saturday his lawyer announced that he has covid and is on a ventilator.  Justice delayed...how does that go?

Coastal sand dunes in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, have lost their designation as a protected environmental site because the owner of the golf course they abut lied about preserving them.  Can you guess his name?  Wait, that's not the good part:  under Scottish law said liar can be compelled to reveal the source of the rubles cash he used to buy the land.  

Masks?  We don't need no stinking masks!  Moscow is jumping despite a thousand covid deaths a day.  It looks like Sputnik-V is not the vaccine it's made out to be.  At least there are no reports of Russians beating up people who wear masks.  They're not savages.

Did anyone ask?

The source of all wisdom Wikipedia defines the Streisand Effect as "a phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove or censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information."  In other words, keep your big mouth shut.  Fortunately Trump never learned to do that, whether the topic is the size of his penis or conspiring with Russia.  So when the National Republican Senatorial Committee met in Palm Beach for his convenience, he treated them to some new material based on very old material.  In the midst of oldies about the "stolen" election, how he personally saved a dying party and "phony impeachment" (singular) the congregation suddenly heard this:

"I'm not into golden showers.  You know the great thing, our great First Lady -- 'That one,' she said, 'I don't believe that one.'"   

Like Adele releasing a new single after six years, that became the story.  He can't remember the source of the "pee tape" rumor (the Steele dossier), he can't remember the name of "our great First Lady," and now we have to wonder what she does believe about her feckless prenup partner, but he definitely does not enjoy this particular kink.  Well, I never thought he did.  He's a germophobe who can't stand the sight of blood and ran in disgust from a room where a woman was nursing.  He didn't want George Bush's casket on "his" plane even when he wasn't on board.  Cemeteries creep him out.  Whatever Putin has on him of a sexual (as opposed to financial or legal) nature probably involves underage girls and is perfectly kosher in Moscow.  But urine, nyet.  

So why bring it up?  Dementia?  Indiscretion?  Inability to read a room even when it's full of toadies?  Tell us what else you're "not into" -- exercise, vegetarian food, ramps, women who resist, women who aren't attractive enough to be photographed with you, women who head successful countries like Germany, women who call you "mushroom penis" and sue you, dogs, birds, toilets that struggle to handle your enormous dumps, lawyers who want to get paid, did I omit most of the world that isn't even white?  

Talking of debt-plagued lawyers, do you remember signing one of your many books to Rudolph Giuliani?  "The best mayor N.Y.C. has ever had!" just sold it at auction for $54,143.  He currently lacks a law license in New York and the District of Columbia because of your loopy claims of election fraud and, well, I guess you know how alimony bills mount up.  Please don't be too angry, he really really likes you.  It's kind of pathetic.  I'm sure he has signed baseballs that would bring in more but he's holding onto them.  

It's been a week of indiscretions.  Lindsey Graham -- you remember him, he's currently in disgrace for saying the talk of election rigging in Georgia is so much chin music -- went to Sean Hannity to denounce the Biden administration for calling off immigration raids at job sites (they're going after the employers of the undocumented instead).  He also proclaimed that "forty thousand Brazilians" have crossed the southern border sporting "designer clothes and Gucci bags" and headed for those lucrative day-labor jobs in Connecticut.  Anyone but Hannity would have laughed out loud.  If I were a senator about whom rumors regularly circulate, in a party where homophobia would be a plank in the platform if they were still allowed to have one, I would conceal my ability to tell Gucci from Louis Vuitton at a glance.  But I'm not. 

Glenn Youngkin is an ardent Trumpite and candidate for governor of Virginia, but when Pigpen Bannon showed up at his "Take Back Virginia" rally with a flag he swore had been carried in the January 6 coup attempt, Youngkin suggested it might not be exactly a good idea to pledge allegiance to it.  After all, we only have Pigpen's word, it's not as if it's stained with the blood of Martyr Ashli Babbitt.  His opponent Terry McAuliffe is campaigning with Stacey Abrams, who is awesome, so I trust Virginians to do the right thing and give Glenn a chance to scream FRAUD AT POLLS!

Bill Clinton is recovering in a California hospital from a urinary tract infection.  Funny how everything comes back to piss today.  

 

Culture wars heating up

No one can understand why the Augustus St. Gaudens funerary monument in Cornish, New Hampshire,  was defaced with anti-Semitic slogans.  St. Gaudens was not Jewish.  He is best known, however, for the 54th Massachusetts memorial on Boston Common, honoring Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the most celebrated Black regiment in the Civil War.  Which was itself vandalized last year.

Of course racists and anti-Semites have more than a passing acquaintance.  Down in Southlake, Texas, a new chapter was written in the struggle against critical race theory.  Teachers have been told that if they have a book about the Holocaust in the classroom they must also offer one with an "opposing perspective."  I don't know if that means a David Irving-type text claiming that it never happened or a book suggesting that the Jews had it coming.  I imagine we will hear more.

The Georgia Board of Education -- why are you laughing? -- decreed in June that there won't be any teaching about critical race theory or otherwise implying that racism is a real thing.  So when some white students at Coosa High School in Rome -- if you don't stop laughing I will turn this blog around -- decided to celebrate by waving a Confederate flag to mark "farm day," Black students planned a protest and were suspended before they could carry it out.  I guess that will show them.  It will also suggest that no matter what Mr. Beauregard is permitted to teach in American History, America's young people are painfully aware that racism has never gone away.  (Farm day?)

I don't read comic books because I am an adult, but I had to investigate the smell of burning hair.  I soon traced it to other adults whose heads are on fire because the newest version of Superman, apparently the son of the original and Lois Lane, is bisexual.  He kissed a boy and he liked it.  There is nothing that energizes the conservatives like the sex lives of imaginary characters, except possibly the racial identities of imaginary characters.  The very thought of a Black Santa Claus or a female James Bond gives them the yips.  Although he recently quit the role of Bond, Daniel Craig can expect plenty of grief for saying he frequents gay bars (fewer fistfights) and has kissed all his leading men.  If the UK breaks up I expect blame to fall on Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor on Doctor Who.  

You finally did it, you damn dirty Democrats!  You destroyed Christmas!  "Experts say Biden won't be able to save Christmas" screams The Hill, which is practically the same thing.  Joe the Grinch has longshoremen and truckers working around the clock -- it doesn't hurt to have a president who's on speaking terms with labor unions -- but the port congestion has been building for a long time mostly because of pandemic lockdowns and people too sick to work.  Christmas will still kick off in December but the stores may be out of the stuff Americans spend billions of dollars on because it's made somewhere else.  All right, China.  The people who blast their religiosity like bad breath will nevertheless insist that it's just not Christmas without plastic wreaths, shiny wrapping paper and glass balls the cat can knock off the tree.   And you can forget about Halloween -- there's not a slutty nurse costume to be had.   By December it will be Biden's fault that Louis DeJoy has made the postal service even worse.

All right, how many got this barely veiled threat from the National Republican Congressional Committee?

 

As far as I can tell it's authentic.  Stefanik?  Greene?  Sammy "The Bull" Gravano?  Is anybody missing tonight?

 

Make believe bawl room

It required no gift of prophecy to predict that cute little domestic terrorist Ashli Babbitt would get her own Horst Wessel-Lied or that it would come from Nashville.  I assume the guitar picker who wrote and recorded it and who goes by the unimprovable name Forgiato Blow is a country singer; if I'm wrong I apologize to all the others.  You can hear it all over, and if it don't make your nose fill up my name ain't Lonesome Pynes.  You can read the lyric here to kinda brace yourself.  

If she hadn't been murdered by Democrats Ashli would have been thrilled to know she was the subject of "Texas Loves Ashli Babbitt Day" in Freeport, Texas.  The day's highlight was a classically dishonest and generally sickening birthday tribute from Der Fuhrer himself (via video and Teleprompter) encouraging the assembled MAGAts to do a better job with the next Putsch.

I guess they rejected my version:

   On the Hill, ev'ry Friday

   On the Hill it's Trump's Big Lie day

   So ev'ry time the mob comes along

   I dress up silly and I sing this song:

   Climb, Babbitt, climb, Babbitt, smash right through

   Hang Pence and shoot Pelosi, Schumer too 

   You'll be remembered for being a tool

   Who died to empower a fat fascist fool

(thanks to Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen, "Run, Rabbit, Run" 1939)

"There was no reason Ashli should have lost her life that day," he had the gall to intone.  Hey, Melania, someone needs a full-length mirror.  

 

    

Solved!

 At last we know what happened to all those American cities that vanished last summer -- they were vaporized by Black Lives Matter.  That comes directly from Lara Trump, incubator of Eric-spawn and your next Senator, North Carolina, with the imprimatur of Fox News ("You give us twenty-five years, we'll give you the end of the republican experiment").  She arrived angry about the Justice Department providing security requested by school board members who didn't sign up for death threats and assaults.  Because Merrick Garland's jack-booted thugs are coming to take your guns freedom.  "If you want to go after people, how about cops that were murdered?  How about complete and entire cities that were destroyed?" she demanded.  That's why I never hear from anyone in Kenosha anymore.  Gone.  Damn.

Of course, no police were shot in Kenosha.  Jacob Blake was shot by Officer Rusten Sheskey and is paralyzed below the waist, and federal prosecutors have declined to file charges.  Kyle Rittenhouse's mom drove him over from Illinois so he could kill two people and wound a third, but it turns out he was just doing some nocturnal hunting and they looked like rabbits or whatever you hunt at night in a city.  It's hard to tell what with Kenosha being burned to the ground.  

America's white supremacists got a few suggestions on strategy from a Tory MP named Jonathan Gullis.  He believes that just using the term "white privilege" makes you a terrorist who should be reported to the government's counterterrorist program Prevent.  Moreover, teachers who say anything critical of the Conservative Party must be fired.  Expressing support for the European Union?  Death or exile.  I made that last one up because it hasn't occurred to him yet.

Meanwhile we've got a Scorpions-in-a-Bottle double event.  Mickey Flynn has long been a favorite of QAnon, until they noticed him leading a prayer meeting at some cult center in Nebraska and had an epiphany:  The general is a Satanist!  Which for some reason is incompatible with Qism.  I never would have guessed.  Will Mike have to choose between the Q Continuum and the I AM outfit?  It's a nailbiter for sure.

And it couldn't come at a worse time, for there is another disturbance in the farce.  Which archnutter sits nearer the Trump throne, Margie Greene or Lin Wood?  Prepare for war in heaven as Wood calls Greene "a communist."  Unless you're a lawyer who's taken a lot of blows to the head it's a little hard to follow Wood's argument but here goes.  Greene has called for Joe Biden's impeachment, which implies that he is actually the President which NO NO NOTNOTNOT!  Moreover you can't impeach him with "a communist Congress" because they take their orders from the Politburo or something.  "A traitor will come at you as a patriot.  Be careful," Wood warned darkly.  Margie responded by accusing Wood of stealing money that patriots donated for the defense of his client, Kyle "Nimrod" Rittenhouse.  She's flailing, or she would have linked him to David Icke's Lizard People which, I'm sorry to say, is not a zydeco-ska band.  We expect more from you, Margie.  It's not like you're busy with committees or any other actual work.

Look, the Lizard People are getting things done.  They talked Anthony Warner into bombing a chunk of downtown Nashville last Christmas.  They warned Matthew Coleman about his children's serpent DNA so he could save the world from them.  Queen Elizabeth is immortal -- she's the Lizard Queen.  (Sorry, Charles.)  I'm not sure why Robert DeNiro dressed up as an Uzbek homeopath and shot Malala Yousafzai, but I'll take their word for it.  Does Jonathan Gullis know David Icke?  Anyone who asks that question must be on the Soros payroll.

This is an albino squirrel.  Need I say more?

 

The times, they are a-changin'

 Monday October 11 is Columbus Day, when we celebrate the day before the Italian navigator's Spanish crew set foot on Hispaniola.  Has America changed over the last nine months?  Read Joe Biden's Proclamation which finds room to celebrate the achievements of Italian Americans while acknowledging the tragedy and resilience of this country's First People.  Compare and contrast with last year's, warning darkly of "radical activists" and bragging about the Executive Order meant to protect the statues of racist seditionists.  Night and day.  I'm only surprised it didn't warn about how rigged the election would be.

It's been a bad week for the Forever President.  Desperate for attention, last night he made up with Fox News long enough to inform Sean Hannity that Haitian immigrants represent "a death wish for our country."  That's been his position on all immigrants who aren't Norwegian, but this time he traveled back to the 1980s to single out the poorest nation in this hemisphere for abuse:  "Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem.  AIDS is a step beyond.  AIDS is a real bad problem.  Many of those people will probably have AIDS..." and so on, repeating "AIDS" as the demented tend to do.  To be clear, the Trumpandemic has claimed over 700,000 American lives, hospitals have instituted triage and people react with sometimes fatal violence to the suggestion that they wear a mask, but in his racist mind AIDS -- long controlled by drugs -- is still as terrifying as when he haunted Studio 54.

The Trump Organization [sic] is still trying to unload the lease on the Trump Trivago, the hotel he opened in Washington to siphon money out of diplomats, lobbyists and other supplicants who understood they had to stay and be seen there.  Despite four years of this 64-karat grift, the place managed to lose $70 million under the expert management of Junior & Eric, despite public filings claiming a profit of $150 million.  That is quite a disparity, and I can't believe it all went up Junior's nose.

One of the charges in one of the impeachments was obstruction of justice, but the Senate let him get away with it and no, Senator Collins, Trump has not learned his lesson.  He has ordered Steve Bannon and three other scofflaws to ignore subpoenas from the January 6 Select Committee, possibly setting Pigpen up for criminal penalties.  Will he put his noxious person where his mouth is?  I'm tingling with anticipation.  To make matters worse for Trump, Jen Psaki said the President believes "an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted" for documents Trump is eager to conceal.  Could it be even worse than we thought?

Poor Donnie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Whothehellsthat? is regularly vandalized but an artist called Plastic Jesus decided that isn't enough.  He installed a white coffin labeled "USA Freedom Box."  Beat that, John Wayne!  Plastic Jesus says his motto is "Stop making stupid people famous."  Too late.

Another blow to the Trump legacy:  Joe Biden has restored full protection to national monuments trashed by the Zinke-Bernhardt Interior Department, including Bear Ears and Grand Staircase/Escalante in Utah.  Next up:  rescue the Postal Service from DeJoy.

It doesn't look like the Pulitzer Prize those reporters won in 2018 for writing about Russian interference in the 2016 election will be rescinded.  Also, not only has Trump again failed to win a Nobel Peace Prize but it was shared by journalists who make life uncomfortable for the autocrats of two of Trump's favorite places, Russia (Dmitry Muratov) and the Philippines (Maria Ressa).  No Emmy either.  

And the Nobel for literature honored Abdulrazak Gurnah from the "shithole country" of Tanzania.  Not your year, Donnie.  Very very unfair.

All your news are belong to us!

 It's Thursday, and you know what that means.  Let's dial the weird up to eleven.

Once a member of the Amish community is shunned there's no returning to the farm.  I imagine it's the same with the cult formerly known as the Republican Party, which makes the recent activities of Mike Pence all the more pathetic.  He told Sean Hannity that the media focus on the January 6 lynch mob is meant to "demean" those happy patriots and distract from Joe Biden's "failed agenda."  (It can't be judged a failure if Manchenema won't let it be enacted, but let that pass.)  Pence imagines that he can somehow pursue the 2024 nomination, and is raising money for that purpose.  Yeah, and Carlo Rizzi thought Michael Corleone was sending him to Las Vegas.  Mike, you had one job.  Did you not get John Eastman's memo?  Who told you to seek advice from Dan Quayle?  Who thought he would be right?  As J.J. Hunseker would say, you're dead, go get yourself buried, and be glad it's just politically.

Former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was invited to an immigration hearing in Montreal just so Canadian officials could throw her out of the country.  Really, Canada?  It's not like you to be this childish.  Did you also scrawl "DOODY-HEAD" across her passport?

Andy Murray is the UK's most successful tennis player since forever, but off the court he acts like a sitcom dad.  After practicing for a California match he decided his sneakers were sweaty and smelly so he put them under his car to dry, with his wedding ring attached.  Perhaps it was also sweaty.  Next day, no sneakers.  He bought new shoes but would like the ring returned.  "I'm an idiot," he bragged on Instagram.  No one has disputed this.

Chuck Grassley is 88 and says he wants another term in the Senate, where he has nested since 1981.  He may want to reconsider after being called out for congratulating Lucy Koh, nominated to the US Court of Appeals, for the work ethic of "your people" (Korean Americans).  Clearly his wife should take his hand and gently lead him away before his obvious dementia -- oh, he's a Republican?  Never mind.

Today in Trumpandemic news, Jeffrey Burnham of Maryland allegedly shot and killed his pharmacist brother and sister in law because he decided they were "killing people with the covid shot."  It's not clear why he also thought he should slash the throat of Rebecca Reynolds, 83, a friend of his mother.

Germans are nothing if not thorough.  Last week Irmgard Furchner, 96, ran away from her nursing home shortly before she was to be tried for aiding and abetting murder at the Stutthof concentration camp, where she was a secretary.  She was tracked down and taken to court.  Now Josef S, 100, is being tried on 3,518 counts of murder as an SS guard at Sachsenhausen.  No, I don't know why his last name is redacted but not hers.  

It makes more sense when you know that anti-Semitic graffiti in English and German were painted on former barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland.  In Europe the past is never dead.  It's not even past.

Anti-Trump Republicans are at a higher risk than Democrats.  Jay Allen Johnson of Delta Junction, Alaska, is in hot water for leaving scary voicemail messages for Senator Lisa Murkowski, one threatening arson and another inquiring conversationally, "Fifty caliber shell, you ever see what that does to a fucking human head?"  He's charged with threatening two senators but the indictment doesn't name the other.  

School shooting...Texas...you know...

New Hampshire state representative Ken Weyler (guess) has resigned as chair of the House Finance Committee after sending the other members an interesting document which asserts, among other things, that there are "tentacled creatures" in covid vaccine and that the pope is controlled by a shadowy figure known as "the Grey Pope."  Then it gets weird.  Weyler, who says he only read the first few pages (which were perfectly lucid, I guess), remains in the House and on the committee because his "institutional knowledge is unmatched," according to Speaker Sherman Packard.  Or maybe he said something else about an institution.

If you ever looked at the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind Spencer Elden may be suing you.  He's suing the band, the photographer, the record company and everyone else who saw his little peepee back in 1991 because of "lifelong damages" he says he suffered.  Any reasonable person would be dining out on this forever -- "Remember Nevermind?  No shit, that was me."  But Spencer is still pursuing that dollar.  Hey, it beats working.  

A Black family in Virginia Beach has been subjected to constant harassment because the police refuse to enforce noise ordinances or classify the "monkey noises" as hate speech.  But earlier this year they did manage to shoot Donovan Lynch and nine other people.  Now Lynch's cousin Pharrell Williams has moved his annual Something In the Water festival out of there, citing the city's "toxic energy."  Last year it brought $41 million to the Virginia Beach economy, so the mayor is anxious to meet.  Question for Tucker Carlson:  Is it "cancel culture" when you cancel yourself?  And how does this relate to the Supreme Court's refusal to consider the question of ending "qualified immunity" for killer police?

In related news, Ed Mullins quit as president of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association but we still don't know why the FBI searched his house and their offices.

Al Capone's vault was a bust but his family has many personal items they plan to auction including jewelry, photographs, and of course guns.  They want him to be remembered as "a loving father" and not just a man who took a baseball bat to an underling's head that one time.  The bidders are lining up.

This is my shocked face

 Doctor, can you check and see if I'm dead inside?  I don't seem able to experience surprise.

"The largest investigation in journalism history" (as its authors call it) was unveiled yesterday.  The Pandora Papers document some of the trillions of dollars being sheltered from public scrutiny and taxation and my reaction was "South Dakota?  You're kidding."

I can usually rely on Stephanie Grisham, the Beltway's Hedda Hopper, to get my juices flowing.  Today we learned that Melania Trump wanted to send full-length mirrors to children in Malawi "so they could see how beautiful and strong they looked."  You know it's true because the ex-model's office called Grisham "a deceitful and troubled individual."  No juices in evidence.

The Israel Antiquities Authority released photos of a 2,700-year-old limestone toilet discovered by archeologists in Jerusalem.  These were extremely rare and available only to the upper classes.  Where would Jesus poop?  Behind the house like everyone else.

"War is not healthy for children and other living things" said a famous poster in the 1960s.  And apparently neither is Facebook according to Frances Haugen's testimony before a Senate committee.  Imagine, a company that put profits ahead of everything else and mostly ignored incitements to violence and conspiracy theories that cost countless lives during a pandemic.  Facebook apparatchik Andy Stone questioned Haugen's expertise but had to do it on Twitter, as Facebook is still recovering from yesterday's blackout.  All right, that's amusing.

On the second day of what promises to be a colorful term a man was extracted from his car, apparently wired for explosives, in front of the Supreme Court.   Now that they have had a taste of what it was like to be in the Capitol on January 6, I'm sure Their Honors will do just as they were programmed to do by Moscow Mitch and the Federalist Society.

The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church reports that French clerics abused more than 200,000 minors over the past seventy years.  Maximilien Robespierre and his associates were unavailable for comment.

When life gives you annual raging wildfires, make brandy.  That's the solution to smoke-damaged grapes being tried by Hoopes Vineyard in California's Napa Valley.  We'll know in two years (it has to age).  Meanwhile, why not try hickory-smoked raisins?  

The FBI just raided the offices of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association and the home of its president Ed Mullins.  Mullins is a Fox News and OANN regular who publicized personal information about Chiara de Blasio (the mayor's daughter) after she was arrested at a George Floyd protest.  He also claimed Tessa Majors, a Barnard student who was murdered in Morningside Park, went there to buy drugs.  Which was a lie.  But the feds don't usually concern themselves with loudmouth cop union officials or they'd never get home.  More to come?  

Somewhere I read that a woman should remove one piece of jewelry before leaving the house.  This woman should have removed the elegant silver noose that is getting Givenchy's spring line so much attention, most of it horrified.  In Britain the outcry is concerned with the issue of young girls and suicide.  In America it's being called "Jim Crow-inspired."  Only the capital punishment community seems happy.

Sixteen large electric utilities pulled in $1.25 billion in covid relief cash but still cut off the power of a million customers who couldn't pay their bills.  Shocked?  Moi?

I had no idea

 You kick back with a beverage and visit the sites less traveled, you learn all sorts of things.

As a non-player of video games I had no idea that both PlayStations and XBoxes are almost unobtainable, at least in their latest versions.  Blame is being placed on the world-wide chip shortage that is also bedeviling the auto industry, home appliance makers, phones and pretty much every other inorganic thing you might want.  "Chipageddon" even affects CSSI, a company that makes dog-grooming machines.  Really?  They can't do that by hand?  I had no idea.

Cheer up, it could be worse.  Northern Ireland is short of clowns.  All right, don't cheer up.  NI is just now coming out of a long pandemic lockdown during which many professional clowns left to find work elsewhere in Europe, presumably thirty to a car.  What would a circus be without clowns?  A lot less upsetting to small children and a lot less tedious for everyone else.

Merck Pharmaceutical says its new drug is halving the rates of hospitalization and death in patients with moderate to severe covid.  Now all they need is a better name than molnupiravir and an endorsement from Q.  ("It's made from carpet fibers!  It won't magnetize you and Bill Gates can't trace it!")  Because the richest country on earth is coming up on 700,000 dead.

Ryan Faircloth is facing federal charges for leaving a Molotov cocktail inside the offices of the Democratic Party in Austin.  Under Texas state law that's perfectly fine.

"By the pricking of my thumbs..."  Trump must have every slip-and-fall lawyer in Palm Beach County on J. Wellington Wimpy retainer (he'll gladly pay them Tuesday if they prevail in court today).  The latest in his tsunami of dumb lawsuits demands that Twitter give back his account.  I have no idea who reads his bullshit now on YourRantHere.com or whatever, apart from Right Wing Watch, but apparently he's not reaching the masses.  He absolutely has a Constitutional right to the free services of a private corporation, right?  Even after he violated their terms of service?    

I'm sure superlawyer Lin Wood agrees, but just now he's busy promoting the candidacy of someone called Kandiss Taylor for governor of Georgia by sharing his belief that the 9/11 atrocity didn't really happen.  We fought a hopeless twenty-year war for nothing?  I had no idea. 

Victoria Beckham, whose professional name is Anorexic Spice, wants us to know that her favorite meal is salted toast.  The Independent thinks this is important enough to run all week.  I have no idea why.

What is it called when you can't take "yes" for an answer?  Trump won Idaho last year with 64 percent of the vote, but that's not good enough for Mike Lindell because, according to the voices in HisPillow, he actually won 120 percent of the vote.  Therefore a hand count-nose sniff-hold each ballot up to the ultraviolet light recount must be performed.  I'm starting to think the point of all this is not to detect fraud but to undermine the whole enterprise of voting.  I'm also thinking Mike has come to love the attention, even the derisory kind, and is in no hurry to go back to his pillow factory.  Democracy dies in derpness.

Remember the protesters in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd?  Remember how BLM shot up a police station?  Here he is:

He pleaded guilty.  His name is Ivan Hunter Harrison, he's from Texas, and he's a Boogaloo Boi [sic].  Now that's a false flag.

How does anyone know?

 Bill Fischer parked his Chevy Avalanche truck for four days somewhere in North Dakota and came back to find it crammed with 150 pounds of walnuts.  He says it was the work of one red squirrel.  Is he sure he hasn't pissed off anyone in the neighborhood?

What's become of free speech?  When John T. Earnest was sentenced to life without parole for a 2019 shooting at a California synagogue that left one dead and three wounded, the judge refused to let him make a statement or even turn around to face survivors.  Who will be the first to blame world-wide Jewish hegemony?  Because we really wanted to hear what he thinks.

Despite being fully vaccinated (he says) Brett Kavanaugh has tested positive for covid.  Better add "avoid beer" to the post-vaccine instructions.

His pal Samuel Alito joined the chorus of far-right judges insisting their rulings are not governed by their politics on issues like abortion and complaining about "unprecedented efforts to intimidate the Court."  No, not The McConnell Center, this time the lucky venue was Notre Dame.  If you want a really friendly crowd, Sam, you might try the next Trump Hatesapaloser.

James Schulz, Jr., allegedly stabbed the manager of a restaurant in League City, Texas, after being told to put on a mask.  Of course, it would have been harder to identify him from the security video if he had...worn a mask.

Nurses in Missouri and now school board members in California need panic buttons to protect them from violent parents.  Next:  Coroners inquests?  Zoning commissioners?  

A poll of Trumpanzees finds that 52 percent favor secession to escape the brutal oppression of the Biden administration.  (Lazy bastards -- four years ago we were Googling the immigration procedures of New Zealand.)  Apparently they have given up hope of a restoration even in 2024.  As I recall the last secession was caused by fear that Lincoln would keep slave owners from spreading their "way of life" to the new western territories.  Their ideological descendants seem to be terrified that their lives will be prolonged by a vaccine and that their children will be taught the truth about the first secession.  Well, you could throw a wall around South Dakota and have that.  Nothing there but defaced mountains, blizzards, and corrupt, horny, drunk-driving politicians.  Mazel tov!

Is the Marine Corps going power-mad?  Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was thrown in the brig for criticizing the Biden administration on social media about the withdrawal from Afghanistan.  Junior Trump and the Sedition Caucus rushed to his defense but he told them to sod off:  "Tell your son to stop tweeting about me.  Your whole family knows nothing about us or our sacrifices.  I could never work with you...I hate how you divided the country.  I don't need or want your help."  Meanwhile Lance Cpl. Hunter Clark is under investigation for showing up at a Trump hate rally and claiming to be the Marine who hoisted a baby over a wall in Kabul. 

And now, your moment of Stephanie Grisham:  Challenged by a young boy to go vegan, Trump went batshit crazy instead:  "No, no.  It messes with your body chemistry, your brain.  And if I lose even one brain cell, we're fucked."

That explains it.