Happy talk

Relentlessly upbeat I am, as good news floods in from everywhere.  Call me Sky of Buttermilk farm.

November is reprieve month and I'm not talking about that stupid turkey "pardoning" at the White House.  When AOC is President I hope she puts an end to it.  Another conviction has been vacated and this time the wrongly convicted person is still alive.  Kevin Strickland is free after serving 43 years for a triple murder in Missouri he did not commit.  He left prison in a wheelchair but he is 62 and still alive, and he wants to visit his mother's grave.  

Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter -- what a sonorous title! -- ordered two Colorado lawyers to cough up $187,000 in legal costs for their frivolous lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results.  He accused them of filing "unverified and uninvestigated defamatory rumors that strike at the heart of our democratic system and were used by others to foment a violent insurrection."  Pay the clerk, guys -- I'm sure your client will reimburse when he moves back into the White House next week.  

Or possibly not.  Mike Lindell -- Mike the Baptist to Trump's Messiah -- has been thwarted by the RNC, Ronna McDaniel, Fox News, Newsmax, antifa, and a conspiracy of Republican attorneys general who refuse to sign something he was planning to shove under John Roberts's nose today.   And that would do it.  Undaunted, the Pillow King will publish incontrovertible proof of election theft on his website in time for the "Thanks-a-thon" scheduled for tomorrow midnight (CST?).  Ninety-six hours of non-stop holiday rantings for the Qcumbers to share with their long-suffering families around the table.  I'll be in front of the TV with a folding table and Ninotchka.

I haven't paid much attention to the latest installment of Treasonous and Insane Stuff Trump Told Me Which I Saved For My Book.  That would be Jonathan Karl's Betrayal:  The Final Act of the Trump Show.  (They all have titles that sound like the last days of Ceausescu or Gaddafi.)  Karl, however, won the cake with a wholly weird anecdote about the time Trump called him "very cool.  He's like my son."  He was comparing Karl's lack of excitement about a Trump appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner to Barron Trump's reluctance to tell Daddy he loves him.  Trump has not noticed that he has two other sons who would do backflips on hot coals just to get his attention but he's obsessed about the youngest one.  How Old Testament.  How creepy.  There may be hope for Barron after all.

Firsts!  For a little over an hour last week Kamala Harris was Acting President of the United States while Joe Biden underwent a colonoscopy.  (NOW they activate the 25th Amendment.)  So the first woman, the first Asian American and the first African American woman to assume the office.  But wait!  There's more!  Today she and Doug Emhoff, who I refuse to call the Second Gentleman because it's silly, moved into the renovated Vice Presidential residence and marked the occasion by nailing a mezuzah to the doorway.  It was loaned by The Temple in Atlanta, where Leo Frank once worshiped.  Emhoff's parents attended, the first time they have seen him since the pandemic began.  I am now officially verklempt.

The patriots who marched through Charlottesville in 2017 to celebrate the Trump era have been ordered to pay $26 million to nine people who were traumatized by the torchlight parade of "Unite the Right."  Most of it is owed by James Fields, who is doing life for the murder of Heather Heyer, so there's little likelihood he'll be able to pay, but the judgment is on record.  Spencer, Cantwell and the rest are officially having a bad day.  "Jews will not replace us"?  Stand back and stand down.

Remember this idiot?  He pleaded guilty.  He's going to do time.  And he had to give back the Speaker's lectern.  Wave goodbye to the idiot.