Has Garland got the slows?

There is widespread speculation that THE case may be about to break.  The Justice Department announced it will hire 131 lawyers specifically to deal with the January 6, 2021, insurrection.  After more than a year someone besides the QAnon Shaman may face actual punishment.  On the other hand, Merrick Garland may be the George McClellan of attorneys general.  McClellan would never take the field until he had a significant advantage in men and materiel, and even then he was rarely effective.  "McClellan has got the slows," remarked his frustrated commander-in-chief.  Eventually Lincoln's patience ran out and he replaced McClellan with Ambrose Burnside.  There have been suggestions for replacing Garland, including Preet Bharara and Jamie Raskin, but this is no time for the confirmation cha-cha.

We must hope that General Garland is ready to attack, and I'm not talking about "Please, sir, could you come to the US courthouse for arraignment if you have time, possibly?"  Too late.

Here's what I want:  a pre-dawn arrest, the FBI barging into his trash-palace before he has time for hair and makeup.  When the Trumpanzees wake up and turn on the television I want them to see their messiah as he really is, a fat, bald, blotchy old man with no dentures, crying in his handcuffs.  In the doorway Hope Hicks in a nightgown wails, "Don't take him away, he's a good man, he didn't mean to overthrow the government."  I want the ultimate episode of Cops.  If Hicks is not available, Liz Harrington will do, but no more concessions.

Beyond a treasonable doubt

Did you know that only Vladimir Putin stands between the United States and nuclear annihilation?  Tucker Carlson says so, and you can tell by his ratings that he's really smart.  If Putin falls, "some anti-American terror group" just might use all 6,000 Russian nukes against our civilian population.  He didn't say how he knows this, but it's clear Baby Tuckoo is so anxious to prop up Putin that he'll say any scary shit to his highly impressionable audience.  Clearly Joe Biden should stop being so mean to this great statesman who only wants what's best for the Russian Empire.

While Tuckoo holds high the red, white and blue banner -- not that one -- elsewhere Fox is rushing to support Florida's vile governor DeSantis as he attempts to, oh, what's the word, cancel the Disney Corporation.  Florida now has a "Don't Say Gay" law that prohibits public school teachers from acknowledging that there is anything but normal, Christian mommy-daddy sex to their students and Disney, after some reprehensible fumbling and stumbling (and a strike by employees) has decided to support its repeal.  This has earned them the dreaded sobriquet "woke," which no one can define but most Trumpanzees can spell, like "red" sixty years ago.  Tuckoo left off defending Uncle Vlad long enough to accuse Disney of being involved in human trafficking and "chemical castration" of children.  Looks like the kids of Qcumbers won't get to visit Pirates of the Caribbean this summer.

Most Americans don't watch Yevgeny Popov on Russian TV.  They should.  Popov not only called for "regime change" in the US but for "our partner Trump [to] become president again."  Russian TV speaks with one voice so he can't be dismissed as some Candace Owens fringe nut.  I continue to await a response from the "sane" Republicans.  Mitt?  Liz?  Are you waiting until he hosts the Carlson White Power Hour?

Susan Collins did her bit for sanity today when she promised to vote for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation.  She is probably in a secure location until then.

Don't expect to hear from Mitch McConnell.  He's too busy protecting Clarence Thomas from "clumsy bullying" over the revelations that his wife was involved in the insurrection up to her chins.  How dare anyone suggest this "great American" ever listens to her?  Or shares her contempt for democracy?  How dare they?  Humph.

The phrase of the day is "burner phone," as in Trump's claim that "I never even heard the term."  It's being suggested that his calls to organize the insurrection were made on such a phone or phones.  But it seems he brought it up in connection with Mary Trump's lawsuit, and John Bolton says he often used the term.  He seems to have been excited by all the secretive spy stuff, as by the prospect of using nuclear weapons and "invisible" stealth bombers.  It's too bad the term "second childhood" has given way to "Alzheimer's disease."  I'm sure the missing logs disappeared long ago down a White House toilet, but this is not the era of Rose Mary Woods.   Those calls are in a database somewhere.

For those keeping track of Trump business failures, add Truth Social, the media platform that was going to bring Twitter to its knees.  Traffic has dropped by 93 percent, which means more people are using AOL.  How could this be, with dairy farmer Devin Nunes at the helm of Trump Media & Technology Group?  I think it was Paul Krugman who observed that Trump would be richer today if he'd put his father's money in a savings account.  Of course, they never would have let him into Studio 54.

Alex Horton in the Washington Post writes:

"Russian troops in Ukraine have scrambled to avoid detection and attack by using tree branches and straw, even swaths of carpeting, to conceal tanks and other armored vehicles, in what analysts call a surprising lack of sophistication for such an advanced military and further evidence of how ill-prepared some commanders were for the sustained fight that has unfolded."  

As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move.  

And Macbeth responds, "Liar and slave!" and threatens to hang him.  Tyrants do not like bad news.  "A breathtaking degree of amateurism," says Horton.  I think it's pretty creative.  Desperate but creative.

With the phone log scandal, the "Putin, if you're listening" scandal and Ginni Thomas inadvertently reminding us olds of Martha Mitchell, CBS chose this moment to add Trump henchman Mick Mulvaney to its roster of seditious Solons.  Nobody knows why.

War, peace, etc.

 Listen up, California!  It's all very well to be the sanctuary state for women seeking reproductive freedom and the first to make election day an official holiday.  If you really want to be the envy of the other states why not choose Rachel Hamm as your secretary of state?  Just like Ken "Dinosaur" Ham but with even more M's!  She has done battle with Satan-worshipers in her neighborhood and actually killed a witch with her prayers, which is why she has the backing of Mike Lindell and Michael Flynn and the admiration of Steve Bannon.  But those endorsements pale in comparison to Jesus.  Her son found Jesus in a closet while looking for his "Let's Go Brandon" shirt and Jesus handed him a scroll commanding Rachel to run for office.  I can't wait to see it.  I just hope the kid isn't messing with her.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco says the Justice Department is hiring an additional 131 lawyers to handle the January 6 insurrection cases.  Meanwhile the House Select Committee reports a mysterious seven-and-a-half hour gap in the White House phone logs turned over for that momentous day.  All they have is Kayleigh MAGA-ninny ordering pizza and someone who sounds like Barron trying to win Adele tickets from HOT 99.5.

Rep. Pete "No Relation To That Woke Alabama RINO" Sessions (R-TX) became the latest to embrace the white nationalist "great replacement" theory.  The brown hordes at the southern border are definitely pushing out the "white, Christian Americans."  Can I at least meet my replacement?

Gotcha!  Somebody started a rumor that Nebraska schools had set out litter boxes for children who "self-identify as cats," because questioning your gender at birth is just so gol-durn funny.  (Who said the next step after same-sex marriage would be people marrying their dogs?)  One idiot -- no, that's unfair.  One Republican fell for it.  State senator Bruce Bostelman, not the sharpest, had to apologize for mentioning it in a televised debate.  And there was much hilarity.

When Joe Biden said Putin has to go and called him a butcher and a war criminal, my response was, "Hell, Joe, everybody knows that."  But then the media and even his own people lost their minds and "walked it back" (early leader for Most Tiresome Cliche of 2022).  Was he wrong?  Well, looky looky who's asking his friend and sponsor Putin to release information he supposedly has on Hunter Biden.  Depose the one, convict the other.  Only way this ends.

I guess Syrian recruitment was a bust, because the shredded Russian army is bringing in a thousand mercenaries from the Wagner Group, known for committing war crimes in Africa and Syria.  It's not just personnel shortages.  The Russian army's tanks charged into Ukraine like it was Kursk 1943, but either their tactics suck or the tanks do.  Now they're being pushed back from Kyiv and Vlad is screaming into his MyPillow.

Peter Doocy is silly!  Biden is right again!

This is for me.  Would everyone please read this article about the supermassive black hole so the Independent will stop running it week after week?  Thanks truly.

Cavalcade of Sport

 What does the world need?  More sports.  That's why ESPN and others are able to bring us World Chase Tag, in which teams of grown men play tag on a futuristic obstacle course in front of paying spectators.  I have seen it.  It exists.  

It's faster and more thrilling than Cornhole, which promises a bit more than it delivers.  Cornhole is, in fact, beanbag, which politics ain't according to Mr. Dooley.

Players try to toss the beanbag into the hole.  It has all the excitement of curling with none of the speed or danger.  

And now, pickleball.  Described as "one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States," pickleball is played with a ping-pong-type paddle and a net.  It's in the news because Arslan Guney, 71, is looking at three years in prison for marking up a gymnasium floor in Denver to show where the equipment should be placed.  (Pickleball still has to share space with basketball and volleyball, for now.)  He is charged with felony criminal mischief.  If he had taken part in the January 6 insurrection he might be faced with three months in the slammer, more likely probation.  Colorado takes its gymnasia more seriously than Merrick Garland takes sedition, assault and riot.

The punters are still analyzing Will Smith's slap of Chris Rock as though it were Ali-Frazier.  Was it a stunt?  Should Smith have been arrested or ejected from the venue?  Won't somebody think of the children?  This has something for almost everybody.  (It was the second-lowest-rated Oscar show since televising began, but this thirty seconds has been viewed more times than the Zapruder film.)  Tayo Bero says all the outrage is rooted in racism; nobody remembers the time Debbie Reynolds put a beatdown on Joan Fontaine.  Stuart Heritage worries that "it might have been just the thing that the Oscars needed," and future telecasts will be gooned up like professional wrestling if the ratings require it.  "Cheap violence might be thrilling in the moment, but it tarnishes everything around it," he writes.  I guess he's not a hockey fan.

I say, what's the matter, Ms. Pinkett?  Is your arm broken?  It was for you to bitch-slap Mr. Rock if his "joke" annoyed you.  Sisters are supposedly doing it for themselves, or haven't you heard?  That burst of feminism Hollywood experienced after #MeToo dissipated fast.  And since the intelligence of Americans is usually overestimated, Maryland state senator Will Smith is getting all kinds of unwanted attention.  A video game developer named Will Smith is also hoping the next show business outburst involves Zeljko Ivanek and Goran Visnjic.

"Many people are asking, so I'll give it to you now, it is 100% true..."

What could it be?  That "many people" is the giveaway:  Kim Jong-Trump claims he hit a hole in one during his daily golf outing.  Apparently there's no video so you'll just have to take his word for it, as with his Michigan Man of the Year award and his intimidation of Vladimir Putin and his impregnable border wall and his pharmaceutical price controls and his superiority to Abraham Lincoln and the millions of jobs created by his daughter and his "extraordinary" physical strength and his claim to have read the Bible and...

Tales of the unexpected

Convicted felon Jeff Fortenberry surprised me by resigning from the House at the urgent request of Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Governor Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and possibly the ghost of Henry Fonda.  He did it in the most dickish way possible, quoting a remarkably self-satisfied sermonette by Mother, sorry, St. Teresa of Calcutta, but he did it.

A famous drummer did not die.  Charlie Watts, Sam Lay, Joey Covington (Jefferson Airplane) and Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) have all died in the past year, but Chris Frantz survived a head-on collision with a drunk.  His wife Tina Weymouth suffered several fractures and is recovering.

Doonesbury abides!  As does Garry Trudeau.  Check it out.

In 1922, as the Jazz Age was hitting its stride, New Orleans, of all places, decided to ban jazz and dancing in its public schools.  The law, probably rooted in racism, has long been ignored and was finally repealed, exactly a century later.  

What if Trump held a hate rally in Georgia and nobody came?  All right, five thousand people, but it was cold and windy (headline at GPB:  "Trump's Republican revenge tour falters in Georgia").  It's probably good news for Brian Kemp, called by the Orange One "a turncoat, a coward, a complete and total disaster" because he wouldn't help Brad Raffensperger search under the couch cushions for the 11,700 ballots Trump demanded.  Now Stacey Abrams will "steal" the governorship from him (steal it back, more like).  The opening acts didn't overshadow Trump by even attempting to make sense.  Herschel Walker denounced critical race theory and promised to "get men out of women's sports," which is not a thing; while Empty Greene demanded that Pete and Chasten Buttigieg "stay out of girls' bathrooms," which is even more baffling.  Not a good night for mental hygiene.  According to the organizers (and Sean Spicer?) it was the largest crowd Georgia has seen since Sherman's army.  But it was Trump who delivered the best through-the-looking-glass gag of the night when he complained of how rude Judge Jackson was to those nice Senators as they politely called her an unqualified advocate of child pornographers.  "Total disdain and even hatred" is what it seemed like to Trump, who is absolutely the least racist biped that ever walked on land.  

In case it wasn't clear from his characterizations of Volodymyr Zelensky as "a thug" and Nancy Pelosi "a drunk," Madison Cawthorn told a roomful of supporters, "At 26 years old I don't have a lot of wisdom."  He plans to remedy that by taking Neuter Gingrich as his mentor.  Despite Cawthorn's claim of "charisma," Gingrich says he barely remembers talking to him.  You'd think the Hitler Youth haircut and the wheelchair would jog his memory.

In Poland Joe Biden pledged to admit a hundred thousand of the nearly four million Ukrainians who have fled their country to the United States.  It didn't take Laura Ingraham long to dig up a faux-intellectual who thinks that's a bad idea.  Todd Bensman is hooked up with many anti-immigrant groups and has even testified to the Free Dumb Caucus on the "crisis" at the southern border, so the surprising part is that he hates the prospect of white refugees, too.  "What about the American taxpayer?" demanded Ingraham, keeping her eye on the ball as usual.

The American taxpayers, or at least those Ingraham hangs out with, will pay a lot more if Joe Biden has his way.  A minimum tax of 20 percent on the richest 0.01 percent of households should pay for social spending and reduce the deficit that worries Republicans so much at the moment.

Ukrainian MP Rustem Umerov and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich (best known as the owner of Chelsea football club) were apparently poisoned while attending informal peace talks in Kyiv earlier this month.  Really, Vlad?  Again with the polonium?  Kim Jong-un has moved on to nerve agents administered by cute girls in airports.  Try to keep up.  In other news it looks like Ukrainian forces have re-taken Irpin from the Russians.  Vlad had a worse weekend than his ex-puppet in Georgia.

Here's a shocker:  The former Roman Catholic bishop of Albany, Howard Hubbard, admitted covering up flagrant child abuse by his priests from 1977 to 2014, out of concern for "scandal and the respect of the priesthood."  So do you think there's more respect now, Bishop?

The Denver Police Department defunded themselves by $14 million, the sum a jury awarded to people they brutalized during a demonstration protesting the murder of George Floyd in 2020.  Be a shame if nobody got a raise this year.

Shocking violence last night, huh?  No, not a rich movie star slapping another rich movie star.  Men in fatigues invaded a cockfight in Michoacan, Mexico and killed twenty people with assault rifles.  They take animal abuse seriously.

This was forwarded by my friend and reader, Jackie.  I don't know who Robert Becker is but I envy his Photoshop skills.

 

   

Things they actually said

Fans of A Christmas Story are familiar with the neighborhood bully Scut Farkas and his horrible little henchman Grover Dill.  Putin has his own Grover Dill called Dmitri Medvedev.  For reasons of his own (dreams of being named successor, perhaps), this toady put his name to an incoherent, racist screed called "Why contacts with the current Ukrainian leadership are meaningless."  After some scrambled history it settles down to an ad hominem attack on Volodymyr Zelensky, "a man with certain ethnic roots," nudge nudge, who is not a genuine person just as Ukraine is not a real country.  And so on.  If this is the acme of Russian "thinking" I'd hate to read their gutter press.  Defending the indefensible must be enervating and exhausting even for a toady.

But there is no shortage of gutter thinking even in The West.  Try this from someone Newsweek describes as "former Republican Senate candidate Lauren Witzke:  "Here's the deal with arranged marriages is that your parents want what's best for you...I fully support arranged marriages [and] parents having a say and choosing the family that you choose to bond yourself with, I fully support that."  At the time she was interviewing someone called "Woozuh" who took it the next level:  "My real position is that women are our currency to be bartered and traded.  It's not biblically unfounded...you could trade a virgin bride for half a dozen yoke of oxen."  (Twelve oxen?)  "I think if we went back to that and got rid of all this feminism crap, forget about your master's degree, forget about your career and just go mommy mode."  It's safe to say they weren't talking about some adorable old match-maker like in Crossing Delancey helping Amy Irving realize that Peter Riegert is the man she wanted after all.  Some crap is podcast performance art to appeal to the incels and "own" the libs.  Some of it is as serious as cancer.

Regrets?  Martin Anglehart has a few.  He fell in with the mob of dark-money-funded truckers who terrorized Ottawa and other Canadian cities to protest government measures to keep people from dying of covid.  Anglehart spent thousands of his own dollars to provide the diesel dummies with fuel and laundry services, and now he says he was kicked out of his home and lives in his SUV.  "I would like to apologize to people in Ottawa.  I'm sorry...all I wanted was to help people."  The wrong people.

When the ink had dried on the PATRIOT Act, some of the Congressmen who voted for it finally read it.  They discovered to their shock that librarians were supposed to keep a record of materials checked out and advise the FBI (I suppose) if patrons read books about Iraq or Islam or just about anything that suggested they were "terrorists," the kind who have unlimited time to spend reading books.  Somebody called the ACLU and the ALA and the alarm was raised, and the government never acted on this threat to free thought and speech.  But in America bad ideas don't die, they lie dormant for years like locusts.  The Oklahoma House has passed HB4014, another of these "parents' rights" bills requiring librarians to provide parents with records of what their children read.  Its co-author, one Sherrie Conley, says parental rights "have been given to us...by our Lord and savior simply through birth."  One of the sane minority in the House asked about a problem Conley was having in a single school district, whereupon she retorted, "You may see only one cockroach in your kitchen but that doesn't mean there's only one there."  Quick, Sherrie, the Flit -- I just seen one of them librarians!  

Elsewhere in Woody Guthrie's home state Pastor Jarrin Jackson asks voters to "unleash" him so he can clean up the number one problem confronting Sooners, GODLESS COMMUNISM.  He would like to employ military tribunals to send them to "burn forever in a lake of fire," which is a big task for a member of a state senate.  Gonna take down Darwin, perverts, all that sex stuff.  Shoot them in the face.  Cockroaches.  Everywhere!  Get 'um offa me!!

I don't want to suggest that our super-patriotic Republicans -- did you know Lincoln was a Republican? -- get their ideas from Moscow but Russian schoolchildren are now getting patriotism lessons to keep them from succumbing to thought-crime.  Can book-burnings be far behind?  Yes, their parents are already too frightened to complain.  "We are united and therefore invincible!"  The only question is which state will go first.  Oklahoma?

Enough.  Here's something worth reading.

I can't make it any larger.  Thanks, Andrej, you're a legend.

     

The week ends

 

...with more sore butts than a proctologist's waiting room.

Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker got quit-or-be-fired notices from presidential assistant Gautam Raghavan and refused to quit the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.  So, fired it is.  Walker had his son Christian tweet support for him, while Oz created a witty riposte about how Anthony Fauci should quit instead.  It was all very mature.  These two are running, however ineptly, for the Senate as Republicans, so there is no earthly reason the Biden administration should continue to employ them, but their attitude is that what Trump giveth only Trump can take away.  Their replacements are WNBA star Elena Delle Donne and legendary chef/humanitarian Jose Andres.  Neither has assaulted a spouse or peddled quack cures on television.

Jeff Fortenberry, a Republican who proudly represents the great state of Nebraska, was found guilty of lying to the FBI about campaign money from a Nigerian billionaire, Gilbert Chagoury.  Speaker Pelosi released a statement that concluded, "Congressman Fortenberry must resign from the House," because a felony conviction is not enough to get you thrown out.  He won't, of course.

Because the Electoral College frequently prevents democracy, Trump became president in 2016.  Nevertheless, he is suing Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and an armful of other people who tried to prevent that.  He would like yuge damages because they revealed his Russian support, now that being Putin's puppet is considered a bad thing.  Also wire tapps.  I didn't know "sore winner" was a thing.  Trump actually found lawyers to represent him (is it possible they don't know about his deadbeat reputation?).  You can, too.  They're at legalbrains.com.

Mo Brooks showed up on January 6, 2021, ready to rumble in body armor.  He made a speech to the mob.  He voted against certifying the election.  He signed the letter.  For two years he was pathetically loyal.  Then one day he suggested it was time to "move on," i.e., accept reality.  And that act of disloyalty -- well, if Trump knew who Judas Iscariot was, that would be his witty name for Brooks.  Senate endorsement withdrawn!  Cast into the outer darkness, Mo doesn't care anymore.  He told WIAT in Birmingham, "He always brings up 'We've got to rescind the election.  We got to take Joe Biden down and put me in now.'"  By violence, because there is no legal framework for such a thing.  His mentor Putin wouldn't stand for the inconvenience of electoral defeat.

But Trump can always count on the devotion of his very own Renfield, Stephen Miller.  Miller has also withdrawn his endorsement, which carries so much weight in Alabama.  Does anyone else have the feeling that when Trump dies the Millers will poison their children and shoot themselves rather than live in a world without him?  

(Of course, the problem with Brooks may be that he's polling a distant third in the Alabama Republican primary.  Trump hates losers.  A man in his position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous, or any more ridiculous.  As Jennifer Rubin points out, his subservience to Putin is already coming back to haunt him, as even most Republicans are forced by public opinion to support Ukraine.)

Speaking of the Poison Dwarf, Putin becomes ever more shameless in his propaganda, now complaining almost daily that the West want to "cancel" Russian culture.  It must be said that he has plenty of help, with orchestras unhiring Russian musicians and scrapping Tchaikovsky.  But invoking "Joanne Rowling," as he calls her, is especially low.  True, she has been criticized for expressing unpopular opinions about the transgendered, but she's still the richest woman on earth and nobody is burning Harry Potter books except fundamentalist preachers who think they promote satanism.  Criticized, not tossed out a window.  That's how we still roll in the liberal democracies Putin despises.  And he has the gall to mention Shostakovich, who lived in terror of the regime under which thugs like Putin thrived!  Is it in his name that Ukrainian children have to be murdered, orphaned and kidnapped?

It wouldn't be the weekend if a Republican hadn't said something stupid.  Against stiff competition Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee took home the brass figlagee.  Republicans love to show off their devotion to the Founding Fathers and the Sacred Scriptures, which they mostly haven't read.  Blackburn left off searching her hair for a lost Kit-Kat to tweet, "The Constitution grants us rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- not abortions."  Sorry, Marsha, that's the other one, the open letter to King George that begins, "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America..."  Can you guess it now?

The anti-choice crew always insist that women eventually regret ending a pregnancy.  They usually don't but sometimes the baby-daddies do, especially when the abortion comes to light years later.  Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina, who found god when he got into politics, not only paid to have "his" fetus aborted but shared the news on his Facebook page in 1989.  The NCGOP declined to comment, calling it "a personal matter," which is distinctly not the party's position on the uterus of every other woman in the country.  

Have Russian troops bogged down in Ukraine discovered fragging?  According to reporter Dan Sabbagh, "More on the Russian commander officials believe was killed by his own troops.  The belief is he was 'run over.'  Was the commander of 37th motor rifle brigade."  Could be an accident...Sabbagh also reports that the Ukrainians may have more tanks than they started with.  The tanks run out of gas, the Russians abandon them, and farmers with tractors tow them away.

If Sarah Palin denies us all the gift of a House campaign it will probably be because she can't keep up with the next generation of Republiclowns.  As usual, Empty Greene was first out of the little car this week, complaining that she feels "threatened" by trans women.  Not that they've put out a contract or anything, she's afraid real women like her will be "replaced" by them.  Also something about "corporate communism," I don't know, she's a little hard to follow.  She has decided the Hitler Fanboy was right about "thug" Zelensky and his corrupt government, but denies she's repeating Russian propaganda.  She is apparently now an expert on immunology, comparing covid boosters to one-shot polio vaccine.  I can clearly remember getting multiple doses of both Salk and Sabine vaccines, and I was only about ten.  I also remember my mother saying, "Be sure of your facts before you speak."  Did Margie have a mother?  Would she be proud to see Georgians trying to use the Fourteenth Amendment "insurrection qualification clause" to prevent her re-election?

YouTube cancels Trump!  Actually they just took down video of his electoral fantasies at the last CPAC.  Will YouTube be added to the omnibus lawsuit?

Indicted attorney general Ken Paxton has proclaimed Pride Week "illegal" in Texas, calling it "a week-long instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent."  This is a state where Confederate Memorial Day is still a legal holiday, despite being a twenty-four-hour-long instructional effort in sedition.  It's also the state where a young woman was charged with a felony for trying to give her baby away to strangers on the street in Corpus Christi.  But she didn't abort it!

Remember Al Sleet, "your hippy-dippy weatherman"?  Pointing to the map and describing a line of thunderstorms and a line of ICBMs, "so I wouldn't sweat the thunderstorms"?  Well, the Conger ice shelf has collapsed in Antarctica, so I wouldn't sweat the five-dollar gas.

People who live in real cities won't believe me but when you call 911 in Memphis you could be put on hold.  I thought of that when I read about Karen in Euclid, Ohio, who called the emergency number to demand that something be done about her incorrect KFC order.  How did Sherrod Brown get elected by these people?

Big exhale, people, Joe Manchin says he will vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Not since Jackie Robinson in 1947 has a Black American endured so much vile abuse with such equanimity.  

If you want to understand why so many Ukrainians would rather die than submit to Russian rule again, and you don't have the time or the stomach to read Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands, see Agnieszka Holland's 2019 film Mr. Jones.  

  

 

  

Book chat

 A new Thursday feature, possibly.

In spite of everything, some good has come of the witch trial conducted by the Republicans of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The posturing of Ted Cruz has propelled The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale onto the bestseller list.  "Every purchase now comes with a vial of Ted Cruz tears," Vitale tweeted.  Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is a trustee of Georgetown Day School, a private school in the District of Columbia, and Vitale's book is on a list of recommended readings along with Ibram X. Kendi's Antiracist Baby and Critical Race Theory:  An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.  Cruz held them up to prove that Judge Jackson is a racist who will promote racism and race-related race stuff, and also that he thinks trustees compile the school's reading lists.  Judging by the condition of the book, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn't think he has opened it since sending a staff member to Barnes & Noble to buy it as a prop.  Allegedly.  Anyway, congratulations to Professor Vitale on his windfall.  Just the thing to read when relaxing in Cancun or whiling away the hours in the Bozeman airport.

The End of Policing suggests that money spent militarizing the police could better be used to train them to deal with the social and psychological problems of city residents.  Libraries are already doing this.  They offer computers and help with their use, assist people seeking jobs, and save lives, literally.  At the McPherson Square Branch Library in Philadelphia, librarians are called on to administer the anti-overdose drug Narcan (Naloxone) to patrons and passers-by.  Rep. Patrick Maloney introduced the Life-Saving Librarians Act to provide Narcan kits and training to all libraries.  It seems like a job police could be doing.  I'm sure they do.  But they like to tell us they're the blue line holding back the barbarians and, surprise, librarians are doing that, too, without guns.  They are single-handedly defending the First Amendment against those who want to ban books and strangle dissent, and they do it for less money than a rookie cop in a medium-size city.  

Police are not prepared to deal with assaults on free speech, at least in Providence.  When Red Ink Community Library held an event to mark the anniversary of The Communist Manifesto last month they attracted a mob of masked neo-Nazis (they will put on masks to hide their identity, not to prevent disease), unmistakable in uniforms and swastikas.  One event organizer was assaulted.  The Providence PD arrived, chatted amiably with the master race and left without making an arrest.  Is this our future?  I like Cabaret but I don't want to live in it.

Ted Cruz isn't the only Texas extremist to learn the hard way about the Streisand effect.  State Rep. Matt Krause tried to boost his unsuccessful campaign for attorney general by publishing a ludicrously long list of books that offended him in the state's public school libraries.  The result was #FReadomfighters, a group of several thousand parents, students, teachers, librarians and plain old Texans organized for the purpose of combating censorship.  That's grass-roots organizing -- no Koch money, no ALEX talking points.

 

All the best people

We must be taking on water.  Paul Manafort was caught trying to sneak off to Dubai today on a revoked passport (I seem to recall he owns several).  Evan Neumann was luckier:  the Trump insurrection veteran has been granted asylum in Belarus as a "political prisoner," the kind that commits assault and violent trespass.  Has he compared himself to Rosa Parks yet?  

Fashion arbiter Peter Schiff has a podcast where he whines about being "one of the most hated men on the planet right now.  In fact I may be number two just behind Vladimir Putin himself."  That's putting on airs.  He's just a manicured idiot who wants the president of Ukraine to "put on something nicer" to address Congress.  Out of respect.

Let's talk about that Congress, specifically the Republicans who infest its Senate Judiciary Committee.  If Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is enduring their ranting, hectoring, interrupting and whitemansplaining without pharmaceutical support, she shouldn't be on the Supreme Court.  She should be in charge of the entire planet and whatever fuckery Elon Musk has in mind for the moon.  Not once has she cried (Kavanaugh), simpered (Barrett) or muttered about a "high tech lynching" (Thomas), which is basically what's happening.  Time limits?  They don't respect no time limits.  Strom Thurmond would have been more civil than his successor, who flounced back in to free-associate about child pornography, while Ted Cruz applied his sledgehammer wit to kindergarten books and/or critical race theory.  Proposed definition of a racist:  Anyone who didn't want to vomit.

It's not just the old Confederacy.  Mike Braun (R-IN) was tricked by a clever reporter into saying the Supreme Court should not have ruled in Loving v. Virginia that state law forbidding interracial marriage is unconstitutional.  He changed his tune when some aide pointed out that it sounded a lot like "Dixie."

Speaking of which, Clarence Thomas is hospitalized and said to be on a ventilator.  With any luck we'll have to go through another of these shitfests in a few weeks.

MacKenzie Scott, whose 26-year marriage to Jeff Bezos netted her $62.2 billion, has donated $275 million of it to Planned Parenthood.  I expect her to begin taking some of the abuse normally directed at George Soros.

It is a far, far better use of the money than buying a non-existent artwork by Yves Klein, the first artist to realize that most collectors are morons.

Sarah Palin has been busy, still pursuing her hopeless defamation suit against the New York Times while threatening to run for the seat vacated by Rep. Don Young.  But who's thinning the moose population?

This is a line of Muscovites queueing for bread in 1992.  The Guardian is wryly amused that sanctions have them queueing for sugar in 2022.  But only months ago Americans were hording toilet paper and fighting over bottled water, and as for gas...nothing is certain, is it?

World War Too

With only one American hostage, Brittney Griner, and unable to grab any reporters, Russian invaders decided kidnaping 2,389 Ukrainian children would be better suited to their capabilities.  At least five generals have been picked off by snipers, and according to a Pentagon press briefing Russian morale is low, perhaps since they seem to lack -- hang on -- winter gear.   They were supposed to be warm in their quarters by now, Day 26.  Instead, nearly ten thousand are dead and the Ukrainians have recaptured the outskirts of Kyiv.  You can't win a war with Sportpalast rallies, as Goebbels found out.

It's not only echoes of Stalingrad that reverberate.  Russia and Japan never signed a formal peace treaty for the few months the USSR was actually at war with the Japanese Empire, and have negotiated for decades over some small islands north of Hokkaido.  In response to Japan's condemnation of the war, Russia has now broken off talks (to be honest, there wasn't much progress since 1956 anyway).  So Japan is shipping non-lethal gear like helmets and has taken in dozens of refugees.  This is highly unusual for a country which normally discourages immigration.  The US has admitted almost none of the three million who have fled the war.  Hey, they could be drug-smuggling terrorists from Honduras!

Ask a foreign policy expert like the Rev. Robert Ritchie -- you may know him better as Kid Rock.  Baby Tuckoo gave his cult a break from the sad war news (see above) and got Mr. Rock to brag about how Trump sought his advice on North Korea and Islamic State.  As he put it, "I was there with Trump one day when he ended the caliphate."  You remember, the day he fed the entire White House staff with two sesame buns and a Filet O Fish.  It was like awesome.  

Joe Biden used the phrase "new world order" in a speech to a bunch of CEOs yesterday, causing Q-adjacent heads to explode all over the nutosphere.  In context it's clear he was talking about the strengthening of NATO and the European Union as well as the reinvigoration of democracy, not to mention quoting the innocuous George H.W. Bush.  But they hear what they hear.  The most baffling tweet was "I believe with all my heart that Joe Biden was installed by Globalists, Babylon included, to usher in the New World Order."  We know "globalists" is code for "Jews" but hell if I know what  "Babylon" is.  The Middle East?  The town on Long Island?  What Rastafarians call America?  I'm not googling it. 

Lindsey Graham does not believe you're innocent until proven guilty.  Lindsey Graham does not think "terrorists" are entitled to a legal defense.  Lindsey Graham said so, and then Lindsey Graham flounced out of Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing.  Hmmph!

If a bunch of unemployed truckers drive around the DC Beltway and nobody pays attention, can they still get covid?  Zachary Petrizzo reports, "Today out in Hagerstown, more and more truckers with The People's Convoy have complained about becoming sick with a bad cough.  One streamer, 'OTR Survival,' ended up going to an urgent care, and described the illness as 'getting hit by a bus.'"

FREEDOM!

 

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

Last week the Senate spent fourteen seconds lousing up America's circadian rhythms.  Anyway a few Senators did, without debate or even voting it out of the Commerce Committee.  That Rubio and Sinema were the ringleaders should surprise no one.  Unless the House intervenes, next year we have to go on permanent Daylight Saving Time, which does not mean there will be more daylight in winter, no matter what Ron Johnson says.

The clocks went forward on Saturday night, which may explain why Ted Cruz missed his flight out of Bozeman, Montana, yesterday.  Why a Texas senator was in Montana is a whole other matter.  Cruz went full Kyle (the male version of Karen), demanding to speak to the manager and presumably make the plane come back for him.  Unfortunately he returned to Washington in time to whine that Supreme Court confirmation hearings have become so angry and confrontational, at least when the nomination is made by a Democrat.  For the same reason that you're more likely to get abuse for wearing a mask than for being a jerk to a ticketing agent, Teddy.  Your party is full of traitorous meatballs like Josh Hawley and professional race-baiters like John NMI Kennedy.  And did you really describe attempted rape as "teenage dating habits"?

Voter restrictions, outrageous gerrymandering and even "poll police" apparently are not enough to maintain Republicans in office.  Now a group of armed thugs organized by Mike Pillow are going door to door in Colorado to intimidate voters in their homes.  The "U.S. Election Integrity Plan" authorizes "citizen audit activities" to scare people of color away from voting.  Fortunately the 1871 Klan Act passed during the Grant Administration is still on the books, the Roberts Court not having had a crack at it yet.  Can someone tell me why this meth-head Lindell is still at large?

Get 'em while they're young.  A "teacher" at Turning Point Christian School proudly posted video of herself leading four- and five-year-olds in an anti-Biden chant.  Only one parent complained (well, it is a Christian school).  The Trumpjugend leader is apparently still employed there.

Speaking of Nazis, Boris Romanchenko survived Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora, Bergen-Belsen and Dortmund, but was killed in the Russian attack on Kharkiv.  He was 96.

Wisconsin police must teach kneeling on Black necks in their academy.  Shawn Guetschow was caught on security video using the move to subdue a twelve-year-old girl during a lunchroom fight.  He resigned from his school security job but is still on the Kenosha PD.  The girl was luckier than George Floyd -- she only suffers from neck injuries and PTSD.  

Our numptie of the week is proud Trumpanzee Brandon Fellows, not a lawyer but representing himself on various charges stemming from the 2021 coup (which he calls "the museum tour/insurrection").  He keeps filing motions with the DC court comparing himself to Jesus and Martin Luther King because he's in jail like them (King anyway) for his beliefs.   I know another white male who went to jail for his part in an insurrection.  You probably know his book My Struggle better than Letter From a Birmingham Jail.  Let it go, Brandon.

  

Schadenfreude Saturday

 I love reading about the inconveniences of the leisure classes and today's Washington Post has a keeper:  the 2,090 passengers on the Norwegian Escape, which was damaged when it ran aground off Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic.  Over three days, Norwegian Cruise Lines shuttled them to Orlando on chartered planes.  Then they were on their own.  It was not the week of overeating and Branson-style entertainment they anticipated.  The lawsuits will doubtless go on for years.

Am I a scholar or a snob?  In The Baffler Jessa Crispin reveals something I didn't even know, that while running for president in 2020 Pete Buttigieg told people his favorite book was Ulysses.  That was nervy.  According to Crispin this was interpreted as "I went to Harvard" and drove away voters.  "The idea that anyone other than scholars or snobs might take pleasure in the famously 'difficult' prose of Ulysses was declared absurd."  This fed into arguments about "whether difficult books are ableist" and "the whiteness of the canon."  If by ableist you mean "require a large vocabulary and the ability to recognize allusions to Homer, Shakespeare, et al.," sure.  (Joyce's sight was failing by the time he finished it -- does that get him excused from ableism or whatever it is?)  As for the tired old argument about Dead White Males hogging all the shelf space, I had hoped it died with Harold Bloom.  But I'm no scholar so I guess...snob it is.  If Mayor Pete runs again he should mention Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Then he can be accused of cultural appropriation.

Or it's just possible voters don't give a damn if you read Ian Fleming (John F. Kennedy) or The Pet Goat (George W. Bush).  Just don't tell people your favorite poem is The Waste Land.

When Putin complained of the West wanting to "cancel" Russian culture, he seemed to be angry at people inside Russia adopting Western attitudes toward things like free speech, democracy, and not bombing maternity hospitals out of spite.  He doesn't seem interested in the great things Russia has shared with the world.  But much as I hate the dog-whistle word, "cancel" is just what's going on.  Gary Saul Morson writes in First Things of some of the craven acts I've already noted, like changing orchestral programs and boycotting Russian stores.  It gets worse:  the mayor of Amsterdam had to ask people to stop vandalizing Orthodox churches and verbally abusing Russians.  "We have a problem with Putin and the Russian state, not with the Russian population or the Russian inhabitants of Amsterdam..."  Morson goes on to say that presenters are cancelling Russian performers "unless they are prepared to speak out publicly" against the war.  Not a great idea if they have family in Russia, as Putin gets more unhinged by the day -- the head of the central bank "resigned" and an important general was arrested yesterday.   

But then comes this statement:  "Even at the height of the Cold War no one thought of banning Russian literature, art or music."  Really?  No one got an FBI file opened for evincing an interest in Dostoevsky or Shostakovich or even chess?  If you defected and you weren't Lee Harvey Oswald, good luck getting back into this country, much less getting the State Department to advance plane fare for you and your Russian wife.  Relax, I'm not going down that rabbit hole.  I'm just saying the paranoia was wicked bad, especially in the early 1950s.  They just didn't call it "canceling."

Get ready for the great bio-weapon convergence.  BA.2, son of Omicron, is spiking all over Europe and elsewhere, and while it's less severe in the US than previous versions, reports from Hong Kong are more dire.  At the same time, propaganda about non-existent Ukrainian bio-weapons from US-built labs gets tossed between the Kremlin and Fox News like an ever-expanding volleyball.  If lockdowns and mask mandates return, I confidently predict the Usual Gang will blame it on Zelensky and Fauci with Biden and Soros as enablers.  When is Trump's next Two Hours' Hate?

Meanwhile bird flu is turning up in Iowa.  It has already hit the UK, where chickens are kept indoors and free range eggs are no longer available.  The horror.

Russian TV has a new star, Madison Cawthorn.  They love his "Zelensky is a thug" monologue and play it constantly.  But not his vacation selfies at Berchtesgaden, which kind of undercut their claim to be fighting Nazism in Ukraine.  Even Kevin McCarthy eventually criticized the Mad bummer.

As states like Florida and Texas grow ever more vicious in their treatment of women and transgender youth, California proposes to offer sanctuary to the wretched refuse of their teeming shores.  It even wants to crack down on assault weapons.  Too bad housing there is so expensive.

That's the high point of American civilization in 2022.  The nadir would be Wisconsin, where the Republiclowns are still intent on overturning the results of the 2020 election.  If it works, they may take a crack at repealing the Stamp Act.

Day 24.  Who to blame now?

   

The discard pile

 Gotta get some trivial but annoying stuff out of the way.

...and why is everything he does reported to me?  So he lost his Instagram account for being a dick to Trevor Noah.  So what?    

That Facebook is losing customers is good news for everyone except Russian propagandists, QAnon conspiracy theorists and its employees.  Meta will no longer do their laundry.  It will continue to offer free meals, free take-out food and free shuttle buses to workers who often make six-figure salaries, but they'll have to hit the laundromat their own selves.  Aww.

After his latest court appearance Pigpen Bannon ordered the Pig Army to "take down the illegitimate Biden regime."  He didn't say how, but I imagine spitballs are involved.

"Russia has the might to put all of our brash enemies in their place," boasted Dmitri Medvedev, who is played by Dave Thomas.

Baby Tuckoo is not a full-time Putin propagandist.  He also finds time to attack environmentalists.  Not personally, he doesn't have the guts to stand up to a teenage girl, but his guest Luke Rosiak stopped by to psychoanalyze Greta Thunberg.  She doesn't know what she's saying, she just repeats what she hears because she has Asperger's syndrome.  Which doesn't work like that.  But if she's "mentally ill" then so is concern for global climate change, end of story.  

I would never have taken USA Today for a Marxist publication, or even a liberal one (there is a difference) but that was before they named Admiral Rachel Levine as one of their Women of the Year.  It was up to Candace Owens to call them out on their plot to "disrupt the family unit."  She also wants to know where Hillary Clinton stands on this whole transgender crisis because, well, nobody had disparaged Hillary Clinton on Fox for nearly two hours and the countdown clock was running.

"Western civilization?  That would be a good idea," said Gandhi, or something like it, during the years when the British were locking him up and Churchill was calling him "a malignant subversive fanatic."  Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian would agree.

This is personal.  I settled back to watch one of my favorite movies Sweet Smell of Success today and someone had colorized it.  James Wong Howe's gorgeous cinematography of that "dirty town" New York -- ruined.  I thought we weren't doing this anymore, Screenpix.

Russia has nationalized, or if you prefer stolen, some 515 planes leased to Russian companies.  Most of them belong to Irish companies, so -- Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Not only has Netflix raised its monthly fee but it will soon charge subscribers for sharing passwords.  I know Don't Look Up was expensive but how much profit do they need?  Sure, tell me what it has to do with gas prices.

Like Uber and Lyft tacking on a fuel surcharge.  (By the way, oil has dropped below $100 a barrel yet somehow it's not reflected in the retail price.)  How much goes to the drivers?

Woman-hating gynecologist and Republican idiot Roger Marshall treated members of the truck nuisance convoy to a tour of the Capitol, which is closed to most people.  I'm sure he wasn't helping them scope out the next insurrection/invasion.  

Eli Lilly promises to keep shipping cancer and diabetes drugs to Russia, but the Motherland will run out of Botox and other "non-essentials" very soon.  Will Putin open the national boner pill reserve?  How can their athletes remain competitive without steroids?  And what exactly causes this?

Christina Pushaw, spokescreature for Ron DeSantis, defending Florida's "Anti-Grooming" bill which posits that any discussion of sex with children will make them want to transition and be unattractive.  And with that I think I'm done.

  

 

The best and the worst

 Project Dynamo was founded by current and former military members to help Americans get out of Afghanistan after it fell to the Taliban.  Now one of its founders, Bryan Stern, is driving around Ukraine in a bus evacuating Americans and their Ukrainian spouses and families.  He has been shelled by the Russians and has seen their work.  "The Russian army is frustrated and they're shooting up ambulances and civilian cars, so a green [humanitarian] corridor sounds like a target opportunity."  Stern says it's worse than Afghanistan -- no opportunity to charter planes, and "as bad as the Taliban is, it's different.  There were no missiles coming."  A number of Ukrainian women are carrying surrogate fetuses for Americans, who are particularly frantic about their newborns.  Stern is trying to get the babies out as they are born.  Inevitably, there's an echo of World War II -- Project Dynamo is named for Operation Dynamo, better known as the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940.

For the sake of balance this war has churned up its own Child-Catcher.  Matt Shea, a former Washington state representative who was investigated for domestic terrorism, is in Poland with sixty Ukrainian children being very cagey about what he plans to do with/to them.  Shea told a Polish TV interviewer he works for a Texas outfit called Loving Families and Homes for Orphans, or Loving Homes and Families for Orphans, whatever.  It's not a registered Texas adoption agency but it registered a month ago as a Florida non-profit.  Why do I think those Loving Families are evangelical Christians?  And that this bunch knows what happened to the missing kids who were separated at the border on orders from Trump?  Maybe because Shea runs a church called On Fire Ministries and wants to create a fundamentalist state out of eastern Washington.  Child soldiers in Africa are bad enough without importing the practice to the Pacific northwest.

After President Zelensky finished speaking to a joint session of Congress, Empty Greene, possibly confusing it with a State of the Union address, decided rebuttal was in order.  If you like your Russian propaganda in a Georgia accent, you're in luck:  She covered everything from how the Obama administration set up the current Ukraine government to lies about Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney having "business interests" in Ukraine to "both sides" violating cease-fires.  She stopped just short of singing the Russian national anthem.  Someone should tell her Russia can no longer afford to finance Republican political campaigns.

I know New York is experiencing a crime epidemic but this is really low.  Someone stole 400 bulletproof vests meant for Ukraine from the headquarters of the Ukrainian Congress Committee on Second Avenue.  They were donated by the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department.  

Bryan Stern is not alone.  Ismail Hacioglu of the Sultan Suleiman Mosque in Mariupol has several busloads of Turkish citizens and non-Turks he is unable to move past Russian troops.  The Turkish foreign minister paid a visit to Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, who says it's the Ukrainians' fault.  So it goes.

Most American companies have left Russia but Guardian Industries, which employs several hundred people in glass-making, is staying put.  It's a subsidiary of Koch Industries, bankrolling fascism since 1940.  Why stop now?

All the Republican members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce signed a letter to a number of environmental groups a week ago, demanding to know if they were funded by a Russian front called Sea Change "designed to undermine American energy production."  See?  Environmentalism is a Russian plot!  Shill, baby, shill.

I don't follow ballet closely but I imagine that Olga Smirnova, late of the Bolshoi, is the highest-profile Russian dance defector since Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1974.  "I never thought I would be ashamed of Russia," she wrote last week before leaving for Amsterdam.  Russia is hemorrhaging dancers to the benefit of western companies.  The Dutch National Ballet Academy has accepted a number of Ukrainian students and housed them with Dutch families.  

These and other emigrations are having a serious effect on the already fragile mentality of Vladimir Putin.  In a speech yesterday he called pro-western Russians "scum and traitors" who are betraying their country as it fights for its "sovereignty."  (I had to read that twice.)  The west is also trying to "cancel" Russian culture and replace it with "foie gras, oysters and so-called gender freedoms."  More fake populism from someone who built himself a dacha-state on the Black Sea.  But what about sabotage?  Under Stalin someone was always guilty of sabotage when the stores were empty or the harvest failed, or the Red Army got clobbered by the Poles or Finns.  Could that be what he means by the "fifth column" with their villas in Miami?  I thought those were his people.

In other news, Russia has blocked access to the BBC News website.  I remember when Germans could be arrested for listening to the BBC.  Damn!  Get out of my head, World War II!

  

Unforgivable rhetoric

 Our specialty.

Volodymyr Zelensky came virtually to Washington today with a speech and a video called "Close the Sky," perhaps calculating that the US Congress would respond to images and evocative music instead of words.  Very perceptive.  They applauded and wept.

Zelensky was very specific about what he needs short of a no-fly zone:  S-300 missiles and MiG29 fighters.  He's getting a $13.6 billion "package."  Maybe some armed drones called Switchblades.  The onslaught continues.

"Unforgivable rhetoric" was Putin's hurt-feelings response to Biden calling him a war criminal.  Lindsey Graham has swung back to calling for assassination, adding that John McCain would feel the same way.  He still misses McCain.  He also has nothing to lose now that a couple of New York Times reporters have a book which says Graham called White House counsel Pat Cipollone on January 6, 2021, to talk 25th Amendment if Trump refused to denounce the coup he had instigated.  "You're special, we love you" is probably not what Senator Integrity had in mind.  But he also wimped out on Twenty-five.   

Just off-stage, the slow collapse of civil society continues.  Idaho Republicans decided that the gynephobic anti-choice laws in Texas, Florida and Missouri weren't nearly cruel and stupid enough (Missouri has signed on to the myth that an ectopic pregnancy can and must be "re-implanted" because science doesn't count as much as punishing women).  The Idaho bill allows "biological relatives" of the "pre-born" to sue clinics and doctors, even including the rapist's second cousin Cletus.  (No more than ten, please, we're not barbarians.)  Who needs Ammon Bundy?  The state's already an asylum without walls.

A Republican named Peter Schiff, who failed to get elected to the Senate from Connecticut, nevertheless decided to grab some attention by complaining of Zelensky's attire.  "I understand times are hard, but doesn't the President of the Ukraine own a suit?  I don't have much respect for current members of the U.S. Congress either, but I still wouldn't address them wearing a t-shirt."  Chuckling at his own wit, he hit "send."  Oh, Mr. Schiff, does your work as an economist at Euro Pacific Capital ever take you near the sound of artillery?  By the way, no one calls it "the Ukraine" anymore.  But thanks for reminding us that Connecticut voters made the right choice.  Also you look like Trotsky.

Like Br'er Rabbit fighting the Tar-Baby, Lauren Boebert can't free herself from her State of the Union antics.  Now she's relating a letter she says she got from "Shana Chappell, the mother of Lieutenant Corporal Kareem Nikoui."  The lady exists; the rank doesn't.  Unless it's the one held by her imaginary friend Prince John.  Her term is nearly over.  She should sit down and shut up.

I was hoping to avoid this.  Atrocity of the day:  Russian troops shot down ten people standing in line for bread in Chernihiv.  Runner up:  A theater in Mariupol being used as a shelter was bombed.  Their mistake was writing in large letters and in Russian CHILDREN.  Gave them something to aim at.  And speaking of atrocities...

Pat Robertson is older than the plague and far more unpleasant.  Also, he can't wait for the End Times.  There is no other way to interpret his weird demand for Biden to call Putin's "bluff" and unleash nuclear weapons on Russia.  Listen, Marion (for that is the name your mama gave you), if you need to merge with your god go out in the woods and shoot yourself.  Some of us want to see the last season of The Crown.

Russian gangsters are having their yachts seized all over the world.  Wouldn't it be a shame if somebody accidentally took Joe Manchin's yacht by mistake?  Accidentally?  And it got broken?  It would.  And that Jeff Bezos monstrosity which will require the dismantling of a bridge to get it out of Rotterdam.  Some of these fuckers are bigger than the Titanic, which suggests another solution.

And lest we relax, covid is making a comeback.  A quarter-million new cases in Germany.  A whole Chinese province locked down.  Maybe Robertson has the right idea. 

  

Inheriting the wind

Putin has stepped up his game of "I know you are but what am I?" with the west, announcing sanctions on a long list of irritating Americans.  Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Jen Psaki, Hunter Biden and Mark Milley are among those who won't be attending the spring fashion show in Pskov this year.  (Not a single Republican -- how odd.)  The response from "Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton" was classic:  "I want to thank the Russian Academy for this Lifetime Achievement Award."  Why didn't she uncork a few of those in 2016?  

For those who just awoke from a coma, former RNC chair Marc Racicot explains why he thinks Trump lacks "the essential qualities of character to lead this nation" in a Washington Post op-ed.  It sounds like he just awoke, in time to hear Trump tell Jeanine Pirro that Putin is killing Ukrainians because "They had a country...where there was a lot of love and we do it because, you know, someone wants to expand their country or he wants to put it back the way it was..."  Imperial love is tough love.  Millions of people wish he loved them a little less.  

Wolodymyr Zelensky skyped the Canadian Parliament this morning with the usual results (three standing ovations, zero jets).  And it looks like Canada's contribution to the war, the renowned sniper known as Wali, was killed in Mariupol.

Today's hero is Marina Ovsyannikova, who decided it was time to make amends for her years as a purveyor of government propaganda on Russia One.  She came onto the set behind a news reader with a sign that said "NO WAR -- Don't believe the propaganda -- they are lying to you here" in English and Russian.  Of course she was arrested.  Meanwhile Candace Owens is appalled at the way Russians are being mistreated by the liberal media.  She wants us to know that "Russian lives matter."  Why won't the Ukrainians stop the violence?  Sorry, Candace, the Kremlin has already selected Tucker Carlson as its spokesman.  Leave your audition tape at reception.

Candace will be even more appalled when Ukraine unleashes its occult powers.  Lara Logan has identified the "black sun of the occult" on their body armor and she is Not Having It.  "This is why Crimea voted for independence" in an election only she could see.  To escape the Nazis, of course.  Ed Henry, fired by Fox for sexual misconduct and now keeping busy at something called Real America's Voice, thanked her for the "truth bombs" before they both went out for Kool-Aid.  Now I can't wait for Zelensky to turn Putin into a newt.

Remember that guy in Les Miz who's completely obsessed with that other guy?  Meet Rand Paul, the self-certified eye doctor on a mission.  Babbling about "dictators" and "science," he now wants to eliminate the entire position of director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and replace it with some kind of politically-appointed triumvirate who will be easier to bully than Anthony Fauci, who he hates with all his tiny, shriveled heart.  So the next pandemic will kill four million Americans.  

Today in ironically named shipping news the Norwegian Escape was freed after running aground off the Dominican Republic.  The container ship Ever Forward remains grounded in Chesapeake Bay.  (Its sister ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for a week last year.)

The completely ridiculous Josh Hawley neglected to get permission for the January 6 fist-pump photo he uses on campaign merchandise.  E&E News, a subsidiary of Politico, wants him to stop.  "This new mug is really whipping the left into a frenzy!" his website assures the punters.  It's true, I've seen the left rending their garments and howling at the moon.  But, you know, copyright infringement.  Did they cover that at Yale Law, Mr. Elitist Professor?

Andrei Muraviev, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, Giuliani, Trump, and now Ron DeSantis?  That ball of snakes is getting bigger.

According to a Wall Street Journal poll, 52 percent of Americans think Biden will not run for re-election.  Hell, I wouldn't blame him if he quit in the morning.