A swirling cauldron

 Some days there's so much wackaloon I don't know where to start.  This is such a day.  Let's dive in.

"We were born for this moment.  I've been preparing for this moment for my entire life without knowing it.  I just thought I was a political warrior.  But this is no longer a war in the political realm, and I do know how it comes out because I know how the Bible comes out."

Guess.  Go on.  You'll never get it.  Hint:  he carries the face of evil on his back.

Yes!  It's Roger Stone and he has identified a satanic portal over the White House.  He calls on "people of good faith and Christians" -- nice distinction there -- to embark on a national "prayer assault" to close the portal.  It accounts for the "inherent evil" inside the building, where people are trying to help a small country under attack, keep the planet from incinerating, aid debt-crippled college graduates, put qualified people on the Supreme Court and, oh, I don't know, all kinds of wickedness.  Always a few berries short of a fruit salad, Stone has now gone full Margie Greene, proclaiming everything satanic.  Joe Biden is a Catholic.  Coincidence?  

Nothing is going to match that.  But we go on.  Check your harness and grab your ripcord.

This is Tory MP Neil Parish, who represents the lucky people of Tiverton and Honiton.  Parish turned himself in to Parliamentary authorities after another Honorable Member spotted him watching porn on his phone in the House of Commons.  Shocking, right?  Actually he looks like he's watching it right now.  Parish is known, it says here, as "a champion for animals and farming," which seems to hint at the type of thing he was watching.  ("I had to determine if the sheep was being abused, Mr. Speaker.")  Labour's Shadow Leader is Thangam Debbonaire; he (?) doesn't figure in this story, I just wanted to enjoy the name.  Also, according to the Mail on Sunday, the Tories have complained that Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner tries to distract Boris during QT by crossing and uncrossing her legs like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.  What the hell is up with the Mother of Parliaments?

One thing hasn't changed:  The British take bankruptcy seriously.  Former tennis star Boris Becker was sentenced to two years and six months in real prison, not some community-service-ethics-class bullshit, for concealing millions of pounds in assets when he filed bankruptcy in 2017.  He had previously received a suspended sentence for violating insolvency law in Germany and probably expected another slap on the backhand.  

Amazon is losing money.  Apparently people would rather go shopping in the sunshine, and they invested big in an electric car company, Rivian, which stalled.  (See what I did there?)  Expect another increase in the Prime membership.  They already want us to pay an extra "fuel surcharge" for third-party sellers.  How long before Jeff Bezos rides in on a white horse to sort things out?

According to Politico there's trouble in the Free Dumb Caucus:  Despite a shared love for guns & Jesus, Empty Greene and Ptomaine Boebert despise each other.  At least once they had to be separated, which is a real shame because Greene spends most of her time in the gym and Boebert always carries a gun.  I don't know, smells like one of those Jack Benny-Fred Allen "feuds" for the sake of cheap publicity.  Prove me wrong.  Spill some blood.

"Patriots Arise" is the stirring name of a QAnon wingding held this week in Gettysburg, the little Pennsylvania town which has seen enough grief, you'd think.  They were addressed by Official Trump Spellcheck and Typist Liz Harrington, who called for the arrest of "those who broke election laws."  I'd go to ground if I were you, Mark Meadows.  Oh, no, wait, she means "those who voted for Biden."

Nice story!  Venezuelan asylum seeker Ordalis Heras had no money to get herself and her two children from Texas to New York, but then a miracle happened:  a bitter, twisted man named Abbott chartered a bus and sent them and some other people to Washington to troll the Democrats!  Mrs. Heras is so grateful.  The Biden administration made sure they were fed and cared for on the thirty-hour trip and Catholic Charities -- those satanic Catholics again! -- took it from there.  Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos! 

 

 

Kristina Karamo.  Remember the name.  She most likely will not be Michigan's next secretary of state but she has a future as a Republican politician/Fox News regular/Russian propagandist.  That's because she is 1. Black, 2. A QCumber and 3. Able to identify "super crafty" Satan as the power behind Beyonce, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Cardi B, and some Korean show where people talk to their ancestors and thereby insult Christianity, the One True Faith.  Candace Owens better watch her back.

If Trump really, really wants to prove he's not afraid of Putin, he can pull out his legendary comedy bit from 2016, mocking Serge Kovaleski, the disabled New York Times reporter.  Only now it's Putin who can't control his tremors as he greets Alexander Lukashenko.  But it's just as funny, right?  Maybe tonight in Nebraska, when he toasts fellow pussy-grabber and gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster. 

 

 Don't be frightened -- it's just Ohio state rep Jean Schmidt, explaining why the "emotional scars" of rape don't give you a right to abort the result.  No, it's "an opportunity" for the woman "to make a determination to help that life be a productive human being."  All right, who threw water on her?

We end where we began, in the White House BS (Before Satan).  In a new book This Will Not Pass, my favorite governor Phil Murphy describes the roomful of made-in-China MAGA crap Trump kept next to the Oval Office.  He expected "the reciprocity" from governors who wanted covid help, but in return they could grab a shopping bag and fill it with the shoddy souvenirs that cost plenty at the Trumpstore.  I want the Melania "elegance & poise" figurine for just $99.99 (sorry, she's clothed).  He probably had to be argued out of charging the governors admission.

 

 

Dangerous fruit

 A group of people who say they were assaulted by Trump goons at a 2015 rally got him deposed in their lawsuit and have now released the video.  Needless to say, it's hilarious.

Super-virile tough guy Donny says he ordered the mob to "beat the crap" out of protesters because of a warning that they would "do fruit" -- specifically, "pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that" which is probably lethal.  "There was an alert out that day," presumably from their agents at Publix.  Because "tomatoes are bad" and "some fruit is a lot worse."  No pumpkins?  They have seeds and a stem you can use as a handle.  I'd go with the pumpkin.

(Incidentally, the only violence at Trump rallies was committed by his supporters, encouraged by him in what now seems like a rehearsal for January 6.  Once a man held up a sign and the SecServ hustled him offstage to change his underwear.)

By coincidence Emanuel Macron was also threatened with tomatoes during a post-election stroll through a working-class district of Paris.  Someone threw a whole bag and missed.  "He sidestepped the projectile and continued to greet people and shake hands."  It doesn't say the would-be assassin was even arrested.  

I don't know how these people got TFG to sit for a deposition.  He ignored a subpoena by AG Letitia James in her civil investigation of his business practices, and Judge Arthur Engoron imposed a contempt order and a fine of $10,000 a day.  His faithful disciple Alex Jones, who owes millions to the families he defamed by lying about their murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, chose to dodge responsibility by filing bankruptcy.  Will Trump do the same?  He's had plenty of experience.  But wouldn't that undermine his claim to be absurdly rich?  No, because the Trumpanzees would understand how smart he is to avoid paying fines, taxes, wages and other obligations.  And they would give him more money, which he doesn't need because he's so rich.  The zenith of MAGAt reasoning, and now I have a headache.

Trump will talk to any mom's-basement podcaster who expresses fulsome admiration but he still craves a wider audience.  That's why he sat down with human gumboil Piers Morgan last week.  Before Morgan insulted him by refuting his Big Lie, he placed himself yet again at the center of, well, everything:*  "I said, 'Isn't it a shame all those people are dead, all because of a rigged election.'  Because if our election wasn't rigged, you would have had nobody dead."  He was talking about the invasion of Ukraine by his good friend Putin, great guy, very smart, would never have done it if Trump had told him to stand down.  So, Brad Raffensperger, are you sorry now you didn't "find" those votes?  Because of you, Mariupol is in ruins.

See-saw, Marjorie Daw, recommended "Marshall law."  Empty is having quite the month.  You can go to court and "I can't recall" all day, but the internet never forgets.  Like this text to Mark Meadows she thought the enemy would never see:  "In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law.  I don't know on [sic] these things.  I just wanted you to tell him."  But she thinks the problem is that the American people "don't really know me...the media created a character [sic] of me, and that's the character that they want to present to the American people."  Based on what?  On statements like "Satan's controlling the [Catholic] Church," which she said to a fringe Catholic group called Church Militant.  The bishops take public money and use it to "essentially skirt around [sic] US immigration laws."  In court last week, where some people were trying to use the Fourteenth Amendment to get her out of politics, they played a video where she says, "We can't allow the transfer of power to happen peacefully."  The University of Georgia may be proud to have alumni like Greene and Herschel Walker, but I'm [sic] of writing about her.

Home-schooled Hitler's in hot water again.  When the TSA agent asks if he packed the bag himself, the correct answer is, "Yes, except for the gun," but he can't seem to remember.  Needless to say it's the fault of the  "political establishment" gunning for him, so to speak, releasing raunchy pictures and demanding he be investigated for insider trading (fellow MAGAt Thom Tillis, if you please).  Won't someone take pity on a poor, Nazi-loving paraplegic?  

Piers Morgan didn't have time to ask Trump about lightbulbs and toilets, so Larry Kudlow went on Fox Business Network -- yes, it still exists for a few hours a day -- to carry on the fight against low-intensity showerheads.  Somebody has to, and he's not busy.

Where have you gone, Robert Morgenthau?  A nation turns its lonely eyes to you...Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg appears to have lost interest in prosecuting Trump.  That leaves Merrick Garland and Fani Willis, and my money's on Willis.  

Today is the birthday of Terry Pratchett, who should have lived much more than 66 years.  So we remember him and others who died too young:  Jeremy Hardy (57), Sean Lock (58), Linda Smith (48), Peter Cook (57), Graham Chapman (48).  Laughter is a blessing.

*Does the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have a chapter on toxic solipsism?

 

OK Groomer

 

Now that "groomer" is an all-weather term of abuse for everyone who is not a bigot or a traitor, should we wear it with pride?  Or should we start pointing out that the Right has more real groomers than Churchill Downs?

And hypocrites?  We're having a sale on hypocrites.

A rare Republican who actually served time.  Not enough of those.

Politico thought we should see how Home-schooled Hitler spends his down time.

Keep watching, Cawthorn's about to denounce sexual perversion in Washington.  Any minute.  Wait, are those mouse ears?  

His spokesman, Luke Ball, "did not respond to multiple requests for comment."  What is there to say?  And "Ball" naturally leads to Tucker Carlson's solution to the masculinity crisis:

On a mountain, naturally.  "I'm ready for my close-up, Fraulein Riefenstahl."

Of course, children are really at risk in this country, and not from Ted Cruz's sweaty fantasies about Mickey Mouse and Pluto.  Read about what was happening at this Christian camp in Branson, Missouri.  Or just Google "youth pastor."  Thirteen gymnasts who were patients of Larry Nassar are suing the FBI for mishandling its investigation of the doctor, leading to more years of abuse.  The Catholic Church -- where do I even begin?  In his haste to ban same-sex marriage in Tennessee by legalizing common-law marriage (boy-girl only) one Republican never set an age limit until it was pointed out that the underage could be "married" and had to rush in an amendment (marriage to barely pubescent girls is a proud Southern tradition).  All these are real, not Qcumbers-on-fentanyl hallucinations.  And let's not forget this Friend of Mitch:

 Every time a fake accusation is hurled at a state senator in Michigan or a liberal selected at random, a real child-molester goes unpunished.  Live with that, conscienceless degenerates.  Laugh it up.

Mirth day

 

All right, this timeline is providing so much for us to laugh at, there must be something apocalyptic around the corner.  Something we need to be distracted from.  In one week...

America's punchline, Rudolph Giuliani, made aware that you don't need a law license to pick up a quick paycheck, shows up on one of those talent fests to sing "Bad To The Bone" after emerging from a toy younger viewers may not recognize as a Jack In the Box.  In costume, with better makeup than above.

President For Life Donzo J. Trump, in trademark clown makeup, invites pseudo-journalist Piers Morgan to his trash palace to brag about his stupendous hole-in-one.  But Morgan ambushes him by stating that even he has not seen any evidence of a stolen election, and they wind up calling each other names and then PFL waddles out fribbling his tie like Oliver Hardy.  Trump:  "You're a fool!  And you haven't studied...I don't think you're real."  Jury's out on that one.

Liz Cheney and Wolodymyr Zelensky received the John F. Kennedy Profile In Courage Award.  It's a long time since I read Sorensen's Kennedy's book, but I seem to recall one of the exemplars was the senator whose vote kept Andrew Johnson from being booted out of office in 1868.  Zelensky deserves better (not to mention planes and missiles), but he's probably too busy to notice.

Empty Greene went to court to paint herself as a victim of the January 6 insurrection and to insist (under oath) that she just can't remember if she urged Trump to impose martial law in order to prevent democracy.  She's being sued by Free Speech for People, an organization that doesn't think traitors should run for Congress.  She warmed up by whining that the press would be allowed to observe, probably for the first time in any American courtroom.  "I am the first Republican member of Congress that is going to be forced to take the witness stand under oath and defend myself."  FSP also sued traitors Andy Biggs, Maddy Cawthorn and the cockroach from Planet Gosar, but only woke leftist Georgia allowed the suit to proceed.

Another book, another description of Speaker-wannabe Kevin McCarthy discussing the Twenty-fifth Amendment with Trump and then lying about it.  Liz Cheney got him on tape.

If you're keeping score, the winner of Election Fraud Lotto is Mark Meadows, with the news that he was registered in Virginia and South Carolina as well as the rusty trailer in North Carolina.  Is anyone checking the other forty-seven states?  Wherever Meadows goes he likes to sample the local version of cherry pie and register to vote.  He's like an evil Steve Hartman.

Fresh from putting Piers in his place, Trump told a bunch of Heritage Foundation fans that he tried to extort money from NATO by threatening not to defend them from Putin.  So he still doesn't know how NATO works and he doesn't watch the channels that carry hourly news of NATO's growing popularity.  Soon he'll be calling Finland and Sweden "shithole countries" for trying to join.

If you're an idiot and you find yourself on a plane -- a very enclosed space -- with Mike Tyson, how do you get his attention?  You throw a bottle at him.  And then he punches you hard enough to make your head bleed.  Because he's Mike Tyson.

Giuliani's masked singing seems like opening night at the Met compared to Norm Pattis, an attorney for the forever-classy Alex Jones.  Jones is trying to hide behind bankruptcy laws to avoid paying the parents who sued him for lying about Sandy Hook, and the representative fits the client perfectly.  Pattis, who fancies himself a comedian, dropped his pants to perform a routine at a Connecticut pizzeria that climaxed with him saying "n-----" because it's funny, damn it.  

Today in Russian disinformation, Tucker Carlson more or less accused Wolodymyr Zelensky of stealing the money Ukraine is getting from the US.  Because those people will do anything for money.  Has Putin done a deal with Baby Tuckoo for a chain of ball-tanning salons, you think?

"Fox gave time and attention to a powerful figure who would have, if given his way, put the last nail in the coffin of democracy in this country."  (Variety)  Yes, Variety ("Wall Street Lays an Egg," 1929) now has bigger, tanner balls than The New York Times.  

What's the matter with Netflix?

 The world's agog at the news that Netflix is losing subscribers and its stock price has plummeted.  Suggested causes including competition, the end of lockdowns, price increases, the loss of its Russian market and overspending on movies like Don't Look Up.  Allow me to help.

Jim Gaffigan's latest show, taped in Spain, was disappointing.

The Kominsky Method lacks zip without Alan Arkin.

Too many old movies.  Everyone who wanted to see Love, Actually has actually done so.

The Crown, Season Five.  Get on with it, or you'll need to add a show about the queen's funeral.  (Please tell me that's not what you're waiting for.)

Munich:  The Edge of War.  Maybe not the best time for a fresh appreciation of Neville Chamberlain.

The John Wayne Gacy Tapes.  See above.

Rita Moreno:  Just a Girl Who Decided To Go For It.  Pretty sure I saw this on PBS.

Servant of the People.  Why are you not promoting the hell out of this?  I really had to search for it.

Wheel of Fortune:  You're joking.

I'm always here if you need any more help.

Get up, stand up

 

Is it naive to think that answering lies with truth can make a difference?  Are we too far gone as -- I use the term cautiously -- a nation?

Mallory McMorrow, a state senator in Michigan, was mad as hell when a Republican named Lana Theis decided to raise money by calling her a "groomer," this spring's favorite term of abuse for anyone less homophobic than Ron DeSantis.  Instead of taking it like a good Democrat she went after Theis's "hollow, hateful scheme" on the floor of the Senate.  Then she shared her thoughts on Twitter for those of us who don't follow Lansing politics.  Now she's a star.

McMorrow may have been inspired by state representative Ian Mackey of Missouri (there seems to be a shortage of gumption at the national level of the party).  Mackey, who is gay, spoke at length in opposition to a bill to ban trans student athletes from competitive sports.  Mackey spoke of his fear as a kid of hate-filled "nice people" like the bill's author Chuck Basye:  "You may win this today but you're going to lose."  Basye insists it's just to "save women's sports."  Republicans are determined to save people who never asked them to.

Both McMorrow and Mackey are part of the minority but Ukraine is giving the world a lesson in standing up to bullies:  You may win today but you're going to lose.  The Russians have apparently decided to do to Mariupol what Hitler did to Warsaw, including marching the survivors off to camps.  And a world which is either short of memory or slow to learn thinks it can oppose evil by banning Russian and Belarusian players from Wimbledon.  Or walking out of the G20 -- in Washington! -- while the Russian is talking.  Did they slam the door?  The Poison Dwarf tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile and didn't even claim it was a coincidence.  They don't need an ICBM to hit Kyiv.

If it's April 2022 in Casablanca what time is it in New York?  to paraphrase my spiritual adviser Rick Blaine.   Time to pull up your socks and face down the lions.  They're mangier than they look.

It's WTAF Tuesday

 According to the Pew Research Center in 2020, sixty-five percent of Americans identified themselves as Christians.  (I don't think "Pew" refers to the uncomfortable seats in churches but you never know.)  So why do so many of them whine so much about being oppressed?  Because it's not a hundred percent?  

Jack Jensz, Jr., CEO of something called Kingdom Realm, pulled out a guitar and inflicted "Christian" music on the passengers of this unidentified airline, then posted the atrocity on Instagram.  The expression on the man in the plaid shirt says it all.  Nobody stopped him because I wasn't on that flight, or a team of surgeons would now be laboring...never mind.  As word of the assault spread virally, Rep. Ilhan Omar was bemused by the Christian entitlement on display:  "I think my family and I should have a prayer session next time I am on a plane.  How do you think it will end?"  OMAR HATES CHRISTIANS!  GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM! was pretty much the measured response.  Since people have been hauled off American planes for reading Italian or "looking Arab," the Congresswoman knows perfectly well how it will end.   She wears the hijab.

A guitar player triggered a different controversy over at the Fox house, where a lady commenter who goes by Kennedy became unhinged because the play-off music after her segment was Springsteen's "Glory Days."  I checked and it's devoid of political content, just an ironic comment about the disappointments of getting older, but "he's turned into a massive pinko," she whined (is that expression coming back?).  Her show is called "Outnumbered" because the right also have to assert their bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.  The idea that Springsteen might not want them to use his music just proves how "cancelled" they are, day after day.

Malcolm Nance, the former Naval intelligence officer who is a commentator on MSNBC, has joined the International Legion of Defense fighting for Ukraine.  He is sixty years old.  He calls it "an existential war" and asks that Joe Biden provide Ukraine with long-range artillery, which sounds moderate enough.  Meanwhile and in keeping with our theme of "Why is ev'rybody always pickin' on me?" Putin fanboy Tucker Carlson, 52, has produced a show called "The End of Men" about how masculinity is being destroyed by, well, pretty much everything woke and mean and feminist.  Baby Tuckoo, however, is getting no closer to the real shooting than maybe Bermuda.  See what you mean about the big drop in testosterone there, Tuckoo.

Now at least one thing makes sense:  Heidi Cruz's assertion that "Ted does not tan his testicles" didn't come out of thin air.  Evidently nude cow-milking and push-ups and what-not figure in the doc, which I now want to see.  There's a naked guy "charging" his testicles, which immediately called up Adolf Eichmann's nutty scheme (cited in Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem) for sterilizing Jews.  But if Trumpanzees want to fry their little swimmers, I have no objections.

I love it when Republicans go to war against big business, so I'm sending out for popcorn to follow DeSantis versus Disney.  The flabby-faced fascist wants the legislature to repeal a law from 1967 that makes Disney a self-governing entity within Florida, even operating its own power grid.  That's how desperate they were back then to get a theme park built in Orlando.  It's the state's biggest employer, but maybe not for long.  DeSantis wants a cold war with Georgia if That Woman becomes governor.  Disney is a lot bigger and richer than Georgia.

All Kevin Berling wanted was to work at his job at Gravity Diagnostics in Covington, Kentucky.  What he got was an office birthday party he specifically asked them not to throw.  Now, for having "Happy Birthday" sung at him against his will, a jury has awarded him $450,000 for lost wages and emotional distress.  It will be a long time before Gravity employees are even asked to sign a card for Sarah in HR, I'm guessing.  (Full disclosure:  I hate that song.)

I never heard of the Salish Sea (between British Columbia and Washington), but it's where a pod of orcas attacked a humpback whale named Valiant and got their dorsal fins handed to them.  Valiant had had enough and turned on the nine killer whales/dolphins, scattering them.  It seems Valiant had a traumatic childhood experience and never forgot.  I propose re-naming him "Zelensky."

For the first time in twelve years a relief restaurant affiliated with World Central Kitchen was damaged by Russian shelling in a civilian area of Kharkiv.  Four employees were injured.  But they're still cooking.

Prohibited topics, unsolicited strategies

I've been feeling a little subpar for, oh, the last fifteen years or so, and now, thanks to acupuncturist/chiropractor/researcher Dr. Bryan Ardis, I know why:  cobra venom.  The Catholic Church has been introducing synthetic cobra venom into our drinking water to replace our "God-created DNA" with the evil kind in order to make us hybrids of Satan.  So goodbye covid, hello King Cobra Venom Pandemic.  At least we know where we stand.  The doctor doesn't say why horse dewormer is the only effective antidote, but I feel certain he's doing more research.  I have stopped drinking water in order to safeguard my precious bodily fluids, and I already feel tons better.  If only Oprah was still doing her daily show we would have been introduced to Dr. Ardis long ago, and he'd probably be running for the Senate.

So many conspiracies.  Thwarted by the state legislature and the intrepid Ron DeSantis, the critical race theory plotters are smuggling CRT into the state's curriculum via math books.  Florida's "education" department rejected 54 math texts because they contained "prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT."  ("If LaShonda votes illegally in Miami and Murray votes illegally in The Villages, why does Murray get probation while LaShonda is sentenced to six years in prison?  Show your work.")  Any combination of numbers that adds up to 1619 is also prohibited by state law.  

In CRT-shy states it's probably illegal to say so, but Friday was the seventy-fifth anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, an event for which major league baseball congratulates itself every year.  Since Robinson has been dead since 1972, racists like Tom Cotton are comfortable praising his achievements without any context.  They also like to tell us he was a Republican, which is true up until 1964 when, to his horror, they nominated Barry Goldwater for president.  Robinson wrote, "A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP...seeking to sell Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind -- the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy."  Sixty years ago most Americans apparently agreed, or they were just afraid Goldwater would start a nuclear war.  Today, who knows?

Dictionary.com defines "charlatan" as "a person who pretends or claims to have more knowledge or skill than he or she possesses; quack."  As a description of Trump it's fairly mild, but it's what Judge Reggie Walton pulled out as he prepared to sentence insurrectionist Dustin Thompson.  "I have a concern that we have, unfortunately, American citizens who were so gullible that they were willing to accept what was being said without any proof that the allegations about the election had any merit whatsoever...we have charlatans like our former president, who doesn't in my view care about democracy but only about power."  Appointing Judge Walton was one of the few good things George W. Bush did.  Now how do we get Trump tried in his court?

Z for zero

Forget the tanks and the armored personnel carriers.  The Russian war against Ukraine, which was supposed to last a week, has foundered because of two factors:  the heroism of the Ukrainians, military and otherwise; and the collapse of Russian trucks.  The truck has been a fundamental part of war at least since Verdun in 1916, but Russia has yet to figure this out.  You can't move troops or ammunition without transport and they forgot to bring horses this time.  If I may be allowed a dumb pun, it's not Mariupol that's got them bogged down, it's the motor pool.  Barely trained conscripts are being asked to service trucks that have not been shelled but have simply broken down -- often civilian trucks which were not designed to carry missiles and shells -- and officers have probably banked money that was supposed to buy tires or replacement parts.  

Here's another miscalculation:  draftees.  They don't want to be there and they certainly don't want to die there.  They were rushed to the front when it became clear that this would be a long war (another echo of 1914-18).  They want to survive their one year and go home, which sounds like Americans in Vietnam.  

These guys are loading by hand the shells and missiles that real armies load with forklifts.  This takes longer, wastes fuel, and gives the Ukrainians more time to target them.  What's the Russian for "clusterfuck"?

Caught in a nightmare like this, I can see why the conscripts take out their frustration by blasting away at high-rise apartment buildings, hospitals and kindergartens.  Like the murders at My Lai, the war crimes are inexcusable but understandable.  Such is the nature of war.  You're the good guys coming to liberate them, they're told.  

It's impossible to ascertain much, with all the real journalists banished or jailed, but rumors swirl that this guy --

-- no, not Alexei Sayle, Admiral Igor Osipov, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, is in the brig.  Might have something to do with the sinking of the Moskva.  It's like late July and you're twenty-five games out of first, you fire the manager because you can't fire the whole team.  Also defense minister Sergei Shoigu, the general manager if you will, either had an ordinary meeting today or has suffered a massive heart attack, or possibly both.  Shoigu was last spotted on TV around March 24.  Sergei Naryshkin, head of foreign intelligence (the chief scout, let's say) got an earful from the owner Putin last month and hasn't been seen since.  It's like the good old Stalin days.

A smart owner would declare himself world series champion and go home.

Coming at us from all sides

A nine-year-old girl was waiting at the mall in Victorville, California, to see the Easter Bunny when shots rang out and she was hit in the arm.   Shoe shop co-owner Marqel Cockrell had spotted a shoplifter and opened fire, forgetting that he was in California and not Texas.  The girl is recovering, the shooter was arrested in Nevada after fleeing the scene, and the shoes are long gone.  So what did that accomplish?

Frank James, the man arrested for shooting multiple people on a subway platform in Brooklyn, apparently ate lunch after the attack at Katz's Deli on Houston Street.  ("No-frills deli with theatrically cranky service serving mile-high sandwiches since 1888" it says on their web page.)  I can't even remember what I had for lunch Tuesday.  This is wrong.

Freedom of choice is very important in South Carolina, unless you are a woman with a functioning uterus.  The state legislature accordingly offers the condemned a choice of deaths, and Richard Moore has plumped for a firing squad instead of electrocution.  Perhaps he saw The Green Mile.  But really, two options?  What about the guillotine, or being chased off a cliff?  Is there no one who still knows how to do an efficient hanging?   "Painless" lethal injections are always ghastly, but what's wrong with hemlock?  Sometimes I'm embarrassed by my country's lack of imagination.

I don't know how much history Russian kids are allowed to learn but I'm sure the Great Patriotic War gets more attention than the humiliating 1905 defeat by Japan.  That was largely a naval war which ended with Japan in control of Korea and Manchuria and Russia in a revolutionary warm-up for 1917.  I thought of it because the Russian flagship cruiser Moskva was sunk on Wednesday -- the ship featured in this year's must-have commemorative stamp "Russian warship go fuck yourself."  The hit was confirmed by Turkish and Romanian vessels nearby.  "The Kremlin has not given any details on possible casualties," reports the Guardian, because life is as cheap in Putin's Russia as it was in Ivan the Terrible's.  

Or as "our partner Trump" joked about the ambush of four Americans in Niger, terrorism is "a rough business."  Sycophantic laughter ensued.

On trial for the attempted overthrow of the government on January 6, 2021, Dustin Thompson of Ohio was convicted when the jury didn't buy his "following presidential orders" defense.  In addition to obstruction, he stole a coatrack and a bottle of bourbon.  I hope it was good bourbon.

It's Ramadan, time for Israeli police to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque again.  This happens every year -- Palestinians throw rocks in the general direction of the Western Wall and armed troops march in, this time injuring 150 people.  Yes, it's Holy Week.

Sean Hannity tried to get Trump to say that the war in Ukraine and the countless atrocities that ensued were in any way reprehensible, without success.  He's still as subservient to Vlad as his own pathetic sons are to him.  He's still mad at NATO, even as Finland and Sweden complete the paperwork for joining (fuck around and find out, Putin).  The farthest Trump will go is to insist Putin never would have dared invade if he were still president.  But wasn't it a smart, strong thing to do?  Read the country, Donzo -- most Americans want Biden to send the Marines.

I love Laurel and Hardy and so does Andre Moore-Gerald, apparently.  On his YouTube channel, which has an impressive 83 subscribers, Moore-Gerald ambushes people on the streets of Greenville, South Carolina, and pushes a plate of whipped cream in their faces.  Not being paid extras or in on the joke, these people have complained to the police, and now there's an arrest warrant out.  Not cool, Andre.  

What's this?  Multiple accusations of physical and psychological abuse at a church?  Specifically Hillsong NYC, described as "the Manhattan branch of the global megachurch" whose worshipers include Justin Bieber and Kevin Durant (is there nothing celebrities won't fall for?).  Dick pics, oral sex, assault, mental illness -- I'll wait for the Netflix documentary.

What's this?  Multiple accusations of unwanted groping and fondling by a Republican who wants to be governor of Nebraska?  Yeah, well, Andrew Cuomo!

The federal courthouse in Tallahassee was this close to being named after Judge Joseph W. Hatchett, the first Black Supreme Court justice in Florida, who died last year.  The bill was supported by Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and other impeccable Trumpanzees.  It was approved by the state's entire Congressional delegation.  And then -- it failed.  Allegedly because Justice Hatchett upheld a lower court's ruling against school prayer back in 1999.  Asked why he voted against a bill he co-sponsored, Vern Buchanan replied with exemplary honesty, "I don't know."  Because it certainly wasn't spite over the Republiklan's failure to keep Ketanji Brown Jackson off the Supreme Court.  Not at all.  Why do you woke leftist liberals have to make everything about race?

Denying medical care to people is about as low as it gets, or so I hope, but a number of states have enacted laws against offering gender-change treatment to minors.  This week help appeared from an unexpected source, when the US Air Force announced arrangements to "mitigate" the special needs of Air Force families in Republican-ruled states with medical, psychological and other counseling.  Thanks to Undersecretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.  Suck it, Missouri.  Swallow it, Texas. 

Valerie Biden Owens, the President's sister, has written a book called Growing Up Biden.  She was in charge of redecorating the Oval Office and decided she wanted "everything Trump had touched" out.  She even wanted to replace the Resolute Desk with FDR's, but Hyde Park said no.  Not surprisingly, Owens has nothing good to say about Metamucilini, calling him "a bully, pure and simple -- a narcissistic, incompetent and incomplete man."  Very temperate, I thought.  Jimmy Carter's sister Ruth was a faith-healer and could have exorcised the place.   I wonder if it still smells of Big Mac farts.    

  

Word of the day

vet (v) originally to have a horse checked by a veterinarian before allowing it to race; to appraise, verify, or check for accuracy, authenticity, suitability, etc.

"I was simply confused and people were taking stuff down...they said we had to take anything down with unicorns and rainbows," said Kay Brazelton, who works at a school in the Buckeye Valley (Ohio) system.  A surprise visit from Thomas Gradgrind?  ("In this life we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!")  No, a planned visit from Jason Tharp to read his book It's Okay To Be a Unicorn! to young children.  An agent of the Gender Police heard about it and spread the word that the book promotes gayness, although it does not mention sexuality but you can just tell.  So Tharp's appearance was cancelled and a special meeting of the school board was called and the interim superintendent explained that one parent "just wanted to make sure that we vetted the book."  Because while rainbows are real they have been co-opted by the gays and rendered icky, so maybe the same with unicorns, which are mythical?

"I'm here to create books that inspire kids to dream big, embrace themselves, understand the importance of self-kindness" -- is he talking about masturbation? --  "...being a human is not easy," said Tharp, described by WBNS 10 as "a straight married man," perhaps to keep the villagers from burning his house.  

How do you vet a book about unicorns?   I read a book that was full of angels, demons, "giants in the earth," a talking snake and several dead people who came back to life.  When Buckeye Valley finishes vetting Tharp's book they should really take a look at this one.  It's full of hair-raising brutality, misogyny, ludicrous misinformation and something called "begats."  Come to think of it, this thing was read to me in school long ago.  I can't say it taught me anything about kindness. 

Richard England is a regular patron of the Seymour (Indiana) Public Library.  In 2020 he dropped off some books and a poem he had written for a librarian who wasn't there.  

"The Red Mean" goes:  "Know no good.  Bring out your dead.  Let em eat cake.  Off with your head.  Before you become Donald Trump's clone, Know Satan's reward Is only a loan.  

"Liars are losers.  Haters are cruel.  Oh what a pity To die such a fool."

For this England got a call from the police informing him that he had been banned from the library and would be arrested for criminal trespass if he tried to enter it again.  The library staff pronounced themselves "confused and scared" by this threatening document, and Jackson County's lawyers called it "a true threat" and not protected by the First Amendment.  ("Off with your head" being the sentiment that derailed the career of Kathy Griffin.)  Nonsense, ruled Judge Tanya Walton Pratt when the ACLU brought the case into her court.  You violated the man's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.  Give him back his library card and stop being stupid.

The police.  Not even the library police that Woody Allen used to joke about:  "They took away my glasses for a month."  (Overdue books.  We've all done it.) 

Teen Vogue wants young adults to know that Brooklyn has their back.  If they're trapped in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas, Tennessee, or one of the other twenty states on PEN America's radar, they can download an app giving them access to any ebooks the Brooklyn Public Library has.  You can't burn an app.

  

The pendejo papers

 

Remember the Clinton impeachment?  It was on the news wall to wall for months.  For younger readers, President Bill Clinton engaged in White House shenanigans with a flirtatious intern named Monica Lewinsky and then lied about it.  The sky didn't exactly fall but I checked every morning to make sure it was still up there.  Very Serious People went on the TV to talk about how to explain to the children that boy presidents have wee-wees and sometimes use them to make Jesus cry.  "Slick Willie" jokes and blue dress references fell like hail on the faux-enraged and the rest of us alike.  The Clintons had to go on television and hold hands and talk about forgiveness, which resulted in still more abuse for Hillary because everything does.   The chief justice ordered a new toga for the trial.  An ethically dubious Papal Knight called Henry Hyde prosecuted.  And in the end, not much came of it.

Not much except to move the male member out of the shadows, so to speak, and give it a central place in political life.   The organ that dared not speak its name now looms as large as the Washington Monument, which no one had previously perceived as phallic.  Decades later Jeff Bezos got so stupid rich that he built a rocket which...well...

 

So when Ted Cruz demanded that Yale discipline students who disrupted an anti-LGBTQ hate rally, he was asking for it.  Cruz showed up in New Haven to record some podcast he runs and a student asked if he would fellate a man to end world hunger.  He quickly handed off his friend Knowles who said something about "consequentialist ethics," apparently a thing that "typical left-wing undergraduates" busy themselves with.  Ted should have chosen a campus with no ethics.  Liberty University is much closer to Washington.  We're still waiting for a definitive yes or no.  (The kid should have asked, "Would you bend over for Trump if it would end world hunger?  Or would you just encourage him to insult your wife and slander your father?"  Phrasing is everything.)

The Trump Bund are getting more brazen in their contempt for this country, if possible.  On the Lou Dobbs Drive-time Hour Empty Greene proclaimed that joining the military is "throwing your life away" because Joe Biden is commander-in-chief instead of "the most honest human being, perhaps, that god ever created, perhaps."  The one who stood next to a Gold Star father in Arlington and mused, "What was in it for them?"  This one.

Also the military make you take covid vaccine, along with about a dozen others.  Not to mention the "woke training" in the ideology of the "sick satanic left."  I hear Fort Dix has abandoned KP for CRT.

But what of the satanic right? I hear you ask.  And that known witch Kristi Noem?  Must be, because her attorney general and vehicular killer Jason Ravnsborg, freshly impeached by the Republican-controlled South Dakota legislature, says he's the victim of (what else?) a witch hunt.  Noem had called for his resignation, which certainly had nothing to do with his investigation of her daughter and a skeevy real estate license.  Instead of thanking the Lord Trump that he's not in jail for manslaughter, etc., Ravnsborg is playing the self-pity card.  Oh, look, they're both up for re-election on November 8.  Imagine that.

Greg Abbott also hates America but he's doing more than babble about it to Lou Dobbs.  He's got state officials inspecting trucks from Mexico after they've been inspected by US Customs because he's a flaming, skyrocketing asshole.  Loads of perishables are backed up for miles, along with auto parts and other goods.  Truckers who aren't being childish about vaccines but just trying to earn a living are stuck in hundred-degree heat for hours.  Why won't Biden fix supply lines and end inflation?  Is Abbott up for re-election?  Do you have to ask?

Two days ago in the Rose Garden, Joe Biden announced an executive order banning untraceable "ghost guns" and introducing his new ATF director.  Yesterday a man shot up a subway station in Brooklyn, injuring 29 people.  Today he was arrested, in part because police were able to trace the handgun he bought eleven years ago in Ohio.  The system works if we let it.

 

At last the 2003 show

 The US invaded Iraq to find them.  George W. Bush looked everywhere, even under his desk.  Finally, the Weapons of Mass Destruction have surfaced.  From the Guardian:

"Russia is receiving munitions and military hardware sourced from Iraq for its war effort in Ukraine with the help of Iranian weapons smuggling networks, according to members of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and regional intelligence services with knowledge of the process."

I knew they'd turn up!  We should have been nicer to the Iranians twenty years ago.  They had the keys to the bus station lockers where the anti-tank missiles and RPGs were hidden.  Russia made nice with Iran during the butchery in Syria and now it's paying off.  Just goes to show, you can get farther with a kind word and a few torture chambers than you can with a kind word.  Also, death to America.

Now that it's officially a world war, maybe we can join in?  The Irish are ready to fight -- a ten-car "caravan" of pro-Russian fifth columnists invaded Dublin today.  Another gang of fascists demonstrated in Hanover, Germany.  Russia isn't coy about its plans, including inviting "our partner Trump" to help celebrate the "liberation" of Mariupol, after which they will formally re-install him in power as the Germans did with Mussolini in 1943.  Malek Dudakov, a political scientist specializing in America, has already picked Tulsi Gabbard as vice-president.  "With America we should be working to amplify the divisions and -- in light of our limited abilities -- to deepen the polarization of American society."  You're being too modest, professor, there's an entire major "party" at your disposal. 

 

With so little to be sure of

 I think the moment when I heard the lambs screaming was (checks watch) fourteen minutes ago.  That's when I came across this post at Joy Reid's blog reporting that intergalactic cockroach envoy Paul Gosar was scheduled to be the star of the American Populist Union gala in Tempe on April 20.  Guests didn't need to be reminded of the significance of the date, of course, and once it was revealed as a Hitler birthday event Gosar promptly wimped out.  The APU can find any number of replacements without crossing the state line.  The Demon Dentist helped organize the January 6 insurrection, but this was a Putsch too far, I guess.  

I then made the mistake of looking for more news.  Like:  the Buffalo police will not be punished for their callous, unprovoked assault on Martin Gugino, fracturing his skull and putting him in the hospital for weeks.  Like:  millions of French people with full access to news about Ukraine nevertheless voted for neo-Vichy candidate Marine le Pen.  Like:  David Mamet, who once was a good playwright, has transformed into a Qcumber, telling Fox News that male teachers are probably mostly pedophiles one way or another.  Like:  the US Bureau of Prisons is advertising for mental health professionals to come work for them because prisons are an exciting place to experience every pathology in the DSM.  Like:  people in Taiwan are organizing and learning self-defense and survival skills with no support from their government (mustn't upset China).  Like this:

So I decided that's enough. 

The Guardian has a lovely appreciation of Singin' In the Rain by Guy Lodge in honor of its seventieth anniversary --seventy years!  I have decided to concentrate only on the things that make me proud to belong to the human species and ignore all the rest before somebody gets killed.  That's not a figure of speech.  I have a cane and I'm willing to use it.

Mr. Lodge says, "The film's first full-scale musical number comes nearly half an hour in, with Donald O'Connor's 'Make 'em laugh.'"  He must have been taken in by the low-end vaudeville setting of "Fit as a Fiddle" and the audience's negative response.  I think it's wonderful.

And in less than three minutes we're away.

Has it stood up better than An American in Paris or Gigi?  I think so.  American is too long and tries too hard, and while we're on the subject, why is Fred Astaire castigated for his blackface tribute to Bill Robinson in Swing Time while Gene Kelly gets a pass for portraying Toulouse-Lautrec's Chocolat here?  It isn't even germane to the plot, like disguising himself as a third Nicholas brother in The Pirate.  As for Gigi, we must now see it as the story of a girl being trained as a courtesan, and even though marriage occurs instead, this can never be all right.  A man in his seventies thanking heaven for little girls is equally queasy-making.  It's like blackface.  Times have changed.

So although its plot turns on an impossibility (post-recording was not available until the 1930s), Singin' In the Rain deserves its place on everybody's best-films list.  It helps that Cyd Charisse dances but is not called upon to speak.  Like Lina Lamont, talking was not her strongest skill.

Hollow laughter

 Sometimes the joke is buried too deep.  The Grantville, Georgia, Police Department actually offered prayers for Richard Hawk and his wife and grandson, who were killed during a robbery of their gun range.  Forty guns are missing.

There was a hate rally in Selma, North Carolina (they meant to hold it in Alabama but Giuliani made the arrangements) and Pillow Mike showed up to promise the mob that the arrests of all the media CEOs who "tried to cancel our voice forever" are imminent:  "crooked YouTube and Google and Zuckerbuck's [sic] Facebook."  So that was fun.  Then the cancelled but perpetually squawking Trump arrived to aver modestly, "I think I'm the most honest human being, perhaps, that god ever created, perhaps."  But he didn't say positively.  Then he endorsed Mehmet Oz for the Senate because he's on television.

There's a NASCAR driver named Jerrod Sessler running for the Senate in Washington.  That's not the joke.  He thought "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister represented "traditional, conservative American values."  That's not the joke either.  Sessler pronounced himself "bummed" to learn that Snider had approved the song for Ukraine but not for a bunch of anti-maskers who invaded a department store in Florida.  And he got an answer from Snider:  "One use is for a righteous battle against oppression; the other is infantile feet stomping against an inconvenience."  Now I'm laughing.

Sessler is hardly the only humor-proof Republiclown.  Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Empty Greene's pedophiliac ravings ("Where's Will Smith when you need him?") and "Klan-Mom," as he calls her, sicced the police on him.  I'll bet she dialed 911.  To which Kimmel responded, "She's a snowflake and a sociopath at the same time."  Margie, there's an old saying about answering newspaper criticism: "Don't pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel."  That goes double for someone whose audience is in the millions.

Ron DeSantis took time out from rescinding the rights of LGBTQ people, women of childbearing age and children who like to read and turned his eyes north, threatening "a cold war between Florida and Georgia" should Stacey Abrams be elected governor.  A journalist named Craig Pittman dismisses this as "trying desperately to get attention from Fox News for saying something outrageous to own the libs and diss Black people."  I'm hoping for border patrols and maybe a wall.  Searchlights.  Machine guns.  Florida starting its own coast guard to go along with the new anti-voting commandos.  

It seems that among the records Trump ate, flushed or both, are details of all the goodies he got from other countries because their leaders like him so much, and in no sense bribes.  The National Archives and Records Administration would also like to know what Mr. Valiant-For-Truth a/k/a Mike Pence strolled away with.  And to think the post-bellum period was called the Era of Good Stealings.  

The plans of Russian oligarchs to profit hugely from the Sputnik V vaccine have been derailed by the war against Ukraine.  Pity.

    

For the children

Putin's war appears to have claimed an unexpected victim in the relative tranquility of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin.  Natalia Aleksandrovna Hitchcock is accused of strangling her son Oliver, 8, and attempting to drown his eleven-year-old brother because she feared they would be kidnapped and tortured by the Russian government.  According to her husband, she showed no signs of mental instability until the invasion of Ukraine in February.  She was born in Russia.

One American child along with the thousands of Ukrainians killed, injured, orphaned and abducted in this war.  At Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region today, the Russians bombed the train station with a missile inscribed "For the children" and a series of cluster bombs, killing at least fifty people.  Yes, some were children.  From the Mariupol maternity hospital to the theater clearly marked "children" -- in Russian -- it's beyond question that Ukraine's children are deliberately targeted.  It is genocide, even when denied with numbing regularity, and even when Russians pretend to be avenging some imaginary crime against "Russian" children in Donetsk and the Donbas.

"Pedophile" (or "groomer") is the current term of abuse in the raging war of the right against the sane part of the population, an outgrowth of the QAnon obsession with trafficking and Hollywood liberals and their even more bonkers belief that Trump alone can fix it.  That may change now that Netflix viewers have been introduced to a real pedophile in Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story.  Before his death in 2011 the TV presenter was literally loved by millions and honored by the upper crust for his charity work.  It's true that he raised tens of millions for good causes while using his celebrity to gain access to the most vulnerable young people, hundreds of them still haunted by what Savile did to them.  Police worked hard to ignore the reports and rumors, though not as hard as the BBC.  British libel law kept them quiet -- who's going to believe reform school children when Margaret Thatcher is repeatedly demanding a knighthood for this creep?  At least one pope was bamboozled -- Jimmy was a good Catholic.

Sometimes they get caught younger.  The Q Qontinuum would have you believe that Democrats are pedophiles, so I don't expect them to comment on former RNC strategist and president of his college's Students For Life Ruben Verastigui, sentenced to twelve years in prison for possession of child pornography, the description of which is more than I wanted to know.  Raping and killing babies was but one of the fantasies this Ever-Trumper shared with Adam Hageman, an underling at Wilbur Ross's  Commerce Department.  Which is more disgusting, the random ravings of Empty Greene ("any Senator voting to confirm KBJ is pro-pedophile") or the reality of the sick right?

The Disney Corporation is the latest target of the sickness for its belated and very mild criticism of Florida's newest batch of anti-LGBTQ hate laws.  This automatically makes Uncle Walt a "groomer" and results in threats of boycott.  (The Southern Baptist Convention did that for eight years ending in 2005 with Disney as popular and prosperous as ever.  Pixar, Hulu, Disney+, ABC, ESPN, Lucasfilm, resorts and theme parks, I think they'll weather this brainfart.)  And just for laughs, Trump's coked-up eldest got involved today claiming that a picture of two cartoon mice is pornographic.  Another obsession of the right, the sex lives of the imaginary.  As Tom Lehrer observed long ago, "Filth...is in the mind of the beholder."  

Real children are in real jeopardy everywhere.  Stop grooming them for your Rightzi propaganda.  If you want to help children, vote for day care, free school lunches, Medicaid, prenatal screening and care, a higher minimum wage.  Vote against the six Congressional disgraces who couldn't even support a House resolution for the collection of evidence of Russian war crimes.  And the party they rode in on.

  

This just in

Forty-three days into its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and countless atrocities, Russia has been suspended for three years from the United Nations Human Rights Council.  Another month and they're off the Secretary General's Christmas card list.

A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that people with guns in their homes are more likely to be shot to death.  Also, men who go to Chick-fil-A with guns stuck in their waistbands will at some point shoot their balls off.

A rabid animal which bit nine people on Capitol Hill has been euthanized.  Sadly, this did not create a vacancy in Georgia's Fourteenth District.

A prospective juror in the sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz was excused after telling the judge, "I need to figure out something, I have my sugar daddy that I see every day."  Forget it, Jake, it's Florida.  (For those who have forgotten in the course of subsequent massacres, Cruz pleaded guilty to murdering seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.)

Cuban migrants are arriving at the southern border in the highest numbers since 1980.  They are receiving the preferential treatment denied to Haitians, Hondurans, Mexicans, etc. as always.  It remains to be seen if Greg Abbott will bus them to Washington with the rest of the undocumented.

Today is National Beer Day.  It marks the 1933 Cullen-Harrison Act which authorized the sale of 4% beer, but it only became a holiday in 2017.  It is also National Burrito Day and Coffee Cake Day, for those planning a festive lunch.

War-by-sanction has now reached Putin's daughters.  Although they seem to be the barely acknowledged offspring of his first marriage, Papa has helped the putas become extremely rich and now they will be dragged into his war crimes.  So sad.

"Secret service said I couldn't go.  I would have gone there in a minute," Trump told the Washington Post, blaming all the violence on Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Muriel Bowser.  Also, he doesn't remember getting "very many" phone calls, especially from frantic members of Congress under siege.  The mob is now "the largest crowd I've ever spoken to" (so much for Spicer's lies about the inauguration) although "the fake news don't want to show pictures."  (You're talking to the Washington Post, asshole, not the New York Post.)  "Other world leaders [than Viktor Orban] regularly call him because they like him so much, Trump claimed."  And as Willy Loman knew, there is nothing as important as being well-liked.  Interesting:  When Zelensky is mentioned the phrase "perfect phone call" still bubbles up to the top layer of industrial waste in his diseased brain.  Now he likes Zelensky.  He still compares the election he lost to somebody stealing diamonds from Tiffany.*  Oh and True the Vote will announce next week that they've found millions of illegal votes in Georgia.  Mark your calendar.

Rand Paul kept everybody waiting while he phoned his hairdresser or something, but the vote is finally over and Ketanji Brown Jackson is a Supreme Court justice.   She is not only superbly qualified, she deserves the job for enduring the racism, misogyny and lying stupidity of the Republiclowns without whining (Thomas) or crying (Kavanaugh).  Although Lindsey Graham's hissy-fits were entertaining.

Since WHAT IS A WOMAN has somehow emerged as a major battlefield in the culture war, some amusement can be found in the authoritative responses.  Josh Hawley tried "someone who has a uterus" and was stumped by a question about hysterectomy.  "I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?"  Margie Greene (R-Bronze Age), who called Justice Jackson "ignorant," came up with, "We came from Adam's rib.  God created us with his hands...We are the weaker sex but we are our partner's, our husband's wife."  Lindsey Graham came as close as he ever has with "The birds and the bees stuff -- it's been a while, but I think I remember the general gist of the differences."  I'll bet.  

 I’m not religious but I could accept the idea that Ariana DeBose is the work of a craftsman God. Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, is evidence that God stopped caring long ago and outsourced production to some shoddy factory that uses cut-rate parts. (Stephen Robinson)

    

Decide for yourself.

*The store, not his daughter.