Breaking news: No one shot at NRA convention

 On Memorial Day we remember the dead in America's wars, including the forever war between the armed and the unarmed.  If you choose to remain unarmed, or own a weapon but fail to carry it to the park, a birthday party, elementary school or the supermarket, that's your problem.  The Constitution does not guarantee the safety of the careless.  

From Taft, Oklahoma, to Benton Harbor, Michigan, from Merced County, California, to Port Richmond, Pennsylvania, America rang with the sound of folks celebrating freedom, unavailable to oppressed people in places like New Zealand and Japan and (soon) Canada.  Also, guns are easier to obtain than fireworks in most places.  Virtually the only gun-free venue was Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center.  We know this because the NRA does not allow either open or concealed carry at its Second Amendment jamborees, even when Trump is not present.  (Presumably the Secret Service had weapons in case someone smuggled in a cream pie or a quince.)  I don't know how free it was in there but it was the safest place in Texas.

Many conventioneers nevertheless felt free to express some incendiary opinions about the mass murder a few hundred miles away in Uvalde.  False flag, of course.  It's because the schools teach children that "our country is a bunch of crap" instead of subjecting them to corporal punishment.  It's gay teachers who aren't armed.  "It's straight out of a playbook," one said darkly, without specifying which football team he had in mind.  It's giving $40 billion to Ukraine instead of turning schools into fortresses.  It's demons.  Mostly, according to the members who would even talk to the "lying media," it's about them -- ostracizing them for their beliefs, making them feel bad because they love to shoot.  Pity them.  (The people who were quoted are all between 53 and 71, which offers a glimmer of hope.  Maybe the young are going to solve this.)  Hollis asserted that the shooter could have killed 21 people just as easily with a baseball bat, which begs the question:  Why didn't he?

The whole weekend was a tribute to the men and women who struggle to write satire against overwhelming odds.  John Cornyn and Greg Abbott were there in spirit and in video, proclaiming their love for armaments and NRA cash.  All embezzlement was forgiven as Wayne LaPierre took to the stage.  Trump entered to "Hold On, I'm Coming," eliciting the wrath of David Porter and the estate of Isaac Hayes.  He proceeded to read the names of the Uvalde victims with the incomprehension he brings to all written material, able to pronounce the words, unable to process them with what an anatomist might call his "brain," and finished with a self-satisfied grin and a dance step.  I'm the most compassionate person in the whole history of the world.  I'm not in favor of giving Ted Cruz anything but a choice of last meals, but at least he physically showed up.

Meanwhile Chuck Schumer swung into action, recessing the Senate for ten days.  The end.

How can it be worse?

I have suggested that comedians are the conscience of our time, but I'm willing to expand that definition to include professional basketball teams.

On Tuesday Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors, delivered a passionate plea for gun control to a roomful of reporters who wanted to talk about the game.  Last night the Miami Heat asked for a moment of silence before their game with the Boston Celtics and presented a video tribute to the Uvalde victims.  They asked the fans to call their senators and urge gun control laws and thousands cheered.  This frightened Marco Rubio into expressing his deep concern for Muslims:  "The @NBA doesn't like to talk about the billions they make from a China that enslaves Uyghur Muslims and harvests their organs.  But they have no problem politicizing a horrific tragedy in America."  What Chinese government policy has to do with an elementary school massacre in Texas was not immediately clear, but Marco Millions (more than three million in "contributions" since 2015) is not required to make sense.  By the way, today's word is "politicizing."  We'll encounter it again.

Irma Garcia was one of two teachers who died Tuesday trying to protect their fourth-grade students.  Today her husband Joe died from an apparent heart attack.  They had four children.  One of Irma Garcia's pupils, Miah Cerrillo, is alive because she smeared herself with a classmate's blood and played dead.  She has bullet fragments in her back but is home from the hospital.  Some of her friends were so badly mutilated that the medical examiner needed DNA to identify them.  America may not lead in electronics or medical technology but we are the arsenal of idiocracy.  Very effective weapon, the Colt AR-15.

With the weaponry at his disposal Salvador Ramos could have finished off a classroom in five minutes, but it now appears the police gave him ample time to line up his shots.  He apparently locked himself in for up to an hour while the regulars awaited the arrival of the Customs and Border Patrol SWAT team stationed a few miles away.  Juan Carranza lives next to Robb Elementary and heard women shouting "Go in there!" "The cops aren't doing shit but standing outside!" cried a distraught father.  Unarmed parents were organizing their own intervention when CBP arrived.  To be fair, two Uvalde officers were wounded by the killer.  Expect more calls from the usual suspects to arm teachers, or turn schools into fortresses, or make children out of Kevlar.   Or maybe Texas could spend as much money training police as it does on buying them hats.

The dreaded "politicization" began yesterday when Beto O'Rourke crashed the governor's ritual display of piety and obliviousness.  The Republican mayor of Uvalde, whose term may be ending, called him "a sick son of a bitch" and had him ejected because O'Rourke is running for governor and therefore nothing he says matters.  Confronted by a reporter from Murdoch's Sky News on his way out of the convocation, Ted Cruz went for bathos:  "There are nineteen sets of parents who are never going to kiss their child goodnight again."  Because, as his friend Greg Paresis observed, Uvalde has "a problem with mental health, illness."  Sky pressed Cruz for a better answer and was told, "Stop being a propagandist."  Is propagandizing worse than politicization? 

Let's check in with the Republiclown Network and find out.  After the President's remarks on Tuesday night Baby Tuckoo let fly:  "Frail, confused, bitterly partisan, desecrating the memory of recently murdered children with tired talking points...dividing the country in a moment of deep pain...unfit to lead this country."  Maybe jet-lagged?  After a flight from Japan I'd have trouble remembering my name.  Coming home to the same needless slaughter he mourned last week in Buffalo and probably wondering why he wanted this fucking job in the first place.   Knowing that the Sedition Party and Manchenema will make sure the next Ramos or Gendron can arm himself legally, may already have done so.  Nothing will change, you trust fund twat.  Sleep well.

I can politicize, too.  My blog, my rules.

This is what happens when you let murderous thugs like Kyle Rittenhouse walk.  Don't look down, Judge Schroeder, or you'll see blood on your nice shiny shoes.

Ryan Busse was a firearms executive before he became an opponent.  He explains how we got here better than I could.

Mike Lee, Utah's dumbest senator, for the win:  Mass shootings are caused by "fatherlessness. the breakdown of families, isolation from civil society."  Strange, nobody has blamed pornography.  Oh, well, tomorrow is another day. 

     

  

Quotes

 

"What happened in Uvalde is a horrific tragedy that cannot be tolerated in the state of Texas," said Greg Abbott, governor, with his actual mouth, hours after urging Texans to "pick up the pace" and buy guns at a faster rate than hated libtard California.  Salvador Ramos was bullied, liked video games, fought with his mother (who apparently had drug problems) and did badly in school, so clearly it's not Abbott's fault, or the NRA's fault, or the Republicans' fault, that he easily acquired two assault rifles and enough ammunition to kill nineteen children and two teachers, wounding a number of others.  He was eighteen, the sales were legal, and he was in America, where the tree of liberty must be Sequoia-size by now.

Nothing to see here.

"When I watch from afar and see events such as this today, it's not as a politician.  I see them just as a mother," said Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, where assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons have been banned since 2019.  

"Deeply saddened by the news of the murder of innocent children in Texas," wrote Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, taking time out from the invasion of his country.

"You're doing nothing.  You're all doing nothing," said Beto O'Rourke to a collection of Texas dignitaries before being thrown out of their press conference.  Apparently he was "out of order."  Then a reporter asked why Abbott went to a fundraiser within hours of the massacre.  He didn't get much of an answer.

"Thank you to the local first responders working on the scene," said Marsha Blackburn, a senator known for her compassion.

"What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff," said Herschel Walker, freshly anointed candidate for the Senate, when asked about new gun laws.  He'll fit right in with Blackburn.

Joe Biden called on Congress to pass "common sense gun laws," which Laura Ingraham found "despicable."

Empty Greene agreed:  "We don't need more [sic] gun control.  We need to return to gawd."

The interstellar cockroach from the planet Gosar went further, calling Ramos "a transsexual leftist illegal alien."  Two hours later the tweet vanished, but the cockroach is still here.

Trump said nothing.  He is still pitying himself because Mo Brooks, Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger won their primaries despite his hatred.  This kind of impotence is impervious to Viagra.

Steve Kerr said "I ask you, Mitch McConnell...are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers?  Because that's what it looks like."  A basketball coach makes more sense than half the Congress and most of the states.  

The Indiana legislature had no comment, as they were busy preventing transgender females from competing in girls sports.  Priorities.

Never again, ever again

 This is a profoundly evil country.

Founded on genocide and built by the enslaved, how could it be otherwise?

I was going to write about the Southern Baptist Convention and its comprehensive new sexual abuse scandal, concealed for decades by liars and hypocrites.

I was going to write about the apparently immortal war criminal Henry Kissinger, who has the solution for Ukraine:  Give Putin whatever he wants and apologize for the inconvenience.

I was going to write about this tweet from the governor of Texas but maybe I'll just let it stand.  Timing is everything, Greg.

I probably wasn't going to write about the big murder lobby shindig in Houston and its many distinguished speakers.  Now it might be interesting.  

I could hardly resist writing about Giuliani's freak-out at the Celebrate Israel parade.  He was exhausted from lying to the January 6 committee all day.  I was going to conclude, "Go home, Rudolph, you're drunk."  There will be other opportunities.

I was going to chortle at those fake signatures on Republican petitions in Michigan.  I'm only human.

But I am so.  Fucking.  Tired.

Schools scared to death. The truth is, one education under desks, Stooped low from bullets; That plunge when we ask Where our children Shall live & how & if

Amanda Gorman

National Youth Poet Laureate

Selected short subjects

 Many years ago George Carlin observed, "Have you noticed that people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't fuck in the first place?"  It can't be an accident that people who believe in Replacement Theory are people who urgently need to be replaced.  Airedales will do.

What's Russian for "bone spurs"?  The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has intercepted phone calls from Russian draftees imploring their mothers to get doctors' notes excusing them from the war.  This is how we lost Vietnam -- all the he-man patriot warriors (Trump, Giuliani, Pat Buchanan, Ted Nugent, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Sylvester Stallone, Rush Limbaugh) chose to wimp out.  Max Cleland and John Kerry couldn't do it all by themselves.

I don't like the word "delusional," but when Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott look in a mirror they both see a young Brad Pitt.

I will get Melania on the cover of any magazine she wants if she will show me her diploma from Ljubljana A&M or wherever she graduated (according to her visa application).  She promised to produce it in 2017 but I guess she was too busy #BeingBest.  Well, now she has time to look for it.

Who's next?  Now that Oklahoma has decided life begins at the moment of ejaculation, what will the next red state do?  It's obvious:  ban sex between a man and woman except for the few days a month the woman is fertile.  If she still fails to get pregnant, send the police.  Any takers?  Idaho?

With all the supply-line issues and pandemic disruptions, why is there never a gun shortage?

Ask your doctor if non-stop pill commercials are right for you.  For every million dollars the pharmaceutical industry spends on advertising, how about they're required to spend a dollar on research?  For instance, maybe come up with an antidepressant that doesn't make you want to kill yourself. 

There are two kinds of fascist dictator -- the ones like Franco who make their own people miserable and die of old age, and the ones like Hitler and Putin who start wars and end up in a bunker raving about "the Jews" and hoping they can control the tremors long enough to pull the trigger.  (Pro tip, Vlad:  Use both hands.)

If your religion has the concept of "honor killing" you need to find another one.

 

Making a list, checking it twice

We've all done it, usually in the fourth grade.  Enraged at a playground taunt or the failure to be invited to the right birthday party, you make a list of all the people you won't speak to anymore.  Nowadays I suppose you post it on Tik-Tok or some similar place.  When I was young...never mind.

We grow up, or most of us do.  But when Madison Cawthorn found out he wouldn't be in Congress after January because his own party was so tired of him and his coke-orgy stories and his arrests, his first instinct was to make a list -- of all the "America First Patriots" who "had my back" unlike the mean doody-heads Richard Burr and Thom Tillis and all those people who voted against him last week.  He went on to call for a "Dark MAGA" to avenge him on the "globalists" and how "the time for genteel politics as usual has come to an end."  It's pretty thrilling for a one-term loser, and you can probably guess which one-term loser tops the Hero List.  

Despite his continued willingness to bomb Ukraine back to the Stone Age, Vladimir Putin is another loser by any reckoning.  His one-week war has now lasted for more than three months, revealing the once-feared Russian military to be a bunch of corrupt clowns and incompetents who lost an entire battalion trying and failing to cross the Siverskyi Donets River.  His economy is in ruins and his health isn't much better.  So -- time for a list!

Russia (i.e. Putin) has listed 963 Americans who are not allowed in the country and it's impressive:  Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Pete Buttigieg,  CIA Director William Burns, former press secretary Jen Psaki, Mark Zuckerberg, Morgan Freeman, Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden.  Also John McCain, Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch, because who wants zombie Senators roaming around?  The roll of honor includes many journalists (no Fox News entertainers), an Iowa judge, several rabbis, an LGBTQ activist and "a history professor at Yale University," presumably Timothy Snyder.  Still welcome in Mother Russia:   Mitch McConnell (the list must have been compiled before his visit to Kyiv), Rand Paul, and Trump and his minions with the curious exception of Mike Pompeo.  

Morgan Freeman?  The bastards.  And nobody from Disney?

Maddy and Vladdy, do you feel better now?

  

Can anybody else smell that?

 Desert Island Discs has been running on the BBC since 1942, asking guests ("castaways," as they cutely call them) to name a book, a luxury item and eight recordings they would want on the proverbial desert island.  Mostly they ask for very long books and wine or a piano.  It's a bit like The Archers -- listeners expect escapist fare.  Rarely does the program make news, even when John Cleese requested "a statue of Margaret Thatcher and a baseball bat."  (The one newly installed in Grantham has already been attacked with eggs, but there is no indication of Cleese's involvement.)

So it was an event when the castaway was Fiona Hill, Russia expert, adviser to George W. Bush and Barack Obama and attempted adviser to Trump.  She described sitting next to Putin at a banquet (apparently because she was considered nondescript and would not distract from the great leader) and how he smelled -- "almost like he had stepped out of some special preparatory bath or something, into the moment."  She was close enough to note his expensive clothes and watch and also his vanity.  ("He really could have done with glasses" but instead had cards with huge words telling him "who was who and what he should say.")  He neither ate nor drank.  Perhaps he fears being poisoned, as Hill was during a visit to Chechnya.  Putin's Russia sounds like the court of the Borgias minus the art.

Hill had nothing to say about Trump's odor, but she was appalled by his ignorance about everything from history to women (he assumed she was a secretary and addressed her as "darlin'").  The day after she testified in the first impeachment Hill got the usual death threats, and a male friend wondered if they should seek extra security.  "No," she said calmly.  "They're cowards."   Trump has taken to saying things like "She'd be nothing without the accent," because although she was born to a working-class Northern family and never tried to acquire a posh accent, to him she sounds like Dame Maggie Smith playing a countess.  So...the coarse kid from Queens is still intimidated by Brits.  I'm glad.

The rest of the news is the usual madness.  

How many plagues can we endure?  Let's see, fire, drought, war, famine...monkeypox.  The WHO thinks it's spread by sexual contact and will spike during this summer's music festivals.  David Heymann says, "There are vaccines available" but many Americans will choose antifungals or exorcism because, well, you know.  

Something about being mayor of New York gives politicians delusions of adequacy.  According to the New York Post, so maybe untrue, Bill DeBlasio wants to run for Congress, after toying briefly with the idea of running for governor.  The current mayor, Eric Adams, reportedly wants to skip all that and run for president.  Dare to dream, guys.  Neither one of you is making people say "Fiorello who?"

The airlift hastily (and badly) named "Operation Fly Formula" will begin delivering infant formula from Europe this weekend.  But what of the dijon mustard disaster?  The mustard seed harvest was halved by extreme heat in Canada and the Burgundy region of France and the shelves are emptying.  It looks like a windfall for the black market.  You can't expect the French to use Gulden's.

Meanwhile British pubs, clubs and bars are having to cut back hours because of a severe bouncer shortage.  Imagine:  the big men (and some women) who size up your clothes and shoes and find you wanting have moved on to jobs with better hours and less projectile vomiting.  Cheer up, covid is back big time.  Maybe lockdown will resume.

A mustard shop in Dijon.  All your mustard needs under one roof.  

"There is more Met than Yankee in every one of us."  Roger Angell, baseball's "reluctant poet laureate," has died at 101.

Blame it on the coronavirus

"He was very paranoid about getting covid...and then he got covid just a few weeks ago," said Sandra Komoroff, described as a relative of Payton Gendron.  "And when you're home all day on the Internet you're missing out on human contact.  There's a lot of emotion and a lot of body language you're not getting when you see their face."  Millions of us were in that position without killing anybody, but sure, there's always room for another theory.  Laura Ingraham blames the media -- not the Murdoch outlet that pays her and Tucker, of course, but the ones who try to restrict hate speech of the kind Gendron lapped up.  Logical thought is not Dr. Laura's specialty subject.  So to recap:  A false-flag furry radicalized by violent video games and driven mad by "China flu."  He probably chose a supermarket to call attention to Biden's theft of formula from little white babies.  Did I miss anything?  Was he groomed by Pedodems?

(Of course, it wasn't the Biden administration that decided to "protect" domestic producers by slapping a tariff on Canadian formula.  You don't hear about this when the cable news pans over empty shelves.)

Eco-fascism!  The Rightzis have taken to blaming immigration and over-population for "degrading" the environment, also an obsession of the Christchurch and El Paso mass murderers.  How strange, then, that Rightzi policies about abortion and contraception can only lead to more Americans being born in states that already have little or no interest in pre-natal screening, daycare or early childhood development.  Ingraham is not the only practitioner of pretzel logic.

Tomorrow:  How the murders were planned on Hunter Biden's laptop.

                                                       * * * * * * * * *

This is the expression I have when I wake up.  I need some time off.

I need a break from Elon Musk, his incredible expanding ego, his adventures in fake money, his on-again off-again acquisition of Twitter, his future voting plans and the most punchable face of all time.

Had enough of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, also, too.  I liked him in Ed Wood, I never heard of her, and I wish they would settle their bloody dispute and go away.  This is happening in an actual courtroom, where serious things could be going on.  

Likewise Wayne Rooney, his wife Colleen and some other woman.  Don't even tell me what "Wagatha Christie" means, I won't listen.  Sod off, the lot of you.

Oh, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian Piers Morgan?  Has anyone ever jumped from the CN Tower?  Be the first.

Junior Trump has an opinion about NATO and Finland and Uncle Vlad?  Junior can shove it up his nose.  Why are you still here?  Baby Tuckoo says you're being replaced.

I could go on but I have a bad knee.  Papa Francesco and I are going out for tequila shots.  

It's all true!

 Se non e vero e ben trovato, says the adage ("If it's not real it damn well should be").  Well, I believe the Republicans are using a secret weapon against Democrats similar to "Havana Syndrome," the mysterious neurological disorder afflicting diplomats who have lived in Cuba.  In February Senator Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico had a stroke, recovering just in time to vote for the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.  This week Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland also had a stroke and remains hospitalized.  And days before the Pennsylvania primary Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, a candidate for the Senate, announced that he is recovering from a stroke.  Do you believe in coincidence?  How about leprechauns?

White racist inspired by Trump and Tucker Carlson drives to Buffalo to kill ten Black people with easily obtained military-style weapons.  It can't be that simple.  Was the poor kid let down by (Biden's) failing mental health system (Margie Greene)?  Was he radicalized by violent video games (Jon Scott of Fox News)?  Gendron was a federal agent.  Another false flag event to touch off a race war (Arizona psychopath Wendy Rogers).  No, Future Governor Kandiss Taylor for the win:  Gendron is a "furry," a perversion she has already addressed in Executive Order #6SJ7GT.  Governor JesusGunsBabies already has a public school dress code which will forbid students to dress as animals, which is apparently out of control.  I wonder if Governor Kandiss knows the Queen of Canada.

I hate to say it but Margie Greene isn't completely wrong about the failure of the mental health industry.  In Canada, too.

Anyway, something is attacking our brains.  Could it be PFAS?  (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances), the "forever chemicals" we've been using since the 1940s to achieve non-stick frying pans, microwave popcorn bags, stain-repellent carpet and other miracles.  Even if you live in Borneo and never leave, you have been exposed and probably absorbed this stuff.  I choose to believe it's been at least partially responsible for everything from Trump to Brexit to that Austrian guy who locked his daughter in the cellar for twenty-four years and impregnated her seven times (Republican governors, please read).  Some historians think the Roman Empire was fatally weakened by lead-lined water pipes and cooking vessels long before it was destroyed by Christianity.  Nobody knows what this shit is doing to us, or how long it's been doing it.  JAMA recommends you donate blood and plasma.  Pass it on to someone else!  That's the ticket.

Here's an amusing cartoon I saw before I read the rumor about Putin's "blood cancer."  Now it's not so amusing.  What if he thinks, "Fuck it, I'll take everybody with me"?

Maybe it's for the best.  Enjoy the spring weather while you can.

Mid-May roundup

I know, "May you live in interesting times" is not a real Chinese curse but it probably should be.  No one can say the times are boring.

The war in Ukraine is going as well as can be expected, which is to say the invaders are getting kicked in the Donbas.  President Zelensky says Ukraine has re-taken territory and shot down at least 200 Russian aircraft, the worst losses since the early 1940s.  The Russian logistics ship Vsevolod Bobrov was burning in the Black Sea two days ago.  British intelligence reported an entire Russian tank battalion lost as they tried to cross the Siverskyi Donets River.  The Russians are retreating from Kharkiv.  Best of all, one of Putin's fellow robber-barons (oligarch is such an ugly word) was overheard telling someone he has "blood cancer" (presumably leukemia) and will undergo surgery (presumably a bone-marrow transplant).  

Nancy Pelosi visited Kyiv two weeks ago, so Mitch McConnell decided yesterday that it was safe for him to drop in on Zelensky with some of his colleagues (Susan Collins, John Cornyn and John Barrasso).  Always be seen with the winning side.  I assume McConnell explained why Rand Paul is being a manchin about the $40 billion aid package the Senate passed otherwise unanimously ("He's an asshole, Mr. President").  Then they posed for pictures at the gloriously named House of Chimaeras in the presidential compound.  

Ukraine triumphed on another front, winning the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin.  Of course, the European Broadcasting Union had banned Russia.  Zelensky (should I be spelling it Zelenskyy?) says Mariupol will be ready to host next year's event, which is pretty ambitious.

Pink Floyd (minus Rogers Waters) released a song last month in support of Ukraine, their first in 28 years.  Perhaps inspired by Pink, the original cast will join Rob Reiner for a sequel to This Is 'Spinal Tap,' scheduled for release in 2024.  New drummer, of course.

Mehmet Oz is Trump's hand-picked candidate for Pennsylvania Senator, but he's not the only Republican in this week's primary.  One opponent, Kathy Barnette, wrote in 2015 that "pedophilia is a cornerstone of Islam," and Oz, a Muslim, calls it "disqualifying."  Not much fun when the hate you live by comes back to bite you, is it, Donny?  It's important to stay focused on the big picture.  Like Melania, who gave an interview to Fox News and whined that Vogue has put Michelle Obama and Jill Biden on its cover but never her.  (In fact the cover featured her in 2005, wearing her wedding dress -- a day she understandably wants to forget.)

Even China is struggling to cope with the newest covid mutation, so it must be unimaginably bad for North Korea to admit there's a problem.  "Great turmoil" is the term used by Kim Jong-un himself, who may now regret turning down offers of vaccine from China and Russia.  At least there are no North Koreans refusing to be masked and yelling about "Freedom!"  Count on it.

From the WaPo:  "The Dallas police chief announced Friday that a recent shooting at an Asian-run hair salon that left three women wounded may be a hate crime and could be connected to a series of similar incidents at other local businesses run by Asian Americans."  Really?  The department has come along wonderfully since 1963.  Y'all keep it up now, y'hear?

All the little gatekeepers

 On a mild spring Saturday in upstate New York, eighteen-year-old Payton Gendron decided it was time to act on the manifesto he had posted to 4chan.  He put on his helmet and body armor, collected his legally-acquired weaponry and drove two hundred miles from Conklin to Buffalo, the nearest city with a significant Black population.  Arriving at Tops Supermarket around 2:30 he opened fire.  When he stopped several minutes later thirteen people had been shot, eleven of them Black.  Ten would eventually die.  Gendron had thoughtfully attached a camera to his helmet to livestream the fun to his friends on Twitch.

 One of his role-models was Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.  The rest of the manifesto, according to NBC's psycho-whisperer Ben Collins, was pretty much straight Tucker Carlson/Great Replacement/critical race theory argle-bargle, the usual Jewish plot.  According to Collins, Gendron was specific about his plans last Thursday, but at that point he was only exercising his First Amendment rights.  The Second would come later.

(Read in high-pitched Baby Tuckoo voice):  "I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term 'replacement,' if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World."  Who still uses the term "third world"?  Carlson's fellow trust-fund baby Tom Buchanan called them "the colored empires."  He read a book once.

I know ten people who won't vote at all this year.  One witness, Grady Lewis, spoke for all:  "There will be candles, probably have a march, some preaching.  But nothing that needs to be done is going to be done."  On the contrary.  California passed a law prohibiting the sale of semiautomatic weapons to  anyone under 21, like Payton Gendron.  Last week Judge Ryan D. Nelson struck it down, as it "infringed on the Second Amendment rights of those 18-21."  He cited "the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army," which is going back to pre-Second Amendment times.  Clearly an Originalist.  Moscow Mitch, take notice.  

 

Won't somebody think of the children?

 It seems we can't think of anything else, usually in grossly political terms.

Abbott Laboratories, one of only two companies in the US manufacturing formula and baby food, shut down its facility in Sturgis, Michigan, in February after contaminated products caused the death of two infants and sickened several others.  The company says it will be another six to eight weeks before they can begin shipping again.  Low-income families are especially affected because Abbott was the exclusive supplier to agencies administering the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.  Rationing by some stores and empty shelves in many states are a nightmare for millions.  The mess is made worse by lingering supply chain problems making it hard to obtain ingredients.

Malnourished children are nothing new for the richest country in world history, which may be why red-state governors have decided this is THE campaign issue of the year.  Not promising to pay attention to the needs of the poor or anything but blaming Biden and those baby-killing Democrats.  Did you know they're taking nutrition away from white American babies and giving it to "illegal" brown people?  If you didn't, you will.  "Joe Biden continues to put America LAST by shipping pallets of baby formula to the southern border as American families face empty shelves," squawks Elise Stefanik.  (That's when Joe's not siphoning water out of the Colorado River and selling it to France.)  Greg Abbott (no connection, we hope) seized on another way to demonize asylum seekers, issuing an OFFICIAL STATEMENT about "our most vulnerable, precious Texans" -- please use the airsick bags stored in front of your seat -- and the wickedness of sacrificing them to babies who can't even speak English.  For his part, Biden acknowledged that the crisis could have been averted "if we'd been better mind readers" and hinted he might have to use the Defense Production Act.  Calls himself a president and he doesn't even blame China?

By way of researching this (yeah, I do) I looked into the local WIC and found they have an office at Fort Stewart, Georgia, home of the Third Infantry Division ("Rock of the Marne!").  Is it conceivable that serving members of the American military need help feeding their children?  Well, what do you think?

It's right-wing dogma that Democrats hate babies.  They don't want them to be born to girls of thirteen who were raped by an uncle; they don't want them to be neglected and abused because their parents (usually just mothers) can't provide for them; they don't want them to have to grow up in places like Satartia, Mississippi, where a carbon dioxide pipeline that ruptured last year poisoned dozens of people; they don't want politicians deciding what they can read or what they can be taught about science, history and even math; they don't want them to inherit a planet that is no longer viable.  To that end, millions of people in all fifty states are in the streets to demand that the government stay the hell out of their medical decisions.  I'm not saying they're all Democrats, but I don't see any MAGA hats or Confederate flags.

Vultures, vultures everywhere

 

Oops, they did it again!  The choice ninjas created another message for Susan Qollins, not as decorative as the first but it still must have taken several minutes.  It appears to be a well-lighted patch of sidewalk, too.  I assume she doesn't have a dog or a neighbor who likes her well enough to give her a call.  (What is it with Republicans and hostile neighbors?)  Once again the Bangor Department of Public Works was summoned to power-wash it away so Senator Snowflake would not be offended by free speech.  It must be a comfort for her to know that Senator Cuisinart-hair (a/k/a Marsha Blackburn) wants to lock 'em up!

Watch the network news if you dare and you'll be treated to at least five minutes -- a lifetime in MSM terms -- about inflation and especially gas prices.  So the House Oversight and Reform Committee is a little confused about why Trump legacy Louis DeJoy ordered a new fleet of postal trucks, nine out of ten gas-powered and getting a staggering 8.6 miles per gallon.  There are Russian tanks rumbling around Kharkiv that are more fuel-efficient.  Chairperson Carolyn Maloney doesn't think this is the best use of $11.3 billion, but the USPS is resisting calls for its records.  Maybe they're lost, like Trump's phone.  Maybe a dingo ate them.

Here's a consequence of Brexit nobody saw coming:  Ukrainian refugees who arrive in Ireland and then cross to the UK in small boats could be passed along to Rwanda.  Why Rwanda?  Apparently Madagascar said no.  Why would traumatized Ukrainians have trouble adjusting to a country in central Africa?

Here's a consequence of global warming nobody saw coming:  As the level of Lake Mead drops, mob victims of the past are revealed, two in the last week.  This is what happens when you don't want the  effort of burying them in the desert.

Some days...

...I just report the news.  

"He'll maybe be the best person to have.  I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?"

It's not a thundering endorsement but it makes a pretty good campaign slogan coming from Lindsey Graham.  And oh lordy, there is tape.  CNN played it today in connection with This Will Not Pass:  Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.  They caught up with Graham when he was still shaken by the January 6, 2021, coup attempt.  No matter how hard he back-pedals now, I think he's played his last round at Lago de Merde.  Trump is probably looking for another brain-damaged ex-football player to run against him in a primary.  Poor Lindsey.

The women's lacrosse team from Delaware State University was driving through Georgia when a Liberty County sheriff's deputy decided they looked like Freedom Riders from the 1960s.  He pulled the bus over for allegedly traveling in the wrong lane and then decided to search it for drugs, "rifling the suitcases of team members and using K-9 dogs."  No drugs were found and now people are angry, including Delaware Governor John Carney.  "Moments like these should be relegated to part of our country's complicated history," he said, revealing a worrying familiarity with critical race theory.  "The past is never dead.  It's not even past," said William Faulkner.  Let his estate sue me if they like.

Speaking of complicated histories, Lufthansa barred a group of Orthodox Jews from a Frankfurt-to-Budapest flight after some of them (not all) refused to wear masks.  The egregious case of profiling was denounced by Uwe Becker, antisemitism commissioner of the state of Hesse.  This is why they still need one.

Veterinarian/hog farmer Jim Pillen has won the Nebraska gubernatorial primary, defeating Trump-approved groper/grabber Charles Herbster and seven others.  Is the magic fading?

The UK will sign a security assurance declaration with Sweden promising assistance in the event of Russian attack.  Sweden managed to stay neutral through two world wars, but everything is up for grabs now.

Steve Daines (R-Idiot) can't understand why there are legal protections for the eggs of sea turtles and eagles but not for the eggs of humans.  And I can't explain it because my head just exploded.  But Daines is a bit of a RINO on this issue because his party is now worried about the rights of unfertilized eggs, too.  They're ready to overturn Griswold, the 1965 decision that married couples have a right to contraception.  Does anyone now doubt that this is a war on women, those over-educated nuisances who think they have a right to think?  Keep your eye on the Nineteenth Amendment.

How about some Esper-anto?  Trump hated General Stanley McChrystal and Admiral William McRaven so much, he wanted Esper to un-retire them so they could be court martialed for criticizing him.  What, not Colin Powell?  According to an anonymous source, the stable jenius wanted war with China so bad that he asked if the Chinese had attacked us with a "hurricane gun," which would constitute a hostile act.  Yet Rick Scott (R-Medicarefraud) says it's Biden who's "incoherent, incapacitated and confused." But Esper has been put on notice by Pigpen Bannon:  he will be subject to swift vengeance "when we come to power."  Scorched earth, man.  

Want to know about the South Carolina man who dropped dead while burying the woman he strangled?  Fair enough.

I saw this coming.  Jen Psaki tired of finding new ways to tell Pete Doocy he's an imbecile and quit.  Her replacement is her former deputy Karine Jean-Pierre.  Now:  what does Tucker Carlson hate?  Women, women who get prominent positions, LGBTQ people and Black people.  Jean-Pierre ticked all his boxes.  She was even born in Haiti, and you know what a free ride those people get.  As of today, Jean-Pierre has held more White House briefings than Stephanie Grisham.  

As the horror in Ukraine drags on we celebrate any positive news.  Like:

Millions of Russians are downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) which give them access to news sources blocked by the government.

Ukrainians are shooting down Russian SU-34 fighter planes with rudimentary GPS devices taped to the dashboard.  Do they still have Radio Shack in Russia?

Forget May 1.  Now it's Victory In Great Patriotic War For Mother Russia Day Parade!  That's where old Russia hands go to try to guess the future.  As the parade began Putin appeared to have trouble walking, coughed a lot and was bundled in a blanket.  

"In discrediting democratic elections in 2011 and 2012, Vladimir Putin took on the mantle of the heroic redeemer and placed his country on the horns of [Ivan] Ilyin's dilemma.  No one can change Russia for the better so long as he lives, and no one in Russia knows what will happen when he dies."  (Timothy Snyder, The  Road to Unfreedom, 2018)

Sergei Lavrov thinks he knows.  A lot of people thought Epicenter would win the Derby, too.

They no longer call him stupid

Just because Mark Esper failed in his duty to report Trump's psychopathic behavior to his bosses (that would be us Americans) it doesn't mean his ironically titled book is completely worthless.  (Did the words "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" occur in that "sacred oath" he took?)  For example, when he says Trump complained that naval ships were "ugly" compared to Russian and Italian ones, I believe him.  We know he spent hours poring over "window treatments" for the White House, selecting photos that he thought made him look gorgeous and choosing a new color scheme for Air Force One.  Not to mention the daily regimen of orange clown makeup and shellac for that growth on his head.  Most people that vain would try to lose some weight, or at least order suits that hid his belly, but Trump is not most people -- an occasion for joy in a dark time.

Nevertheless, he's still obsessed with appearing smart in front of crowds made up of the "poorly educated" he loves.  In Nebraska he brought up the Mini-Mental State Exam again as if it were the Riddle of the Sphinx which he alone had solved.  It's just a basic rule-out-dementia test, and it was administered by the far-from-impeccable Dr. Ronny (now Rep. Jackson), who probably slipped him clues like Portia nudging Bassanio to the right casket.  Trump is so proud, you'd think it was the only test he ever passed.  It could be.  No one has ever scored so high.  "I'll bet you couldn't, they get very hard, the last five questions," he told an admirably straight-faced Chris Wallace.  And he's memorized the first five, in case they come up again.  "They're calling me bad names.  They're calling me stupid, Ronny."  It was Fake Military School all over again.

How would you like to have a job for life, a car and a driver, and a costume that screams "Respect me!" and still be able to depict yourself as a victim?  Become a right-wing Supreme Court hack and it's yours.  

Welcome to the majesty of the law.  The Senate, which can't even vote unanimously to adjourn, unanimously passed The Supreme Court Police Parity Act, providing extra security for the justices, their families including Ginny the Seditionist, and their dogs.  And all because pissed-off women (and a lot of men) plan to go on picketing their homes and workplace and any other place they show up to earn big bucks addressing the Federalist Society or the Proud Boys.  Although the First Amendment is pretty clear about "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" to protest when stripped of their humanity, Moscow Mitch was livid about demonstrators not breaking windows or even stepping on the grass before the homes of Roberts, Kavanaugh and Alito:  it's "flat-out illegal" to try to influence a judge.  Even one who made up his mind forty years ago?

And who will protect poor Susan Qollins, who could have stopped Kavanaugh but chose to believe his lies?  Susie Q had an actual message of support for the Women's Health Protection Act chalked on her sidewalk, but the Bangor Police must be woke leftists because they declined to investigate.  As of this hour Qollins has not gone into hiding like Christine Blasey Ford, but she's plenty scared.  Probably.  If they have colored chalk, who knows what else they have?  Maybe fruit?

It says "please."  Those monsters.

Speaking of people who got real death threats and needed real bodyguards, whatever became of Anthony Fauci?  You still hear his name from time to time, usually from some Trumpanzee running for the school board in Cheesecurd, Wisconsin, and promising to hang or shoot him, but he has fallen out of rotation in the Hate 100.  Now it's all Disney, Disney, Disney.  Marco Rubio's No Tax Breaks For Radical Corporate Activism Act (better known as NTBFRCA) would punish companies (including Disney) who pay for employees to travel out of hellhole states to obtain abortions or trans care for minors.  Josh Hawley's Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022 would shorten copyright periods in order to "take away Disney's special privileges" and allow the rest of us to produce cartoons about Dumbo and Bambi.  (I think his real goal is to get Song of the South out of the vault and back in circulation.  BTW, Happy Confederate Memorial Day, South Carolina.)  The company's vast holdings in Florida have already been stripped of self-governing status by Ron "Ersatz Trump" DeSantis, which will stick his constituents with a hell of a tax bill.  Well, nobody said culture wars were free.  

Elsewhere, the Tory Party took a beating in local and bi-elections.  Which is remarkable given that there isn't much plausible opposition.  The reliably nutty Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers will probably claim that all those elections were rigged.  She already alerted French voters, "Macron stole the election.  Dig deeper our fellow French patriots!  You guys know how to party like it is 1776."  No, I don't know what it means, either, but she also believes "Zelensky is a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons."  Because "I stand with the Christians worldwide and not the global bankers who are shoving godlessness and degeneracy in our face."  Jacinda Ardern, Justin Trudeau and Zelensky "all report to the same Satanic masters."  I knew Satan would show up eventually.  "The bankers want a great reset and World War III."  It must be fun all the time in the Arizona legislature.  This bint was a colonel in our Air Force.  Now I'm scared.

 

Fount of Life

 If you think women were intended by Gawd to be incubators, there's no need to go all the way back to the seventeenth century and "great common-law authority" Matthew Hale.  There are people who matter, with penises, who will snigger when a proponent of marital rape and witch-burning is cited in a 21st century legal decision.  "Hey, why not remind us what the Code of Hammurabi says?" they will ask snarkily.  Step into this alley, I got your precedent right here.

I see where Sammy and Amy are worried that "the domestic supply of infants" suitable for adoption "has become virtually nonexistent."  Why didn't you say so?  It's not about stripping all American women of their rights, it's about those poor people who have to go to Albania to buy a baby.  When you add travel, lawyers, bribes and miscellaneous expenses it's way more than the minimum $13,000 it costs to have a baby in the USA.  The historical precedent you want is less than a hundred years old.

Lebensborn was founded in 1935 to increase the supply of Aryan babies in the Third Reich.  Eventually it spread to occupied countries where SS officers could inseminate racially acceptable women and ensure Germany's future soldiers and breeders.  Some lucky blond children were even removed from their families and turned over to unfortunate (childless) German families to raise, a procedure we now discourage as "kidnapping."  Of course the Reich and its SS are gone, but the practice has evidently been revived by the Russian invaders of Ukraine, among others.  Fertile German women had a chance to compete for prizes like the Cross of Honor of the German Mother; Mrs. Barrett's seven would probably qualify her for at least Honorable Mention.

Anyway, if it's babies they want, there are plenty of women who will produce them without depriving everyone of abortion and contraception (come on, you know you want to).  All the states need to do is pay them a living wage, provide pre-natal care and create a mechanism for protecting the all-important parental rights of the fathers -- including rapists.  If women voluntarily give up the right to control their bodies, I'm fine with it.  (In much the same way teenagers with no better options voluntarily join the military, but one thing at a time.)  How about leading the way, Mississippi?  Your child mortality rate is a disgrace.  Don't you want to be Number One in something besides pellagra?

Leave Roe alone and set up a chain of Sammytariums!  Breeding is fundamental!  

Happy Mother's Day.

No more wire hangers?

 The outrage of the week -- driving even the war in Ukraine from the headlines -- was not the news that Supreme Court justices don't wait for cases to come before them before making up their minds.  It was that someone attacked "the integrity and independence of the Supreme Court," according to Moscow Mitch, who appointed its three illegitimate members.  Sammy Alito's bucket list was leaked to Politico and Grant Stinchfield of Newsmax knows who did it:  Ketanji Brown Jackson, who doesn't even have a computer password yet.  No evidence needed, he just knows because she's "a radical left-wing activist."  Rightzis like women to be passive, preferably supine.  

Statutory Gaetz knows what women need:  they're "over-educated, under-loved" cat owners with microwaves who have no chance to be groped by a he-man like him.  Which is why they want abortion to be safe and legal.  Makes sense, right?  Based on one over-educated woman there's nothing to worry about.  Susan Qollins was dismayed to learn that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied to her during their confirmations, but she still won't support a bill to create a legal right to abortion because it originated with Democrats.  

According to Mark Esper's tell-all memoir Fun With Guns, Trump wanted to launch missiles into Mexico to "destroy the drug labs," whose exact location he learned from God but never shared with the Mexican government.  That's not even the funny part.  His son and namesake can't understand all the "media outrage."  Junior, maybe they were thinking of you and your hobby.

Charles Beaudrot, an administrative law judge, has ruled that Empty Greene can stay on the ballot in spite of her seditious activities around the January 6 coup.  Perhaps he anticipates the overturning of the Fourteenth Amendment, another item on the fascist wish list.  

Alito was scheduled to appear at a judicial conference in New Orleans but has gone into hiding instead.  A "ring of steel" has been erected around the Court in DC as the Lifetime-appointed Liars prepare to ignore demonstrators armed with signs and chants.  Or as I like to think of them, patriotic tourists. 

Howard Dean, who is a doctor, wants Trump to be the 2024 nominee.  (He once diagnosed Trump's chronic sniffing as a symptom of cocaine use but I can't agree -- he'd be much more focused and alert.  Besides, he's afraid of losing control if he even drinks a beer.)  Dean got a treat this week when Trump gave an interview to the Christian Broadcasting Network.  He shared his thoughts on Walt Disney, who would hate what the woke are doing to "my beautiful Magic Kingdom," and he modestly took credit for spreading the gospel:  "Nobody has done more for Christianity.  Nobody has done more for religion of all types than me."  If only they all didn't have such serious proscriptions on lying.

 Still the creepiest photo-op in history.

Not waving but drowning

 

NASA is about to to embark on its "Beacon In the Galaxy" program, sending this depiction of two earthoids into space as an invitation to visit earth.  They are waving to convey friendliness.  No way that could be misinterpreted.  The message will include "information on the biochemical composition of life on earth, the Solar System's time-stamped position in the Milky Way relative to known globular clusters, as well as digitized depictions of the Solar System and Earth's surface."   That should enable any reasonably advanced life-forms to draw down on us like intergalactic snipers.  Thanks, NASA.

No, really.  It's time to put this chunk of rock out of its misery.  

 

 NASA might want to include this picture of a man walking across a riverbed in New Delhi.  A prolonged heat wave in India and Pakistan has caused shortages of water and electricity and massive crop losses for over a billion people.  Ironically, many could drown if glaciers in the north melt.  Nazeer Ahmed of Turbat, Pakistan, was blunt:  "We are living in hell."

Iraq is used to sandstorms but not like this:  hundreds have been hospitalized by five in the last month, exacerbated by (all together now) "record-low rainfall, desertification and climate change."  The fertile crescent is no more.

The dead crops of India will exacerbate food shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, where Europe's breadbasket was emptied by murderous Russian aggression.  Not only is spring sowing affected but the country has thirteen million tons of corn and 3.8 million tons of wheat it cannot export by sea.  Men are fighting, so women and children are working in the fields.  In the cities, people queue for groceries and bottled water or depend on agencies like World Central Kitchen.  

Lest we forget, the plague continues.  Yesterday saw the death of the millionth covid victim in the US, certainly a low figure because many nursing home deaths were uncounted at the beginning.  Special thanks to Ron DeSantis, Rand Paul, Mehmet Oz, Greg Abbott, Ron Johnson, Fox News and all the other hacks, quacks and shitsacks who worked tirelessly to make sure the novel coronavirus would have the right to live and mutate -- next up, the "very contagious" BA.2.12.1 variant.  NASA had better tell our space friends to hurry.

Of course, middle-class Americans won't go hungry; they'll just gripe about how much Joe Biden is charging for milk and ground beef.  So far (it's only May) the wildfires have affected New Mexico and Arizona.  Unless you live in their path you can keep pretending somebody will do something to stop global warming next year or the year after.  Dial up the AC and follow the riveting case of Heard v. Depp.  Or is it Depp v. Heard?  Will it eventually reach the Supreme Court?  Does Sammy the Bull have a draft opinion ready?

To sum up:  Yeah, we did some great poetry, mu shu pork, Beethoven's late quartets and Buster Keaton, but I think we've reached the end.  Do Not Resuscitate.  Thank you and good night.

       

The real housewives of Salem

 Aside from tax cuts for the rich, the Republicans have been devoid of ideas since Warren G. Harding downsized the Navy.  Their last national election featured the platform TRUMP 4 EVER.  It wasn't enough to impress the undecided voters.

Based on gubernatorial and Congressional campaigns this year, the party has become a modern-dress production of The Crucible by people who aren't smart enough to grasp that Arthur Miller thought the Salem witch mania of 1692-3, like McCarthyism, was a bad idea.  We've already had a preview of Roger Stone's show Blue State Gateways To Hell, coming soon to the Travel Channel.   Then Goody Greene revealed the very words Satan whispered in her ear to convince her abortion is no big deal.  She had previously explained that "Satan's controlling the Catholic Church," which would come as no surprise to the judges in Salem.  Not the whole church, of course -- not the people who think a woman should welcome the "opportunity" to have her rapist's baby, or the communion nazis who want to cut Joe Biden off ("No body of Christ for you!").  Only Pope Francis and his woke liberal supporters with all their concern for immigrants and poor people.  And the environment!  Get thee behind me!

Then Goody Karamo explained the Satanic influence of pop stars.  She wants to strip Cardi B, Beyonce and other women and examine their bodies -- in a completely godly and not-lesbian way -- for the devil's mark cunningly concealed among the tattoos.  The mark you get after dancing in the forest with the Black Man (presumably Barack Obama).  Also evil:  yoga, which predates Christianity by several hundred years.  Yoga pants, too, probably.

And now, Kandiss Taylor.  Goody Taylor is not waiting until she becomes governor of Georgia, which is just as well.  She has prepared "Executive Order #10" to "take down the Satanic Elite/Luciferian Cabal."  All the evil in Georgia -- and it's considerable, boy, let me tell you -- stems from this thing here:

The Georgia Guidestones, erected in 1980 by someone calling himself R.C. Christian, in Elberton County near the South Carolina state line.  They contain a series of unworkable prescriptions for a perfect world starting with "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."  They're inscribed in English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian, with additional translations in Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit and Ancient Egyptian.  I owe Goody Taylor my gratitude because I never heard of them before.  That doesn't mean they haven't been defaced by the self-righteous over the years.  Anyway, they're coming down on the first day of her reign.  I can only guess what the first nine "Executive Orders" target, but at least all the human sacrifices will end.  "Jesus Guns Babies" is her campaign slogan.  Maybe we all get a gun and/or a baby.

Goody Taylor is a third grade teacher and five percent of Georgia voters consider her gubernatorial material.  Deal with that.

 

Mayday, Mayday

 

Anybody know which state issued that?  I have a sudden need to know.

"THREE-LEGGED DOG WITH CANCER SAVES BABY OTTER IN MINNESOTA RIVER DRAMA"

His name is Gus.  

A young girl was attacked by a coyote on Huntington Beach in California.

An Alabama public health worker was mauled to death by a pack of dogs while investigating a previous mauling.  The owner has been charged with manslaughter.

"You gotta sit here and listen to this," Governor Janet Mills of Maine said to a security guard, while Governor Kate Brown of Oregon called her husband.  The spectacle was Trump on a conference call foaming at the mouth because of protests over the murder of George Floyd.  The lunatic told them he was putting General Mark Milley in charge with instructions to "beat the fuck" out of BLM or "shoot them."  It's a good thing he's not a racist.

Aaron von Ehlinger used to be an Idaho legislator.  Now he's a convicted rapist.  The victim was a nineteen-year-old intern.

Tennessee's in the news and that can't be good.  A state pol called Jerry Sexton (R-Bean Station, I swear) has a bill to put political appointees in charge of censoring library books and has offered to burn any they don't approve, crackle crackle crackle.  But Governor Lee, he done signed the bill so's any wormy Tennesseans can buy ivermectin without a prescription.  Swings and roundabouts.

I'm going back and stare at that sweet otter baby until I feel calmer.