Well, there's your problem!

 How's this for a start to the week?

"Ever felt the Earth move under your feet?  It's a wonder more of us don't:  scientists have suspected for a while that Earth's inner core rotates at a faster speed than the rest of the planet.  Now, a new study published in the journal Science Advances suggests that not only does the inner core spin faster, it changes direction every six years."

Read it.  Have your suspicions confirmed.  There's not a damn thing you can do about it.

I thought there was something odd going on when I noticed Fox News carrying the second public hearing of the House Select Committee.  Presumably the order came down from the Aussie Pornographer, who can still grasp overnight ratings data.  The Fox management must have felt the ground shifting beneath their feet, or jobs in white nationalist media are becoming scarce.  Robert Herring, the proprietor of One America News, spread a rumor last week that Elon Musk wanted to buy his operation, and Musk shut it down faster than a self-driven Tesla.  (He still wants Twitter but the cryptocurrency meltdown got in his way.)

I remember fire drills.  I even remember "duck and cover."  But I left school long before Columbine, so I have no experience of active-shooter exercises.  Sam Bailey has opened my eyes in today's Ohio Capital Journal.  "As a kid, I never thought much about why someone would want us murdered.  It was just a fact of life.  I existed so someone wanted me to stop existing.  The pillars of the American school system became:  reading, writing, arithmetic and surviving a bullet to the head."  May as well start early to prepare for supermarkets, workplaces and outdoor concerts in the land of the wary and scary.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's expensive flop Cinderella has closed in London, and the show's director Laurence Connor read a letter from his lordship to the closing night audience which basically blamed it on the covid pandemic and the government's failure to help financially.  I love it when rich soreheads blame a virus instead of their own mediocrity.  Of course ALW has made mediocrity work for him for a very long time.  Nobody expects the gravy train to derail.

Another hugely successful mediocrity, James Patterson, is worried that "it is hard for white men to get writing gigs in film, theater, TV or publishing."  Patterson whined to The Times of London that racism is to blame.  "It's even harder for older writers.  You don't meet many 52-year-old white males."  Not since they were culled by Alice Walker and Colson Whitehead.  Oh, the humanity.

An upvote to Coeur d'Alene police chief Lee White and his force, who stopped 31 members of the "Patriot Front" when they arrived masked and in a U-Haul to break up Pride in the Park yesterday.  This bunch wear blue shirts, for those keeping track of domestic terrorist gang colors.  Only two were from Idaho; the others commuted from as far away as Virginia.

Every day I learn something about American history, usually something dismaying.  In 1870 Lt. Gustavus Doane led a massacre of 173 Piegan Blackfeet, many of them suffering from smallpox, in Montana.  A 10,550 foot peak in Yellowstone in Wyoming was named in his honor.  Now Mount Doane will become First Peoples Mountain after a unanimous vote by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, none of them presumably appointed by Trump.

Mary Trump "has taught courses in developmental psychology, trauma and psychopathology," it says in her Wikipedia entry, so when she says the Donnie-Ivanka relationship is "completely transactional" I guess she knows her onions.  "Once one or both of them come to the conclusion that there's nothing in it for them, then they will move on," she told MSNBC of Ivanka's testimony that she "accepted" Bill Barr's denial of the stolen election lie.  Princess doesn't need a weatherman or a former attorney general to tell which way the wind blows.  Or as Tolstoy said, "Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way -- and then there are those fucking Trumps."  

Mo Brooks clung to the Big Lie for two years before "going Woke" at "our massive, Cullman, Alabama, Rally" by suggesting it might be time to move on.  Not accept all reality, of course, just the fact of the ongoing Biden presidency.  Mo Brooks is no Ivanka, and was cast into the outer darkness.  Trump transferred his blessing/endorsement to Katie Britt, who enjoys the support of the detested Mitch McConnell.  Wait, it gets better.  Brooks finished second in the Alabama senate primary and again approached Trump, on his knees like a pilgrim at Guadalupe, to beg for the re-endorsement.  And was rebuffed in another tweet -- sorry, Truth Socialite -- replete with weirdly capitalized words.  Wouldn't it be funny if that seat went to a Democrat, maybe Doug Jones for a full term?

Liz Cheney seemed calm and controlled this morning when introducing testimony about how Trump told his followers not to vote by mail and therefore knew mail ballots would take longer to tally and necessarily favor Biden.  I guess I missed something because Drunk Rudy pronounced her "completely hysterical...gone off her deep end."  Women in politics have been called hysterical roughly since the reign of Elizabeth I (hystera = womb), so Cheney won't be too bothered.  Also too shrill, too well prepared, too short and "with blood coming out of her...wherever."  It was, of course, Drunk Rudy who told Trump on election night to "just say you won," the only piece of advice he heard.  He's been saying it ever since.  That's why there's a Select Committee.

If you want to know about hysteria, the Washington Post profiles Margie Greene's constituent Angela Rubino as "a case study of what [Trump's] movement is becoming."  She's "a citizen of a parallel America...awash in domestic enemies, stolen elections, immigrant invaders, sexual predators...and other fresh nightmares revealed by the minute on her social media scrolls."  The new so-called gun control bill includes a provision for opening the mental health records of under-21s who want to buy a gun, but I don't see how that will protect society from "Burnitdown," as Rubino is known online.  Among other things that will rob you of sleep, she's sure Brian Kemp is one of them because he supports an electric-car factory that will bring jobs to the state.  When you're to the right of Kemp, it's time to call the vet and have yourself euthanized.  Hey, Angela, did you know birds aren't real?  

As if poor Donnie doesn't have enough grief, the "World's First DeSantis Flotilla" happened on the St. Johns River Saturday, and everyone knows you can't be elected president without a boat parade or several.  That's how they know Biden stole the election -- no boats, just votes.  Hey!  I think we've got a slogan.