Cloudy with traces of hope

 

This is my favorite galaxy, until the Webb Telescope shows us something even more amazing.

Mark McCloskey, who leaped to fame by courageously pointing a gun at unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 (his wife backed him up), failed to win the Missouri senatorial primary.  In fact, he got 3 percent of the vote.  They pleaded guilty to harassment and turned over their arsenal, and the governor pardoned them and Trump cheered, but it's over.  Back to slip-and-fall court.

Kansas put a referendum on the ballot asking voters to amend the state constitution to forbid abortion.  They worded it in a way they thought was clever and they cleverly included it in the primary election for Republicans only, and it still got rejected by 60 percent of voters.  The turnout scared everybody.  No doubt the forced-birthers will demand a recount, claim that "Soros voters" were bused in from Chicago, want to spend millions on court challenges and hire Cyber Ninjas to demolish the voting machines, but for now, this is how victory looks:

And that's a big "fuck you" to Amy Copious Breeder and her fellow justices.

Ron Johnson has been called "the stupidest person in the Senate" and he sought to nail down that title by choosing the same day to call for the end of "entitlements" like Medicare and Social Security.   "If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost," he complained on some podcast.  Yes, you pay into it your whole working life, you qualify, and you get it.  That's what "entitled" means.  Mandela Barnes, the leading Democratic contender for the seat Johnson now occupies, must be rejoicing.  Read the country, Ron.  Or do you think only Kansas voters are energized?  The Opus Dei court gave Democrats a Big Issue and you just gave them another one.   

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022 finally passed the Senate despite Republican obstruction, so veterans exposed to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan will get something besides empty rhetoric from the right.  The eleven "no" voters were Romney, Paul, Lankford, the perfectly named Crapo, Lee, Lummis, Risch, Shelby, Toomey, Tillis and Tuberville.  Keep this is mind when they rant about athletes "dishonoring" veterans by taking a knee.  And they will.  Thanks to Jon Stewart, who never stopped fighting.  "I'm not sure I've ever seen a situation where people who have already given so much had to fight so hard to get so little," he said.

The Sandy Hook parents didn't volunteer and train for a foreign war, they just dropped their children off at school one morning ten years ago.   For them, justice has been just as long in coming.  Perhaps it got a little closer.  In an Austin courtroom Alex Jones finally admitted that the murdered children and adults were "one hundred percent real," not the "crisis actors" he has long described.  He had no choice after his current set of bonehead lawyers "messed up" and sent the plaintiffs all his text messages for the last two years.  Jones has made at least $150 million from his decade of lies and that's what the parents are suing for, while he continues to obstruct by crying poverty and filing bankruptcy.  Today he even faked a coughing fit to avoid answering a question.  In view of his entire career, I don't think putting underpants on his head and pencils up his nose will impress anyone.  

 

Especially Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, who has Had It.

But their emails!  It's not just the Secret Service who accidentally somehow deleted all their texts from January 6, 2021, a date which will live in incompetent infamy.  American Oversight, using that pesky Freedom of Information Act, requested all the Defense Department texts and other communications by senior officials on the same day and -- whoops!  Can't find.  Mighty quiet for such a momentous occasion.  Also at the Department of Homeland Security, where they were all playing Minecraft and nobody picked up a phone or turned on a television.  How could this have happened?  And could it have anything to do with the sudden appointment of "acting" officials like Christopher Miller, Ryan McCarthy, Kash Patel and Paul Ney?  It's almost as if someone wanted the National Guard to remain in the armory two miles from the besieged Capitol.  The Justice Department is being asked to investigate, which means they'll need to hire more lawyers.  

It looks like Nancy Pelosi's "Suck it, Xi" visit to Taiwan was a great success.  China "cannot prevent world leaders or anyone from traveling to Taiwan to pay respect to its flourishing democracy," she said.  Possible Rightzi responses:  1. She represents San Francisco and its many Taiwanese voters.  2.  She's 82, doddery and senile like Biden -- probably thought she was in Chinatown.  China is holding noisy war games in the Taiwan Straits, but they were going to do that in any case.  Cent'anni, Annunziata!

Since we're only accentuating the positive today, it's good news for pregnant Georgians.  Don't worry about the swollen ankles and morning sickness:  after only six weeks you can claim fetal Ryan or Francesca as a tax deduction.  Georgia's top income tax is only 5.75 percent, so think long and hard before your partner gets...I'm sorry, I don't know where I was going with that.

On a slightly related note, garlic farmers in South Korea are angry about a commercial that depicts a woman who wants to have sex with a very large bulb of garlic.  Tell us what you think.

I guess we'll know more if garlic outsells onions.  And Hyundais.