London Bridge has fallen down

 

A double rainbow appeared over the Thames today.  Really.

I woke up wondering what to write about.  Turned out history had me covered.

Others will offer a plethora of tributes, from the flowery to the snarky-hip.  In this corner of Blogenheim, just down from Desolation Row, we never cease compiling evidence of accelerating entropy.  Call it duty.

The holy grail of clean energy may have been found -- in South Korea.  Physicists report a sustained nuclear fusion reaction of one hundred million degrees centigrade for 30 seconds.  That's hotter than the sun.  It requires no fossil fuel and produces no hazardous waste.  Joe Manchin won't like it.

A paratrooper named Killian Ryan was discharged from the army for drunk driving and making false statements on his application for security clearance.  Digging into his background revealed membership in various fascist organizations and this interesting tweet:  "I serve for combat experience so I'm more proficient in killing n*****s."  You may want to email him at "naziace1488."  Or not.  

Etowah County, Alabama, should consider changing its name to Gilead.  Pregnant women are being locked up for months after being arrested with small amounts of marijuana.  They can't post bail until they complete drug rehab, which is physically impossible in jail, subject to "lack of consistent access to standard prenatal care...poor diets, poor sanitation, infestations with bugs and vermin, poor ventilation, noise, lack of privacy," etc., according to Dr. Carolyn Sufrin of Johns Hopkins medical school.  At least one developed a blood clot in her uterus, but some judge named Sonny -- really -- wasn't impressed.  As you can see, Alabama is pro-life, just not women's life.

In 2013 Mehmet Oz told the National Governors Association of uninsured Americans, "They don't have a right to health but they have a right to access, to get that health."  He wanted doctors to (voluntarily) provide "fifteen-minute screenings" in "a festival-like setting."  (Burning Pee?  Bone-aroo?  Osteoclastonbury?  Sorry, solemnity makes me frivolous.)  I wonder how long it will take his crew to disavow this position.  "Give them a way of crawling back out of the abyss, of darkness, of fear, of not having the health they need..."  And if the fascists have made them distrust the whole healthcare system, you'll sell them raspberry capsules, right?

Further evidence that the other species have put aside their differences and are coming after us:  While hunting moose in Alaska Nicholas Kuperus was attacked by a grizzly bear.  In fairness, she was probably protecting her cubs.  Probably.

Dennis Prager, who thinks he's a university, is willing to acknowledge that slavery was "a vicious system."  But that doesn't mean the operators of agricultural concentration camps were nasty people.  "There were undoubtedly many nice slaveholders in the South...if you had been invited to one of their homes you would've been treated beautifully" because "nice people can support vicious things."  His hosts, Dennis and Julie, didn't ask how he knows this.  Either he is two hundred years old or he's been seduced by all the curtsying and bowing in movies like Jezebel and Gone With the Wind.  Of course he went on to equate slavery with "the Left" because we're all about "the diminution of human rights and liberties."  This kind of thing seems perfectly reasonable on the Right.  Also the Holocaust.

Speaking of human rights and liberties, the Miami-Dade school board just voted 8-1 that October cannot be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer History Month because it violates bigots' right to be bigots, as well as children's right not to learn that gay people exist.  And over in West Florida a/k/a Texas, Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the Affordable Care Act can't require employers to pay for HIV-prevention drugs.  Because religious freedom! which is protected by a special law in West Florida completely separate from that toothless old First Amendment.  W made O'Connor a judge in 2007.  At the time it was one of his less idiotic acts.

While appealing the appalling ruling about a "special master" to sift through the ultra-secret stuff Trump stored in his unlocked desk, the Justice Department quietly leaked the news that one of the recovered docs covered "a foreign government's military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities."  Be afraid, Israeli intelligence, be very afraid.  Trump can't read, someone had to tell him what to steal and my money is on Kushner.  Prince Bone Saw wouldn't hand two billion dollars to a knucklehead who had never run a hedge fund unless said knucklehead brought something nice to the deal.  Of course, given the ruthlessness of Mossad assassins -- they'll shoot you in the head and then go to a movie -- maybe it's Kushner who should be afraid.  No wonder he's building a house on an island.

The Lincoln Project is back with an ad that made Trump ketchup-hurling mad.  He's calling them "Perverts and Lowlifes" and threatening to sue Fox News, which aired it.  I should think his lawyers are busy keeping him out of prison, but fine, sue.  Suin' ain't winnin'.  

Are you ready for some good war news?  While the world was distracted, the Ukrainian counterattack near Kharkiv has re-taken "twenty kilometers of Russian-held territory."  Time for Putin to bluster about nuclear weapons again.  

Rest in peace, ma'am.  You were OK.