Things you need to know

 "I thought I was having a heart attack, " King Abdullah II of Jordan told a friend in 2018.  He was referring to a phone call from Trump offering him "control" of the West Bank, whose population is decidedly anti-monarchist.  Why did Trump imagine the West Bank was somehow his to give?  We'll have to read The Divider:  Trump In the White House 2017-2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, to find out.  They also reveal his response to an unfavorable ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit:  "Let's just cancel it."  He ordered legislation sent to Congress and was ignored.  Apparently he was ignored a lot by people who assumed he'd lose interest, forget, or be distracted by something that enraged him even more.  It looks like a good read, especially for mental health professionals.

The Wall Street Journal is in mourning today because Joe Biden and his Cabinet worked through the night to avert a national rail strike.  It's hard to remember a president who was more pro-labor (and pro-labor unions).

To which Biden tweeted:  "Thanks for your concern @wsj.  To answer your question:  Yes, the trains are running on time."  (And could we retire that particular tedious equation of railway timetables and a well-run state?  Italian trains ran just as well before Mussolini and his thugs arrived in Rome.)

Why would you think Paul Gosar wants to destroy the FBI?  Perhaps because on August 8 he tweeted, "We must destroy the FBI.  We must save America.  I stand with Donald J. Trump."  Three days later Ricky Shiffer was killed by police after attacking the Cincinnati FBI office with a nail gun.  Now Gosar says it was just a way of attracting attention, difficult when you have to compete with other Crackpot Caucusers.  What he really wants is "new blood in the FBI," perhaps an unfortunate choice of words.  Can we assume he also does not stand with Trump nor wish to save America?  It's all rather confusing, really.

At fifteen Pieper Lewis ran away from an abusive home.  Zachary Brooks, 37, took her in, raped her and trafficked her to other men, and she stabbed him to death.  After she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter Judge David M. Porter of Polk County, Iowa, sentenced her to supervised probation and ordered her to pay $150,000 to Brooks's family.  Outraged, her math teacher Leland Schipper organized a GoFundMe which has now raised over $330,000.  I hope she gets to keep the rest.

Golden oldies:  Mandela Barnes is scaring the trump out of Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, so the NRSC rolled out a Willie Horton-style ad designed to tie Barnes to the driver (also Black) of the car that hit a Christmas parade in Waukesha, killing six people.  It goes on to lie about his position on cash bail and ends with scary images of Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Omar.  Trouble is, the Willie Horton ad worked, and America is even more viciously racist than it was in 1988.  We'll see if Wisconsin is.

We'll also see how much money they want to burn on Illinois gubernatorial catspaw Darren Bailey, who won the primary by calling Chicago a "hellhole."  Then he got an apartment there to "immerse myself in the culture" from the high rise formerly known as the John Hancock Center (farmer Bailey should be safe enough there even though "Chicago is living the Purge and the cops stand down.")  Like so many fascists he can't denounce abortion without going there (the Holocaust "doesn't even compare to a shadow" of the lives lost).  The next day he attacked the media for twisting his words but he didn't fix them:  "Jewish rabbis" told him he was "actually right."  I wonder where J.B. Pritzker will hold his victory party.  

Where's the bartender?  Putin went to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, to meet Presidents Xi (China) and Khurelsukh (Mongolia) and beg for help in Ukraine.  After a week of ass-kicking he ordered the bombing of a dam to flood Volodymyr Zelensky's hometown of Kryvyi Rih.  Has he forgotten the disaster that ensued for the Wehrmacht when Hitler became obsessed with a city named for Stalin?  Yuliia Paievska described the horrors she witnessed in Mariupol.  Read it if you can stand to.

Not a mob summit but something sleazier?  Trump and associates actually met at Sterling, we're told, to decide if it was classy enough to host a LIV Golf Tour/Saud Blood Money event.  So where was Ari Fleischer?  And why all the secrecy?  Are there bodies that need to be moved?  

Choosing a running mate is very important, many people are saying.  According to Baker and Glasser Trump has ruled out Mike Pence because he "committed political suicide" by following the law instead of tearing up all the electoral college submissions while shouting "TRUMP WINS!"  In the same book he passed over Nikki Haley because of her "complexion problem."  As in acne, or too much blusher, or the sort of complexion Fred told him never to rent to?  Unclear.  Best of all, Trump, who is afraid of nothing -- he would have lumbered right into Stoneman Douglas High School and ripped the gun out of Nikolas Cruz's hand -- was afraid, maybe still is afraid that Iran will retaliate against him for killing Qassem Suleimani.  He's probably glad they retaliated against Salman Rushdie instead.  Fuck that guy.

Be afraid, Donzo.  But not of Iran.