Season of mists

 

This is Mischief Night (your local name may vary) when people, usually adolescents, commit acts of varying degrees of atrocity in anticipation of Halloween.  Egging houses is probably too expensive due to inflation, same with decorating your neighbor's trees with toilet paper.  You might want to break into the home of an elderly man and fracture his skull with a hammer, but it's been done.

At least half the country is appalled at the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi, while about forty percent seem to find it either funny or grounds for political commentary.  (There's always about five percent who have no opinion.)  In the second group we find Ministry of Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes:

Keep your day job as long as it lasts, Dev, you have a limited future in comedy.  Jesse Watters and Gutfeld! have nailed down the hatelaugh audience.

Nunes's "clothes on" witticism refers to a report, since rescinded, that David DePape was in his underwear when arrested because he was there to have sex with Pelosi.  A local "speaker and investigative journalist" named Joe Eskanazi, who has sources, decided to embellish this by calling DePape "a former Castro nudist protester," presumably a reference to the San Francisco neighborhood (with a significant LGBTQ population) and not the former Cuban leaders.  It could be true -- it looks like DePape was all over the place politically before discovering QAnon and covid conspiracies.  Coupled with "false flag" and "meant to make the right look bad," I'm sure we'll hear a lot more of this.  The slightly less mad explanation is whaddaya expect when you demonize the police just because a couple dozen Black people get shot or strangled or tased to death every year, why don't they just get out of bed and comply?  I did say slightly.  

No doubt there's an even lower stratum of "conservative" thought that Pelosi had it coming and his wife (who isn't a real Catholic according to religious arbiter Tucker Carlson) doubly so and their daughter who didn't mourn when a neighbor kicked Rand Paul's ass and, well, just about any other traitor to Trump including Liz Cheney and Mike Pence.  I can just about hear them down there, I don't feel the need to go and look.  But Bill Maher does.  Bill Maher knows why the right is so angry and violent -- we don't listen to them.  They have so many valid ideas about how Anthony Fauci and his family deserve punishment, and how corporations that won't give money to Republicans should be investigated, and how Hillary Clinton has been dead since 2016.  And it's not enough to believe these things and share them on podcasts and social media, they have a Constitutional Right to make everyone listen.  Anything less assaults their freedom, just as Mike Pence's religious freedom is under attack because we don't want to hear his interpretations of the Old Testament night and day.  It's.  Our.  Fault.

Fortunately the rabid have a new friend at Twitter.  Elon Musk used his new toy to spread an article on the male prostitute angle with the giggly comment, "There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye."  Yes, there is.  It means that Twitter is now a complete tool of Trumpanzee disinformation and racial hatred.  Already LeBron James has called on Musk to do something about the spike in uses of "n-----" on his platform, up 500 percent in just twelve hours.  As people like Shonda Rhimes close their accounts, it will only get worse.  Musk insists the policy on hate speech remains in effect and that he is forming a "content moderation council," sort of like the local politicians who will decide on abortions in Pennsylvania if Oz has his way.  What can go wrong?

Joe Biden:  "Enough is enough is enough.  Every person of good conscience needs to clearly and unambiguously stand up against the violence in our politics, regardless of what your politics are."

Christine Drazan, Republican candidate for governor of Oregon, is campaigning with right-wing militia leader B.J. Soper, who calls central Oregon a "redoubt" under assault from socialists and communists.  All her money comes from January 6 coup bankrollers.

Trump-appointed Judge Michael Liburdi sees nothing wrong with storm troopers menacing voters at drop boxes in Arizona.  

Conservation Voters New Mexico, an environmentalist group, received an anonymous letter containing a toxic substance and antisemitic symbols.  The letter also threatened the state Democratic Party and Rep. Nathan Small.

The FBI is investigating more than a thousand threats to election officials, mostly in rural areas.

Because Trumpanzees gibber and howl and fling their feces at Dominion machines, Nye County, Nevada, is hand-counting ballots in the presence of armed kibitzers and random nutters. It's going as well as you would expect.

I almost wish Joe Biden would declare a state of emergency and cancel the election.  I just want to watch Tucker Carlson implode like a Philco TV. 

We can't even enjoy the death-glories of autumn anymore.  

And additionally...

 Justin Fields wanted to mark his 38th birthday by having sex with his girlfriend Tammy Bailey.  Perfectly understandable, but she wasn't in the mood.  So he stabbed her more than a hundred times with an eight-inch survival knife and cut off her head.  "He was frustrated because he didn't get what he wanted," said Sheriff Mark Moon of Blount County, Alabama, a man known for understatement.

He's not the only one.  In Grand County, Utah, there is video of Deputy Amanda Edwards in pursuit of a Black shoplifting suspect with a lasso.  "That's going to look really bad if you use that," a colleague observes.  "Better than a taser," Edwards responds.  Here she is.

Murder, rape, torture, kidnapping...grave robbing?  Russian forces have stolen the remains of Grigory Potemkin, Russian statesman and lover of Catherine the Great, from Kherson.  To "protect" them.

Video has also surfaced of Paul Gosar talking to a vigilante who boasts about shooting migrants at the Mexican border.  "Say a prayer because this country needs you," the cockroach hisses.  "There's a bunch of people that are ready to go into action."  What was that about advocacy for violence disqualifying a public office seeker?  I can't hear you, Senator Paul.

Hey, another decapitation story.  Healer/osteopath Jemma Mitchell was sentenced to life in the UK for killing and beheading her "friend" Mee Kuen Chong in order to inherit her estate.  They met through a church group.  The judge's speech needs to be read in the tones of Charles Laughton.

The death of Jerry Lee Lewis has been announced for the second time this week, apparently for real this time.  The Killer was 87.

Did you know Grant was not only a great military commander?

That's spooky.

Where's Nancy?

 

As soon as I heard about the intruder who broke into the Pelosi house with a hammer, I knew it wasn't McCarthy.  This sheep-faced wimp spends most of his time hiding under his desk until he can no longer hear Empty Greene's poodle heels clattering angrily down the hall.  This is only one reason he fears her:

What could she have meant last night?  Is it a coded message to begin the attacks?  Or just glee because that nice Mr. Musk will put her and Metamucilini back on Twitter before some men start repossessing the fixtures at Ministry of Truth Social?

Here's a more typical response:  "There's no room for violence anywhere but we're going to send her back to be with him in California."  That was Glenn Youngkin, ever-classy governor of Virginia and successor to Thomas Jefferson.  Virginia is for mother...lovers.

Or this from perpetually aggrieved Rand Paul:  "Unlike Nancy Pelosi's daughter who celebrated my assault, I condemn this attack and wish Mr. Pelosi a speedy recovery."  How gallant.  I still can't believe Trump didn't send him a Purple Heart.

Pramila Jayapal knows what it felt like.  Unlike David DePape, who may not have brought his own hammer (it isn't clear), her stalker had a pistol and had been outside her house for weeks, expressing dissenting political opinions like "Fuck you, cunt!"  He brought a friend.  They suggested she return to India.  Your basic post-Trump discourse.

"I'm not going to mince words.  Democrats want Republicans dead and they've already started the killings," Empty Greene asserted days ago.  Here is a list of Republicans slain by Democrats.

Abraham Lincoln?

Timing is everything.  Last week Nancy Pelosi told Andrea Mitchell, "I said I would have punched [Trump] out, I would've gone to jail and I would have been happy to do so."  Really, asked Mitchell?  "He wouldn't have had the courage to come to the Hill.  It's all talk," the Speaker replied.  At that moment I expected the more rabid Trumpanzees to demand she be wrestled to the ground by the Secret Service for threatening him, or at least interrogated by the FBI.  The same bunch who wanted her prosecuted for destroying an official document when she ostentatiously tore up her copy of his reality-averse SOTU message.  Now it's too late.  Now it's her husband Paul who is in surgery.   Now they show their true colors, and it's ugly.

What does it all mean?

The Pope says priests and nuns need to delete porn from their phones because it "weakens the priestly heart."  

Mike Pence says the First Amendment does not guarantee "freedom from religion," and that "no one is allowed to talk about the Ten Commandments or the importance of moral values" because of -- you guessed it -- "far-left progressives."  

Interstellar cockroach in a dentist skin Paul Gosar has written to Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin, inviting them to Arizona for "peace talks."  This is the same Arizona where armed, masked thugs are hanging around drop boxes to intimidate voters, and where the campaign office of Democratic secretary of state Katie Hobbs was just burglarized.  

...so your loved ones can send help if you don't return from voting.

Check your watch and note what you were doing when Empty Greene came up with the extraordinary concept "corporate communism."  It's when corporate donors stop giving to the Republicans because of the January 6 coup attempt.  She will investigate as soon as she has power, you bet.  Police were called to London's Highgate Cemetery to investigate possible fracking-related tremors but discovered that Karl Marx had rolled over.

A Georgia mail-in ballot (and I should know) says it can be dropped off by a family member.  To that end, a man named Mark Andrews deposited five ballots at a drop box in Gwinnett County on October 6, 2020, for himself, his wife and their three adult children.  He was disturbed to discover himself starring in 2,000 Mules with a narrator intoning, "What you are seeing is a crime.  These are fraudulent votes."  His face and the license plate of his car are visible.  He was even more disturbed when some election denier turned him in to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, which cleared him of all charges.  Now he is suing True the Vote and three chuckleheads named D'Souza, Engelbrecht and Phillips for defamation.  The fact that Mr. Andrews is Black probably had nothing to do with it.

The secret word is ROMNEY.  Observers as far away as the Guardian are worried that John Fetterman appeared to struggle with words in his debate with Mehmet Oz.  Republican chair Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel found it hilarious in an interview with Hugh Hewitt:  "So Biden said, 'Between the two of us we may be able to finish a full sentence.'"  (He didn't.)  Meanwhile Bret Baier offered to act as the unbiased moderator of a debate between Mike Lee and Evan McMullin on Fox News but Lee, who has not had a major stroke (that we know of), declined.  Lee was in the studio two weeks ago pleading for the endorsement of Mitt ROMNEY but has not received it.  

On November 6 we set back the clocks and Trump throws a hate party in Miami for Little Marco.  And look who he forgot to invite:  Ron DeSantis.  Ooh, feud!  I knew this was why he hired the Swift Boat Slanderer.

More than 250 literary figures signed an open letter to Penguin Random House protesting their plan to publish a book by Amy Coney "People of Praise" Barrett.  There's always Regnery but I doubt they can match the $2 million Copious Breeder is alleged to be getting.

The former Lake Mead has yielded its sixth set of human remains this year.  

The Miss Universe Organization has been bought for $20 million by Thai businesswoman Jakapong "Anne" Jakrajutatip, who is transgender.  Deal with that, DeSantis.

"God love ya"

 "A papaya is a very good representation of a uterus, and you can practice on the papaya fruit."

I didn't expect to read a sentence like that when I got up this morning, but those are words that Dr. Danielle Mathisen used to President Biden to explain how medical students in Texas have to learn the abortion procedure since the state became a Margaret Atwood novel.  We live in interesting times.  "Gotcha.  God love ya," the President responded, because what else can you say to something so mad?  

"My body is my body and I don't want the government telling me what I can do with my body," a woman told Margie Greene on a call-in show.  Had she added, "And I ain't takin' no vaccine 'cause it's got a Bill Gates microchip" they would have parted as friends.  But the topic was abortion and Greene, who is 48, retorted, "Ma'am, are you having children anytime soon?  That's my question, I'm asking a legitimate question...I don't think you're having children anytime soon, so I appreciate your interest in women's rights but killing an unborn baby is not a woman's right and that's not healthcare."  And I can see through the phone that you're too old to get pregnant, Greene, 48, did not add.  Jesus told her.  She also dismissed the idea of a pregnant ten-year-old as "a very rare, rare, rare occasion."  Also from Jesus.  Greene will be 49 next May, so where does she get off preaching about "America's future"?

Let's hear from a qualified doctor, not a lady doctor like Mathisen who may or may not have children anytime soon and in any case is too emotional to think clearly.  Let's hear from Mehmet Oz:

"As a physician I've been in the room when there's some difficult conversations happening.  I don't want the federal government involved with that at all.  I want women, doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that's always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves."

A lot to unpack, huh?  Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon, so the number of pregnancies he has consulted on is probably quite limited.  If he was "in the room" while his wife or girlfriend decided to abort I wouldn't be surprised but I wouldn't want him to violate her privacy.  Now, who are these local political leaders (my italics)?  The mayor of (let's say) Braddock, Pennsylvania?  Somebody from the school board who just voted to ban Our Bodies, Ourselves or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?  The traffic court judge?  Should there be three of them so they can vote?  Will the proceeding be reported in the local paper like any other government proceeding?  ("The Womb Unit voted 2-1 to allow Sandra F. to terminate her pregnancy after amniocentesis showed...")  If we're talking about Oklahoma, those two are looking at criminal prosecution and so is Sandra.  Things are getting murkier.  What if the woman's partner is a famous football player who says he will pay for the procedure?  Is that third member a proponent of Great Replacement theory who thinks white women should reproduce no matter what, Black women not at all?  Is there even a hospital within a hundred miles of this failing Rust Belt city with tumbleweed blowing through the boarded-up downtown?  We're way down the rabbit hole.

Or maybe Oz the amateur politician is just trying to neutralize the issue that is bringing people out to vote despite every obstacle the fascists can devise?  Yeah, going with that.  Abortion is "murder" but there should be no criminal penalties.  He would vote against Lindsey Graham's federal ban but is fine with leaving it up to the states.  I'm surprised Oprah didn't book him on her show to tap dance.

In other news -- and there is other news -- the Trump "campaign" has opened negotiations with Chris LaCivita of Swift Boat Veterans for Troof, which makes me wonder who they need to slander.  I see where Ron DeSantis won a Bronze Star and other medals with SEAL Team One, so Commodore Bone Spurs is probably gunning (sorry) for him.

Samuel Alito still can't find out who leaked his wonderful, perfect decision in Dobbs.  He says the leak made him and the other Opus Dei terrorists on the Court "targets for assassination."  Since almost everyone in public life has been so targeted, from Dr. Anthony Fauci to Rep. Ilhan Omar to the governor of Michigan, and since the worst consequence his mob faced was Brett Kavanaugh's interrupted steak dinner, he can shut the fuck up.  Or resign, he can always do that.

More whining from Rand Paul.  He wants Mike Franken, Iowa Democratic Senate candidate, to be disqualified because Franken joked about the injuries Paul's neighbor inflicted on him in a 2017 altercation.  "Advocacy for violence should disqualify Franken from holding ANY office," huffed Paul, who had nothing to say when Trump repeatedly told his mobs to "beat the hell" out of reporters and protesters, and was probably hiding in a closet with Ted Cruz when patriotic tourists called for the deaths of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, etc., etc.  A little late with the kumbaya, pal.

Are there any women who haven't been pressured by Herschel Walker to undergo abortions?  Maybe we need a national registry.

In our new feature Life Imitates the Simpsons, Florida's version of Whacking Day is the annual Burmese python hunt.  This year 231 of the invasive species were caught, with teenager Matthew Concepcion the individual winner at 28.  Why is this good?  Because around the same time a 54-year-old woman named Jahrah was found to have been ingested by a python on an Indonesian rubber plantation.  

Multiculturalists are crowing that in Rishi Sunak the UK has its first prime minister of Indian heritage.  Big deal.  Ireland elected Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach five years ago, and he's also a physician and gay.  Yesterday national treasure Charlie Pierce proposed, "Let the Irish Run the UK Until the English Can Get This Omnishambles Together" and he wasn't just being snarky.  At any rate Sunak has banned new fracking, so that's good.  Eventually Joe Biden will learn to pronounce his name, if he lasts longer than Liz Truss.

In the other Georgia (the one in the Caucasus) citizens overwhelmingly support Ukraine despite the careful neutrality of their own government.  Playwright Davit Gabunia has noticed that pro-Putin Russians have no trouble crossing the border, while opponents of the war often do.  People are afraid the groundwork for a Russian invasion and occupation is being laid.  They are probably right to be.  Meanwhile thirty progressive Democrats led by Rep. Pramila Jayapan wrote to Biden urging him to push Ukraine toward "negotiations" with the Russian invaders.  Then one of them said, "Shit, we're lining up with the fascists!" and the letter was withdrawn.  Get it together, people.

Bob Woodward says he's stunned that Trump lied to his then-13-year-old son about covid.  I'm stunned that he's stunned.  Is this the same Woodward who got Mark "Deep Throat" Felt to spill the beans on Nixon?  To quote W.C. Fields in My Little Chickadee, "Time has slowed you on the draw."

Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap...Madame Tussaud's?  Yes, Ye Stinfection's wax image has been moved out of sight at the London museum, where you can still see Vlad the Impaler, Adolf Hitler and Hawley Harvey Crippen.  That leaves Netflix, which promises not to cancel its three-part documentary Jeen-Yuhs.  Netflix recently announced a third-quarter gain of 2.4 million subscribers thanks to quality offerings like Dahmer -- Monster:  The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, so why not?

God love ya.

  

       

Time to get serious

 Amou Haji, the Iranian hermit celebrated (if that's the right word) as "the world's dirtiest man," has died at age 94, several months after neighbors convinced him to bathe for the first time in sixty years.  The Tehran Times says he ate roadkill, smoked a pipe filled with animal excrement and believed washing would make him ill.  It looks like he was right.  This does not bode well for Steve Bannon, sentenced to four months in prison and a risible fine by a Trump-appointed judge.  He can always claim a weekly shower amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.  May as well take advantage of the Constitution even as he works to trash it.

In other news of our fair and impartial judiciary, Clarence Thomas says Lindsey Graham does not have to testify under subpoena to the Fulton County grand jury, at least for now.  I'm sure Ginni will show her appreciation for his wisdom in the usual manner.

Adidas is one of the multinational corporations that employs Uighur slave labor to make its athletic shoes in China, but is willing to take a financial hit by ending its business partnership with Kanye West.  The next time some Rightzi says abortion (or Obamacare or critical race theory) is "worse than slavery," you can say "No, but a mentally unbalanced rapper who spews antisemitism is."

Maybe Michael Moore is right about the midterms.  Tucker Carlson seems to think so.  The genial host of Tin-tray Tucker's White Power Clubhouse is becoming more deranged by the day, describing the Democratic Party as a "child sacrifice cult" and raging at criticism of his apparently unemployable son Buckley, who was given a pity-job by Rep. Jim Banks.  I assume someone at Fox knows where they stored the straitjackets after O'Reilly was fired.

Moore seems to have Arizona worried, too.  The state where it all began in 1964 already has armed thugs intimidating voters on behalf of the Republicans, but people are managing to vote anyway.  To curb this, the legislature is considering measures to require even more voter ID -- possibly involving a DNA test.  Their candidate for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, has guaranteed that Arizona's electoral votes will go to Trump, or DeSantis, or whatever in 2024, regardless of the popular vote.  This is somehow legal.  Voters can still put a stop to it, but will they?

The trial of Stewart Rhodes and four other fascists is on hold because Mr. "I Shot My Eye Out" has contracted covid.  Now how could that have happened?

It's no secret that Ted Cruz is a bully-coward -- it's a Texas Republican requirement -- but his masochism is out of hand.  Who could forget...

If he thought growing a beard would help, well, a mask didn't:

And now Mr. Glutton for Punishment (isn't that a character from Pilgrim's Progress?) flew all the way to New York to be jeered at Yankee Stadium and booed at a taping of The View.  ("Fuck you," someone yelled, and it wasn't Whoopi.)  He stopped by Fox News to have some ointment applied to his raw ass, but you know he loves it.  Better sharpen the stilettos, Heidi, he's Cruz-in' for a bruisin'.

Trump's obsession with penises, or at least his own, has long been a source of comedy, dating from the debate when he assured Marco Rubio there was "no problem" with the size of his hands or anything else.  (This in turn stems from his long battle with Spy magazine's characterization of the "short-fingered vulgarian" which he does not understand to this day.)  As the prosecutors close in, the penetration fantasies have turned darker.  Recently Maggie Haberman told how he relished the idea of Jared Kushner going camping and being raped by feral hillbillies out of Deliverance, complete with banjo music.  Last week in Texas he pumped up the mob with a yarn about the leaked Supreme Court decision in Dobbs (remember that?) and how journalists should be jailed for refusing to reveal the source.  "When this person realizes he's going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly he will say 'I'd like very much to tell you exactly who that leaker is!'"  Big laugh.  Texas.  Because prison rape is funny when it happens to a reporter, like dressing room rape in a department store.  Realistically, even if justice prevails and Trump goes to prison, no one would touch his flabby ass with a baseball bat.  But he's frightened.  Maybe that's enough.

 

Independent day

 (Warning:  Contains self-indulgence)

In addition to real papers I look at the British publication the Independent.  Sometimes it has useful information.  More often it has headlines like these:

Kim Kardashian's Birthday Celebrations Cut Short By Adverse Weather

Missing Cat Reunited With Family After Six Years

Maisie Williams Makes Brutal Admission About Game of Thrones Ending

Balthazar Owner Responds After James Corden Says Feud Is "So Silly"  (This has been going on for two weeks)

First Grey Seal Pup of the Year Is Born at England's Largest Colony  

Deborah James "Would Have Been Thrilled" By Bowel Cancer Breakthrough

I Ate 13 Courses of Carbs at the UK's First Bread-Only Restaurant

Every Rumoured Contestant for This Year's I'm a Celebrity

Midnights Is Taylor Swift's Darkest and Most Cryptic Album Yet

Kanye West Claims Quentin Tarantino Stole Django Unchained Idea

Bimbos Are Back.  Did Megan Markle Miss the Memo?

Notice I haven't even mentioned sport.  Most of these heads would pique your interest in The Onion, but here I don't even have the energy to click.  Luckily "Love Island" is not currently monopolizing half the page.  And compared to the Daily Mail, this is Areopagitica, Milton's case for a free press which he would probably want to revise.

With some relief I turn to the Washington Post and a truly fascinating article about why summertime drivers are encountering fewer bug splatters on their windshields.  I'm not joking, it's deeply worrying ecology-and-aerodynamics information.  Unlike the affairs of a Kardashian, it will not make you feel dumber for reading it.

     

News you can use

 If you are a female person and thinking of taking in the World Cup in Qatar, you probably need to know that it is a crime to produce a child out of wedlock.  Several Australian, New Zealand and British women learned this when a baby was discovered in an airport bathroom.  The five women were pulled off a Qatar Airways flight to Sydney and subjected to gynecological examinations, presumably by a doctor but it could just as easily have been the Purity Police.  This happened two years ago, and the Australian women are only now suing for "unlawful physical contact," which seems pointless in a Qatari court.  Anyway, footie fans, this is not a place you need to visit.  Sell your tickets and buy an enormous flatscreen TV.

"I've got news for you.  Absolutely no one wants to hear what your plan is for their uterus."  That sounds like Qatar but it's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responding to Mike Pence's anticipation of "pro-life majorities" imposing purity police on America after the mid-term election.  If she's reading "Mike's Midterm Tsunami of Truth" AOC already knows that Michael Moore predicts gains for the Democrats.  We laughed when he said Trump would win in 2016.  We should listen to him now as he tries to awake the sleeping giant that is non-voters, brainwashed by a relentless deafening groan of both-siderism.   

 

I'm not exaggerating.  In Zionsville (yeah) Indiana, Matt Keefer is running for the school board on a platform of "all Nazis weren't bad."  When questioned about this apparently mainstream Republican position he responded, "I am correct," and what's more "hate" from the "far left" "only makes me stronger."  That's not hate, Matt, it's pity for a fool.  How does pity make you feel?  

I don't think Trump concerns himself with local races, but in this case Keefer may get to stand on the platform at the next hate rally.  The one in Robstown, Texas, was standard issue xenophobic spew about subhumans pouring across the border, etc., etc.  Multiply-indicted Ken Paxton came in for most of the praise Trump didn't lavish on himself, as Greg Abbott had a previous engagement with the Yankees-Astros game.  Oh, and he's going to sue the Pulitzer board "in two weeks" -- we know what that means.  The yobs ate it up, wiped the cow feces from their chins and begged for more.

They got it today, as their messiah took to his bankrupt social media platform for a particularly weird one.  "Who is going to enter the Trump Quicksand?  Many have tried, leaving permanently damaged, or never to be heard from again!"  He is totally in control of the rotting hulk still officially known as the Republican Party, no one can win without him, all must kiss his ass like J.D. Vance.  Also Jake Tapper is "low rated," which is weird because Tapper unquestionably read the memo from the new management and has scooted to the right like Brooks Robinson at shortstop.  Of course it is a myth beloved of pulp writers and B-movie producers that humans routinely die when trapped in quicksand.  Don't tell Donzo, he thinks he invented it.

The Trump Quicksand is a title waiting to be used by the next reporter with a book about how Trump refused to wear the same socks twice or threatened to kill a servant who put too much ice in his Diet Coke or whatever bombshells remain unrevealed.  You're welcome.

Speaking of books, Trump is double-plus-unhappy about the new Woodward audio book because "the tapes belong to me."  The writer into whose mic he prattled for hours, boasting about the classified documents he smuggled out of Washington, is now "sleazy" and, guess what, another hopeless lawsuit will be filed as soon as his disciples pony up another million dollars in love offerings.  I predict that a slice of the royalties will make this go away.  Not going to happen.

Some of Trump's lawyers have suggested that the DoJ might be "invited" back to the Florida Document Dine & Dump for another look around.  They think we didn't see those boxes being loaded on the plane and flown to Bedminster because stupid people think everyone else is stupid, too.  Of course, if the swag is already in Riyadh or Moscow, there's no point in bothering the FBI.

This just in:  Boris Johnson says he doesn't want another term as PM.  I don't even care anymore.

To the ladies

 

If you see a review copy of this at the London equivalent of the Strand, pounce.  The Truss government fell this morning after more than a hundred MPs wrote letters of absolutely no confidence.  For those who like to apply Sabermetrics to British politics, she lasted a total of six weeks, the shortest career of any prime minister (overlapping briefly with the longest reign of any British monarch).  Her home secretary Suella Braverman resigned yesterday (or was fired according to the New York Times) and she was already on her second chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.  Chaos aside, Truss will be best remembered for the Pinteresque pauses which punctuated her interviews, and the soft whirring of hamster wheels as she tried to compose a response.  Given the economic mess the Johnson gang left behind, people are talking about a "glass cliff" and suggesting she got the job because the Tories wanted to demonstrate the unfitness of women -- a reason hauntingly similar to our white nationalist party running Herschel Walker for the Senate.  

How odd that another female failure, Kelly Loeffler, should bob to the surface today thanks to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which published some of her electronic communications in the heady days between the 2020 election and the failed coup.  Delightfully, she got reamed out by Tricia Raffensperger for joining Dolt 45 in pressuring Tricia's husband to falsify the election results.  Then she got "Hey!  I need to talk to you" by Empty Greene in the same cause and enthusiastically agreed to help with the plot as long as Trump gave her credit when the devil came down to Georgia to talk up her and David Perdue's candidacies.  (Both were satisfyingly clobbered, you'll recall.)  Then she backed down, fearing the "long term reputational risk" faced by herself and her husband, who runs a little mom & pop called the New York Stock Exchange.  This was after her instincts for insider trading earned her the name Sticky Fingers Loeffler, at least here.  So long, Kelly, don't worry about us.  Jon Ossoff is doing your job better than you ever could.

This Huffpost headline grabbed my eye:  BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY BESTOWS DANIEL CRAIG WITH SAME HONOR HELD BY JAMES BOND.  But do we really need an actor with a license to kill?  Actually, Princess Anne made him an honorary Commander in the Royal Navy, which is a lot less upsetting.

In a last-gasp ad buy, Pennsylvania voters are being reminded of an encounter between John Fetterman and a Black jogger in 2013.  The face of the ad is a Black woman identified as only Janice H.  That's because she's long-time right wing minister/birther Janice Hollis and not some random voter who just happened to step forward.  In other words, as phony as Oz operative Sheila Armstrong.   Does Oz know any Black people who aren't on his payroll?  (Oprah doesn't count, as she's clearly not interested in coming within a hundred miles of his campaign.)

It may be worth signing up for Peacock to see the new documentary about Rosa Parks, the civil rights figure who is invoked by the right these days as often and as disturbingly as the Holocaust.  At one point she appears on a TV game show, apparently because she needed the money -- and I'm reminded of Jesse Owens, who came home from Berlin in 1936 with four gold medals and took a series of menial jobs to survive.  Her great-nephew says, "She was a soldier from birth," not just a tired seamstress who refused to vacate a bus seat.  I wonder what she would say to Janice Hollis or Sheila Armstrong.  Or Candace Owens.

I think I know what she would say to Tucker Carlson, who has taken to bashing Joy Reid and Tiffany Cross for provoking a "race war" and comparing MSNBC to the Rwandan radio station that urged the geocide of the Tutsi people.  She would do so politely, eschewing words like "shithead."  Allow me, Mrs. Parks.

Trump got deposed yesterday in the case stemming from his rape of E. Jean Carroll, but it's a day that ends in a "y" so he can't keep from verbally raping her some more.  Carroll's description of the assault puts him in his place:  "It didn't last long."  I seem to recall Stormy Daniels saying something similar, and she was getting paid.

Carroll recovered from her experience a lot better than Lara Logan.  Shame on you, Newsmax, for putting this mentally disturbed woman on your air.  Have you no decency at long last?

  

On a personal note

 

You think you're having a bad day?  That could be your nonna's coffin.  Part of the Poggioreale cemetery in Naples collapsed, dumping the contents of burial niches into the street.  It's the second time in a year the ill-maintained building has disturbed the eternal rest of its occupants.  One strand of my DNA originated in the Naples area, so I could have relatives dangling over the side today.  Vincenzo Santagada, a city councilor with responsibility for cemeteries, says he's on it, which is reassuring.

According to Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso Italians are not white but "Latin," a claim he chose to make during a debate with Karen Bass on Telemundo.  Was this "a silly ploy" to ingratiate himself with the actual Latinos who comprise most of the Telemundo audience (and a significant number of LA voters)?  Perhaps he had recently read Nell Irvin Painter's masterful study of intra-white racism, The History of White People.  Perhaps not.  It's true that 19th century Italian immigrants were the victims of discrimination and even lynching, along with others whose numbers the 1924 immigration act sought to limit, but it hasn't been the case for a long time.  To claim protected status when you have never personally been on the receiving end of discrimination is to trivialize the experiences of millions of people who have.  Caruso is a successful (I assume) real estate operator who has chosen to share his expertise with Los Angeles.  Just what that city needs, its own Trump.  

Voting began in Georgia this week and look what arrived in today's mail:  A letter from the "Department of Human Services" in Henderson, Nevada.  I assumed it was just an official-looking attempt to sell me Medicare supplemental insurance ('tis the season).  It was worse.  It's a debit card worth $350 and a letter that begins, "Governor Brian P. Kemp has dedicated more than $1 Billion of American Rescue Plan Act funds for the Department of Human Services to provide cash assistance to active enrollees in Medicaid, SNAP and/or TANF government benefit programs."  The Department of Human Services is a state agency (mysteriously working out of Nevada) which quite properly omits the word "health" since Kemp did everything he could to spread covid by defying lockdown and mask mandates; his constant ads even brag about it.  I think I'll activate the card and make a one-time contribution of $350 to Stacey Abrams.  Although I admire the chutzpah involved in using Biden-bucks for the purpose of attempted bribery.

Get ready to have all your buttons pushed:  Randy Kaufman, Republican candidate for the governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District, has suspended his campaign.  Kaufman was arrested on October 4 for allegedly masturbating in his truck near a preschool.  What part of that sentence doesn't make you smile?  Kaufman said on his Facebook page that he's running because he wants "our children protected from the progressive left."  Ha!  That got you, didn't it?

The Ukrainians who earlier this month "voted" "overwhelmingly" to join the Russian Empire 2.0 seem to have had second thoughts.  Why else would Putin have imposed martial law in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces?  Outside agitators?

Speaking of Putin, as a quarter-Latin member of The West, I'm getting tired of every tinpot thug blaming us for his self-created problems.  Next thing you know, Putin will announce it's our fault that he's ugly and short and his army can't fight.  We're not that powerful.  Genetics probably had a lot to do with it, Vlad -- were your parents ugly and short?  Same for you, Ultimate Ayatollah or whatever you call yourself.  Iran's not roiled by protests for a fourth week because women are sick of being treated like garbage, it's always The West.  Be grateful they're burning hijabs and not your louse-infested beard -- so far.  And as long as I'm ranting, I propose that Kanye West change his last name, too.  What goes with Ye?  How about Stinfection?

Where did that come from?  There's a lot of anger, people, and that's not all.  Lee County, Florida, where Hurricane Ian came ashore, is seeing a spike in Vibrio vulnificus (flesh-eating bacteria) with eleven deaths this year.  Jackson, Mississippi, found a scapegoat for the collapse of its antiquated water system as a man pleaded guilty to dumping industrial waste into the sewer.  And in Florissant, Missouri, what's described as "entirely unacceptable" levels of radioactive waste were discovered on the grounds of an elementary school, apparently left over from the Manhattan Project.  How many children passed through there over the last 77 years?  Meanwhile Texas is taking a novel approach to the problem of school shootings:  students will receive kits to collect their fingerprints and DNA to make identification easier after the next Second Amendment event.  

It sounds as if the red states have all they can handle, and yet they obsess about imaginary problems.  Scott Perry (R-PA), who chairs the Free Dumb Caucus, wants to be sure there's a paper-trail when he and his pals start investigating the Biden administration's role in preventing Russia and Ukraine from making peace, on Russia's terms, of course.  "If these nitwits in this jackwagon administration are blundering us or intentionally marching us to war with Russia, nuclear or otherwise, we'd better start to preserve the evidence so there can be accountability."  He knows it's true because he heard it from Tulsi Gabbard, who heard it from Glenn Greenwald, who heard it from Tucker Carlson on Russia Tonight.  Regime change has been Biden's evil plan all along because...I forget.  Anyway, Perry wants his phone back from the FBI.  He was a victim on January 6 just like Empty Greene!

Speaking of idiots, why would Trump talk to Bob Woodward with or without a tape recorder?  Why would he show Woodward letters from Kim Jong-un, saying, "Oh, these are so top secret" and "don't say I gave them to you, OK?"  Perhaps we'll learn more when Woodward's new book comes out next week.  Perhaps we can guess.  This is why even bad lawyers don't want to work for him.  It's an audiobook, so we can hear that ignorant Queens whine as he giggles over how much Kim loves him.  I can't wait.

The World Health Organization is being forced to ration cholera vaccine.  But chances are the next pandemic will involve viruses that have long been frozen in melting glaciers.  Nobody on earth will have any natural immunity to those guys.  To paraphrase Al Sleet, your hippy-dippy weatherman, I wouldn't sweat the cholera.

Smiling through

 

Have you ordered your Police Badge and Handcuffs yet?  Only $10.99 at Amazon!

Woburn, Massachusetts, police officer John Donnelly was an organizer of the murderous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Trump praised the "very fine people on both sides."  Only five years later Middlesex County district attorney Marina Ryan is looking into all pending and closed cases Donnelly was involved in.  Like Trump, he liked to post antisemitic rants on social media, but I'm sure that never affected his professionalism.

"U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel -- Before it is too late!" Trump threatened.  So that's three ways Trump differs from Hitler.  Hitler loved dogs, Hitler served in the military and Hitler did not expect gratitude from Jews.  Trump expects it because "No President has done more for Israel than I have."  Has he heard of Harry Truman?

In her debate with Marcus Flowers, Margie Greene depicted herself as a "victim" of the scary January 6 coup attempt despite her many texts cheering on the rioters and urging Trump to declare "Marshall law."  Also "There was election fraud in the 2020 election and my husband has the proof of it."  But instead of producing Perry's proof, or indeed Perry, she raged about "genital mutilation" and "child abuse" and called Flowers a liar.  So your basic 2022 political discourse.  This is the first day of voting in Georgia and two-hour waits are already being reported.  Don't forget to bring your own bottled water -- acts of charity are illegal in this notch on the bible belt.

They were all over the place with ignorance-based medical advice this week.  The HuffPost reported that during 2020 Don Bolduc, Trump-selected Senate candidate in New Hampshire, said Narcan, the drug administered to overdose victims, "keeps them addicted," presumably because it stops them from dying.  Herschel Walker, when asked about lower drug prices, said people don't need insulin at all if they "eat right."  (Perhaps he's an honorary endocrinologist as well as an honorary sheriff.)  And Mehmet Oz, putatively a doctor, described various urine flavors to Jimmy Kimmel and revealed that he once stuck a syringe in his sister's head.  "It didn't go in!  The skull got in the way!"  I'm assuming they were children.  Am I too generous?  And is that the sister he's fighting in a Turkish court over their father's will?

Jerry Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee and fifteen-term Congressman, is about to become a sixteen-term Congressman, but the New York Republican Party decided they should run someone against him anyway.  (You at the back -- did you yell "sacrificial lamb"?)  They have nominated Mike Zumbluskas.  But there's an independent candidate named Mike Itkis running on a promise to decriminalize sex work.  To that end he hired a professional and made a thirteen-minute sex tape which can be seen on Pornhub.  Yes, in 2022 a candidate is campaigning with a video that previous candidates would have decried as a fake or paid cash money to suppress.  O tempora, o mores, o good grief.  (Wait, could Zumbluskas have changed his name to Itkis to sound more "American"?)  

I need this election to end.

Culture in the crosshairs

 After the World Series will come the World Cup (beginning November 20) and that's when the world will actually take notice.  The short-pants-and-kickball event is always hard for most Americans to care about and this year will be extra demanding, as Qatar imposes North Korea-like restrictions on journalists.  Of course Fox Sports is fine with them but others chafe at not being able to discuss human rights abuses, the conditions of the migrant workers who built the stadium, or anything "offensive to the Qatari culture or Islamic principles."  I guess you can talk about the weather and the concession food.  I may have to forget to tune in.

In London, where free speech is at least tolerated, a couple of morons walked into the National Gallery and glued themselves to the wall after flinging canned soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers.  This is supposed to deter the government from issuing new oil and gas licenses and make it work harder on fixing the economy and the climate crisis.  Since the Truss government is barely functioning at this point and Van Gogh was not a known proponent of fracking, I'm at a loss to see what was accomplished other than getting them on the news.  (The painting is behind glass but anyone who queued to see it was out of luck.)  The moron with the purple hair needs to ask herself what chemicals she is applying to her head, for a start.

Before you price houses in New Zealand consider that it may not be the earthly paradise.  The government is pulling a $30,000 subsidy for a hugely popular high school Shakespeare festival because it features "a canon of imperialism."  Worse, it does not demonstrate "the relevance to the contemporary art context of Aotearoa in this time and place and landscape."  Not insular enough, in other words, and makes some indigenous students feel bad about themselves.  In other words, Critical Shakespeare Theory.  I don't know, I think there's plenty of room for cultural crossover.  How would you like this to enliven a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Australia next door is the birthplace of Miriam Margolyes, who hasn't lost her edge at 81.  On Britain's Today program she told the presenters what she wanted to say when she encountered this week's Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt:  "Fuck you, bastard."  And this was before he announced more public service cuts and tax hikes.  They hustled her out of the studio but someone saved it to Twitter.  Nothing goes to waste now.

Margolyes could give John Cleese a talking-to.  At 83 he has found a refuge from "cancel culture" at GB News, which I haven't heard but which seems to be the UK's answer to Newsmax -- Fox News with all inhibitions removed.  He's willing to share a platform with anti-vaxers, conspiracy theorists and professional Markle-haters for the sake of -- what, exactly?  I imagine the BBC would let him say whatever is on his mind provided he goes easy on the potty-mouth, which has never been his style anyway.  Why would anyone who cares about his body of work, his legacy, abandon the Times for the Daily Stormer?  I'm at a loss.  

I like to troll YouTube for the comedy stylings of Christopher Hitchens, who would go anywhere for an audience.  I'm not quite desperate enough to listen to him debate the likes of Dinesh D'Souza or various clerics, but the other night I came across a solo performance from 2009 that was eye-opening.  Way back then, you will remember, Hitch and everyone at the Commonwealth Club of California were sure the greatest threat to Our Way of Life was "Islamofascism," and nothing was more important than expunging the regime of Saddam Hussein.  Not once did it occur to anyone that the fascists were already within the gates, affiliated rather with Christianity, and that the threat was considerably more dire than planes aimed at skyscrapers.  What an innocent time.  

Clown-dread is so widespread there's a medical name for it.  Here's why.

 

The wheels come off

 

Did you know that Muslim parents in Dearborn who "oppose teaching pornography to children" are the new shock troops of the fascist right?   Neither did they.  It was the gist of a fake article posted as if to The Atlantic and guess who fell for it:  Proud product of Princeton and Harvard Ted Cruz.  When the hoax was explained he responded, "You guys are so insane it could easily have been real."  Fooling Ted is something of a national pastime like the ice bucket challenge.  Nobody in Michigan or anyplace else is teaching "pornography" to children, but that's become a shorthand description of sex ed beyond vanilla man-on-top-make-baby.  Why do we continue to be impressed by the Ivy League?

At a rake-stepping event in Philadelphia Mehmet Oz brought a woman onstage and "comforted" her about gun violence in her family.  He failed to mention that they had met before.  In fact, Sheila Armstrong is Philadelphia County Coordinator for the Oz campaign.  That doesn't make her grief at the deaths of her brother and nephew less real, it just makes Oz less honest -- a singular achievement when we're talking about Dr. Snakeoil.

Wasn't it clever of Governissimo DeSantis to lie to Venezuelan asylum seekers about jobs and then fly them to the redoubts of radicaliberals, like Martha's Vineyard and Kamala Harris's house?  He sure stuck it to the libs!  How could that possibly backfire?  Well, Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County, Texas, has certified that 48 of them were the victims of a crime, paving the way for them to receive U-visas and eventually green cards.  Muchas gracias, Governissimo!  You moved them out of the path of a hurricane and jump-started their new lives in the US.  Be sure to mention that when you run for president.  I'm sure it will impress your party's xenophobic base.

"Abortionist bitch daughter"?  Ivanka?  What could Roger Stone possibly mean?  Maybe "abortionist" is just another term of abuse popular with idiots, like "woke" and "groomer."  If you know a fascist idiot, consider a word-a-day calendar for Christmas.  These people are as articulate as sandbags.

On Wednesday George Stephanopoulos suddenly remembered a 2016 Trump interview that might have been significant earlier.  "I asked him a question about...the Muslim woman whose son was killed and he attacked her.  And he just went after her."  That would be Ghazala Khan, mother of Captain Humayun Khan who was killed in Iraq.  "I was like, I guess the interview's over.  He just ended his campaign."  Stephanopoulos then tried to ask about Putin, causing Trump to flounce out of the room.  "I could hear the yelling in the hallway," which was Trump ordering Hope Hicks to bring Stephanopoulos out so he could yell at him some more.  It might have been responsible for this "journalist" to mention Trump's instability six years ago but he sat on it, and not even for a book like Maggie Haberman -- for twenty minutes (minus commercials) with Stephen Colbert.  You're a hero, George.  Take a gumdrop.

Trump was up most of the night assembling a compendium of bullshit which he addressed to Chairman Bennie Thompson after the "Unselect Committee" voted to subpoena him.  None of it was remotely factual, including an assertion of the last hearing's "very poor ratings," a Trump benchmark for everything.  Then he sent his smurfs out to tell people he "may choose" to testify.  Yes, and I may choose to win the National Book Award, but it's equally unlikely to happen.  

If Putin's ex-puppet is showing signs of "agitation, generalized slowing of mental and physical activity, increased appetite and unusual tiredness or weakness" it could be down to the nationwide shortage of Adderall announced by the FDA.  I'm sure he has sources beyond the legitimate ones, like Ronny Jackson, but we should watch for the symptoms anyway.  Slowing of mental activity?  As Dorothy Parker said of the death of Calvin Coolidge, how can they tell?

  

Closing in

 

Yesterday we learned that an "employee" at Mar a Lago moved boxes of documents into the Boss's residence after he found out the FBI was coming to look for them.  I believe this person because they lied about it at first; the story changed when jail was mentioned in subsequent interviews.  Now the Document Thief knows there's a spy in his organization.  Now he's scared.

He also learned that he has to be deposed under oath in E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit, which could lead to the only consequences he has faced for a career of sexual assaults.  Clarence Thomas sidestepped his "Can you do me a favor?" and referred it to his eight associates, who brusquely ruled, "The application to vacate the stay entered for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied."  (Which gets him off the hook with Ginni and bitch-slaps Aileen Cannon.)  No, Trump can't have the stolen secrets back, 9-0.

And the icing on the cake is another unanimous vote:  to subpoena his ass in front of the House Select Committee, whether he recognizes its validity or not.  The Committee presented one of its outstanding documentaries today featuring previously unseen video of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer pleading for the Maryland and Virginia National Guards; a selection of texts the Secret Service weren't able to conceal; the pre-riot plotting of Bannon and Stone; and testimony from Elaine Chao which isn't going to tone down Trump's racism a bit.  Jamie Raskin matched up the violence with the Trump tweets like a Swiss watch.  It's over.  He may not even have noticed the request by New York AG Letitia James for an injunction to stop the "ongoing fraud" of the Trump Organization.  No more stashing assets like Alex Jones.

Back in August the Justice Department said it would not seek a search warrant for the Bedminster theme park, but that was before video surfaced of more document boxes being loaded on Trump's plane.  And now I'm going to editorialize:  Bring in the ground radar and search the whole place.  Trump's business associates probably have bodies buried all over his properties, especially in New Jersey.  It's hard to find a spot that won't be disturbed by construction work.  At this point there's nothing criminal I wouldn't happily believe about this individual.  

We don't just have the best-looking, smartest people, but the funniest.  Some Fox News performer was on yesterday complaining that because of Bidenflation, his lunch at Taco Bell cost $28.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied, "If someone is talking politics and eating $28 of Taco Bell at one sitting, then my immediate follow-up question is what their thoughts are on Biden's cannabis rescheduling."  He can read that when he's no longer hunched over on the toilet.

Fox News's idea of funny is a 2018 phone message that private citizen Joe Biden left for his son Hunter.  Despite his drug addiction and other problems, the old man still loves him.  Isn't that weak and girlie?  Telling your son you care about him and you want him to get help?  You know what man's man would never talk like that to Junior or Eric?  Yes, you do.  Hannity's stunt didn't get quite the response he expected, except from his fellow monsters.  Cut him some slack -- he has to get pretty low to stay competitive with Tin-tray Tucker.  

The year 5783 got off to a rocky start for Jews, with antisemitism spiking everywhere.  First there was Kanye West's weird rant about "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE," then Candace Owens's weird defense of his weird rant.  ("Honest people" know Ye is not going to start a second Holocaust so what's the problem?  As Empty Greene said of Alex Jones's slanderous abuse, "All he did was speak words.")  Then there was the West stuff that was too crazy even for Tucker Carlson, like did you know Margaret Sanger, a "known eugenics," joined forces with the KKK and created Planned Parenthood to "control the Jew population"?  (People who talk about the "Democrat Party" will eventually use "Jew" as an adjective, too.)  Then the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire ("Live free or don't") posted an unhinged tweet comparing Volodymyr Zelensky with Hitler.  The tweet has been deleted but the smell lingers -- Zelensky lost family members in the Holocaust.  Of course, that has never deterred the Soros-haters either.  Also, Trump is now calling E. Jean Carroll "Ms. Bergdorf Goodman," but I don't even know if that's supposed to be racist.  I have a headache.

Are the microwaves still spying on your fortress of solitude, Donzo?  Time to rip out the walls.

Psst! Want some good news?

 Nothing major, but...interesting.

Last month Mike Lee bragged of having the support of every Republican in the Senate except Mitt Romney.  Last night in Trust-fund Tucker's Tree House he begged Romney, "Please get on board.  Help me win reelection."  His opponent, Evan McMullin, is running as an independent and apparently scaring him silly.  

By executive order Gov. David Ige of Hawaii promised not to aid any other state in prosecuting women who travel there for abortions.

Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump must be deposed under oath next week in E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit.  Expect him to run crying to Clarence Thomas, as this one is not in Aileen Cannon's jurisdiction.

After today's verdict in Connecticut, and with one more trial to come, Alex Jones owes about a billion dollars to the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  

The Treasury Department is looking into whether Florida illegally used covid relief funds to kidnap and traffic asylum seekers to Massachusetts.

In today's Herschel Howler, the candidate proclaimed himself Native American, specifically, "My mom just told me that my mom, grandmother, was full-blood Cherokee."  His mother says that's not true and so does the Cherokee Nation database.  If he takes one-tenth the shit that Elizabeth Warren did, I will eat this computer.  

Rep. Zoe Lofgren promises "pretty surprising" material in tomorrow's House Select Committee hearing.  I'm pumped.

Denis Molla of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, claimed someone set fire to his camper van because of his love for Trump.  He has now pleaded guilty to wire fraud after "filing fraudulent insurance claims for a staged arson."  In addition to the insurance he got $17,000 from a GoFundMe page.  Raising money through lies and fraud -- how Trumpish.  Now Molla has no van and the letters "BLM" are painted on his garage.  Yes, he did that, too.

More than 50,000 acres of Colorado will be protected from new mining and drilling because Joe Biden designated the area Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument.  Green Brandon is on a roll!

The ugly American

 

It looks like a special effect from a low-budget scifi movie of the 1950s but it's actually the biggest, ugliest pumpkin of all time.  At 2,560 pounds Maverick, for such is its name, won the title and the $23,040 prize at the Half Moon Bay, California, pumpkin festival.  It even survived the trip from its birthplace in Minnesota.  Now what?

The pumpkin is America's national vegetable.  Pumpkins are raised by the millions at vast expenditure of time, fertilizer and increasingly precious water, mostly for decorating porches over a couple of weeks in October.  As if that isn't wasteful enough, thousands are employed in a "sport" called Punkin Chunkin, the object of which is to hurl them through the air "without the aid of electricity or explosives" and smash them, before presumably cheering crowds.  The distance record, if you care, is 4,438 feet.  Some pumpkins are processed and canned so bakers can use them in pie.  That's about it.  

Imagine you are in a country where food and water are scarce and you come across an account of America's Official Vegetable being raised not to feed people or animals but to be pointlessly destroyed.  What would you think of such a country?  How long can we go on being such a country?  Americans found a continent rich with everything people could want and despoiled it in five hundred years -- passenger pigeons, bison, trees, water, minerals -- where did it go?  Places in California soon will have no water to drink, much less to raise huge, disgusting gourds that nobody eats.  

It's early for Thanksgiving but I feel like this.

Oye como va

I was just about to write something pithy and insightful about the state of the world, but Google proclaimed this Tito Puente Day and I got sidetracked.  What follows will be somewhat incoherent, but at least you can dance to it.

Last month Joe Biden forgot that Rep. Jackie Walorski had died several weeks earlier.  This was widely proclaimed to be evidence of hopeless dementia.  On Sunday Trump wanted to know why George H.W. Bush was not being prosecuted for stuffing government documents into fortune cookies or something -- even when the dentures don't wobble he's impossible to follow -- and nobody suggested that the self-proclaimed Stable Jenius was at all deteriorated.  (Bush has been dead for four years.)  It's almost as if the corporate media are afraid of death threats or something.

This just in:  Annunziata d'Alessandro Pelosi is not a Catholic.  Not even a Christian.  Baby Tuckoo says so.  Like Trump he appears to have had a psychotic break of some description, but as far as I can tell his "reasoning" goes like this:  She supported vaccine mandates during the pandemic.  The covid vaccine reduces fertility, according to no facts.  She wanted to keep women from having babies therefore she is no Catholic.  Poor Carlson's obsession with fertility was bad enough when he was checking his trousers every few minutes and promoting testicle tanning as the solution to low sperm counts.  Now he is also an expert on ovaries.  To the Speaker of the House, as to all women, his message is "Be quiet!"  Working five hours a week has left him (let's say) spent.  A long stay at a rest home is indicated.

"America cannot be saved through legislation.  Christ, not Congress, will be what saves this country."  Thus Madison Cawthorn in his evident farewell address to an empty House chamber.  He then exited, spitting tobacco juice.  Why the Washington Post thought this was newsworthy is a good question.  Although I did enjoy the illustration that accompanied their op-ed about a successful coup in 2024:

Arcimboldo meets Spitting Image:

Svante Paabo of Sweden has won the Nobel Prize in physiology for his work on Neanderthal genomes.  Way ahead of you, Dr. Paabo:

 

If Angela Lansbury had never played any role but Eleanor Shaw Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate she would be celebrated as one of the greatest.  Fortunately she did much more than that before her death today at 96.  For those of us who saw her in Sweeney Todd there can be no other Mrs. Lovett.  

Tulsi Gabbard has left the Democratic Party because she can no longer stand their anti-white racism and nuclear warmongering.  Shocking, isn't it?  Gabbard was a Democrat!

"All you do is kiss my ass to get my support," Trump said to J.D. Vance, by way of supporting him as he strives to become Ohio's next senator.  (Why do they even invite Agolf Twitler to their events?  Or does he just show up?)  In last night's debate Tim Ryan couldn't pass up that helping of caviar:  "Ohio needs an ass-kicker, not an ass-kisser."  Instant bumper sticker.

Even as she signed the declaration that there were no more stolen documents in Trump's sock drawer, Christina Bobb was wondering if coming aboard as his 803rd lawyer was a good career move.  Now, like all the others, she has hired counsel of her own and stopped by for a chat with the Justice Department.  (Also, she's not getting paid.  But she knew that.  We all knew that.)

Pathetically desperate to seem important, Trump is still yelling that he alone can fix it -- "it" being the war in Ukraine.  "The power of nuclear.  They have no idea what they're doing," the idiot who wanted to deploy nuclear weapons against a hurricane told puzzled Arizonans.  You know, the fool who thought he could make a gift of the West Bank to the king of Jordan.  The asshole who wanted to swap Puerto Rico for Greenland.  The foreign policy maven who thinks there's a "shithole country" called Nambia.  Now he wants to be Dag Hammarskjold.  Go back to your lair, retrieve the relevant docs and masturbate over Emmanuel Macron's sex life, you scabrous ogre.  

That feels better.  More Tito Puente?