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.