Step right up!

 Some days the sideshow attractions the Republican base selects in primary after primary make me wonder if pity or sadness is the correct response, especially when families are estranged and publicly humiliated.  Today's exhibit is this tweet from Christian Walker to his father:  

"I know my mom and I would really appreciate it if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us.  You're not a 'family man' when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence...how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you're some 'moral, Christian, upright man.'  You've lived a life of destroying other people's lives.  How dare you."  

Christian, described as a "MAGA influencer" and proponent of family values, discovered this year (along with the rest of us) that he has three secret siblings, but what pushed him to the wall was the revelation that his father paid a woman to have an abortion in 2009 (she has a copy of his cancelled check and a receipt from the clinic, almost as if she knew this day would come).  The candidate, of course, denies it all and has threatened to sue the Daily Beast for breaking the story.  He has learned that much from his patron Trump.

Which brings us to another sad father and son.  First Tucker Carlson was Just Asking Questions about why Joe Biden vandalized the Nord Star pipelines to force Vladimir Putin into a nuclear war, but now he's certain and he's backed up by the unimpeachable Glenn Greenwald.  But wait!  There's more!  In the course of a press event with the Canadian foreign minister Antony Blinken was asked about the pipelines and said it presented "a tremendous opportunity" to convert Europe to renewable energy.  That's all Tuckums had to hear.  He had uncovered a sinister plot against the second-most harassed person in the world, Vladimir Putin.  "This act leaves us, the United States, with no option but total war with Russia."  The fuck?  Never mind, the TV dinner heir has spoken.

Father and son?  I'm getting there.  Junior Trump, ever eager for Daddy's approval, has already signed on to an alternative theory which is, frankly, nuttier and comes with artwork.  This is what he chose to re-tweet:

 Yes, it appears to be a Pixar version of Greta Thunberg attaching some "dynamite" to one of the pipelines and, at the bottom of the (suspiciously well-lit) Baltic Sea, removing her scuba mask to pose for a "picture."  "I could be wrong but my understanding is this is not photo shopped," adds Junior.  But he could be wrong.  Does Junior actually have a job?  Shouldn't he be sitting with lawyers trying to formulate a defense against AG James's lawsuit?  Is Kim putting drain cleaner in his nose powder?  I hope the old man at least sent him an "attaboy" if the creditors haven't shut down Ministry of Truth Social.

When Kim Jong-un heard there was a nuclear war starting up (he never misses a Carlson show) he wanted everyone to know he's rested and ready.  North Korea fired a missile over Japan and into the Pacific for the first time in five years.  It went way, way up and then came down.  Nobody was hurt.  

The other disastrous Senate candidate Mehmet Oz was revealed to have destroyed more than three hundred dogs in the course of medical research at Columbia University between 1989 and 2010.  I don't know what sort of research a TV pitchman needs to do, but the story (broken by Jezebel.com) got more attention than Herschel Walker's hypocrisy.  It also resulted in this picture of John Fetterman with his rescue dogs:

Not "photo shopped," Junior.  Are you afraid of dogs like your father?

Out in Michigan Tudor Dixon's campaign apparently paid cash money to these people to dress up like bikers and sing her praises.  Do not watch while drinking -- this one's a noser.

This, now -- this is Photoshopped.  Except for the shrimping boots, which are tragically real.

I think we have to say that DeSantis is Trump without the style sense.

Speaking of Florida, why is the state so interested in the menstrual cycles of school athletes?  I'm just asking questions.

Who said it?  "On day one, the sexualization of our kids, pole dancing, and all this other crap that's going on will be forbidden in our schools."  That "day one" gave it away.  Yes, it's Doug Mastriano, who only last week embarked on the creative campaign method of fasting and praying for forty days.  (Not really, but he promised to skip a meal every so often the better to fit into his Confederate uniform.)  Great-aunt Ruth taught school in Pennsylvania (York) for forty years.  I wish I had thought to ask her about the pole dancing before she passed.  

All right, Republican candidates, back into the clown car and fire up the calliope.  Only five weeks to go.