Never mind

 Kyrsten Sinema is simplifying her life.  First she shucked off the Democratic Party and now she is selling her clothes and shoes on Facebook.  Sinema would be the tacky story of the week if Trump weren't peddling cards that no eight-year-old would buy if they came with bubble gum.  I guess $174,000 plus gratuities from lobbyists doesn't go as far as it used to.

As his splendid little war closes in on its 300th day, Putin is in Belarus to drop off some Christmas presents and chat up his fellow dictator Lukashenko.  Usually aggressors line up allies before the war starts.  It's not like he's new at this.

The quest to invent catchy acronyms for legislation has jumped the shark with Mike Lee's SCREEN Act (Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net).  The Utah Republican and Mormon (URM) is troubled by all the porn and wants sites to demand the user's age, and what fourteen-year-old would lie about their age just to see some boobs?  But there's more:  Lee has another bill for the grown-ups which would ban any content which "taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex or excretion" and "depicts, describes or represents actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse, titillate or gratify the sexual desires of a person."  At least Lee hasn't blamed mass shootings on porn.  He believes those are caused by "fatherlessness."

Trump spent the weekend trying to rouse his flying monkeys:  "Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer.  The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of 'Justice' and 'Intelligence,' all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer.  These Weaponized Thugs and Tyrants must be dealt with, or our once great and beautiful Country will die!!!"  Not only has the House Select Committee not been "dealt with," they're about to hold a televised hearing to announce their criminal recommendations.   The "orange-covered mud devil" (Tony Kushner) will not be pleased.

Insurrectionist Edward Kelley didn't wait to be asked.  He and his buddy Austin Carter had plans to attack the FBI office in Knoxville and kill the agents who investigated Kelley.  The patriots now face a variety of federal charges.

An article in today's Washington Post begs to be a novel co-written by Hunter S. Thompson and Joseph Heller.  Since that isn't going to happen, here's a particularly sad quote:  "Natalie Harp...often accompanies Trump on his daily golf outings, riding the course in a golf cart equipped with a laptop and sometimes a printer to show him uplifting news articles, online posts or other materials."  They've built him a replica Oval Office described as "like a Barbie Dream House miniature."  There is so much White House loot scattered over storage lockers and offices from Crystal City, Virginia, to West Palm Beach that any spy who didn't come home with an armful of classified documents should have been shot by his or her government.

Benjamin Netanyahu was mildly critical of Trump for dining with someone who had promised to "go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE" but enraged by a New York Times editorial critical of his probable incoming government.  He accused the paper of "burying the Holocaust for years on its back pages and demonizing Israel for decades on its front pages," continuing the practice of conflating Israel with all Jews everywhere.  (It didn't help that a lot of people thought the layout of the crossword resembled a swastika -- "a hidden Happy Chanukah message?" asked city councilman Kalman Yeger.)  Those who say Trump has done no "campaign events" since his dispiriting ballroom announcement have not noticed the ovation he got Friday from some Orthodox Jews who apparently agree that he's " the best ally you've ever had."  It didn't hurt that the President's Conference of Torah Umesorah was held at his Doral resort, and that he forgot to mention Kanye and...Nick?  Nick who?

Fox News Digital (aren't most of their fans too old for computers?) questioned the White House about a rumor that queer activists had been appointed to an HIV advisory council, which sounds eminently sensible.  Deputy press secretary Bates responded thus, and I finally know what I want for Festivus.

The incoming Republican Congressman from New York, George Santos, appears to have lied about everything but his shoe size.  Didn't the Democrats do any research on this Trump-in-the-making?

"To watch these evil bastards...steal this in broad daylight, and if they think they are going to get away with it, they messed with the wrong bitch."  That was "Governor" Kari Lake addressing the Log Cabin Republican holiday gathering at "President" Trump's place.  "I know you can identify as anything you want," she went on.  "I identify as a proud election-denying deplorable...and my pronouns are, 'I won.'"  Really, grammar school teachers, do a better job.  Then she led a chorus of "Over the Rainbow" to thank Joe Biden for signing the Respect for Marriage Act -- I'm joking, of course, wrong room.

If I can't have a Thompson-Heller novel I want a dramatization of The Mark Meadows Texts, with Angela Lansbury as Ginni Thomas...what?  Damn!