Shanda

 When I read that a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a synagogue in Bloomfield, I hoped it was the one in Connecticut.  No, it had to be Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey, the town I grew up in.  That was long ago.  

Friday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day and that wasn't the worst thing that happened.  Rep. "George Santos" decided his first speech to the House should be a condemnation of antisemitism.  It sounded especially hollow to actual Jews who don't appreciate this guy lying about his grandparents supposedly fleeing Ukraine one step ahead of the Nazis.  (He could have made it Ireland and the Black and Tans or Armenians escaping Ottoman forces.  Do some research.)  Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) called it "appalling and offensive."  "Santos" has withdrawn from both committees the Squeaker assigned him until his problems with federal and state investigators and the fact-based world generally have been resolved.  He still gets paid, so he won't have to set up any more fake GoFundMe's and pocket the cash.  And he'll have more time for speeches about his great-uncle being lynched or his cousin hiding out with the Frank and Van Dam families.  His spokesperson is called Naysa Woomer, which is as plausible as anything else.

 

 Here's the unsuccessful synagogue bomber.  I wonder if he's a graduate of Dissident Homeschool.

First Bloomfield, then Stormy Daniels.  Am I having flashbacks?  Is this where I came in?  No, it was back in 2016 when Trump decided to pay the actor/producer $130,000 to not talk about their one-night stand (she estimated ninety seconds, if I'm remembering right) lest it dismay his fundagelical supporters.  It's 2023, I checked, and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg suddenly got the urge to convene a grand jury and investigate possible law-breaking, a line of inquiry he had previously abandoned.  Trump's taking it as seriously as he's capable, calling Bragg "radical" and Daniels "horse faced," though he stopped short of sneering that she's "not my type."  It looks like the irresistibly named David Pecker, then editor of the National Inquirer, has already testified.  $130,000 divided by 90 seconds works out to about $1,445 a second.  Trump got a bargain.

Another blast from 2016 is the arrest of former FBI agent Charles McGonigal, who was snuggling up with Paul Manafort and Oleg Deripaska that year while using the New York field office to ratfuck Hillary Clinton's campaign.  Remember all her classified emails?  Yeah, turns out not so classified after all, despite what James Comey hinted -- loudly -- in the closing days of the campaign.  Should the New York Times admit it was the chief facilitator of the ratfuck? media critics want to know.  As do I.

Gym Jordan demanded to see what the Justice Department has on Joe Biden's classified documents investigation and they told him to piss up a rope.  The DoJ is slow but when they put their foot down it leaves a mark.

Tropical Trump-on-the-run Jair Bolsonaro has applied for a six-month visa to continue evading prosecution in Florida.  When the inevitable coup happens I expect Putin to join hm.

The Republiclowns can't prevent women from serving in state legislatures yet, but they can tighten the screws by imposing dress codes.  Missouri already required "dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots" but an amendment proposed shamefully by Ann Kelly says no more sweaters, not "professional" enough, and certainly no exposed arms.  Florida, usually in the vanguard of vileness, has now responded by banning "low-cut blouses or dresses, sleeveless tops, and dresses and skirts more than one inch above the knee."  Apart from head coverings, this sounds like the required attire for an audience with the pope or interview with the Grand Ayatollah of Iran.

Poor Kari Lake has found her Max Von Mayerling.  "You're the frickin' governor of Arizona," Steve Bannon assured her on his podcast Picnic with Pigpen.  "You just won an incredibly tough race because you stood for policies that MAGA stood for."  Madame is the greatest governor of them all.

   

The mirror crack'd

 

I'm confident that no presidential candidate in a century has kicked off his campaign by referencing "the late, great gangster, Alphonse Capone!"  As in he has more lawyers working for him than Big Al.  Trump seems to find this praiseworthy.  Like Capone, his guilt is not in doubt but it may yet be necessary to ignore all the sedition, treason and serial rape and convict him of tax evasion.  This is what happens when you activate your thumbs without engaging whatever brain you have left.

Instead of the vast hate parties of 2020 he's booking smaller venues to make the "crowd" look bigger, like a high school auditorium in Salem, New Hampshire, followed by the South Carolina statehouse.  He'll probably head for a Chik-fil-a in Zanesville, Ohio, next, and J.D. Vance will think of a reason not to join him, like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.  As Big Al knew, you can't trust nobody to be loyal.

Trump must be broken out with skin eruptions from the pressure of all the pending indictments because he's wearing more makeup than Gene Simmons gets through in a national KISS tour.  The ravings are familiar yet dialed up to eleven.  Wind turbines "kill all the birds, destroy all the planes, and our beautiful oceans and seas and everything else."  I remember when they just caused cancer.  If you want to become an American citizen, "go to the southern border, just walk across the line," a previously unknown clause in the Fourteenth Amendment.  (Trump still has all the best words -- he invented the word "caravan," no matter what the dictionaries say about its Persian origin --FAKE ETYMOLOGY!!)  Just three more weeks in office and he would have completed WALL, and not with ugly shipping containers like that loser Ducey, who refused to find him all the votes in Arizona.  Also he could still order Putin to stop the war because puppets tell their ventriloquists what to do, like in that movie Dead of Night.  Etc.  Time called it "a standard Trump speech, but with a more uneven pacing and a little weirder and meandering."  A little weirder?

"I am more angry now and I am more committed now than ever."  So all that about Capone and turbines destroying planes and instant citizenship was not a display of Trumpian wit?  And the inability of the Taliban to fight at night because they lack "binoculars"?  He wants a "new credentialing body" which will certify the "patriotism" of teachers and fire "pink-haired communists" -- I have no clue where that came from but I know teachers in the Third Reich had to spend a month in Nazi boot camp.  

"World War III would be a catastrophe unlike any other," he proclaimed, and it's hard to argue.  And of course it's going to be Joe Biden's doing.  When he's swept to power he will build an "impenetrable dome" to protect the country for which he has nothing but contempt.  Israel has a missile defense system known as the Iron Dome and it's possible he thinks it's a real dome.  Or he wants to revive Reagan's "Star Wars," which consumed billions of dollars and never worked even in tests.  Or he doesn't know Israel is about the size of New Jersey.  

Oh, yes, Hunter Biden's laptop.  It's going to be an entertaining year.

  

Who's got the bicycle pump?

 Laughs are scarce in war but count on those merry Russians to brighten a cold January day.  They're sending inflatable tanks to Ukraine.  Of course, they also deflate.

The obvious inspiration is General George Patton's "Ghost Army" a huge exercise in subterfuge designed to confuse the Luftwaffe about where tanks were being massed for the invasion of Europe.  It helped that the Germans respected Patton more than any other Allied commander and couldn't believe that smacking a few soldiers suffering from PTSD would get him relieved in disgrace.  

Of course the rubber tanks were never used in combat, as appears to be the case in Ukraine.  I don't think Putin's generals are in on the joke.  We've seen Ukrainian farmers towing real Russian tanks which ran out of gas, now they can use these to patch their boots.

Meanwhile Russian TV reporter Anastasia Yelsukova was covering a battle in Donetsk when she suddenly cried out and grabbed her knee.  Russian media posted images of her getting first aid, being transported, and in the hospital.  Her leg was saved!  Unless, of course, it's just more maskirovka (bullshit).  In soccer they call it "diving."

Putin's No. 1 cheerleader in America Tucker Carlson thinks we should imitate the Fearless Leader of All Western Civilization by invading a harmless neighboring country.  "Why should we let it become Cuba?" he demanded, naming another neighbor.  Of course it's Canada, which has dealt through its legal system (Merrick Garland, please note) with truckers who obstructed traffic in Ottawa last year because they didn't want to follow covid protocols.  "I'm completely in favor of a Bay of Pigs operation to liberate that country," he went on, citing a notable low point in the enforcement of our one-sided Monroe Doctrine.  Then he giggled to let the boys and girls know that his words "cannot reasonably be interpreted as facts."  Especially when he's being sued.  Tuckums, if you love Russia so much go and fight for it. 

I don't have any Santos jokes today because he hasn't claimed to be a lost Romanov heir or the guy who shot Tupac, and because the shit's getting real.  The Federal Election Commission was starting to interest itself in the anonymous donors to his 2020 campaign (if you lose they don't care, it's like The Producers) when the FBI said, "It's OK, we got this."  That means a criminal investigation, and he's already facing one from Nassau County DA Anne T. Donnelly.   If Donnelly is anything like Fani Willis, Santos/Devolder/Ravache/Fischer-Dieskau* should throw himself on the mercy of the Justice Department.

DirecTV, a private corporation, made a business decision to drop Newsmax, which is Fox News for people under 70, and James Comer (R-KY) promised that his House Oversight Committee (I always want to write Overlook, like the hotel) will hold very serious hearings into this assault on the First Amendment or whatever he thinks it is.  This is how the very serious House Klown Kaucus works.  Next:  hearings into people who refuse to watch Newsmax.  

New Hampshire ("Live Free and Don't Pay Taxes") has four electoral votes, which might be one reason Joe Biden chose not to campaign there (covid being the other).  They're miffed, and Marianne Williamson is trying to capitalize on the miffing by being the first and most hopeless challenger in the  state.  She's there right now, trying on mufflers and lighting scented candles and exuding so much positive woo that several diners had to be evacuated.  I assume this is how she sells books.

Are you tired of American flags and "Dont Tread On Me" shirts manufactured in the People's Republic of China?  Sure, we all are!  Cory Mills (R-FL) is so happy Florida makes hand grenades that he presented one to each of his colleagues, along with a letter of authenticity.  He says they're inert and I say he is.  Anyway, the metal detectors are definitely gone.  If you're not familiar with this particular example of Florida Man, he's an election denier who's proud his company also makes tear gas for use on Black Lives Matter and other uppity...folks.  (Here's a description of the original Mills grenade, made for British forces during World War I.  Cory's looks like a roll-on deodorant.)

Given Florida's nonchalant attitude toward covid, no one should be surprised that a network of nursing schools sold fake credentials to 7,600 people in the state.  It isn't called "God's waiting room" for nothing. 

*He hasn't claimed to be a German singer yet but there's plenty of time. 

Nothing to see

The Friday night doc dump is a longstanding Washington tradition:  Put out inconvenient information at the end of the week, when all but political junkies are unlikely to be paying attention, distracted by sports, shopping, family activities and other weekend events.  By Monday it's old news and we're all braced for fresh outrages.

I chose to look away from the latest wrinkle -- let's call it the Friday night snuff film.  I spared myself the police video of a frustrated David DePape attacking Paul Pelosi in the absence of his real target Speaker Nancy Pelosi (do I have to say "allegedly" when he made it perfectly clear who he wanted to "talk to"?).  I also decided not to watch the half-hour assault on Tyre Nichols by Memphis police which caused his death several days later.  The memory of George Floyd calling for his mother is still indelible, thank you, and that was only eight minutes and forty-six seconds.  I may not be strong enough to witness American history in the making.  

We have made so much progress in the century or so since lynchings were recorded with a box camera and then made into postcards which the participants could mail to friends (until the post office improbably refused to handle them).  Thanks to Smartphones and body-cams (and courageous witnesses like Darnella Frazier) the world can watch in real time as America embarrasses itself afresh.  They don't even try to conceal or destroy the evidence.  At least racist murderers by the 1950s hid the bodies of victims like Emmett Till.  Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were buried in an earth dam, which must have required a lot of work in the dark.

The January 6 insurrectionists had a similar nonchalance about their attempt to overthrow the government.  They attacked professional journalists and damaged their equipment but only in a half-hearted way, then proudly recorded their crimes on their own phones and shared them with envious friends back home.  These amateur documentarians provided the evidence for their own criminal convictions.

It's the pride of Arkansas, Bigo Barnett, at 62 old enough to know better, with his foot on Nancy Pelosi's desk.  He helpfully points at it in case there's any confusion.  He's going to prison.

Laughing on the inside

 Convicted procurer Ghislaine Maxwell granted an interview to a UK outfit called Talk TV in which she said that the photo of Virginia Giuffre with Prince Andrew is a fake, that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered, and that the tofu served in her Florida prison is tasteless and needs seasoning.  (She won't eat meat.)  The interviewer was Jeremy Kyle, whose show was cancelled after a guest committed suicide, and who made Maury Povich look like Edward R. Murrow.  Speculation is that Maxwell is trying to rehabilitate the prince's reputation in time for his brother's coronation and thus get herself moved to a British prison where they serve quality vegan cuisine.

The US, Germany and Poland are sending tanks to Ukraine at last, and the Russian ambassador to Germany lost no time in invoking "the terrible, timeless crimes of Nazism."  Yes, Sergei, that's why we're fighting fascists like your boss this time.  "Deliveries of gas chambers are also expected," har har.  Fact check:  the USSR never acknowledged the Holocaust, most of which occurred in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.  Murdered Jews were folded into the deaths of "Soviet citizens."  For further details see Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands.

"Mike Pence is an innocent man.  He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life.  Leave him alone!!!"  Who said it?  I guess the three slammers give it away.  The one time Pence did nothing "knowingly dishonest" (or couldn't find a quasi-legal way to do it), it was "HANG MIKE PENCE!" and the future proprietor of Ministry of Truth Social pointedly refused to call off his trumpanzees.  What a difference a cache of classified documents makes.

I don't know one Fox News pundit from another.  Is Jesse Watters supposed to be the funny one or is that Greg Gutfeld or that drunk lady judge?  Watters seemed really annoyed about the Pence Papers.  "I mean, he could have just destroyed it.  We never would have known."  So hard to tell when they're trying to bring the funny.  

Astonishingly, there seem to be some irregularities in George Santos's amended FEC filing, like a whole load of contributions of $199.99, just under the ruble reporting limit.  Squeaker McCarthy says if he's "done anything illegal" he just might be asked to please remove himself from Congress, maybe.  He'll have to run it past Empty Greene first, so...

Santos also ran face-first into the buzzsaw wit of Louisiana's own John "Boss Hogg" Kennedy, who called him "nutty as a fruitcake" and "a bunny boiler."  "Language like that is hurtful and divisive and has no place in Congress," he pouted.  Four years of it in the White House, on the other hand, no problema.  (Portuguese)

Human sausage casing Mike Pompeo wants to be president so he's "written" a "book," always a good first step.  Draw folks in with your irrepressible sense of humor.  The murder-dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi happened when he was Secretary of State.  Khashoggi held Saudi and US citizenship and worked for an American newspaper, so a normal Secretary of State would at least have made inquiries as to his whereabouts.  That didn't happen, of course, and now Pompeo wants to explain why:  Far from being a "martyr" Khashoggi was "an activist who had supported the losing team," which is why the winning team was perfectly justified in making him into dog food.  Nobody would care had he not been a journalist; it was the media that kept the story on page one, "madder than a vegan in a slaughterhouse."  (See what he did there?  Funny.)  I notice "activist" is still one of the right's terms of contempt.  They much prefer passive journalists who don't ask questions.  Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, Trump proclaimed Prince Salman innocent and Jared got two billion petrodollars for his startup hedge fund, absolutely nothing to see here, the end.

Year of the Rabbit

 I know almost nothing about the Buddhist zodiac but I'm pretty sure this is the only country where Lunar New Year involves older Asian men shooting up their communities.   It happened again in Half Moon Bay, which sounds like a place from a children's book, with seven dead and the 67-year-old shooter in custody, as they say.  "It was the afternoon, when kids were out of school.  For children to witness this is unspeakable," said San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus.  I don't know.  With active-shooter drills in the schools, children were probably less surprised than the adults who worked at the Concord Farms plant nursery.  State Senator Scott Wiener tweeted, "34 mass shootings in 23 days isn't normal."  Are you new here, Senator?

"Mass shooting" is defined as an event with at least four victims (Gun Violence Archive) and so does not include yesterday's high school shooting where only two people were killed by a member of a rival gang.  This occurred in America's heartland, Des Moines, Iowa, I feel compelled to add for some reason.  The newsies have hardly had time to acknowledge the twelve people shot Sunday in the Dior Bar and Lounge in Baton Rouge (all still alive at this writing).  

Everyone knows there's no chance of putting a dent in the mayhem (Biden calls for assault weapon ban, NRA calls for more gun ownership, we've been to this dance before).  At this hour the Senate Judiciary Committee is busy investigating why Ticketmaster made such a mess of Taylor Swift's last tour.  Surely the Commerce committee should be unraveling this shocking scandal.  Maybe Science, since the CEO is blaming bots for grabbing all the tickets.   I thought they preferred Lady Gaga.

Under the heading "Outrages You Can Still Do Something About (Just)" I give you this from Daily Kos:  Nobody can write in cursive anymore.  Nobody under fifty, at least.  When there is no keyboard within reach, people now laboriously and reluctantly block-print everything.  Why not just grab some clay and punch in cuneiform?  The technology drives us inexorably backward.  In honor of National Handwriting Day mt41w -- really? -- urges us to take up real writing, which "trains your brain," improves reading skills, spelling and grammar, and even helps the dyslexic.  No question, the English-speaking world can use all that and more.  How do people learn to sign their names?  Are the primary schools doing anything at all?  I get that there's no reason to learn all the stuff we had to memorize -- a few clicks on a phone will tell you anything from state capitals to kings of England -- but engaging with printed matter, even learning the occasional poem by heart...I feel like I'm a hundred.  Maybe if people didn't wait until graduate school to learn to think, our politics would not be so fucked up.

Speaking of the fucked up...

Fox meteorologist Steve Klotz was beaten on the subway when he tried to protect an old man from three teenage muggers.  The three were grabbed by the NYPD, who let them go and told Klotz he must now file charges.  This somehow became an editorial attack on George Soros by the Murdoch Post because he contributes to the campaigns of non-vengeful DAs.  It seems like the problem is with the cops and not DA Alvin Bragg, but the Aussie Pornographer was never hampered by facts before. 

Of course this case has its fantasy corollary in the world of the other George, Santos.  Congressman Munchausen is now telling people he was robbed and nearly assassinated "in the middle of Fifth Avenue."  They stole his shoes!  And his watch, a gift from Nelson Mandela!  He probably should have chosen another street.  This will remind people of Trump's claim that he could shoot a Brazilian drag performer "in the middle of Fifth Avenue" and no one would care.  If George plans to challenge the Father of Lies, he'll have to step up his game.

Classified documents found at the Indiana home of Mike Pence?  His new place, not the one he lived in when he was vice president?  Were the cereal bowls wrapped in them?  I'm starting to think they stamp everything TOP SECRET just for giggles.

  

     

Solar wind

 

"A piece of Comet ZTF's tail has been pinched off and is being carried away by the solar wind," said SpaceWeather.com.  There's any amount of crazy space stuff right now, including coronal mass ejection.  Sort of puts earthly concerns into perspective. 

Who am I kidding?  Most Earthoids won't pay attention to these wonders unless a solar flare fries the Internet.  Then suddenly we're all North Korea -- no cat videos, no conspiracy theories, no trailers for Star Wars IV Part Six:  Enough Already.  We'd have to leave the house to buy things, play cards with pieces of pasteboard, talk to one another...it's too awful to contemplate.  

And then there's the happy news, like "Dolphins spotted in Bronx River."  Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut for all us misfits, got married on his 93rd birthday (the bride is 63).  Mazel tov, Buzz and Anca!  California vineyards report that all the rain has saved them from disaster, unlike the rest of the state which is pretty much a mess.

This concludes the happy news.

Ten days ago Islamist terrorists in Burkina Faso kidnapped 66 women and children while they foraged for food.  They have now been freed by the army.  Meanwhile, in the "developed" world, children are being abducted, apparently by traffickers, from a hotel in Brighton run by the UK Home Office.  An investigation by the Observer reveals this to be part of a pattern facing asylum-seeking children who arrive in Britain without parents.  One hundred thirty-six have been reported missing, with 79 still unaccounted for.  Far from calling out the troops, Home Secretary Suellen Braverman and the Sunak government seem unconcerned.  Many children apparently have their birthdates changed by the same Home Office so they can be classified as adults.  What was it Gandhi said about "western civilization"?

Asian-Americans in Monterey Park, California, were celebrating lunar new year when they collided with the American custom of mass murder.  A gunman killed ten people and wounded at least ten more before evidently shooting himself.  We are now waiting for the sheriff to announce that he bought the gun(s) legally.

Since he ran out of other things to do, Trump has been crashing wedding receptions at his Florida version of Motel Six to regale the guests with complaints about the "stolen" election and the perfidy of Democrats.  He also likes to play DJ, which is not something I want to think about.  Yesterday he put on his special pink tie (the color of mourning in Queens) and showed up in North Carolina at the funeral of Lynette "Diamond" Hardaway, who died at 51 definitely not from covid or the vaccine.  He gave a classy eulogy which touched on gas prices, inflation, the federal budget, how other countries are shipping their convicts and mental patients here, and the "big line of very, very nice vehicles outside."  Apparently he took credit for arranging the whole thing including valet parking.  "They said about fifteen, twenty minutes, in and out," he groused.  "This is a little longer than fifteen minutes, right?"  Is it possible that Donald Trump has never attended a Black funeral before?

As gatherings go, it could have been worse.  Patrons at Anna's Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, were startled when the sound of gunfire interrupted their meal.  It was the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky throwing a dinner for Jonathan Mattingly, formerly of the Louisville police.  The festivities included video of Mattingly and his former colleagues shooting up the apartment of Breonna Taylor.  Mattingly has embarked on a second career as a "conservative author and pundit," and the ladies wanted to get his take on the night Taylor died while she slept.  Rather than book a private room, they simply dimmed the lights and treated the whole restaurant to the footage while people tried to enjoy their moussaka.  Mattingly's Facebook comment:  "Food was amazing and staff was even better!"

The woke mob is baying at the heels of poor Kyle Rittenhouse again.  First the Southern Star Brewing Company of Conroe, Texas, backed out of hosting his traveling show "Meet the Killer" or whatever it's called, saying it "does not reflect our values."  Now he's been noped by the Venetian casino in Las Vegas, though they're going ahead with the SHOT Show (Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade).  It's getting so a vigilante killer can't make an honest living anymore.  

I will now say something mildly approving of Trump.  When his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton et al. was tossed and Judge Donald Middlebrooks imposed nearly a million dollars in sanctions, he saw the sense of withdrawing a similarly ridiculous suit against New York AG Letitia James.  Now I read that Alec Baldwin plans to resume shooting on Rust despite being charged with involuntary manslaughter.   Alec, you've spent too much time in the orange clown makeup.

  

Parallel lies

In the course of my activities I came across a British (he would prefer English) politician named Paul Nuttall.  It's impossible not to be struck by comparisons with our own weird time.

Nuttall was for a time leader of UKIP, the far-right party now known as Reform UK.  He served two terms in the European Parliament but failed in six attempts to win election to the UK Parliament.  Apart from election denial he ticks all the boxes, as they say, for a MAGA Republican:  climate-change denial, pro-torture and capital punishment, anti-choice, anti-gender reassignment, anti-marriage equality, and of course anti-"woke," which he calls "cultural Marxism."  As an undergraduate studying history he wrote an essay suggesting that Jews bore some responsibility for the Holocaust, citing as a source David Irving; he later insisted his girlfriend had found the citations on the Internet and it wasn't his fault.  He supports a ban on the wearing of burkas and the abolition of the National Health Service because it "stifles competition," though most Britons have indicated they don't want a medicine-for-profit system like ours.

Not surprisingly, he shares the right's contempt for women.  When the Scottish National Party voted to ban foxhunting, Nuttall wrote, "Tuesday is Emmeline Pankhurst Day...perhaps we should throw Nicola Sturgeon [First Minister of Scotland] in front of a hunt horse as part of the commemorations."  Similar fates have been proposed for prominent women from Merkel to Markle by jovial right-wingers.  They rarely face consequences.

Here is where it gets interesting, I promise:  Nuttall is also a prolific liar.  He claimed to hold a Ph.D. from Liverpool Hope University when it did not yet award them.  He said he played professionally for Tranmere Rovers although he had only been a member of their youth squad.  He said he was on the board of a vocational training charity, North West Training Council; they say he wasn't.  And while campaigning he claimed he had lost "close personal friends" in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, when 97 people died and hundreds more were trampled at the Sheffield stadium.  (He was twelve at the time.)  All these boasts had to be "walked back" because British journalists are not as lazy as Americans.

Look, we've all buffed our resumes in search of a job or a promotion.  "Product delivery coordinator for a Fortune 500 company" sounds a lot more impressive than "Drive-up window at McDonald's."  HR people expect it and often accept it.  Politicians are just as guilty:  Richard Blumenthal "misspoke" when he said he served in Vietnam; Hillary Clinton didn't exactly land in Bosnia "under sniper fire."  Joe McCarthy apparently liked to fire at coconut trees once his missions as a tail-gunner/observer had ended...

 

 ...earning the politically useful nickname "Tail-gunner Joe."  

In the era of Trump and Santos, however, lying has become a way of life, and unraveling the lies a full-time job for reporters and comedians.  The lie has gone from harmless decoration to the picture itself, and almost exclusively in the service of the authoritarian right.  They never lose an election unless it is "rigged," as Trump announced weeks before the 2020 election.  All charges against them are a "hoax" or a "witch hunt."  Contemptible tales of being tragedy-adjacent insult real victims and the people who care about them.  Happy in their reality of alternate facts and brazen lies, content that millions will accept whatever they say, they count on finding willing fools in every nation.

It is not funny.       

 

Chilly Thursday

 I got a little worked up yesterday so I'm trying to achieve a more Zen-like calm today.  After all, it is what it is.

Elvis Francois of Dominica was lost at sea for 24 days before being picked up by the Colombian navy.  He survived on a bottle of ketchup mixed with garlic powder and bouillon cubes.  Ketchup -- is there anything it can't do?

As California experienced its worst storms in a decade, Julian Sands decided it was a good time to climb Mount Baldy.  Now he's missing.  You can't determine someone's intelligence by his work in films.  

Alec Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed will be tried for involuntary manslaughter in the death of Halyna Hutchins.  David Halls, the assistant director, pleaded guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon, a misdemeanor.

In today's installment of "Tales from a Deposition," Trump was shown a picture of E. Jean Carroll at the time of the "incident" and identified it, "That's Marla, yeah, that's my wife."  If he was in the habit of raping his wives, as the late Ivana said, his confusion is understandable.  Too vain for glasses?

More bad news for Elon Musk:  The Wyoming legislature plans to phase out the sale of electric vehicles by 2035, mainly because California is phasing it in.  I guess that'll show that uppity Gavin Newsom, you bet.  Meanwhile in heavily polluted Thailand, where more than 30,000 people die of respiratory and heart diseases every year, the gas-guzzling taxis known as tuk-tuks are being replaced by electric models.  I'll let you know if Wyoming bans visitors from Thailand.  They can totally do that.  The red states are practically sovereign nations.

Just ask Governissimo DeSantis.  Kinky-boots stepped up his hilarious campaign for president by demanding a grand jury investigation into "any and all wrongdoing" connected to covid vaccines.  It sounds a little vague but probably won't include quack doctors and anti-vax loonies promoting de-worming products or aquarium cleaners as an alternative.  They just want to get to the bottom of all these people suddenly dying because of "the jab" and the microchip that Bill Gates implanted in everyone who got it.  Florida Science!  

Nova the clouded leopard has been found and returned to the Dallas Zoo.  Police are trying to determine who cut the wire at her habitat and at that of the langurs.  Talk to the baboons.  I can say no more.

Speaking of primates, we're waiting to see if the Squeaker can persuade his zoo to raise the debt ceiling or drive a giant spike into the global economy.  Mitch McConnell says it won't happen on his watch but to the MAGAts he might as well be Dead Ted Kennedy.

The only normal, or at least non-criminal, thing George Santos ever did (as far as we can tell) was to perform as a drag queen named Kitara Ravache in Brazil.  Wouldn't it be perfect if that's what finally gets him booted out of Congress?

Perfect.

Hell is empty

 

Any time you can steal from a homeless veteran with PTSD and let his service dog die, that's a good day in Santosworld.  And pocket $3,000 and slander Jews and still get to be on two House committees. 

By now there's nothing left to be said about George Santos/Anthony Devolder/Anthony Zabrovsky/Kitara Ravache except that he has found a home in Kevin McCarthy's House of Representatives.  Soon he will "serve" on its Small Business and Science, Space and Technology Committees.  It's a pity he lost his first attempt to become a Congressman.  Two years ago a team of surgeons would be struggling to remove Nancy Pelosi's shoe from his ass.  That was when we had a Speaker instead of a Squeaker.  

The Moral Turpitude Congress is just as we expected, but it's horrifying anyway.  Sharon Premoli was incredulous when 9/11 "denialist" and January 6 seditionist Marjorie Taylor Greene collected her reward from Squeaker McCarthy, a seat on the Homeland Security Committee; Premoli survived, barely, the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, when according to Greene it was struck by a "so called plane." 

Empty is not the only Georgia cracker to raise their profile through dirty deals with the new Squeaker.  There's Rick Allen, who knows that people really want to work past the age of 65 and just wants to "give them incentive to do it."  Super guy.  Meanwhile the reliably cretinous Earl "Cruddy" Carter has concocted the Fair Tax Act, which would eliminate the IRS (the income, corporate, payroll and estate taxes) in favor of a national sales tax of 30 percent, on top of existing state sales tax.  Someone should tell him the UK has a Value Added Tax (VAT) as well as income tax, local property rates and a whacking great estate tax and they're still broke.  Far from being "fair" his idiot proposal would fall heaviest on the poorest and he knows it.   

Ptomaine Lauren Boebert now adorns the Oversight and Accountability Committee, the bog that will launch a thousand investigations.  So does the cockroach from Planet Gosar.

This mistake of nature is James Comer, chair of the Oversight Committee, and like it says, the documents found at Biden's house and office are way more important than the ones Trump stole and says he declassified through the "Think" method and stashed in his storage locker and still wants back.  Pretty much speaks for itself.

By way of comparison, here is a picture of Rich Osthoff's dog Sapphire suffering with an obvious tumor.  She didn't get treated because the GoFundMe money raised by "Anthony Zabrovsky" never reached Osthoff.  He couldn't even afford to have her euthanized.  Fuck George Santos and fuck all Republicans.

Don't try to tell me about the "good" ones.  Adam Kinzinger just got caught flogging autographed copies of the House Select Committee report on the Trump coup for $100.00.  I guess CNN isn't paying him enough.

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

I just report 'em

 

Using his new identity as "Brendan Fraser," George Santos accepts a Golden Globe award.

Lauren, dear, the woke liberal metal detectors have been gone for two weeks.  Why weren't you locked and loaded when Marjorie Taylor Greene came out of the bathroom stall and "questioned your loyalty" to Kevin McCarthy?  You could have done this country a great service and tested the limits of Congressional immunity to criminal prosecution.  But you ran away like a little Democrat.  I for one am ashamed.  Is it possible that you're not familiar with these?

(By the way, did you really take "millions of dollars" from McCarthy?  How much did he spend to get this job?)

Instead, Margie's emitting tweets like "Vengeance is mine declares the Lord.  God will not let evil go unpunished.  The @HouseGOP must do what is right for the American people and no longer serve the Uniparty and the Globalist agenda.  America First! [flag emoji]"  I know "globalist" means "Jews" -- pretty bold quoting their own book against them -- but I haven't a clue about "Uniparty."  It's a good thing she's seen the light on QAnon or she'd sound really bonkers.

Speaking of disloyalty, Trump gave an interview and, inevitably, it came up.  Now he's accusing the evangelicals of turning against him.  Apparently some of them want to hitch their wagon to Ron DeSantis, who they consider just as medieval but more electable.  "There's great disloyalty in the world of politics and that's a sign of disloyalty."  And after his three stooges put women in their place by overturning Roe!  If I could be bothered to look it up I'd quote Shakespeare's Richard II wailing that he's been the victim of worse betrayal than Jesus.  It's pretty funny.

Solomon Pena (R-Jailhouse) failed to get elected to the New Mexico legislature, which can only be the result of RIGGED!  So he recruited some friends and they've been drive-by shooting at the houses of Democratic office holders.  Allegedly.  No one was injured but state Senator Linda Lopez reported that three bullets passed through the bedroom of her ten-year-old daughter.  While she slept.

Wait, don't go.  The rest of the world is just as screwed up.

For two decades Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick has been subjecting a select group of women to rape and abuse while the Met (the UK police) "ignored eight warnings" about his activities.  In fact they promoted him to the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection command, which allowed him to carry a gun -- much better for intimidating victims than handcuffs and a warrant card.  "I can kill you without leaving any evidence," he told one, and threatened to plant drugs on another.  "Bastard Dave," as his mates call him, has pleaded guilty to 49 charges.  Sir Mark Rowley, the new Met commissioner, said, "He should not have been a police officer."  Ya think, Mark?

Of course the misogyny is not confined to the filth.  A month after the column where he described a dream of Meghan Markle being marched naked through the streets and pelted with shit, Jeremy Clarkson decided to apologize.  Amazon's decision to cancel more episodes of Clarkson's Farm and The Grand Tour probably had nothing to do with it.  And now -- surprise! -- he's going with the Roseanne Barr defense, prescription drugs.  Clarkson has been taking the diabetes drug Ozempic as a preventative and for weight loss.  In a column for the Sunday Times he acknowledged eating and drinking too much but, you know, this is easier.  Side effects do not include racism and misogyny.  He's always been a prick.

Moving on to Italy, the National Museum of Cinema presented its lifetime achievement award (the Stella della Mole) to Kevin Spacey.  Vittorio Sgarbi, undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture, said, "Tonight we're witnessing Kevin Spacey's comeback," and the actor thanked the museum for having "the courage, the balls to invite me."  In June Spacey goes on trial in the UK for a variety of sexual offenses. 

For the first time since 1961 China reports a decline in population.  They expect further shrinkage due to the lingering effects of the one-child policy and successive mutations of the coronavirus.  The head of the National Bureau of Statistics says labor still exceeds demand but the future is uncertain.  Maybe this is why they want to acquire the 23.5 million people who live in Taiwan.

On Martin Luther King Day Boston unveiled "The Embrace," a 22-foot bronze depicting King and his wife Coretta Scott King embracing when he learned of winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.  Or so says the artist Hank Willis Thomas.  Others are not so sure, including Mrs. King's cousin Seneca Scott, who called it "a pair of hands hugging a beefy penis...a masturbatory metal homage."  I don't know much about art but I know...well, you tell me.

Call me old-fashioned but I think people will still prefer the St. Gaudens on Boston Common...

...in spite of the angel whose crotch rests on Colonel Shaw's head.

I was reminded of the Statue of Liberty's arm sitting in Madison Square Park for six years, waiting for the US to raise the money for a pedestal.

 

  

      

Do you hear what I hear?

 You have to listen carefully to hear anything besides "BIDEN DOCUMENTS CLASSIFIED BIDEN BIDEN INVESTIGATION DOCUMENTS" but in brief intervals of quiet, over the birdsong and sounds of trucks backing up, justice may be approaching.

Not from Washington, where the Republicans are ripping up the paving stones and erecting barricades to  protect the Worst Criminal in American History from Jack Smith.  From Fulton County, Georgia, where District Attorney Fani Willis has quietly spent a year presenting a grand jury with evidence that Trump violated the state's racketeering law when he tried to strongarm Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into falsifying the vote count in 2020.  I'm not even sure how she has jurisdiction since the crime was committed in Washington, D.C. -- all Raffensperger did was reluctantly answer the phone and say no.  But I'm very glad she has, because she has enough courage for two and should share it with Merrick Garland.  In Georgia the actual indictment must be issued by a judge and it's hard to figure out who that is (possibly for his protection) but it looks like County Judge Robert McBurney is the last hurdle.  

Trump's lawyers will raise every kind of objection they can dream up to keep him off the witness stand -- he's busy running for president!  her father was once a Black Panther!  BONE SPURS! -- but once his scabby hand hits the Bible it's all over.  A combination of arrogance, stupidity and his own sense of invulnerability make Trump the worst witness in the world.  Let us examine his sworn deposition in the defamation lawsuit of E. Jean Carroll.  

He claims he never met Carroll, despite photos of them with her former husband many years ago.  But he knows her well enough to offer a psychiatric diagnosis ("nut job," "mentally sick").  

He misquoted her in an interview she gave Anderson Cooper, where she explained why she disliked the word "rape" ("I think most people think of rape as being sexy").  Trump:  "She actually indicated that she loved it, OK?...She said it was very sexy to be raped."  Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan:  "It's your testimony that E. Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you?"  "Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper I believe that's what took place."  He ranted about "having to waste a whole day" on the deposition when he could have watched television or played golf.  He used the word "hoax" a lot and bragged about how his one-horse media platform is more successful than Twitter.  (To be fair, neither of them pays its bills.)  When Kaplan asked if he was the pussy-grabber he boasted of being he said, "I will tell you not, but you may have some people like your client that lie."  (He has no idea how many other victims are prepared to testify at trial.)  Alina Habba couldn't make him shut up.  She may fondly remember her days of representing a parking garage in New Jersey.

I never met her, she's mentally ill, I didn't rape her but she said she loved it.  The lawsuit will only cost him money.  Fani Willis's case will cost whatever time he has left.  I have to believe this.

   

Food fight

 

The Class of '25 is settling in at the House.  The metal detectors are gone and so is the Office of Congressional Ethics in all but name.  Members can again enjoy their First Amendment right to smoke, if only in their offices for now.  (Thanks, tobacco lobby!)  And in his first act of celebratory revenge, K-Mac promises to remove Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from their committees as payback for Empty Greene and Cockroach Gosar.  Because being a liberal is the equivalent of threatening violence as of right now.   Of course, this kabuki has real-world consequences -- an Indiana lab worker named Jonathan Reeser was fired for DMing to Swalwell, "I HOPE YOU [sic] FAMILY IS RAPED AND MURDERED."  He elaborated:

It doesn't say what kind of lab Reeser worked for, probably meth and he was too much even for them.  Anyway, Kev will no doubt find a staff job for him.

Then a commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission suggested a ban on gas stoves was under consideration and everybody went mad.  As if there weren't enough Kulturkampf being waged over candy.  

Oh, you missed it?

  This is why we cannot relax our vigilance.  Because China is trying to undermine us through "woke" M&M ads.  See, those are female candies.  Holding hands.  Mars, Inc., is a Chicom front.  I saw it on Fox.

Where was I?  Oh, gas stoves.  The idea is to replace them with safer electric ones, not wind powered or anything, but Joe Manchin and Ted Cruz were already climbing the walls.  Ovens.  Go figure.

As of 5:01 pm "George Santos" was still representing embarrassed Long Islanders in the House.  The latest revelation is that in 2019 he introduced himself as "Anthony Devolder" of "United for Trump" (which seems to be a non-existent organization) at a get-together called "Walk Away LGBT."  The intent was to get LGBT people to desert the Democrats and line up with the party that regards them as an abomination on the face of the earth, so, not sure how that went, but we now have another secret identity for Congressman Munchausen.  Something about a Ponzi scheme and a stolen scarf...really, as the Firesign Theater once put it, "It's a little like having bees live in your head."  Asked if his Asshole Assembly would move to expel this creature, McCarthy loftily explained that in America one is innocent until proven guilty.  So he supports an end to cash bail?  Don't be silly.  

As the investigating committees form up and get ready to investigate, we could be hours away from at long last getting to see Hunter Biden's penis pictures on his own laptop.  No more than three special subcommittees will deal with this bombshell as the rest prepare to impeach everyone in sight, freeze the debt limit, defund Ukraine and crack down on all this damn voting.  

Self-government is hard.  But it isn't usually this hard.  

My book report: At war with ourselves

 Matthew F. Delmont, Half American:  The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, Viking, 2022

In 1941 the United States went to war with its shoelaces tied together and its pants down.  Fortunately the other major powers had created the same problem for themselves.

When the Germans invaded Ukraine they were greeted as liberators by people with fresh memories of Stalin's man-made famine and other atrocities.  They quickly learned that when Nazi racial theory described Slavs as sub-human, it meant all Slavs.  Japan could have recruited millions to its "Co-prosperity Sphere" from among Asians weary of western colonialism, but Japan chose to treat Indochinese, Koreans, Filipinos, East Indians and especially Chinese as horribly as white prisoners of war, in some cases worse.  America consigned a significant portion of its population to legally mandated apartheid and demanded they put their lives on the line for a country that saw them as half-American at best.  Astonishingly, several million did.  Even when they were denied the chance to serve in combat, putting on a uniform was an act so radical that it could still end in death.

Before I opened this book I knew about the Tuskegee Airmen.  I knew Executive Order 8802 was meant to end racial discrimination in the defense industries, and that it was only issued after A. Philip Randolph threatened a March on Washington that was postponed for twenty years.  "You can't bring 100,000 Negroes to Washington.  Somebody might get killed," President Roosevelt protested.  He signed but he didn't put enough teeth into enforcement.  I even knew about Doris Miller, who can stand for the whole Black experience.  But I didn't know his whole story.

Miller (his name was sometimes given as "Dorie" by reporters who thought "Doris" must be a mistake) was a messman on the USS West Virginia, the only rating in the Navy open to Black men.  When it was bombed at Pearl Harbor Miller, with no training, jumped to an anti-aircraft gun and shot down at least one Japanese plane as the ship sank beneath him.  For this he was awarded the Navy Cross, personally bestowed by Admiral Chester Nimitz, and became the most celebrated Black serviceman in America.  Then he went back to being a messman, serving meals and doing laundry for white officers.  Two years later Doris Miller was one of 644 crewmen who died when the USS Liscome Bay was torpedoed at the Battle of Makin.  By then he had been promoted to cook.

The reader closes the book marveling that a country so determined to get in its own way managed to defeat two formidable enemies.  How profligate we were with so much talent, patriotism, skill and courage.  For example, the completely avoidable disaster at Port Chicago ammunition depot near San Francisco, where Black sailors were put to work unloading high explosives from boxcars and loading them onto ships, with no training in the dangerous work.  On the contrary:  white officers laid bets on whose "team" could work the fastest.  The inevitable occurred on July 17, 1944, when an explosion killed 320 people and destroyed two ships and a Coast Guard barge.  The surviving enlisted men went on strike for better conditions and fifty were charged with mutiny.  Their attorney, Thurgood Marshall, was able to save their lives but they spent the rest of the war in prison.  

What about Executive Order 8802, hailed as a corollary to the Emancipation Proclamation?  Shipyards and munitions factories that grudgingly complied would only hire Black men as janitors, and when a few were promoted to higher-skilled, better-paid positions, whites often walked off the job.  Delmont writes, "These 'hate-strikes' cost war-production plants more than 2.5 million worker hours during a tense three-month period from March to May 1943."  One employee in Canton, Ohio, said, "I would rather lose the war than work with those Negroes."  Needless to say, it was worse in Mobile and other Southern cities.  And it was even worse for Black women, many of them college educated, who joined the military or sought jobs in defense plants.  

Half American tells the ugly truth about the "greatest generation" and its mission of liberating the world without first liberating itself.  That struggle would be postponed, hampered by the deliberate misrepresentation of Black fighting ability by the mainstream press, and the lies politicians like James Eastland and John Rankin spoke into the Congressional Record; by the murders of servicemen who dared return home in uniform; by the GI Bill which was left up to the states to administer, cutting most Black veterans out of opportunities for education and home ownership; by the racist attitudes of the overwhelming majority of white Americans.  It still has to be said -- racism is bad for everybody, even in peacetime.  

If that makes little white kids (or more likely their parents) feel sad and uncomfortable, so be it.  Maybe a history book is no good if it doesn't make you angry.  Half American will make you feel rage.  

Sergeant Isaac Woodard, Jr., US Army, attacked and blinded by a sheriff in Batesburg, South Carolina, as he returned home by bus in 1946.

  

  

 

Anger management

 Everything seems to be designed to piss me off today, beginning with the way this stupid system guesses what I'm about to write.  Until I figure out how to shut it off, there will be blood.  Pounding in my ears.

A non-tenured professor of art history at Hamline University in St. Paul was fired for including a medieval painting of Muhammad in her survey course.  Prior to springing this on the class she warned all students it was coming, gave them permission to absent themselves and offered to discuss the matter privately.  Apparently there were no takers.  She duly displayed the painting, in which the Prophet's face is covered by a veil, and then somebody complained.  The university's associate vice president of inclusive excellence (this is a thing) called her "inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic."  And now unemployed.  The painting is from a 14th century text by Rashid al-Din and not some obscure Danish newspaper, but that's beside the point.  If Hamline fired Erika Lopez Prater because they feared violence, that's even more insulting and Islamophobic.  If they wanted to replenish the ammunition of the "wokeness gone mad" crowd, well done.  Inclusive excellence my ass.

A second batch of classified documents was found in an office Joe Biden used five years ago at the Penn Biden Center and Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Robert K. Hur, to lead the investigation.  Months after far more sensitive material was found in various storage lockers, desk drawers and a facility in Virginia, Trump continues to sleep in his own bed and shit in his personal golden toilet.  Do you double standard, Judge Garland?

A high school teacher named Keenan Anderson was restrained and repeatedly Tased by Los Angeles police after a traffic accident, subsequently dying in the hospital.  This is not at all uncommon in the city.  It was noteworthy because Anderson's cousin Patrisse Cullors is one of the founders of Black Lives Matter.  The LAPD released their own 12 minute video, not as awful as the murder of George Floyd although it does feature the traditional knee to the neck.  Anderson, on his knees, tries to explain what happened, addressing the police as "sir," but they have already decided that he's drunk.  And now he's dead.  He was 31.

"Woke" grounded all domestic aviation yesterday.  Actually it was a glitch with the FAA's computer software but you wouldn't know that if you were a pitiful fool who tunes in to Fox News expecting news.  This would never have happened if the Secretary of Transportation were a straight white man who works for Trump.  Nor the Southwest Airlines holiday debacle involving thirty-year-old phones and computers and a shortage of flight crews because they'd rather pay a dividend than upgrade their equipment.  Nor the Amtrak delay in South Carolina that occurred because a freight train derailed and the car-and-passenger train needed a special crew for re-routing.  Nor whatever the horrific weather is doing to public transportation in California right now.  It's all Buttigieg's fault; he only got the job because he's gay.  Experts like Jesse Watters and Junior Trump have figured it out.

Governissimo DeSantis displays his cowardice (or amateurishness) in ordering dawn raids on mostly Black people for "illegal voting."  He's not quite ready to have armed police break down the doors of Trump enclaves like The Villages, where a lot of double voting took place.  It's not as if the laird of Mar a Lago ever passes up a chance to rage at him.  Wimp.

Sometimes they come out with something so transcendently stupid that I just close the computer and stare at the wall, often for half an hour.  In a New York Times op-ed Ezra Klein wrote, "Clean abundant energy is the foundation on which a more equal, just and humane world can be built."  On Fox News, where they prefer dirty, expensive energy, an oil and tobacco lobbyist named Steve Milloy retorted, "Wind power made the trans-Atlantic slave trade possible."  Is this the best the carbon emissions-and-lung cancer industries can do?

...and this was only page one.  Who's chasing him around the pool with a blood pressure cup and a Xylazine?  By comparison I'm feeling almost tranquil.  It's a good day when a six-year-old doesn't shoot a teacher with his mom's 9-mm pistol.

    

Let's see what's in the papers

 A couple days ago I was wondering what so engrossed Rep. Katie Porter as she waited out the chaos to cast another vote for Hakeem Jeffries.

Brilliant choice.  I'm not familiar with Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck but it's Number 19 on Amazon's best-seller list, two slots ahead of the current John Grisham.  Today Rep. Porter announced that she's running for the Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein.  Feinstein hasn't exactly retired but she stepped down as chair of the Judiciary Committee and took herself out of the running for president pro tempore.  The Senate needs Katie and her whiteboard.

Here she is pushing for restoring the IRS to pre-2010 staffing levels, one of the first targets of the MAGA Mob a/k/a the 118th Congress.  I am so surprised.

Satellites -- boy, no secrets from them.  China says it has covid under control but the eye in the sky shows unusual crowds (and even new parking lots) at Chinese crematoriums.  Nevertheless China promises to "retaliate" against Japan, South Korea and any other country which requires negative tests of Chinese travelers.  They still think a public health crisis can be solved by threats, saving face instead of saving lives.

In other covid news, it seems that Diamonds are not forever.  Passionate anti-vaxer and Trump worshiper Lynette Hardaway a/k/a Diamond of the Diamond and Silk duo, has died aged about 51.  No one will admit it was covid; the pair were fired two years ago for being too unhinged even for Fox News, which they blamed on racism.  "Probably her big and precious HEART just plain gave out," wrote the laird of Mar a Lago.  Don't read the rest if you're thinking about lunch.

On January 6, 2021, a date which will live in infamy, the Speaker of the House had a conversation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which went something like this:  Speaker:  You know he's crazy, don't you?  Chairman:  That's right.  The subject of their talk was the President whose followers were attacking the Capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of the election.  Nancy Pelosi wanted Mark Milley to assure her that crazy Trump would not involve the military in his sweaty fantasy of clinging to power.  Their talk was far from secret:  the Speaker described it the next day and it's documented in the Report of the House Select Committee.  But the interstellar cockroach occupying the skin of the unfortunate dentist Paul Gosar has a different slant on that conversation, hissing tweeting:  "Milleys [sic] treasonous sell out to China will be investigated.  Pelosi not warning members about intel of impending violence will be exposed.  Soon, we'll know the truth."  Not forgetting the Rothschilds and their space lasers, I would imagine.  Strap in, the next two years will be spent in Cloud-Cuckoo-land.

Bert's Books of Swindon.  British bookshops are cool.

Here's something the Mob can investigate:  Mel Gibson cancelled!  The racist, homophobic, antisemitic actor was dropped from riding with the Krewe of Endymion as co-Grand Marshal of next month's Mardi Gras parade.  (Why was he invited in the first place?  How do I know?)  "Fucking Jews.  The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," he told the officer who arrested him for driving drunk in 2006, not realizing that the Jews also control Mardi Gras.

Hey, what's a gal gotta do to get suspended from the new Muskified Twitter?  Post a self-praising video with music she stole from Dr. Dre.  I'm reliably told that it was perfectly awful but it disappeared like a fart in a hurricane, presumably at the insistence of the Doctor's lawyers.  "I don't license my music to politicians, especially someone as divisive and hateful as this one," said Dre.  Is that any way to talk about Margie Greene as she stalks the Capitol -- in slow motion -- while threatening, "It's time to begin, and they can't stop what's coming."  She should have gone with "Tomorrow Belongs To Me," though Kander and Ebb probably have some ferocious lawyers, too.  What is it with the Law and Order party and its persistent flouting of copyright law?  Trump has ripped off everybody but Jello Biafra.

In its sneaky subversive way C-SPAN was the star of last week's House slapstick, deploying its own cameras to show the private chats and deal-making as well as the brawling.  It was just beginning to draw an audience -- "Hey, there's nobody talking over the speakers -- and no commercials!" when the new "leadership" ordered it to go back to a single camera focused on whoever is making a speech.  Maybe they do have a vestigial sense of shame.  So if Chip Roy is reading Spare on the taxpayers' time, we'll never know.

Oh, no!  Guess who just got a subpoena from Jack Smith.