Half staff again

 Michael McRae learned of America's latest mass shooting -- eight people at Michigan State University, three of them fatalities -- when his street filled with police cars and he was ordered to come out with his hands up.  This is the way police break news to Black people.  His son Anthony McRae, 48, was suspected of carrying out the shootings before killing himself.  Far from being a co-conspirator, Michael McRae says he didn't allow guns in his house.  But Anthony seems to have fallen into angry depression since the death  of his mother two years ago.  And so, another shrine, another candlelight vigil, more funerals, more denial from the murder industry.  Another Tuesday in the land of the free.

No doubt about it, crime is A Problem, as it has been for every society since Babylon.  (Have you actually read Hammurabi's Code?  Blood-chilling.)  But Trump, as always has the answer:  Capital punishment.  To be precise, he wants firing squads and he wants them televised, which even the Fearsome Foursome (South Carolina, Utah, Oklahoma and Mississippi) don't do.  He's even musing about the guillotine which, though French in origin, was a big hit with the Third Reich.  Not everyone, just murderers, drug dealers and those "FAKE NEWS!" reporters who annoy him.

(That's Hammurabi, of course, not Trump.)

The executions would be televised as a "deterrent."  If you want to deter crime, show the final minutes (hours?) of some poor bastard strapped to a gurney and being bloodlessly poisoned to death by an actual medical doctor.  Recently the states have had to give up because the drugs didn't work.  This happens a lot in Oklahoma, "every square inch" of which Governor Kevin Stitt has claimed for Jesus.  Maybe he should give crucifixion a try.

But Trump is nothing if not a multitasker.  In addition to criminal justice reform he's also working up a slate of fresh insults for his coming campaign.  No longer "DeSanctimonious," which makes no sense and is hard to spell, DeSantis is now "Meatball Ron," because you want to kick off by insulting Italians.  This should work as well as suggesting that Chris Christie needs to lose weight.  

Tomorrow the Director of National Intelligence will brief John Bolton on the various balloons recently popped by the Air Force.  I have no idea why.  

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Bonkers) has a splendid theory about why the first balloon was not shot down in Montana but allowed to drift off the coast of South Carolina.  Basically Biden is in the pay of the Chinese and it wouldn't have damaged anything because it was no bigger than the plane that crashed in Shanksville on 9/11 and everybody is lying!  She said this in Idaho because the Coeur d'Alene Republicans had trouble booking a local idiot on Super Bowl Sunday.

Astronomers in Hawaii say this is a Chinese satellite using green lasers to measure pollutants over the observatory on Mauna Kea.  Expect another round of shit-losing.

In the speculation bowl, Baby Tuckoo has already roared past the China stage and is sure aliens are balloon-invading us.  "At some point they're gonna demand to be taken to our leader.  And what are we gonna say then?  'This is Kamala Harris.  She once dated Montel Williams but now she runs our country because her boss is senile.'"  He didn't look senile when he was bitch-slapping the Klown Kaukus one week ago.  Kevin McCarthy, on the other hand, looked like a shop teacher brought out of retirement to substitute for Mrs. Pelosi.  And since when is dating Montel Williams disqualifying for high office?  Junior Trump's coke-bunny "fiancee" was married to Gavin Newsom until he woke up one day and caught her watching Fox News.

Nikki Haley is officially running for president.  Whoopee.

Have you claimed Jewish (or "Jew-ish") ancestry yet?  It's the new right-wing craze.  Anna Paulina Luna had some loopy story about being "raised as a Messianic Jew" by her Catholic father (think "Jews for Jesus," who were always pamphleting in New York in the 1970s), but her family says her grandfather actually fought for Germany in the late unpleasantness (1939-1945).  She's also a tiny bit Ashkenazy; according to those send-in-your-DNA companies, most of us are.  Meanwhile, antisemitic violence continues to escalate.

Here's the Congresswoman dressed for a community theater production of "Madchen in Uniform."

Oh, she's Hispanic, too.  And she can be Roma if necessary.

What's this?  Mississippi might elect a Democratic governor.  Of course he's Elvis's cousin Brandon Presley, but how much worse than Tate Reeve can anyone be?  Let's go Brandon!