Clownish gangster

 

MSNBC kept showing Hair Farce One parked at the airport in West Palm Beach, and for a while I assumed he would be lamming out for Moscow or some other pre-arranged hideout.  As of this hour, apparently not.  No one has seen The Indictment yet but thirty-four counts seems like a lot.  He probably wishes he hadn't falsified business records to hide the payment -- for that's the gist of it, I'm told -- and for once paid a bill himself.  Or at least created another enterprise to scam the marks, like the charitable foundation that was later forced to dissolve, or the risible University, or some patch of waste ground he could call a park, overvalue by millions and hand to the state.  Regrets, regrets.  The costliest copulation in history has swept whatever Monica Lewinsky did gratis for Bill Clinton off the map.

Also, Clinton had too much sense to pose for a "Hey, look what I nailed!" photo.  I don't often feel sympathy for stars of the sex film industry but imagine having all that lard on top of you for even ninety seconds.  It looks like he takes his teeth out, too.

It's important to remember that adultery has not been a crime for many years, so the prurience, while fun, is not the point.  It's a lifetime of flouted laws coupled with the certainty that being a rich white man, at least on paper, will make it all go away.  When the trial is over, we'll see.  Equal justice has always been an aspiration rather than a reality.  

If you think I'm gloomy today, read what David Remnick has to say.  If you're on the wrong side of The New Yorker's paywall like me, Lawyers, Guns & Money can help.

All right.  Now let's have some fun.

March came in like a mangy lion but is going out like a mummer's parade.  (Gotta love New Year's in Philly.)  Trump's enraged tweeting isn't even the funniest, most demented response, and that's saying a lot.  Let's hope he doesn't sprain his thumbs before Tuesday's fingerprinting.

As you can see, Junior's taking it hard while continuing to prop up Bolivia's unofficial economy.  "This is stuff that would make Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, it would make them blush!"  It's "Communist level shit!"  I was wondering why he omitted Hitler.  

Nobody seems to have omitted the Napoleon of crime.  If your angry tweet did not reference "Soros-backed DA Alvin Bragg" you probably have him confused with George Santos.  Mr. Soros is the only rich person in America, it seems, who is not allowed to donate to political candidates as Peter Thiel, Charles Koch, Ginni Thomas, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Jeffrey Yass, Miriam Adelson and Kenneth Griffin do.  None of them is ever described as a "globalist," either, nudge nudge.  

Lindsey Graham turned on the tears at Fox News, which shares his love-hate-love-hate relationship to Trump, pleading for money to start some kind of legal defense.  He babbled about "voodoo" while someone in the Hannity audience laughed.  (The Fox audience must be tapped out by now, but Social Security checks will land next week.)  Margie Greene threatened to come to New York personally on Tuesday; it's not clear if she plans to ride a white horse and lead an army of patriots like Joan of Arc.  Ted Cruz hasn't seen the indictment, either, but he knows "The Founders are weeping."  Speaking of St. Joan, the term "witch hunt" has lost all meaning from overuse.  

Then there were the threats.  Statutory Gaetz is worried about "America's brand" because he thinks we're a soft drink company.  Considering that the former president of France is going to prison for corruption and the president of Russia has been indicted for war crimes, I'm thinking we can finally hold up our heads.  But go on.  "They will regret doing this," muttered Josh Hawley before running away.  "The @HouseGOP will hold Alvin Bragg accountable," raged Elise Stefanik, perhaps unaware that it already tried.  Even a committee chairman smarter than Gym Jordan would have failed.  Or maybe she meant that Massie or Ogle would send one of kids around to shoot him.

Ron DeSantis left off leading a rehearsal of "Freedonia's Gone To War!" long enough to promise that the People's Republic of Florida "will not assist in the extradition" of Trump, even though lawyer Joey Tacos has promised voluntary surrender.  It cost him nothing so he was happy to help.  The Florida Election Commandos may now stand down. 

At this point I know you're wondering, "What about the other princeling?"   Eric visited Hannity to whine, "At some point, the guy deserves a pass!"  Innocent people don't need passes, Spare, despite your automatic invoking of Hillary Clinton and SpongeSean chiming in with "Hunter Biden's laptop!"  They're lower on ammunition than the Russian army.

I suppose it's time to hear directly from Individual One.  He's been "INDICATED."

 

The red, white and blue face paint is new, I think.  His identification with "OUR COUNTRY" is complete.  Did you know this is an attack "THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE"?  We must hope al Qaeda doesn't read that as an invitation to double down on 9/11.

As if Trump would care if they did. 

Where to start?

 

Last year Missouri outlawed "sexually explicit" books in school libraries, like every other red state.  The Missouri Library Association and the Missouri Association of School Librarians sued, with the ACLU representing them pro bono, so Missouri decided to teach these leftist groomers a good lesson:  they have removed state funding from all public libraries.  Keep pushing, librarians, and they'll send in the demolition companies.  The young man above is not in Missouri but in London, where fascist book-burners of an earlier era dropped a bomb on a bookshop; nevertheless, he persisted.  Reading has never been a more radical act than it is now.  And in Harry Truman's home state.  Bastards.

At least they're decisive.  The Republicans in Congress know they hate everything Biden, including his budget proposals, but as the deadline for raising the debt ceiling approaches they can't seem to come up with a budget of their own.  Default, de-shmault, they have bigger fish to fry.  The Overlook Committee holds many hearings into What Is Really Important, where Grannie-to-Be Boebert gets to sit with the serious people and interrogate DC Councilman Charles Allen about his proposals for reforming the District's criminal code and whether he is in favor of public urination..  Yes or no?  Well?  (Of course not.)  It went on for some time while the serious people repressed their laughter.  This is one topic Grannie should avoid, as it can only remind people of the time Grandpa Jayson pulled out his boebert in front of the bowling alley.  But she's as fearless as she is stupid.

Normally Grannie would be sticking up for the sacred Second Amendment in the aftermath of another child massacre, but as she was working on America's pee problem, Margie Greene had to step in.   Did you know that when she was in the eleventh grade Joe Biden made the schools gun-free zones, which caused another lockdown?  People who can count eventually figured out that she meant the Gun-Free School Zones Act signed in 1990 by George H.W. Bush.  Or she was still struggling through high school last year.  Anyway it was found unconstitutional in 1995.  It's now an article of faith among MAGAts that everything they hate was the work of Biden or Obama, regardless of the year.  You can't argue with faith.

As befits a world leader, Trump is already looking ahead to easy conquests in his second, permanent term.  He's asking his "policy advisers" (Kushner and Bannon?) to plan an invasion of Mexico.  Not the regular Mexicans, some of whom are very fine people, just the drug cartels.  Only he can fix it.  Since we know Trump does not believe in NATO* or any other form of international engagement, it may be a threat to force Mexico to build WALL as well as pay for it -- see how smart he is?  Or he may envy the ease with which Putin conquered Ukraine.  What?  Well, any day now.

Yes, everything is great.  Those World War II tanks must be less impressive than expected because Russia is working out a deal with North Korea to swap food for weapons.  At least people will eat (or Kim will overeat) better this year.  Finland expelled Russia's spies and Putin apparently pressured Hungary to put a hold on Sweden's NATO membership, but it's all fine.  Oh, and they arrested a Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, for reporting, or "espionage" as it's known in Russia.  It's 3pm.  If he isn't on a plane by midnight expect the MAGAt Caucus to demand Biden's impeachment.

Today's fiery toxic train derailment/evacuation occurred in Raymond, Minnesota, a hundred miles west of the Twin Cities.  Ethanol and corn syrup, not as bad as it could have been.  Speaking of which, the city of Baltimore says the environmental company Clean Harbors cannot use its sewer system for carloads of contaminated water from East Palestine, Ohio.  Philadelphia assured residents their water is safe despite a chemical spill in the Delaware River in Bucks County, but people are buying bottled water anyway.  You may not have heard much about this because the Republicans haven't figured out how to blame Pete Buttigieg.

From the very same piss-obsessed Lauren Boebert:  "When we had a real Transportation Secretary instead of a DEI sympathy hire, this didn't happen every day!"  (I had to look it up:  Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, three things the right hates.)  A real secretary?  Like "Coco Chow"?  Trump railroad deregulation not relevant?  Buttigieg ran a city, you couldn't run a greasy spoon without attracting the attention of the Health Department.  You know what?  Stick to pee.

The average Wall Street bonus was only $176,700 last year.  However will they afford eggs?

*"I got rid of NATO and built USMCA.  I made a great trade deal with China.  Our farmers, to this day they made tremendous money because of the deal."  Trump to Hannity.  He confuses NATO with NAFTA.  If Joe Biden did that Nikki Haley would be demanding he take a mental competence test.

 

Midweek follies

 I'm not sure I can deal with dead nine-year-olds and Joe Biden's new interest in drilling up still more dinosaur juice.  We could all use a break.

Chris Christie thinks he has a shot at the presidency.  That's it.  That's the joke.  Failing that, he calls upon a hero to bell the cat, i.e., do to Trump what Christie did to Marco Rubio in 2016.  Remember that triumph?  

Woe is woke!  The novels of Agatha Christie are being trimmed of their "offensive" language about Gypsies, natives, and a Caribbean hotel worker's "lovely white teeth."  Hercule Poirot will continue to have an egg-shaped head and mangle English, no matter how much Belgians complain.  I read Christie for the sex scenes but most people are only interested in the plots and the staggering number of garden parties in St. Mary Mead.  

Superior, it's said, never gives up its dead but Lake Mead gave up half a dozen last summer during the prolonged drought.  One has now been identified as Donald Smith of Las Vegas, who drowned in 1974.  Thomas Erndt, who drowned in 2002, was previously identified.  A B-29 and two boats from the Second World War period also popped up.  People drink that water, you know.

Georgia is breathlessly awaiting Brian Kemp's signature on the "Stop Fani Willis From Persecuting Poor Donald Trump" bill, but Wayne Allyn Root can't wait.  The birther/crackpot has called on Republican DAs and AGs to "step up and indict all these dirty Democrat traitors," a list which includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bill AND Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi, Hunter Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas, Eric Holder and Mark Zuckerberg.  Trump happily spread it on Ministry of Truth Social.  It's not clear what Root wants them indicted for, or why Zuckerberg, but linear thinking has always been a problem for me.  I should just spiral like Paul the Cockroach.  Dr. Gosar has accused General Mark Milley of conspiring with China and Nancy Pelosi to overthrow Trump and promised to "investigate" the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  He has already called him a traitor so -- did the investigation happen?  

His partner in psychosis from the other side of the country, Margie Greene, got a Twitter time-out at the worst possible time, as she was alerting America to the terrible trans revenge that began in Nashville.  "Why is Twitter whitewashing the 'Trans Day of Vengeance'?  A day after a mass murder of children by a trans shooter?"  At last we know what it takes to interest the AR-15 Lapel Pin Caucus in a school shooting.  The TDOV is absolutely a real thing, like the Rothschild space lasers.  Is!  Isisis!!

DA Alvin Bragg gave his grand jury a month off because they're just twenty-three New Yorkers with lives.  Who are probably getting death threats like him.

On a visit to Sydney, Barack Obama called out Rupert Murdoch by name (first name) for making people "angry and resentful" through "good old racism and xenophobia and sexism and homophobia."  He also attacked Putin's "ancient way of conceiving power" through violence, coercion and domination.  But according to the Guardian the real story was Aunty Joy Murphy, an Indigenous elder who was invited and then uninvited from welcoming Obama to Melbourne.  She was being "difficult" -- the 78-year-old leader of the Wurundjeri Nation asked for a gift to present to him according to cultural tradition, and for a support person to assist her.  Way to go, Melbourne.

"The trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity and therefore its natural enemy."  For two thousand years that was said of Jews.  Also, movement?  Anyway, that's Kiss-and-Make-Up Tuck making his audience angry and resentful about a fresh phantom threat.  I wouldn't bring it up but you know it will incite more violence (physical and legislative) against trans people.  To save Christianity, which is forever under existential threat from a world of enemies, just like Holy Russia.  Beagle Face's "reasoning" seems to be that when you change your sexual identity, or just cross-dress, you are rejecting god's amazing plan for your life.  He works alone, so there was nobody in the studio to ask about, say, cosmetic surgery, capped teeth, or even scalp-tightening like the botched mess on Trump's head.  I think the war on LGBTQ people is about to enter its Somme Offensive.

Hershel Grynszpan was living in Paris when his family, along with thousands of other Jews, were deported from Germany to the Polish border.  Pushed beyond endurance, he assassinated a minor official in the German embassy.  It was the pretext the Nazis needed for Kristallnacht.  

This got dark in a hurry.  Have a picture of a butterfly.

It came with the computer.

The Senate has repealed the 2003 Iraq War authorization.  The House wants to think about it some more.  

In other past-war news, King Charles is in Germany, where he will lay a wreath at the St. Nikolai memorial in Hamburg to victims of Allied air raids.  Perhaps one day the statue of Arthur "Bomber" Harris in Westminster will be removed like that of Robert E. Lee in Richmond.  Some people still think bombing will demoralize the enemy enough to win a war, although it never has.

"Coward" was Gavin Newsom's response when Squeaker McCarthy scuttled away from a reporter's question about the Nashville shooting.  Give him a break, governor, he hadn't been told what to say yet.

Margie's Twitter account is open for business again!

Tuesday

 

Am I the only one creeped out by this image?  Google is recognizing Justine Siegemund, a Silesian midwife who wrote a book about obstetrics in the 17th century.  Which is fine but in the present climate, as I said, creepy.  Though childless (prolapsed uterus) she delivered more than six thousand babies.  I hope Google will remember Margaret Sanger when the time comes.

This could be something:  Ivana Trump was under FBI investigation for two years in the late 1980s, apparently about ties to her native Czechoslovakia.  My suspicious mind immediately goes to her "fall" down the stairs and mysterious burial on a golf course.  Of course, the Bureau under Hoover compiled huge dossiers on harmless liberals like Leonard Bernstein and Groucho Marx, not to mention the agent-hours devoted to analyzing the lyrics of "Louie Louie" (Dave Marsh's book is indispensable).  We'll know more when Bloomberg reveals the rest of her file.

Her ex-husband continues to reveal his Archie Bunker-like obsession with ethnicity, declaring that Ron DeSantis would be "working in a pizza parlor" without his help.  His endorsement did the trick when those of George Washington and "the great, great Abraham Lincoln" would have failed.  It must be exhausting to be so sublime.  He has also begun calling him "Ron Dukakis" but that should subside when it becomes clear that no Trumpanzees can remember the 1988 presidential candidate.

An aide to Rand Paul was stabbed on Saturday afternoon in Washington.  Police have already arrested a suspect who got out of jail the previous day, but the nation is bracing for a wave of QAnon theories about how Hillary Clinton is behind it.

This painting of six-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted to school in New Orleans by four US Marshals is one of the indelible images of the 1960s but kids in Florida public schools can only be confused by it.  A made-for-television movie about Bridges (by Disney, of course) has now been deemed too "controversial" for them.  Norman Rockwell called the painting "The Problem We All Live With," but 59 years later it hasn't been solved.

An Amsterdam court says a sex film of Michel Houellebecq and some young girls may be released despite his protests, and assuming anyone wants to see it.

Quote of the day from Rep. Dan Burchett (R-TN) asked about the Nashville shooting:  "We're not gonna fix it."  Five points for honesty.  Should be pulled out after every mass murder like The Onion's "'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens."

French people are demonstrating against presidential overreach in using executive authority to raise the retirement age.  Israelis are angry about the prime minister's attempt to weaken the justice system.  What would it take to get Americans riled up?  The cancellation of the Final Four?  We're inured to everything else.

CINO

 

There was another school massacre yesterday in Nashville, three children and three adults, and the Christians In Name Only are out and about like earthworms after a rainstorm.   That's Governor Bill Lee signing a no-permit carry law at the Beretta factory.  Big smiles, y'all!  Love the slogan.

Here's a longer but no less amazing one:  "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."  It's an unattributed quote from the Christmas card of the Ogles family -- he's yet another Tennessee Republican -- and it accompanied this heartwarming photo:

Maybe Ogles himself, or maybe the late great Charlton Heston, as Trump would say.  (Is the little one holding a box of festive ammo?)  Ogles is a freshman, so his family hasn't quite mastered the manic grins of the Massies of neighboring Kentucky:

Of course, the kids are older and maybe have recorded their first "kills."  Is that a bazooka?

Once they learn to do tricks with their guns, Daddy can run for higher office -- say, the Senate.  Here's candidate Ted Cruz frying up some AR-15 bacon at a campaign event.  Australian TV can hardly believe it.

Of course Tennessee already has two senators, so you'd have to muscle past them.  Here's Marsha Blackburn on yesterday's shooting:

"Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville that was enabled by NRA puppets like me who are willing to let kids be fucking slaughtered so long as the NRA continues giving me millions."

Oh, I'm sorry, that's not from Senator Blackburn.  She tweeted the customary thoughts and prayers.  The above is what David Hogg thought she should have said.  He's been in a bad mood ever since Nikolas Cruz murdered seventeen of his schoolmates and teachers.  I'll bet that gun was hot enough to fry Spam!

As if guns and religion were insufficiently linked, the Nashville shooting occurred in a Presbyterian school and seems to have been carried out by a 28-year-old former student who identified as transgender and may have had a hard time there.  (She was also described as "high-functioning autistic.")  States like Tennessee are determined that LGBTQ people have a hard time everywhere, while putting guns in their hands with no need for a permit (see above) and then acting shocked.  Everyone who was bullied in school -- and as we know from A Christmas Story you're either a bully, a toady or one of the nameless rabble of victims -- at least thinks about vengeance.  It's been a feature of most school shootings at least since Columbine.  In the days to come we will hear a lot about mental health issues, including how mad a country must be to make guns easier to obtain than tampons.  Apparently school prayer is not the solution the NRA puppets would have us believe.     

As Ogle, Massie and their caucus redouble their efforts to have the AR-15 proclaimed America's Weapon, the Washington Post has an article on what this gadget does to the human body.  It will not shock anyone who has been deployed to a war zone or close students of the Zapruder film.  (I know, that was a Mannlicher-Carcano.)  Others should approach with caution.  Most of the House need not bother.  Nothing will change, except the Christians will have another excuse for slandering the transgendered.  

Prayers.  Not thoughts.  They're not compatible.

The new normal

 

I wish we had an attorney general like Janet Reno today.

That's probably callous but I never did like religious fanatics, especially the heavily armed kind.   A country that wants to be taken seriously can't negotiate with any terrorists, whether the Branch Davidian, the Taliban or the Barker gang.  I think this particular anniversary would have passed unnoticed outside the right-wing podcasts had Trump not decided to incorporate anti-government violence into his latest campaign.  He feels safe in Texas.  The attorney general has been under criminal indictment for years but no one can touch him.  Basically, it's a state in anarchy.

It was a stellar lineup.  Mike Lindell represented the clinically insane, Robert Jeffress the evangelicals, Ted Nugent the one-hit has-beens (one-term Donnie can identify, man), Dan Patrick the state government and the comedy team of Gaetz & Greene the Congressional MAGA caucus.  

The Waco cult must have absorbed many an apocalyptic sermon thirty years ago, and Trump was happy to pick up where David Koresh left off.  "Either we surrender to the demonic forces abolishing and demolishing...our country, or we defeat them in a landslide on November 5, 2024.  Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state."  Just ordinary political discourse, and at least one worshipper was ready to go:  "If people really loved this country, 50,000 people would go take over the White House and say no more of this," said Will Montfort of Bryant, Texas.  Karey Cottress, a refugee from California, says Ventura has been taken over by Antifa and BLM, who are poisoning the dogs of conservatives.  (Someone in the sheriff's office told her.)  Steve Harris, a "retired statistics professor," says American has been "hijacked."  He refused to be more specific:  "Either you know or you don't."  There was even music, including Trump and the Gulag Chorus causing big, strong men to have tears in their eyes, and Nugent's "Star-Spangled Banner" making them all forget Jimi Hendrix.

Trump also managed to work in insults to Stormy Daniels, Ron DeSantis, the transgendered, Alvin Bragg and Michael Cohen -- nothing new there -- before chowing down on his favorite junk food and assuring reporters, "They've already dropped the case, from what I've heard."  "Don't ask me any more questions," he snarled.  Of course, he'd shrivel like a rose in the desert if the media began to ignore him.  He praised Xi Jinping and Putin, with whom he claims to be near a settlement of the special action or territorial dispute or whatever they're calling it today.  

Ted Nugent is whining that he wants a refund:  "I didn't authorize giving our military hardware to the Taliban."  He probably should have taken it up with Trump in 2020, when these two worked out the withdrawal deal:

Yes, it's Mike Pompeo and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, now the Taliban boss of Afghanistan.  Would it have killed you to add, "And give Nugent his money back," Mike?  Not to mention the proportionate repayments owed to people who pay serious taxes because they still have careers (Beyonce, Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, etc.).

Like a busted Timex, Trump was right about one thing:  Ron DeSantis is stumbling like a drunk marathoner.  The interview with Piers Morgan may be the biggest one-on-one disaster since Prince Andrew talked to Emily Maitlis.  Asked where he was on 9/11, the Governissimo responded, "I think I'd just graduated college and I didn't have a care in the world and all of a sudden, boom!  You know, it happened."  Al Qaeda are such buzzkills.  It was a beautiful day in New York, too, and we couldn't enjoy it.  All the sirens, the billowing smoke, the dead, the missing...Say this for Ron, at least he didn't describe how he rushed to the scene with a whole crew, how he went to hundreds of memorial services, how he congratulated himself on now owning the tallest building below 34th Street.  He's an empty sack that lacks the imagination even to dream up colorful lies.

Speaking of the soulless, prior to the Armageddon Hoedown Margie Greene was at the DC jail claiming again that the January 6 rioters are political prisoners and promising to impeach all the judges who put them there.  Last August she was raving about impeaching Merrick Garland and that hasn't happened, either.  I do not think the word "impeach" means what she thinks it means, but evidently it impresses some voters in the Peach State.

If Trump has a rival for the title "Worst Businessman of the 20th/21st Centuries" it has to be Elon Musk.  According to a leaked memo to his staff, Twitter has lost $20 billion and is worth half what he paid for it.  All he had to do was leave it alone.  I'll repeat that.  All he had to do...

  

Not only...but also

 Joe Biden addressed the Canadian Parliament today and they were respectful and polite, even cordial.  No one screamed "Liar!" or dressed as a laptop.  Take it from me, sometimes us old people really need to talk to other adults.

Danger, Will Robinson!  The Republican state senator was at a hearing for some new Florida hate law and got "duped" into reading the (apparently) fictitious names of some opponents, including high school classics Anita Dick and Holden Hiscock.  Maybe he didn't go to high school.  (The article is by Ron Dicker, whose school career must have been challenging.)

Wheels within wheels...Fifteen states and the District of Columbia provide students with free tampons and sanitary pads in school, but that's too "liberal" and "woke" for Idaho.  Let them walk the halls with blood running down their legs.  What better way to ascertain that they're "real" females, which is how you can tell according to Joanne Rowling.  Clever!

As a House committee debated gun control, Manuel Oliver was arrested for "disrupting" the proceedings.  His son Joaquin was murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.  As Oliver was led away, Texas Republican Pat Fallon demanded, "Is this an insurrection?  I don't want another January 6," nailing down his cred as a Texas Republican.  Or as Mr. Oliver put it, "All of you are full of shit!"  He's not wrong about Texas Republicans.

Refreshed by a week of all-caps threats and ravings, Trump will head to Waco for a celebration of the 1993 siege when an armed cult battled the feds and died in a fiery apocalypse.  In case that's too subtle for the minions, he posted this deepfake incitement...

and got at least one of them to mail some white powder to the office of the Manhattan district attorney.  Moreover, Alvin Bragg is "A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL" (nice conflation of antisemitism and racism, Donzo), "THIS IS THE GESTAPO, THIS IS RUSSIA AND CHINA, BUT WORSE."  Is it the Assyrian Empire?  Vlad Tepes?  A Quentin Tarantino movie?  Don't hold back.  Of course the powder was harmless and even with a bat Trump is afraid to be in the same state as Bragg.  Don't believe me?  Here's a deepfake of him "praying."

 

   It's an iconic pose, The Agony in the Mar a Lago.  Fred, uh, Father, let this indictment pass away...He seems to be thinner, too.

That's more like it.  "NO Crime has been committed...potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country...Why & who would do such a thing?  Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!"  Oh, Donzo, you're too hard on yourself.  Let others take up your cross, so to speak.

Argentina went through a dark period in the 1970s and 1980s which ended, ironically, when the junta overreached and tried to seize the Falklands.  They are determined never to forget and have opened a Museum of Memory in Buenos Aires, where the SC7 Skyvan will soon be displayed.  Uncovered in the US, it's one of the planes and helicopters which were used to dump enemies of the regime into the Atlantic after they had been tortured and drugged.  

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  Remember that as the next civil war draws closer.

                                  

What is Western Civilization?

 Taking on the big questions since 2006.

Is it, as Robyn Pennacchia suggests, a dog-whistle term which "sounds less obviously white supremacist than just saying 'white'"?  That would explain its presence in the rantings of Putin, DeSantis and similar demagogues.  Their western civ requires constant vigilance to protect it from "globalists," wokeness and unisex bathrooms.  That's not a civilization I can support.

Is it an identifiable tradition of free thought and speculation more or less founded by Socrates and informing the best that is said and written by fallible men and women of good will to which we still look for some way out of here?  I dunno.

Is it everywhere under assault?  Always.

Last January an art professor at Hamline University was fired for showing her class a painting of the Prophet Muhammad, after more posted warnings than there are at Chornobyl.  Because someone is always eager to be offended, which is why they enroll in a university rather than a madrasa.

This week the principal got the push from an actual Christian madrasa, Tallahassee Classical, for allowing a photo of Michelangelo's David to be shown to a class on Renaissance art.  "Pornographic!" squealed parents.  This guy.

Justice Potter Stewart said he knew porn when he saw it, but he's dead so we can't ask if he's aroused by this, which has been making Florentines all sweaty since 1505.  David's subsequent sexy activities as king of Israel are barely hinted at by the sculptor, but you can read all about them in your Bible.

Except possibly in the Davis School District of Utah, where someone filed a challenge under the state's new "sensitive materials" law, calling the Bible -- yes -- "pornographic."  The district's communications director says they have to take all such complaints seriously, even when they come from someone appalled by the censoring of, say, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon who thought, "Right, I'll go after the other one to make my point."  Which, if it is the case, good for you, Utah person.  People in the minority have to throw whatever grit they can in the machine.  

I don't know that that is the case.  Could just as easily be one of those silly people with too much time and nothing better to do.  I'm just an old country blogger trying not to think about Bonhoeffer.  (They came for the books but I don't use libraries.  Then they came for the artworks...)

Vice has a piece about Monica Cole, who calls herself One Million Moms and rails against "indecency" in everything from commercials to Sesame Street.  The Southern Poverty Law Center nevertheless takes this deluded woman seriously enough to list OMM among its hate groups.  Who am I to argue?  I just wonder when they'll get around to opera.  It's a niche part of the culture but it's four hundred years old and sooner or later the hate groups will run out of mainstream things to hate.  If it's Renaissance sculpture today it could be Mozart tomorrow.  

Too bad, because if Americans gave opera a chance they'd find it's a good fit.  For example, there's the story of a girl who catches her boyfriend sleeping with a married woman.  She tells the woman's husband and he kills the boyfriend.  That's either Cavalleria Rusticana or every third country song.  In the first act of Die Walkure a brother and sister elope; by the third act the sister is pregnant.  In Arkansas that's called dating.  Their son grows up to slay a dragon, which is almost the same as a dinosaur, and I believe people in Kentucky think that happened.  Then he falls in love with his aunt -- Arkansas again?  In Don Carlo the title character is a little too close to his stepmother...well, I could go on.  If you think the devil is real, opera's got you covered -- from Faust to The Rake's Progress he's right there messing with people.  Elitist?  I don't think so!

There's a problem, of course -- drag.  Any number of operas require women to portray men, even Hansel und Gretel, which children might be exposed to/groomed by.  And if the Million Moms figure out what's happening musically in the second act of Tristan und Isolde, or the prelude to Der Rosenkavalier, her head might explode.   

High culture!  Western civilization!  Let's claw them back from the haters.  We're still trying to grapple with the people who enjoyed Beethoven quartets and then reported for work at the gas chambers.  The cinematic masterpieces that promote the most disgusting racism.  The paintings created by people whose private lives were appalling.  I can't define Western Civilization but I know it when I see it being destroyed. 

Where was I?

 (Warning:  blogger has three days of stored-up bile)

Of course I'm disappointed.  So are the NYPD, who have been standing around in riot gear for two days with nobody to club or tear-gas.  Their union endorsed him, so fuck them.

Life goes on.  In Virginia two determined prisoners broke out of the Newport News Jail Annex using a toothbrush and other hand-made tools.  They headed straight for the IHOP, where they were promptly re-arrested.  All that effort and skill for some pancakes.  IHOP should use it in ads.

"A giant whale sank a sailing crew's boat in the Pacific Ocean...[in] an ordeal that could have come out of a novel," the Guardian breathlessly reports.  Except that the crew were enjoying a vegetarian pizza with ranch dressing and were promptly rescued by the US Coast Guard, it's Melville word for word.

The Alex Murdaugh murder trial got such high ratings, prosecutors are looking for a spin-off.  The death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith in 2015 was ruled a hit-and-run but is being investigated as a homicide.  There are probably other deaths in South Carolina which may as well be added to the pile.

With slime like Ari Fleischer getting in their last licks, it's satisfying to know that the truth is finally being aired about Reagan's dirty deal with Iran to keep the American hostages from being released until after the election.  Two surviving hostages told the Dallas Morning News some of what they endured and they're in no mood to forgive after more than four decades.  They were screwed and so was Jimmy Carter and so was America.  Truth will out.

"I love Trump, like as a person.  I think Trump is funny and insightful."  Who said it?  Yes, that was Tucker Carlson, henceforth to be known as Kiss-and-Make-Up Tuck.  The fact that Trump is stomping DeSantis in the Republiclown polls probably has nothing to do with it.

That could change as word spreads of DeSantis's time as a JAG officer in Guantanamo who apparently enjoyed observing the force-feeding and other forms of torture endured by prisoners.  This will surprise no one who has followed the Governissimo's career of bullying and abusing LGBTQ people, teachers, librarians, asylum seekers, public health professionals (apart from bozos like Joseph Ladapo) and anyone else who can't fight back.  It's become a party of sadists.

When St. Patrick's Day coincides with spring break it brings a perfect storm of violence to Miami Beach.  Mayor Dan Gelber had to impose a state of emergency after one person was killed and businesses and cars were attacked.  Any thoughts, Governissimo?

In Maine, of course, everything is going so well that the state is cracking down on custom license plates, for which drivers pay extra.  A vegan named Peter Starostecki will have to relinquish LUVTOFU because someone decided it celebrates sex rather than bean curd.  And so what if it does?  Nearly three hundred plates were recalled because, as Tom Lehrer said, filth is in the mind of the beholder.  

Jenna Bush Hager has three children but, as she revealed on The Today Show, her first pregnancy was ectopic, requiring the removal of one fallopian tube.  Luckily for her Roe v. Wade was still in effect, so even if it happened in Texas she would not be looking at prison time.  Or dead.

Speaking of unfortunate pregnancies, Jamie Comer, chair of the House Overlook Committee and scourge of Hunter Biden's penis (eww) had a girlfriend in college.  Suppress your gag reflex.  Her name is Marilyn Thomas and she told a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal that Comer hit her and also accompanied her when she went for an abortion.  It sounds like something that should be -- what's the word -- investigated.

An awful lot of people have no fucking clue how government works, and this time I'm not talking about "three branches of government" Tuberville.  ("Uh, the offense, the defense and the special squad?")  Squeaker McCarthy is afraid federal money is somehow being channeled to the Manhattan DA's office, three Republican chairmen want DA Bragg to testify about his "politically motivated" prosecution of Trump, and now Tucker Carlson has called on Joe Biden, no less, to stop Bragg's "Soros-funded prosecution."  Separation of powers, anyone?  States' rights?  Hello?  What does he think Biden is, the governor of some failed state who can hijack the Houston Independent School District or appoint his flunkies to oversee a private corporation like Disney?  Imagine the howls of "Tyranny!" if he did.

According to George Conway, who may not have the freshest information, Trump wants to be perp-walked in handcuffs to "inflame" his MAGAts.  I'm actually fine with inflamed MAGAts.  But why stop there?

No bail, either.  He's got a plane and who knows how many passports (Russia, Saudia Arabia, North Korea) -- he screams "flight risk."

It's been several weeks since a critic of Putin died a questionable death, and Dmitry Svirgunov a/k/a Dima Nova's, was reminiscent of Rasputin -- he accidentally fell through the ice of the Volga River.  It's not known if the pop singer was poisoned, bludgeoned or shot first.  Vlad's war is going splendidly, especially the T54/55 tanks being reconditioned for action.  They did really well against the Panzers at Kursk and gave those unarmed Hungarians hell in 1956.

Some happy news to end:  a contingent of Proud Boys was routed at Drag Story Hour NYC, hosted by New York Attorney General Letitia James, last Sunday.  The Boys really should have learned the history of the Stonewall Inn, where drag queens drove back New York's Finest in 1969.  It was a week after Judy Garland's death and the ladies had no more fucks to give.

Sorry about all the swearing.

Afterthoughts

 

Since Trump has summoned his flying monkeys for Tuesday, someone had a brilliant idea:  Arrest the bastard on Monday instead.

If the Trans Health Equity Act goes through, low-income Maryland residents will not only have access to gender-affirming therapy but Medicaid will pay for it.  Up yours, Florida.

Governor Tim Walz signed a law which provides free breakfast and lunch for all public school children in Minnesota.  In California they only get lunch.  Time to step up.

Michigan's civil rights law now prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.  It only took forty years and Democratic control of both houses, and of course Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

On the ninth anniversary of its annexation, Vladimir Putin stopped by Crimea.  Unlike Joe Biden, he's afraid to get any closer to his criminal war.

After slandering trans people and their providers ("By definition they are pedophiles"), a Houston doctor named Hotze was thrown out of a state senate hearing considering still more legislated hate.  Not for that, for using the word "bullshit."  Texas politicians have delicate sensibilities, it seems.

Doubling down on the hate, the Kentucky legislature cooked up a bill that goes farther:  Providers would be forced to stop and "de-transition" children who are already receiving care.  "I can't support anything that would cost the life of even one of our Kentucky teens," said Governor Andy Beshear, citing statistics on suicide.  But suicide among the marginalized is not a deal-breaker for the "pro-life" party.

On Trindade Island, a remote turtle refuge off the coast of Brazil, plastic debris from the ocean is forming rocks.  "Pollution has reached geology," said geologist Fernanda Avelar Santos.

Emmanuel Macron ran for re-election last year on a promise not to raise the retirement age, but that's exactly what he did this week, without consulting parliament.  Consequently the country is broken out in violent protests.  In Paris, where a prolonged sanitation strike has turned the City of Light into a city of shite, the police have banned gatherings on the Place de la Concorde.  The Revolution is never dead.  It's not even past.

Start your clocks

 There's barely suppressed excitement all over Blogenheim this morning as the Worst Criminal in American History predicts his imminent arrest.  Here's page two -- you can imagine the rest.

I can smell the dried ketchup and loaded Depends all the way from Palm Beach.

As if to spur Jack Smith, he repeats the call to violence from 1/6/21 and this time the LEOs will be locked and loaded.  Who would have thought it would be Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, after dropping out for so long, who would indict ahead of Smith and Fani Willis?  Slow and steady.

Squeaker McCarthy is already at work, "directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy" etc., etc.  You're the boss now, Kev, you sold your grandchildren for the job, let's see you call out the troops as you seem to think your predecessor should have done.  

Of all Trump's crimes, the sleaziest -- screwing an adult film actress and then bribing her to keep quiet about it -- looks to be the one that gets him fingerprinted first.  It's kind of perfect.

Tuesday, March 21.  The birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, the spring solstice.  I feel...younger.

 

This just in

 The International Court of Criminal Justice has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on just one of his provable crimes, abducting and deporting hundreds of Ukrainian children.  It's pretty meaningless unless he has a dacha in The Hague, but it's also a quiet rebuke to the United States, which has yet to indict Trump on any charge including the abduction of children at the Mexican border, some of them still missing.  Maybe it's finally time we joined the ICC.

 

 This is the president of Mexico, Manuel Lopez Obrador, demonstrating what's wrong with American families.  Apparently we don't hug our kids enough and that's why they're dying from Mexican fentanyl.  He's not the chief executive of a corrupt government in a poor, crime-ridden country.  He's Senor Rogers.

The Hyatt Regency Miami Hotel hosted "A Drag Queen Christmas" last December and now Florida wants to cancel its liquor license.  The Governissimo may have grabbed a bigger handful of pudding than he can swallow this time.  We're talking about the Hyatt, not Ed & Evie's B&B in St. Augustine.  I hope they hire Dominion Voting Machine's lawyers.

How would you like to work in this?  It's a Los Angeles high-rise called "(W)rapper" and Eric Owen Moss was paid actual money to design it.  He says he was inspired by Yeats's "The Second Coming" and it certainly suggests a rough beast slouching toward Hollywood to be born.  

Florida teachers will have to explain Rosa Parks to students without any reference to race or why she refused to give up her bus seat.  Wouldn't it make more sense to omit her altogether?  Have a lesson on Louisa May Alcott -- no, her father was a committed abolitionist.  All right, Abigail Adams -- no, she agitated for women to get the vote.  Anita Bryant, who's for Anita Bryant?

Tennessee is second to none when it comes to homophobia, so it's been pure fun to follow the antics of the Lieutenant Governor with the unimprovable porn name Randy McNally.  He was caught admiring

this young man on social media and says he's "really, really sorry."  He's also 79, the dirty old man.  I don't know whether this or Puddin'head Ron gave me a better laugh.  

If you think Child Catcher Putin is the great hope of Western Civ you're not alone:  Trump's back on Twitter with this horror movie/policy address.  It smells like Stephen Miller but the bad lighting and face like an old catcher's mitt are pure Donzo.  This must be what Kilmeade meant when he talked about how "disciplined" he is, no longer eating with Nazis and reading from the TelePrompter.  I'm worried about the clown makeup, though.  When Elizabeth I died it was said her white makeup was an inch thick.  That sounds like an exaggeration alluding to Hamlet ("let her paint an inch thick") but I'm sure it was solid.  Does Trump even wash his face anymore?

"An enormous clump of seaweed...is set to coat beaches in a spongy goop, bringing with it a pungent odor similar to rotting eggs."  I hope this helps those planning spring break.  Thoughts and prayers, Florida.

The third call

 Who is David Ralston?

According to the grand jurors who spoke -- anonymously and discreetly -- with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he was yet another victim of Trump's election interference and desperate attempt to hijack the 2020 election.  His official job is Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, so of course he is a Republican.  After Brad Raffensperger Trump called Frances Watson, the lead investigator in the Secretary of State's office, calling her "Frances" and turning on the old charm which always works so well (see Access Hollywood).  Ms. Watson was non-committal.  So he called the Speaker, who according to the grand juror shot him down like a Chinese weather balloon.  "I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate," he said, leaving Donnie with nothing to add but "Well, thank you."  Georgia's sixteen electoral votes remained in the Biden column where they belonged.  Today's all-caps rant about "RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRAT PROSECUTORS" sounds like the last drops of gas in his tank.  I can't find a picture of Frances Watson, which is just as well considering what the grand jurors had to say about bomb-sniffing dogs and SWAT teams, and what witnesses like Shaye Moss, Ruby Freeman and Tricia Raffensperger described to them.

Not that Agolf Twitler has ever learned anything, but today's lesson is DON'T TRY TO STRONGARM A SPEAKER.  It didn't work with Nancy Pelosi or Rusty Bowers.  They're not impressed and they record your call.  Might work with Squeaker McCarthy, who's barely alive.

Of all the weird shit happening in Florida, and it's the undisputed Land of Weird Shit, the government's fixation on menstruation is perhaps the creepiest.  (This week.)  First the state wanted girls who take part in high school sports to provide information about their periods, a requirement which was dropped in the face of a backlash.  (They still have to prove they were female at birth, a whole other obsession.)  Now state Rep. Stan McClain (guess) wants to make it illegal for girls to discuss their menstrual cycles with school officials.  Beardy Stan is adamant that he'd be fine with a girl asking for an emergency tampon -- he just doesn't want any of that sinful sex ed going on.  ("I can't take phys ed today, Ms. Jones, and I can't tell you why.")

 "Worse than an anal fissure," in fact.  According to her brother Earl Spencer, that's what Princess Diana really thought of Trump.  Of course he's a WOKE LEFTIST EARL!!, or he will be as soon as the anal fissure finds his phone.  Apparently he was using her name to peddle some real estate in New York, if you can believe it.  I believe it.

It's a long way from the lucky Georgia 14th but Margie Greene has appointed herself supreme commander of the southern border.  After she announced that the Border Patrol had found a bomb there in January, the BP had to explain that it was a bag of sand, one of the many things Margie is dumber than.

Anal fissure and pre-coup tour guide Barry Loudermilk, another Georgia genius, was pretty scared on January 6.  Not Josh Hawley or Andrew Clyde crap-your-pants scared, just apprehensive that those tourists he showed around the previous day might not recognize him when their MAGA blood was up.  He's determined to get to the bottom of all the security failures caused by Nancy Pelosi and her refusal to call out the 101st Airborne Division, which is a thing Speakers can do.  In Barry's clouded brain, anyway.  He wants Pelosi to testify and so do I, provided C-SPAN is in the House.

But Asshole of the Day -- sorry, all of the above -- is Ari Fleischer, who you may vaguely remember as George W. Bush's press secretary.  Fleischer went on the SpongeSean Squareface Hour to trash Joe Biden but he couldn't stop there.  Not only can Biden do nothing right, says the man who lied daily about Saddam Hussein's yellowcake uranium and WMDs, he's just as bad as Jimmy Carter.  "Joe Biden is acquiescing America's strength.  [I don't know what it means either.]  The last president who did that was Jimmy Carter.  The era we live in now feels an awful lot to me like the late seventies, which don't forget was followed by morning in America" and the glory that was Ronald Reagan, and Sean just sat there waving his big square face up and down.  They can't even wait for Carter to die.

Runner up:  Wisconsin state representative Donna Rozar, who said, "I have had friends and family members who have been a victim of rape, not of incest but of rape, and that pregnancy was carried to term.  There was support there."  Not even a little incest?  How about your male relatives -- any of them get raped?  Don't leave us with all these questions, Donna.  Were you raped?  Would you recommend it?

Anal fissures everywhere.

 

Straws in the wind

 (all props to Jean Shepherd, may his memory be a blessing)

I always wanted a look at this.  It's an email sent in 2014 from Tucker Carlson to "Hunter!"  That would be the infamous Hunter Biden, about to be "investigated" by Gym Jordan like no private citizen since ever.  "I can't thank you enough for writing that letter to Georgetown on Buckley's behalf.  So nice of you.  I know it'll help.  Hope you're great and we can all get dinner soon.  Tucker."  It was indeed "nice" considering what Carlson was saying every night about the Obama administration, of which Hunter's father was an integral part, but I guess he carries no grudges.  Of course, in view of recent revelations, Carlson could have voted for Obama and still trashed him every weeknight.  He's slippery that way.

"Woke" is the new "red" but you can't just admit it's meaningless.  So when rightwing intellectual Bethany Mandel was interviewed by Briahna Joy Gray about her book Stolen Youth she struggled to articulate a term she claimed to have devoted an entire chapter to.  It's pretty funny.  Before hitting the talk shows Mandel should get someone to write a soundbite on a 3x5 card.  We're all eager for the official definition, since "woke" is being blamed for the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the collapse of the Pajaro River levee and problems with the Mets' bullpen.

Since I don't go to the movies, the In Memoriam segment is my favorite part of any award show.  There was quite a stir after the BAFTAs when Phil Davis quit, enraged at the omission of Bernard Cribbens.  Well, the Oscars was even more slipshod.  Mira Sorvino pronounced herself "hurt and shocked" when her father Paul Sorvino was overlooked.  The Academy gets a pass on people who died in the past week (Chaim Topol and Robert Blake) but not on Sorvino, Anne Heche, William Hurt and David Warner.  (And of course Bernard Cribbens.)  There were a lot of production designers, makeup artists and executives, though.  Very inside baseball.

"Every one of them kissed my ass," said the ever-classy Trump, promoting his anthology of letters from better people, some of whom are dead and can't deny it.  When he met the late Queen Elizabeth II she gave him tea and a dinner and was gracious and polite, and ever since he has boasted of how "she never had a better time" and "secretly knighted" him.  It was her job to be nice to the loathsome (Putin, Ceausescu, Saudi royalty, Idi Amin) when the policy of "her" government required it.  Nobody did it better.  Perhaps her diaries will be published one day and then we'll know.  Only Trump was too stupid (or vain) to understand how the world works.  So he's charging the rubes $99 to read pro forma letters written by (or for) Oprah, Princess Diana, Richard Nixon, John Kennedy, Jr., and others who were doubtless laughing at the idiot who pretended to be "John Barron" and bragged about himself to the Daily Murdoch.  I lived in New York then and we were all laughing.  And on a vaguely related note, I saw Marla Maples in a commercial for some kind of atomizer and she looks fantastic.  No new "kidneys" for her.

Federal prosecutors are curious about $8 million wired via the Caribbean to Trump Media from some Friends of Vladimir last year, at around the time Truth Social was being created as a rival to Twitter.  The term "money laundering" is being whispered.  So that's why he hired obvious mob lawyer Joe Tacopina.  If Jack Smith doesn't get moving, he'll have to wait in line.

Guo Wengui, a/k/a Miles Guo a/k/a Ho Wan Kwok, was arrested in New York on charges of $1 billion in fraud.  The feds say he spent $37 million in stolen money on the yacht he shared with Steve Bannon, who I guess is now what he always looked like:  homeless.  "Miles is honest, forthright, and has impeccable taste," wrote Tony Blair, when the lamster wanted to buy a penthouse in Manhattan.  I guess he was generous with the Labour Party, too.

 

Manchester United, the UK's most celebrated football club, may soon be owned by this guy, Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani of Qatar.  

The Audubon Society has announced that it will spend $25 million on "equity and diversity" including chapters at historically Black colleges and universities.  But it will not change its name even though John James Audubon was both a pioneering naturalist and an enthusiastic owner of enslaved people.  This decision will please nobody, but the money is always welcome.  John Muir -- look, you don't want to know but read the article.

Oklahoma is the personal property of Jesus -- the governor said so -- and it was a matter of time before Bronze Age rule asserted itself.  When state representative John Talley introduced a bill banning the corporal punishment by schools of children with disabilities it ran into a wall of Old Testament obstruction.  To repeat:  children with disabilities.  When the Book of Proverbs was being compiled, children with disabilities didn't live long enough to be paddled.  In some societies they were deliberately killed.  Nevertheless in the birthplace of Woody Guthrie, "God's word is higher than all the so-called experts," according to Republican Jim Olsen.  I wonder what God said about abortion.  So does everyone else.  The Olsens just change the subject.

Do you suppose all the intelligent people went west with the Joads?

"The past is never dead.  It's not even past," said William Faulkner of Oxford, Mississippi, so he would have understood the death of Rasheem Carter.  Last October in Laurel, Mississippi, Carter called his mother to say that three truckloads of white men were chasing him and shouting racist epithets.  A month later his dismembered body was found in some woods twenty miles away.  According to the authorities there is no evidence of foul play -- animals did it.  I'm inclined to agree with that last part.

Nebraska is advancing a bill to outlaw gender-affirming therapies for those under 18, so state Senator Machaela Cavanaugh decided it was time to shove a cork in all legislative proceedings.  For three weeks she has filibustered and introduced amendments to every bill for eight hours a day, even when ill.  Nothing is getting passed, including what she calls "legislating hate against children."  I think I know what her favorite movie is.

Nebraska famously has the only unicameral legislature, so it might not work everywhere.  But we should bloody well try.