Reassurances

 It's NRA convention weekend, spring break for the bloodthirsty.  Trump hadn't arrived yet, so the star of opening day was Governor Kristi Noem.  The delegates were upset that Bill Lee broke under pressure, and the governor of South Dakota "reassured" them that her almost-two-year-old granddaughter already has a rifle and a shotgun.  Then Lauren Boebert told them that her son's girlfriend's fetus has an AK-47 and a bazooka.  I'm joking about one of those.  Can you guess which one?

Noem put the power of her office where her granddaughter's life is -- she signed an executive order in front of everybody which prevents state agencies from working with banks that "discriminate" against gun businesses, presumably by denying them loans or mortgages they don't qualify for.  Next:  making it illegal to refuse to deliver pizza to their premises.  Again, making one up.  Vote now.

"Why do the liberals and Joe Biden want our guns?"  Noem demanded.  "Because it will make it easier for them to infringe on all our other rights."  Nobody wants your guns.  And having a gun or several has not stopped your sort of people from infringing on our right to terminate a pregnancy, vote, receive gender affirming medical care, learn American history, or borrow a library book in Missouri.  What is wrong with you?  Are you sniffing the gasoline fumes from the flamethrower you got for Christmas or have you always been like this?

Then Trump said goodbye to the Jack Teixeira Fan Club and lumbered to the podium.  Stephen Miller wrote him a very grownup speech, different from the usual demented ramblings, about how he'll order the FDA to look into how gender-affirming care makes people insane, based on that one shooting in Nashville (six out of 12,000 gun-related deaths so far this year).  It's now a talking point that trans people are ticking time bombs who will destroy all the straight white Christians and then cause a nuclear war with Russia.  They're calling it "trans ideology," whatever that means.  He's also blaming something called "genetically engineered cannabis" which makes you "demonize patriots."  I'm waiting for the English translation.  I fed it into BabelFish and my computer crashed.  The delegates cheered and fired their weapons into the air.  No, of course they didn't, no guns allowed in the NRA convention hall.

"We're going to have a big, big, successful election coming up; we're going to take back that beautiful, gorgeous White House," he assured the gun-humpers, referring to the building he once called "a real dump."  Then he'll get vengeance on the "Marxist DAs" who persecute Christians like him and investigate the Black ones for racial discrimination.  As the psychiatrist-guest at Fawlty Towers observed, "There's enough material here for an entire conference."

Since the death orgy was in Indiana they thought they'd better invite Mike Pence, who didn't realize the housefly on his head was holding a tiny KICK ME sign.  Now officially a traitor for refusing to ignore the Constitution on Coup Day, he was greeted with boos which grew meaner the more he abased himself.  He told them how proud he was to be Trump's vice-president and someone yelled, "Never again!"  He fought subpoenas from the House Select Committee and Jack Smith but not hard enough.  He told them he'd put armed guards in all schools -- think of the additional sales of guns and ammo, ka-ching! -- and there was lukewarm applause.  "I love you, too," he assured them and retired to the green room to be pelted with rotten fruit.  It's hard to be a straight white Christian Republican.

The Liberal Media doesn't want you to know that there were two expulsions from state legislatures.  The one that got less attention was in Arizona, where Rep. Liz Harris (R-QAnon) was tossed for inviting a fellow election denier to testify before the Joint Election Committee in February and lying about it.  She was investigated by the House Ethics Committee, allowed to present a defense and then booted after a bipartisan vote (attention Tennessee, this is how you do it).  Harris is such a dedicated election denier, she objected that her own election, which she won, was somehow rigged.  It makes no sense but you have to admire her commitment.  Like an Old Bolshevik insisting that he must have done something wrong or else why the show trial?

The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, trashed by Trump, has been resurrected by Joe Biden with twenty-four members including Lady Gaga, Anna Deavere Smith, Arnold Rampersad, George Clooney and Kerry Washington.  It's a small thing, but reassuring.