This never-ending shade

 Casey Rivara stopped his car in Rocklin, California, to help a duck and her young cross the road.  He was returning to his car when another driver struck and killed him.  That's what it feels like to be alive in this time and place.

Amanda Gorman's poem "The Hill We Climb" was read by her at Joe Biden's inauguration over two years ago.  Only now does the Florida hate community have laws in place to censor it.  Shocked by lines about "a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man," one parent in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools demanded that the poem by "Oprah Winfrey" be removed because it "is not educational and have indirect hate messages."  Well, not removed but placed out of reach of young readers so they won't be "indoctrinated."  Gorman pronounced herself "gutted."  She can take comfort in a Washington Post investigation which found that most of the complaints are coming from "a miniscule number of hyperactive adults."  

I can never remember which Fox News host is supposed to be/trying to be funny.  If it's Greg Gutfeld (or Gutfeld!), he needs better writers.  A 38-year-old female teacher in California had been charged with having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male student and Gutfeld! thought it was delightful.  "I'm sorry, come on.  Sixteen years old?  I would have died for that!" said the star of the network that calls all Democrats "groomers."  Statutory rape is fine as long as it's not same-sex, I guess.  One panelist objected but Gutfeld! would not be deterred, citing as legal precedent the Van Halen song "Hot for Teacher."  "I don't condone it, I just envy it," was as far as he would backtrack.  

Ron DeSantis really knows how to launch a presidential campaign -- on a Twitter platform few have heard of, with Elon Musk to shelter him from any rude questions.  The run-up has been -- well, unusual.  First Equality Florida and the Human Rights Campaign, now the NAACP have issued warnings to members to avoid the state.  Last week Florida took a hit to its economy when Disney cancelled plans to build a billion-dollar campus near Orlando which would have added more than two thousand jobs.  (Good spot for that new prison, Ron.)  Anybody want to see governing like this in all fifty states?

Maybe South Carolinians do.  Their governor, Henry McMaster, says things like, "I look forward to the day that Democrats are so rare, we have to hunt them with dogs."  DeSantis hasn't pushed a "hunt the woke with dogs" bill through the Floridastag yet, but now that he's been given the idea...

Now this is funny, Gutfeld!  Fox News built a home studio for Tucker Carlson in his Maine bunker and now they've dismantled it.  Now he can't even do Rupert Pupkin "broadcasts" anymore.  Does anyone want life-size cardboard versions of Trump and Orban?

It's hard to tell the Trump campaign team from the Trump legal defense team but another lawyer dropped out of the latter.  Timothy Parlatore was on boxes-of-stolen-documents assignment before he quit, citing constant interference by Trump's Renfield, Boris Epshteyn.  It didn't help that the client boasted to his yuge CNN audience about how he took the stuff and he doesn't care who knows it.  Now a voice from the past, Ty Cobb, who saw the "town hall" too, says there's so much "evidence of guilty knowledge" that for sure Trump is headed to prison.  America is awaiting the Ministry of Truth Social attack on Cobb and his silly mustache and what a bad lawyer he was.  Meanwhile Trump (pretending to be his lawyers) has written to Merrick Garland requesting a meeting about the "ongoing injustice."  It's hilarious.

It's hard to work up much anger at Target and its decision to pull Pride merchandise off the shelves.  Retail employees are hard to hold these days, doubly so when they're getting death threats from MAGA morons.  "Hey, I just work here" doesn't cut it when the mob is baying for blood.  There are other places to shop whose "commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community" is a little more courageous.

Read Amanda Gorman's poem.  Then listen to Tina Turner, who died today.  You'll feel less alone.