Sinking

 

The Encyclopedia Britannica says it's impossible to sink in quicksand.  So what are we standing on?

Sometimes sheer vileness is not just the point, it's the only point.  At home between stops on his hopeless campaign, Ron DeSantis signed a bill that allows construction companies to use phosphogypsum for paving roads.  The byproduct of phosphate mining emits radon and contains uranium, radium and thorium, all carcinogens.  I choose to believe that the mining company, Mosaic, made a staggering contribution to his campaign because it's less awful than the alternative -- that he's a Bond villain who wants people to sicken and die.

A January 6 insurrectionist was arrested near the Washington home of Barack Obama with firearms and bomb-making materials, and to all intents and purposes he was sent by Trump.  Taylor Taranto saw a Ministry of Truth Social post which gave the addresses of Obama and other Democrats.  He promptly re-truthed it with the comment "Got them cornered!" but there was an outstanding warrant and soon the Secret Service and DC Metro Police had him cornered.  Taranto has been living in his van near the jail so he can be close to his fellow oppressed patriots.  Now he'll be closer still.

The Alito Court hates the powerless and the non-rich so much, it will happily strip them of rights based on fiction.  Lorie Smith is a self-described evangelical graphic designer who challenged Colorado's anti-discrimination law and today the Sick Six assured her that she cannot be compelled to design a website for a same-sex wedding.  Of course, nobody asked her to, but in case it happens she's covered.  Also, in the event minority students get into big-deal colleges, the government can't forgive their massive loans either.  Poor people, curl up and die.  The Court will be adjourning soon so their sugar-daddies can take them on cruises and buy them pretty things.  "The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands," wrote Neil Gorsuch in Smith.  Not all persons, though.  Only religious bigots.

The Second Amendment solution to school shootings -- armed guards and teachers -- was dealt a blow when Scot Peterson was acquitted of all charges in the deaths of seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.  Peterson was the armed "school resource officer" who ran away when the shooting started in 2018.  It's Florida, Scot.  You're supposed to stand your ground, especially when it's your damn job.

Breaking non-news

 

The Kennedy campaign quickly deleted this photo of a young lady modeling campaign gear after someone noticed the Cyrillic writing on the sign.  Trump in 2016 did a better job of concealing his Russian connections.

Trump staffer and brazen opportunist Miles Taylor (you will remember him as the courageous op-ed author Anonymous) has a book out in which he says Trump made sexual comments about Ivanka and other women in his administration.  

Tell us something we don't know, Miles.

Three men have been charged with insider trading, bringing them $22 million, in the merger of Trump Media & Technology Group with Digital World Acquisition Corp. in 2021.  Don't tell me -- Trump turned them in because he didn't get a piece.

Michael Schoenbrod and his wife are both police officers and they came up with an ingenious plan to toilet-train their three-year-old son:  They handcuffed him and put him in a cell.  Where do they work?  Florida, of course.  

Ron DeSantis has a well-thought-out plan to eliminate the Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce and the Internal Revenue Service.  Guess what, Pudding Paws?  Without the IRS there's no money for any departments.  Or the president's salary.

A television channel in New Zealand was reprimanded by the country's media watchdog for a show which depicted dolphins mating.  Earlier this week a feral cat hunt was held in rural North Canterbury which appears to have turned some of the young participants feral.  Jacinda Ardern quits and that country goes to hell.

A man in France broke a record for running a hundred meters while on fire.  I'm pretty sure the record was set by Richard Pryor in 1980.

For the first time in twenty years malaria has been found in Texas and Florida.  How long before asylum seekers are blamed?

The Alito court tossed out affirmative action and half a century of racial progress, but they told Louisiana to make another majority-Black Congressional district.  Swings and roundabouts.

Tommy Tuberville is pumped because Alabama will get a piece of the $42 billion bill to expand access to broadband.  Coach forgot he voted against it.  Coach is a dumb hypocrite.  Joe Biden was happy to point this out.

CPAP is a machine that enables people with sleep apnea to get more and better sleep, and today we learned that Biden uses one.  Tonight we will hear why he should quit immediately before he dies of OLD.  But just think what he can accomplish on a better night's sleep!  Better CPAP than CPAC.

According to the World Health Organization aspartame, an ingredient in Diet Coke and other items, is a carcinogen.  Don't tell Trump.

The crackpottery barn

 To begin with the acme of nutty and work our way down, let's meet Joe Donnell of the great state of South Dakota.  Joe's mission is no less than the redemption of Mt. Rushmore, which was created as a "Freemason shrine...to enshrine democracy or the Declaration of Independence."  The Lord revealed to Joe that Borglum's creation has "a direct ley line to Washington, D.C." which funnels demonic communism across the country.  Not to worry, because with Trump's help God will break that connection if we all pray our asses off.  Joe is a state representative, not some random schizophrenic off his meds, so you can believe him.  He was endorsed by Kristi Noem -- need I say more?  Freemasons, ley lines, demons, Trump, Noem, communism, what more do you need?  Chemtrails?  Joe looks like he can summon some up.

There's so much communism around that Rick Scott, an actual US Senator, had to issue a warning:  Socialists and communists "are not welcome in the Sunshine State," a good long ley line from South Dakota.  He was responding to travel advisories from the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Human Rights Campaign and several others.  I'm sure Joe Donnell is welcome, though.  It's fine, Florida's not much of a tourist destination.

According to Chauncey DeVega at Salon, there's a rational explanation for why Trump now refers to the special prosecutor as "Smith."  He has decided Jack Smith is a secret J-E-W (you know how they change their names to fool people).  And all his Trump derangement falls into place.  Despite being the greatest friend to Israel in the whole history of the world, or at least since 1948, Trump is hated and feared by disloyal American Jews because he is the messiah they have rejected.  I guess.  Joe Donnell seems to be thinking along the same lines.

Who's getting away with it today?  (1) Down in communist-free Florida Bradley Hocevar failed to recognize his pool cleaner, Karl Polek, in the back yard.  Hocevar did what any retired Army colonel would, grabbed his AR-15 and fired off thirty rounds.  Polek survived, though cut by flying glass, and Hocevar will not be charged.  As the Pinellas County sheriff wittily put it, "This is one of those situations we call lawful but awful."  Sounds like standing your ground happens a lot.  (It's not known if the colonel is looking for a new pool cleaner.)

(2) Also in Florida, Susan Lorincz will not face a murder charge for shooting Ajike Owens through the door of her house but has been charged with manslaughter.  The state attorney couldn't find evidence of "hatred, spite, ill will or evil intent" despite Lorincz's history of yelling racist epithets at Owens and her children.  Who says Black lives matter?

Trump is sure the Fox News ratings are down because of the "horrible" pictures of him they insist on using.  I don't know, I think he looks the same.

How many people under state and federal indictment have the time or the interest to keep track of the Fox ratings?

Have you seen this man?  (It's not Trump without hair and makeup.)  General Sergei Surovikin of the Russian aerospace forces has been missing since the quasi-coup of last Saturday.  Surovikin was described by US intelligence as having close ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin of the Fighting Wagners.  Prigozhin is holed up in Minsk, Belarus, and Surovikin may have fallen prey to treacherous Russian gravity.  Allegedly.

Trump is suing E. Jean Carroll for defamation -- stop laughing, this is serious legal news.  Coca-Cola should sue him for concluding the now-infamous "look at my classified secret documents" tape by ordering some Cokes.  

Brain freeze

 

THIS IS IN NO WAY -- sorry, this is in no way a threat of violence against Jack Smith, his family, and his friends.  Or his associates in the Justice Department.  Why would you think it is?  Is it the all-caps format, or the mysterious reference to someone called "Joe Bidden," possibly a coded message?  Is it the citation of the legal precedent known as "US v. Clinton and the cassette tapes he may have stored in his sock drawer while working on a book with Taylor Branch"?  Is it only Tuesday?

The wheels have come off the tricycle.  Nothing is true, everything is permitted.  If you can say it, someone will believe it.  In fact, someone probably does already.  

Is this some sort of anniversary?  Because the Obama birth certificate libel has suddenly re-appeared, unprovoked and unsupported.  Barack Obama gave an interview to Christiane Amanpour on CNN which ranged from the Titan implosion to the future of democracy and that was enough to set them barking.  Kari Lake, Empress of the Southwest, has forgotten that she campaigned for Obama in 2008 and now insists he had a "a mysterious past and virtually no accomplishments on his resume" when some sinister force placed him in the presidency, while preventing investigative journalists like her from giving him "a proper vetting."  Lake is about to issue a book and if it's all that compelling, my beach reading is locked in.  (I never go near a beach.)

Jesse Watters, winner of the coveted 8 pm slot involuntarily vacated by Tucker Carlson at Fox News, saw the interview and was angry because Obama compared the wall-to-wall coverage of five rich white guys' death by misadventure with the boatload of immigrants that sank off Greece around the same time, largely unnoticed although more than three hundred Pakistanis drowned.  "When you're a citizen of the world," he sneered, "you always think of the world instead of the United States.  Remember, this is a guy whose father has roots in Africa.  This is a guy who spent a lot of his childhood in Southeast Asia.  And then spent a lot of time in Hawaii -- was that the last state to get a star on the flag?"  We get it, a foreigner.  Not like, say, Ted Cruz, whose father has roots in Cuba, who was born in Alberta.  Watters passed the racism test, let's see how he does in the Russian propaganda event.

If you wait long enough, everything comes around.  More than twenty years since America's offshore concentration camp opened, UN investigator Fionnuala Ni Aolain was allowed to visit Guantanamo and confirm what was never in doubt, that the thirty men still held there are subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."  None has ever had a trial, even by military tribunal, and all suffer the physical and psychological effects of torture and isolation.  The numbers are small compared to Buchenwald or Stalin's gulag, but the stain on our history is just as indelible.  

Goofy comes around, too.  In Million Dollar Legs (1932) W.C. Fields becomes president of Klopstokia by out-wrestling all his rivals.  For a while it looked like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would meet in a cage match because that's how serious adults settle their differences in 2023.  Now it appears that Musk's mother Maye has called off the fight.  How disappointing for Hatpin Laura Ingraham, who had predicted a Musk victory.  Never mind.  Markwayne Mullin, an actual senator from Oklahoma, wants to throw down with Teamsters president Sean O'Brien, who has called him a "moron" and a "clown."  Throw in the photo being circulated of Robert Kennedy, Jr., lifting weights shirtless, and well, as one of the Firesign Theater observed, it's a little like having bees live in your head.  

Ironically, democracy got a little safer today as the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Independent State Legislature theory is so much chin music, and legislatures can't toss out election results they don't like and appoint their own electors -- exactly what Trump and his crew wanted them to do (and a few attempted) in 2020.  The three dissenters were also the justices known to be most indebted to generous billionaires (Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch), which I'm sure is entirely coincidental.  It will help if we decide to have elections next year and not some variation on the Hunger Games.

Some archeologists excavating a wall in Pompeii have uncovered a 2,000-year-old fresco which appears to depict a pizza, albeit without tomato sauce or mozzarella.  But can you call it pizza?  It's focaccia at best.

Greg Abbott can take water away from construction workers -- most of them are "illegals" anyway -- but he can't stop people pointing and laughing after he fell for a satirical article about Garth Brooks and the Texas Country Jamboree in Hambriston, Texas.  There is no such jamboree and no such city, although Texas and Garth Brooks are real enough.  Greg Abbott is an idiot.

   

They

 

It's happening again.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is having a bad month.  First that little bitch Boebert stole her impeachment idea and tried to get in front of her, claiming to be on a mission from God.  (Elwood Blues on line one!)  Now her television is spying on her.  "...the television turned on by itself and the screen showed someone's laptop trying to connect to the TV."  Her tweet -- whoa, no Truth Social? -- linked to a CBS News story, "Your smart TV might be spying on you, FBI warns."  Marge is so rattled, she is citing both the lying liberal media and the FBI as authorities, and she hates the one and wants to defund the other.  This is big, people.

Lest anyone question her health she goes on, "Just for the record:  I'm very happy.  I'm also very healthy and eat well and exercise a lot.  I don't smoke and never have.  I don't take any medications.  I am not vaccinated.  So I'm not concerned about blood clots, heart conditions, strokes, or anything else.  Nor do I have anything to hide..."  This has taken a strange turn.  No one said she was hallucinating.  I know nothing of modern "smart" TVs but I understand they can interface with computers, so you can watch Succession on the big screen if that's your idea of a good time.   Perhaps a neighbor was trying to do so and punched in the wrong code.  It's too soon to panic.

Ah, but many people are saying that microwaves spied on Trump Tower in 2016, which is why Trump lost...well, anyway, millions of votes were changed by Italian computers accessed by Rothschild space lasers...I can't remember all the details now, and I think they kept changing.  For sure, the CIA is out to get Robert Kennedy, Jr., just as it got his father and Uncle Jack and rigged Uncle Ted's car to go off that bridge.  (No?  Too far?)  They're after him because he's such a threat to someone.  With Trump peddling our nuclear secrets all over the world, the Company has nothing better to do.

Paranoia has replaced covid as the pandemic of our time.  Conspiracy lurks in every corner of the internet.  No one with even a tangential connection to the Clintons has ever died the way they want you to think, from Vincent Foster to Socks the cat.  Crackpot theories from "Who killed Jimi Hendrix?" all the way back to the twelfth century Blood Libel are reanimated and recirculated hourly.  For instance:

Marsha "Aliens Stole My Hairbrush" Blackburn is certain that the announcement of the Titan implosion was delayed until Thursday to distract from the news about Hunter Biden's guilty plea on some trivial tax and gun charges.

Alex Jones reveals an assassination plot against Trump.  What's more, Trump knows all about it and is "ready to die" in the probable bombing of Trump Farce One, his beloved plane.  Or the deep state will make it look like a heart attack.  Or something.  Maybe ricin in his golf gloves.  Who knows?

"We gave Putin no excuse...to blame this [the Wagner mutiny] on the West," said Joe Biden.  If Putin doesn't, Tucker Carlson will.

I get it.  A world run by shadowy, sinister forces is still a world run by somebody, not the random chaos we live with.  This is why gods were invented.  People need certainty, even if it enrages them.  The internet has only made it worse.  It was just sitting there, waiting for some stoner to invent QAnon.  And so here we are.  

Lighten up!

 It's summer.  The world's an awful place in so many ways -- why make it worse?

Recent years have seen a renaming of sports teams to make them not so racist -- the Cleveland Guardians and Washington Commanders being welcome, if unimaginative, replacements.  Not to step into the anti-woke camp, but it's possible to carry this kind of thing too far.  Exhibit A:  The minor league Macon Bacon baseball team.  It's mildly suggestive and is far superior, in my opinion, to the Savannah Bananas.  (Formerly the Sand Gnats, believe it or not.)  Now a fun-free group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine wants it changed because bacon, the best thing ever to happen to pork, is bad for you.  They would prefer the Macon Facon Bacon, which is not only unwieldy but requires an explanatory footnote (Fakin' Bacon, vegetarian bacon substitute, get it?).  Give Macon a break.  Go after a bigger target, doctors.  How about the Green Bay (Meat) Packers?  Or the Dallas (Cattle-Drivin') Cowboys?  

Yeesh.

Speaking of baseball, the superfluous quote of the day comes from LA Angels manager Phil Nevin.  "We were aggressive," said Nevin, by way of explaining the 25-1 victory over Colorado last night in Denver.  Someone doubtless has an elaborate explanation for all the home runs based on the thin air at Coors Field.  With all the new speed-up features introduced this season, why is there none to allow one team to say, "We're not getting anywhere, let's shower and go home early"?

Christian Roberto Lopez Rodriguez of Spain has taken the Guinness Book record for running 100 meters in 12.82 seconds while wearing 2.76-inch stiletto heels.  Now do it backwards.  (Ginger Rogers reference.)

We've been following (with a certain amount of fear) the exploits of the boat-threatening orcas off the Spanish coast.  Enjoy video of an orca nudging one competitor's rudder during a yacht race.  They're smarter than half the Congress.

While the world tries to figure out what just happened in Russia, I can't get over the fact that Yevgeny Prigozhin used to be Putin's caterer.  Apparently he started with a hot dog stand (remember the KGB man in Moscow on the Hudson?), opened a restaurant, then another, and at some point decided that he really wanted to be in the mercenary business.  Only Zelenskyy's transition from sitcom star portraying a president to actual president is more startling.  

As Tony Blinken tries to sort it all out, here he is with Skunk Baxter and Coalition of the Willing performing "Hoochie Coochie Man."  Many roads lead to power.

 

 

Family dyamics

 

I think I understand why Joe Biden put a bust of Robert F. Kennedy in his office.  They both had disappointing sons.

Unless you were an only child you know what I mean.  One kid is golden, outstanding student, great athlete, social skills for miles.  Volunteers for the military, serves with distinction, career success.  That would be Beau Biden, who died too young.  His father still wears his watch.  Hunter is the other one, the screwup who needs bailing out, breaks the rules, can't quite get it together.  And his dad loves him anyway, and will continue to do so no matter how many MAGAts try to portray him as a combination of bin Laden and Carlos the Jackal.

It's not hard to imagine what Bobby would think of his namesake.  Would his love be unconditional?  That's not a Kennedy feature.  Joe was more toughness than love, even having one of his daughters hidden away and eventually lobotomized for the crime of being imperfect.  The children's job was to fulfill the father's unreachable goal.  When Joe Jr. was no longer available to be president the burden fell on Jack, frail in health, whether he wanted it or not.  And so on.  Infuriating as it is from a feminist perspective, it may be just as well that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had only daughters.  There was no pressure to follow in Dad's footsteps (though Malia or Sasha still may).  

If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were named Jones, he wouldn't be sharing his conspiracy theories with Moms for Anything; he'd be running a podcast nobody watches, or working on a whiteboard covered in scribbling and red yarn purporting to prove that Lincoln was assassinated on orders from Disraeli.  The media have decided that the Kennedy name is magic, even though nobody under seventy remembers Camelot (a post-Dallas invention by Theodore H. White).  To most people JFK is just the name of an airport or a terrible movie.  The Kennedy money is a lot more potent.  But a lot of people have money or can score it from the Kochs and Mercers, or from whoever dreamed up No Labels.   The idea seems to be to chip away at support for Biden by promoting Kennedy, Williamson, Ramaswamy, Cornel West (did you know Jill Stein is running his "campaign"?), whatever leftovers they can find to install a Republican.  It's a desperate maneuver by shadowy figures who want only power.  Watch the antics of the House on C-SPAN any day and you'll see what happens when they get some.

We all have some idea of who's running this from the shadows.  If it's Putin, and why not, he has his own problems right now.  Like, how do you get from Moscow to a deluxe hotel suite in Beijing or Budapest when you're afraid to fly?  I guess Palm Beach is out of the question.

You can't make it up, Friday edition

 Leadership.  That's why Titan went too deep and came apart, killing its five occupants.  The Biden administration failed to provide leadership sooner.  So says Dan Crenshaw, who has been hearing "a lot of concerning things from people," i.e., many people are saying.  Stricter regulation of the whole submersible shipwreck tourism industry is certainly not what he wants, being from Texas where "regulation" is a dirty word like "rights" and "RINO."  "Where exactly that leadership failure is, I don't know.  Is it the White House, Coast Guard, Navy?  I don't know."  (It is the White House.  Count on it.)

Indiana Moms for Liberty are holding an early summer get-together this weekend featuring "a class in Biblical Citizenship," whatever that is, a celebration of their school voucher efforts, the outing of those who fund Carmel Pride, and a vow:  "Moms for Liberty will not be intimidated by hate groups!"  If you don't want to be mistaken for a hate group, maybe don't quote Hitler in your ads.

It goes without saying that the Hitler-quoting Moms have booked an all-star slate of speakers:  Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Dennis Prager and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Kennedy is coming off a Twitter encomium from Tucker Carlson that has to be read -- quoting doesn't do justice to the brainstorm on display here.  He calls Kennedy "the most censored famous person in the United States," with "censored" meaning "no responsible person shares his opinions about vaccines, Ukraine, cell phones, the 1918 flu pandemic or LGBTQ people."  

Here's a gem from our "Huh?" collection:  A bill to give disabled people more options for voting was vetoed by Greg Abbott.   Yes, that Greg Abbott.

On June 15 a truck accident caused a fire that destroyed a section of I-95 where this major artery runs through Philadelphia.  Today it reopened, months earlier than expected, with construction workers laboring around the clock and disaster funding from the state and federal governments.  A jet dryer was borrowed from NASCAR to speed the work.  For coordinating this extraordinary effort Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg received a special commendation from the House of Representatives -- ah, gotcha, of course he didn't!  Dan Crenshaw wants hearings to demand why he allowed the truck to crash in the first place.

Malefactors of great derp:  "Roosevelt said you can judge a person by the enemies they make.  By that standard, I'm doing pretty damn well," said Adam Schiff.  He also reported, "I want to thank Kevin McCarthy and the MAGA Republicans for censuring me.  My Senate campaign has just raised over $20M."  

What is going on here, exactly?

 We begin in Idaho, a/k/a Florida with mountains.  Majorjon Kaylor says that 18-year-old Devin Smith was masturbating through a ground-floor window in front of Kaylor's wife and daughters.  That's why he shot Smith, his grandfather Kenneth Guardipee, his mother Kenna Guardipee, and her other son, sixteen-year-old Aiken Smith.  Devin is the recent graduate.

All four are dead.

The Titanic tourists whose disappearance has riveted the media's attention all week are dead, according to the US Coast Guard, following the implosion of their experimental submersible.  Junior Trump should have waited a few hours before going public with his conspiracy theory.  "Literally everything I've seen about this missing submarine is insane and sketchy AF...almost none of it makes any sense whatsoever.  How long till we find other external factors making it even more so???"  In a second Troof Social he singled out "lefties" for mocking his coke-fueled incoherence.  Coming soon:  At least three House committees "investigating" the corrupt Biden Coast Guard's refusal to save the five men because they're rich.

Teachers, librarians, poll workers, health care workers...the weatherman?  When the Trumpanzees don't agree with you, they skip over the letters and get right to the vile, violent threats against you, your family and your pets.  That's what happened to Chris Gloninger, meteorologist at KCCI-TV in Des Moines.  Gloninger was not shy about linking the local forecast to global climate change and soon began getting complaints about his "liberal conspiracy theories" and demands for his home address.  (One idiot used his own name, resulting in a fairly small fine.)  Gloninger, who says the stress has given him PTSD, is getting out of broadcasting altogether.  Is this the state Meredith Willson celebrated in The Music Man?

Boebert and Greene continue to scrap over whose baseless, doomed articles of impeachment against Joe Biden will be heard first, with the gentlelady from Georgia calling the gentlelady from Colorado "a little bitch."  It was delicious, and for dessert Nancy Pelosi took the mic and observed of Republicans, "You look miserable."  As the Republicans settled for censuring Adam Schiff, Pelosi accused them of turning the House into "a puppet show."  Let's hope the two gentleladies go full-on Punch and Judy.

"We live in complicated times and we need common sense."  Who said it?  Practically anyone from Thomas Paine onward, but today it was Will Hurd announcing that he's seeking the (all together now) Republican presidential nomination.  This brings the field to about thirty, with primary voters sighing, "Finally someone I can support!  He was so good in Broadcast News!"  Unfortunately this isn't William Hurt, who died last year, but the former Texas representative who decided he had no future once he criticized Trump.  He was right.  

If you're still freaking out about gas stoves, stop.  That was last month.  The new Kulturkampf battlefield is AM radios.  Manufacturers want to stop putting them in new electric cars because the sound is crap.  The right is sure this is a plot to deprive them of their phone-in hate shows.  Looks like an ethical dilemma for Elon Musk.  Otherwise, who cares?  Well, local broadcasters, for one group, and people who rely on it for emergency information.  But sure, Ted, go right for the political conspiracy theorizing.  Otherwise we might forget why Texas keeps electing you.

Enthusiasms

 Polls of likely Republican voters have Ron DeSantis consolidating his hold on second place at 26 percent, but he feels confident enough to expand his platform of racism, transphobia, anti-science and antichoice to reach out to sports lovers.  Specifically, he loves baseball because it's so "egalitarian."  All you need is one skill at pitching or hitting and you're in; no need to be a "freak of nature," his characterization of basketball players.  (I recommend watching the CBN interview with no sound to enjoy the full weirdness of the DeSantis head-wobble.)  And racism has nothing to do with it, nope, absolutely not.  

It occurs to me that I know nothing of Joe Biden's sports preference, if any.  I hope it's not baseball.  Even with this year's MLB "improvements" a typical game lasts for hours.  I want the president at his desk even on weekends, digesting the Daily Briefings, taking calls from Zelenskyy or whoever, convincing Kevin McCarthy that he hasn't been pantsed again while deftly pantsing him.  I don't want him poring over box scores.  And really, what is it about baseball that appeals to DeSantis, aside from its high percentage of mediocre white players?

If you found that scene shocking, look away now.  Pro Publica documents that Samuel Alito has been the recipient of much generosity from a billionaire named Paul Singer who had numerous cases before the Supreme Court.  Alito's denial of wrongdoing has already appeared in the Wall Street Journal so we know he's dirtier than Trump's sweaty golf socks folded into a box of classified nuclear documents and stashed in a damp storeroom.  John Roberts will now reprise his admired impersonation of Susan Collins.  ("I'm sure he's learned his lesson.")

By the way, Trump revealed to Brett Baier his ingenious plan to end the war in Ukraine:  "I would tell Zelenskyy something, and I would tell Putin something, and I'd get them into a room."  Now why can't Biden do that?  Needs cognitive test!

Ron DeSantis probably chose this moment to sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" because his more refined tastes in sport were about to be revealed.  In a story that combines his fake egalitarianism with Alito's corruption, the Washington Post reveals that he received private flights and a "golf simulator" from rich donors like real estate developer Mori Hosseini, who just happens to chair the trustees of the University of Florida.  In 2018 DeSantis was Hosseini's guest at Augusta National, which excluded women until 2012.  What a surprise -- Augusta's chairman is also on the UF board!  So many serious educators...According to the DeSantis SuperPAC Never Back Down, "Ron DeSantis can't be bought."  However, time-shares are available.

Joe Biden is taking abuse right now for calling Xi Jinping a "dictator."  He prefers president-for-life, chairman of the Communist Party and commander-in-chief of the military.  Biden merely observed that Xi did not know about the balloon full of spy equipment shot down in US airspace last year, and "that's a great embarrassment for dictators."  Meanwhile over on Newsmax Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is claiming that both China and the US are developing "ethnic bioweapons" designed to "attack people of certain racial types."  According to Junior, both nations are collecting "Chinese DNA, Russian DNA," and engineering viruses to kill accordingly.  Probably the CIA has already collected his DNA, so he's remaining underwater until after the 2024 election.  I wish.  (There is actually no such thing as "Russian DNA."  The people of Russia are as ethnically varied as Americans, with Slavic, Nordic, Mongol, Teutonic, Jewish, Celtic and Caucasian -- as in the region -- ancestry for a start.  Stalin was not an ethnic Russian.  Pushkin had an Ethiopian great-grandfather.  Why am I responding to this idiot?)

Are you degraded?  Are you sure?  That's why Biden hired Karine Jean-Pierre to replace Jen Psaki as his press secretary, according to Tucker Carlson -- "to degrade the country and dispirit the rest of us."  Giving a Black woman born in Haiti such a high-profile job -- "the dumbest, nastiest, most dishonest" person he could find -- means a "total inversion of virtue."  He couldn't go any farther without screaming the N-word and frightening the birds that nest in his barn.  "It makes you feel stupid for going to work."  But you don't go to work, Tuckoo.  You tweet.  I blog.  And I'm not even a little dispirited today.  Get some sun.  Take a nap.  Ask Josh Hawley's guy to write you a book.  You're starting to sound as demented as Trump.

"On Tuesday evening [Lauren] Boebert introduced a privileged resolution to impeach President Joe Biden on the made-up charge that he violated his oath by not stopping illegal immigration."  (Daily Kos)  You know, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and keep the brown people out.  Oh, Lauren, the border is Margie Greene's baby.  Better watch your back in the cloakroom.

Transgendered frogs!  Google it!  I'm done.

  

A hundred visions and revisions

 The background of Juneteenth according to white Americans:

1.  "Today is a good day to remember:  Christianity is the faith and America is the place slavery came to die."  (Josh Hawley)   

2.  Lincoln freed the slaves on January 1, 1863.  Game over.

3.  Constitutional amendments 13 through 15 outlawed slavery, gave all men the vote and abolished racial discrimination.  Game officially over.

4.  Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ended segregated schools.  

5.  Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream.

6.  Barack Obama's presidency meant that racism was done.

7.  What more do you people want?  Why aren't you grateful?

"I have not heard one white Democrat apologize for slavery.  I haven't heard any Black person say 'thank you' to the over 300,000 white men who died to free those Black slaves."  (Dave from Texas, calling the toll-free number for Republicans on C-SPAN).

The present is in trouble because we can't agree on the past.  What's more, a lot of us don't want to.  Nearly 200,000 Black men served in the Union army and navy during the Civil War.  As a white person I choose to thank them.

Try this, Josh and Dave:  "I can never acknowledge the right of slavery.  I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians...whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash and the cries of his tortured victims."  (Thaddeus Stevens)

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Imagine, if you will, that it's 1931 and there's a recording of Al Capone telling an associate, "Yeah, I ordered the hit on Moran's gang in that garage.  What are you gonna do about it?"  Confronted with the recording, Capone went on radio to insist on his right to order it.  "He was gonna move on my territory.  You don't do that.  Eliot Ness is a stroonz.  He can't touch me."  Forget the tax case, warm up Old Sparky.  Did Illinois ever have the electric chair?  I don't know.  I only know law enforcement was simpler in those days.  Of course, Big Al never ran for president.

Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed the search warrant for Mar a Lago last summer, can expect more MAGA abuse -- he issued an order barring Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta from revealing any evidence from the classified documents.  Nauta will certainly obey the court, as he doesn't spend the day posting incoherent all-caps rants on social media.  Trump, on the other hand, probably won't be able to help himself.  What happens when Jane Scratchcard violates a court order?  Incarceration, house arrest, an ankle monitor?  That whole "equal justice under the law" principle could get quite a workout.

Trump decided to put aside his objections and submit to a live interview on Fox News.  Actually, it was more of an hour-long confession.  He still can't turn over documents he's holding because he hasn't found time in the last eighteen months to sort through them.  Some of his golf shirts may be in those boxes.  By the time you have your neck hairs dyed yellow and sculpted into a pompadour, apply a double coat of orange clown makeup, get a manicure, post twenty or thirty unhinged rants about Jack Smith's wife and address a torchlight rally in Mulebugger, Tennessee, another day has got behind you.  Where does the time go?  My favorite exchange:

Trump:  These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.  Golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things!

Brett Baier:  Iran war plans?

Trump:  Not that I know of.

And he complained about the FBI making a mess on his beautiful, classy carpet.  I don't see any shoes.

 Baier displayed remarkable courage in his final interview with Trump, slipping in the information that yes, he did lose the 2020 election, and confronting him with a list of the people he hired when they were "the best people," before they turned into gutless idiots who failed to come up to his standards.  And Trump interjected that nobody watches Fox anymore because it is "unfair."  By now he'll be congratulating himself on the extremely high ratings his interview got.  If you still expect consistency, you're the hobgoblin with a small mind.  As Baier now knows, it's like dancing with a jellyfish.

Add David Weiss, US attorney for Delaware, to the long list of Trump disappointments.  Weiss, appointed by Trump in 2017, has agreed to a plea deal with Hunter Biden on charges of non-payment of income tax and lying on a gun permit application.  "The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere 'traffic ticket,'" he raved.  "Our system is BROKEN!"  I was thinking that myself.  Paying taxes late (or not at all) should be a capital offense, unless you're Trump and then it means you're smart.  But why didn't the corrupt Biden DOJ replace Weiss in 2021?  Quite the oversight in Biden's home state.

The Prado has a number of major works by Hieronymus Bosch which were acquired as soon as the paint dried by King Philip II of Spain.  (He was very religious.)  Among them is The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych from 1490-1510 depicting the Garden of Eden on one side panel, Hell on the other and a whole lot of whoopee in the middle.  Scientists have devised glasses which track the length of time viewers look at each part and, surprise!, it's Hell that holds their attention.  I could have told them that.  The Inferno is the most compelling part of Dante's poem, too.  Love it, fear it or just wonder about it, hell is present in everybody's idea of the afterlife and it's a lot more fun than angels with harps.

 

 

Christianity in bad decline

 Major league baseball is too woke for Rudolph Giuliani.  He claims to be boycotting Yankee games over the team's support for Black Lives Matter.  (The nearly hundred-dollar price of a ticket is probably just as significant.  Now that he's just another disgraced ex-lawyer there's no reason to comp him.)  He also demands that real Americans avoid the Dodgers because they allowed the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to participate in Pride Night.  "The Dodgers have decided to declare war on Christianity," he snarled.  Trailing Arizona by four games, they probably have other things to think about.  (OANN's Jack Posobiec held an exorcism outside the stadium but the Sisters collected their Community Hero award anyway.)

Today in the Washington Post you can read an excerpt from Rachel L. Swarns's book The 272:  The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church.  It tells the story of the people who were sold in 1838 by the Jesuit order to pay for Georgetown College (now University).  Clearly Swarns has also declared war on Christianity (the Post did long ago) and her book will not be purchased by school libraries in the places that need most to read it.

To its credit, the university has created the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation to support restitution and other programs to assist descendants of the original 272 enslaved people sold to planters in Louisiana.  It has been criticized for lacking transparency and for failing to identify all who may qualify, but it's a start.  This should be remembered when rushing to defend the indefensible.

The noisiest Christians continue to be those who exercise the greatest cruelty.  Already in Georgia it is illegal to give water or food to people forced to stand in line for hours in order to vote.  Needless to say Texas has gone one better:  the "Death Star Bill" takes effect September 1, providing "statewide consistency" in local regulations.  For some reason this consistency requires curtailing housing and environmental protections, and even mandated hourly water breaks for construction workers.  Texas already leads the nation in worker deaths due to heat, so it's not clear what Abbott hopes to achieve.  Perhaps he will follow Iowa and Arkansas in repealing child labor laws so they can die, too.

But there's plenty of cruelty in the private sector, too.  Bohemian Grove, the secretive retreat for the ultra rich and their tame Supreme Court justices, is being sued by employees for such abuses as sixteen-hour workdays without breaks, unpaid overtime and less-than-minimum wages, and falsified records.  Apparently the help can't even make phone calls from the "camps," a network of luxurious facilities in the forest near San Francisco.  And there's no tipping.  The appeal of these jobs eludes me.

Was Fathers Day invented by greeting card companies?  Not really.  According to the Internet, bottomless well of information, it began in 1908 when a West Virginia church commemorated 385 men who had died the previous year in a coal mine explosion.  A year later Sonoro Louise Smart Dodd took it up as a tribute to her father, who raised six children on his own in Spokane, Washington.  For a time American television was chock full of wise fake dads, none more beloved than Cliff Huxtable, the OB-GYN who always had time to sit on his couch dispensing warmth.  So it's perhaps appropriate that nine more women are suing him for sexual assault in Nevada.  So popular was the show that it's still being rerun on those nameless cable stations that come with your subscription.  Enjoy.

A nation is shocked

 The otherwise airtight case against the Biden Gang was derailed today when Rudolph Giuliani announced the death of the Whistleblower.  Under thuthpithiouth thircumthtanceth.  She was the Burisma bookkeeper and the bribe was ten million, not the five million we'd been told about all this time, and probably she was killed by Joe Biden or Volodymyr Zelenskyy or somebody else.  So that's that.  Sorry.

Was Jamie Raskin gaslighting when he asked the FBI to explain why its information is so wildly different from the insinuations coming out of the House Overlook Committee?  Did he kill the unfortunate bookkeeper?  Does he know who did?  We demand answers!  Don't we?

Perhaps the whistle was poisoned.

Also afraid for his life is completely serious presidential candidate and dead whisperer Robert Kennedy, Jr.  He says he's "gotta be careful" to avoid being assassinated by the CIA because of the grave threat he poses to Joe Biden.  "I'm not stupid and I take precautions."  Oh, Bob, how much heroin did you do back in the day?

I'm sorry, it's been a long week and I can feel myself getting silly.  The right has a new martyr in Alexander McCaskill, who was dumped by Fox News just because he captioned Trump's latest arraignment "WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED," completely fair and balanced (Biden did not address Trump's charges under the Espionage Act).  McCaskill used to produce the Tucker Carlson White Power Hour and Tuckoo is particularly incensed.  It's just possible that Fox is trying to limit its legal liability, especially since McCaskill is named in Abby Grossberg's harassment lawsuit.  It would be wrong of me to speculate.  Anyway, he's all yours now, Newsmax.

Hey, most of Miami, you missed a swell post-arraignment blowout at Versailles yesterday.  Actually not so much.  There was a group prayer and a spirited rendition of "Feliz cumpleanos" and then the birthday boy shouted "Food for everyone!"  He's not a bit demented, he knows what restaurants deal in.  But he didn't stay because there's little Cuban food that doesn't require chewing.  He also didn't pick up the check, but that shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the short-fingered vulgarian.  So don't call him "Donnie Dine & Dash" because that would be hurtful.  I'm guessing the wait staff got stiffed.

E. Jean Carroll's next lawsuit against Trump is scheduled for January, but sources tell us that the defendant will present a surprise alibi witness.  This person (identity hidden for now to protect against the Whistleblower killers) will testify that while Carroll was being assaulted in Bergdorf-Goodman, Trump was raping someone else in Bloomingdale's.  Complete exoneration!  Donate now!  

Jack Teixeira, late of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was indicted on Thursday, too -- the charges are illegal retention and transmission of national defense information.  If that sounds familiar, it's the same section of the Espionage Act that Trump violated (I have to say allegedly).  Wouldn't it be fun if they wound up sharing a cell?  Allegedly.

The best feature of all is that we could have avoided this.  Months ago Trump's lawyers -- Howe and Hummel or whoever they were then -- wanted to approach the Justice Department about some kind of settlement.  The client wouldn't hear of it, probably because he'd have to hand back all his classified "mementos."  And now Jim Trusty has quit, citing "irreconcilable differences," which I always thought was grounds for divorce.  Never mind.  Trump told us he knew more than "his" generals.  He knew more about viruses than Anthony Fauci.  He knew more about everything than the losers in his Cabinet.  Now he can know more about the law than real lawyers.  Do public defenders have much latitude in the cases they accept?

Mutants!

 Only last week Trump discovered that his MAGAts howled their approval when he mentioned the transgendered.  Of course they did, DeSantis in particular has been grooming them for months.  Not to be eclipsed, he has added a new entry to his hate card:  mutants.

You thought I was joking?  I never joke about mutants.

Your move, Ron.  Fire up the Florida legislature and get those shape-shifters, hybrids and lizard people on a bus to Martha's Vineyard.

This puts a new complexion on the scandal at Harvard Medical School, where four people have been indicted for selling human body parts stolen from the school and from a morgue in Arkansas.  The head ghoul, Cedric Lodge, is accused of removing the parts to his home in New Hampshire and selling them online.  He also allegedly allowed Katrina Maclean to make selections for her shop, Kat's Creepy Creations in Peabody, Massachusetts, a place I will never patronize.  (There's something about tanning skin for leather.)  Lodge used to run the school's Anatomic Gifts Program but was terminated last year, so I guess it's all right to go ahead and leave them your skull.

No sooner had the world heard Trump bragging on tape about all the secret documents in his possession than the intrepid House Overlook Committee decided they'd better invent a similarly damning tape of Joe Biden getting bribed during his term as vice-president.  Like the one-eyed whistleblower (unless I'm thinking of a different put-up job), the tape is proving elusive.  Nancy Mace is certain the bribe story is real, while even Gym Jordan acknowledges, "We don't know for sure if these tapes exist."  It's not easy being a deck hand on the SS Trumptanic.

The Mean Kids Kaukus let Squeaker McCarthy open the House again and one of their first acts was an attempt to censure Adam Schiff for saying critical things about their multiply-indicted, twice-impeached leader.  It failed 225-196, with twenty Republicans joining all the Democrats to tell Anna Paulina Luna Livia Plurabelle where she could stick her resolution, and seven courageous Republicans voting "present."  If you can believe it she also proposed fining Schiff $16 million or half the cost of the Mueller investigation (remember that?).  The Squeaker threw Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the Intelligence Committee to avenge Nancy Pelosi removing Empty Greene from her committees for some violent threat or other.  This is what happens when the slow kids take over the play group.

Running a country is harder than just lopping off heads.  The sixth-century Buddhas of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 but now may be rebuilt to attract the tourist trade to the cash-poor nation.  As Kander and Ebb once observed, money makes the world go around.

Of course, there's self-defeating religious intolerance everywhere.  The Southern Baptist Convention, rocked by reports of clergy sexual abuse and steadily losing membership, nevertheless voted to expel two churches because their ministers are female.  One of them is the giant Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.  I guess there are going to be fewer but better Baptists, as Comrade Yakushova observed about the Moscow show trials.

 

The history of Communist regimes in the twentieth century is a story of state terror, relentless propaganda, closed borders and an environment of brutalist architecture, consumer shortages and enforced patriotism, but at least there was full employment.  The state would create some kind of job for everyone, even if it was sweeping the streets.  College graduates in China, however, are posing for pictures like the above to dramatize their anxiety about finding a job, never mind a career.  Nearly sixty percent of young Chinese now attend college but youth unemployment continues to set new records.  Meanwhile the US under the Biden administration posts steady job growth and lower inflation every month, pleasing even the stock market.  You can't help but wonder why the Chinese bother with Mao and Marx.

On Tuesday America heard of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, and yesterday he announced that he's running for the Republican presidential nomination.  Is this going to happen every time Trump gets arraigned?  Is Andre Dickens next?

We began with mutants and stolen body parts and we end with puppy love.  Rangers in Rothrock State Forest in Pennsylvania were reviewing trail cameras to see who was stealing hand sanitizer.  What they saw was Professor Themis Matsoukas of Penn State having sex with his collie.  "I do it to blow off steam," said the chemical engineering professor, who has been placed on leave.  

They are quite winsome.

Rage, rage amid the lying of the right

 If you had been arraigned on multiple counts of the Espionage Act, would you go home, draw the blinds and have a think about what mistakes led you to this point?  Sure, because you are a normal human.

Trump threw himself a hate rally/birthday party.  At Bedminster, the New Jersey golf course where there are unquestionably bodies apart from Ivana Trump's, he summoned a rogues' gallery of the second-rate.  (The most recognizable name was Tommy Tuberville, so there must have been plenty of RSVP No thanks.)  He wished himself a happy birthday because no one else did (the former First Escort was shopping in New York, probably not for books).  

"It's part public relations and part babysitting," said Stephanie Grisham, the last of his press secretaries.  "The staff around him want to keep him busy and want to have people cheering for him and giving him the ego stroke that he'll need so they don't have to deal with him being completely pissed."  John Kelly, the second of his chiefs of staff, was more blunt:  "He's scared shitless.  This is the way he compensates for that...For the first time in his life it looks like he's being held accountable."

Trump has a new hate fetish in Jack Smith.  Last Friday he watched Smith's just-the-facts announcement of the Florida grand jury indictment and pronounced the special prosecutor "scared looking."  According to witnesses, Smith was laser-focused on the defendant in the courtroom, while Trump didn't once look at him.  He saved his abuse for Ministry of Truth Social, calling Smith a "lunatic" and a "thug" who was "shipped off to The Hague to prosecute war criminals using globalist tribunals."  I think he meant "persecute war criminals" like his beleaguered patron Vlad Putin.  We all know what "globalist" means.  Yesterday he went to a Cuban restaurant in Little Havana to rage about "communists," a sure-fire applause-getter with that crowd.  In so many ways that party never got over Joe McCarthy.  

When he returns in glory, Trump promises that his special prosecutor will "go after Biden" and "the entire Biden crime family."  Because he thinks this is a game with no connection to reality.  He's been trying to "go after Biden" at least since he told President Zelenskyy that his country's survival was contingent on digging up dirt about Biden.  Right now in the House James Comer is charged with pretending that the dirt actually exists only Chris Wray won't hand it over.  Trump sent Giuliani on at least one dirt-finding mission to Ukraine and he came back drunk and empty-handed.  What exactly will his special prosecutor (Lin Wood?  Alina Habba?) do differently? 

It's all one enormous inchoate enemy -- DEEP STATE CROOKED HILLARY HUNTER BIDEN MARXISTS WEAPONIZED JUSTICE DEPARTMENT RON DE SANCTIMONIOUS LYING MEDIA CRAZY NANCY LEFTIST LUNATICS MISS BERGDORF GOODMAN WITCH HUNT ending in a prolonged howl of rage and fear.

I haven't been able to confirm that Iron Man Trump needed a golf cart to get from the courthouse to his car, but Fox News has again questioned Joe Biden's prospects.  Biden had to miss College Athlete Day at the White House (Kamala Harris filled in) because of a root canal procedure, which was performed in the basement dental clinic.  (I thought Nixon put a pool down there.)  Some numpty on Fox asked if he has the "stamina" for another term.  His mistake was asking Rep. Katie Porter, who shot back, "Have you ever had a root canal?"  He had to take a half-day off.  I think it's impressive that a man of 80 still has his teeth.  Remember Trump's "God bless the United Shayshay"?  That was the day body-man/valet/co-conspirator Walt Nauta forgot to put the adhesive on the dentures.  

Postscript:  Of all the idiot excuses put forward by idiots for storing classified documents in a tacky bathroom, I think my idiotic favorite came from Florida man and surprise Speaker candidate Byron Donalds.  He triumphantly pointed out that there's really no place more secure than a Mar a Lago shitter because "There are 33 bathrooms at Mar a Lago!"  Any "guest" who wanted to get a look at, oh, I don't know, the US plans for attacking Iran would have to try all of them, or know exactly which one contained which war plans.  Impossible!  Witch hunt!  Case dismissed.  Besides, as the Squeaker pointed out, bathrooms lock.  If all Trump's defenders are this smart, Jack Smith may as well go back to his globalist friends in The Hague.

Hail and mostly farewell

 "I am without doubt in the entire history of the world the person who has been the most persecuted."

Who said it?  The self-pity of the detestable is so universal it's always hard to be sure.  It could be Trump, of course, whose grievances are numberless.  Or Boris Johnson resigning from Parliament before his suspension could result in a by-election; he actually cited a "witch hunt" to reverse Brexit, his finest hour, and failed to mention his violation of his own pandemic lockdown rules.  Or centenarian Kissinger, who seems to have outlived everyone who wanted to see him in The Hague for war crimes.  Maybe Nicolas Sarcozy, cozy at home serving his corruption sentence under house arrest.  Some African strongman who fled the country with most of the treasury?  It could have been either Putin or Kim Jong-un, holding hands and whispering endearments as Russia's war goes down the drain.  ("I blew up another dam."  "Never mind, hold me close.")

Of course the quotation is from Silvio Berlusconi, perhaps the only thing he said that didn't insult women, LGBTQ people or the intelligence of his listeners.  Robertson, Watt, Berlusconi -- can the universe do Murdoch next?

Anyway.  It's Arraignment Tuesday and the millions of Trump warriors have cunningly spread out all over Dade County so they look like maybe six hundred unemployables enjoying the heat and humidity of south Florida, each carrying a flag of some description.  These events are becoming tedious, with DC and Fulton County yet to come.  Look, completely serious candidate Vivek Ramaswamy even made a speech.  He represents TRUTH.  It says so on his hat.

This guy came in from Lord of the Flies Island:

Never mind.  I found some news to celebrate.

Item:  Raising two fingers to the Moms for Censorship and other hate groups, Illinois passed a law making it illegal for libraries to cave to pressure to ban books or lose state funding.  Utah should consider such a law, since the Bible has been pulled from some libraries for being "one of the most sex-ridden books around."  The story of King David alone will make you sweat.

Item:  Vladimir Putin told a meeting of war correspondents and military bloggers that there is "no reason to introduce some kind of special regime or martial law" in Russia despite escalating Ukrainian attacks.  Well, who said there was?  His generals maybe?  By the way, General Sergey Goryachev was killed by a cruise missile yesterday on the Zaporizhzhia front, so, one less general.

Item:  The Afghan military pilot who was facing deportation from the UK to Rwanda (the British dumping ground for asylum seekers) may be granted asylum in the US.

Item:  In Montana, sixteen people between five and 22 are suing the state because it promotes the use of fossil fuel in violation of its own constitution and to the detriment of their health.  I'm sure Greg Gianforte would love to punch them, especially the one in kindergarten. 

Item:  Tomorrow Trump turns 77.

Many crappy returns.

 

  

Battle hymn of the Republicans

 We are coming, Father Donald, three hundred million strong...Kari Lake, once and future governor of Arizona and Empress of the Southwest, has been among the loudest advocates for the worst criminal in American history.  On Saturday she promised that "if you want to get to President [sic] Trump you are going to have to go through me, and you are going through 75 million Americans just like me.  And I'm going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA..."  When this did not result in Jack Smith apologizing and dropping all charges she revised today:  Now it's up to 300 million Americans.  (There were five million NRA members before the stories broke about Wayne LaPierre living la vida loca and perhaps a million quit.)

Tomorrow night's episode of Tucker Carlson's Barn Dance is supposed to be about the persecution and victimization of Trump but Axios is reporting he got a cease-and-desist letter from Fox News because they can't handle the truth and they hate the First Amendment.  Apparently Tucker's contract, which continues to pay him eye-watering gobs of money, also precludes him from engaging in political broadcasting until December 24, 2024.  (Really?  The contract was signed on Christmas Eve, with eggnog and roast chestnuts and It's a Wonderful Life softly burbling in the background?)  Does a badly framed Twitter post constitute a broadcast?  What if there are guests?  What if Tucker gets Mrs. Tucker to slap some makeup on him so he doesn't look like a corpse?  This could wind up with the Supreme Court.

Speaking of the Court, they have decided not to get involved in North Carolina's decision to stop issuing license plates with the Confederate flag.  The purest example of state's rights, huh?  Also in the -- what is it, the Tar Baby State? -- Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis zeroed in on the most important issue before the voters and assured the Republican Convention that they will shitcan Fort Liberty and restore the name of Fort Bragg to the Fayetteville military base.  (So "woke" means "not racist"?  Finally, a definition that makes sense.)  It seems like DeSantis could name some national guard post after Bragg right now if he wanted to, being the governissimo of greater Florida.  Braxton Bragg was a planter/slaveowner in Louisiana so the North Carolina connection is minimal.  He was also a terrible general, hated by his men, and that works, too.

This just in:  Trump will wipe away every tear that America shed when he was indicted again.  Read it if you like.  As he told Roger Stone -- does every bag of fertilizer have a podcast? -- "Our country has to   protest.  We have plenty of protest to protest.  We've lost everything."  Well I for one have not committed espionage.  I feel fine.  Tears of laughter.

Trump is summoning his MAGAts to Miami tomorrow but Robert Reich and I are not worried.  "Violence is possible but there will be no civil war," he writes today.  "Nations don't go to war over whether they like or hate specific leaders.  They go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes or economic policies these leaders represent.  But Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance with a system that refused him a second term and is now beginning to hold him accountable for violating the law."  That may be small comfort for Mayor Suarez and his police, but it's a lot more realistic than the phantom armies imagined by a failed Arizona politician.  On some level all the Republicans bellowing their defense of the indefensible know they're posturing for the knuckle-draggers whose money and votes they need.  

Of all the excuses for stashing state secrets in a bathroom, I think my favorite is Squeaker McCarthy's:  "A bathroom door locks."  His time on earth has not been wasted.  Sorry the mean kids are still playing keep-away with the House of Representatives, Kev.