Hedonism and mindless dancing

 

One picture says it all:  The classified nuclear secrets of the United States tossed into boxes like comic books destined for a yard sale and stashed next to the toilet in a literally piss-elegant bathroom with a crystal chandelier.  What country can take us seriously now?  

The weekend's big surprise is how unsurprising it all is.  We've known for months that Trump stole classified documents, denied it, admitted to it, claimed he declassified them by saying magic words, denied it some more, accused Biden, Obama and Pence of the same thing and then recorded himself displaying them to persons unknown.  Any prosecutor who didn't put this in front of a grand jury would be disbarred.  We also knew from past experience his response to being indicted:  howls of wounded innocence, name-calling, demands that everyone involved be prosecuted instead, a hastily arranged hate rally before a carefully selected mob of pitchfork-wielders, and general defiance.  Next performance in Fulton County.

If I have to choose one to savor like fine cheese it would be the tape:  "Secret.  This is secret information.  Look, look at this."  (sound of rustling papers) "This was done by the military and given to me...This totally wins my case, you know.  Except it is like highly confidential.  Secret.  This is secret information."  "Sir, we're here for the Lopez-Rodriguez wedding reception."  All right, I made that last part up.  Or did I?

Secret.  What does it mean?

I didn't expect the espionage/conspiracy case to end up with Aileen Cannon, the same Trump appointee who named a special master to examine the documents last year and got smacked by the Appeals Court.  Will she be more willing to stand up to his inevitable bullying this time?  Does she care about being taken seriously as a judge?  Will she punt?  It's a fresh bone for the pundits to gnaw.  After Roberts and Kavanaugh voted to uphold the Voting Rights Act, I'm not making any bets.

Trump's not the only former bigshot helping police with their inquiries.  Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and later released in connection with financial wrongdoing in the Scottish National Party.  She has been upgraded from "wife of a suspect" to "suspect" and of course asserts her innocence.  No surprise there either.

Brittney Griner's time as a hostage of Putin is over but the trauma is not.  Arriving at the airport in Dallas with the Phoenix Mercury, she was accosted by a "media figure" (asshole with Twitter account) named Alex Stein who screamed, "Do you still want to boycott America, Brittney?" and "She hates America!" while being livestreamed by one of his bro's.  In the present climate it's impossible to say if it he has a problem with her being gay, Black, female, or just taller than he is.  

Have you heard about the New Federal State of China?  It snuck up on me, too.  But it's authentic, or why would Paul Gosar be addressing it?  Gosar accuses China (the real one) of using TikTok to promote "hedonism and mindless dancing," which sounds like an agenda I can support.  Here, see for yourself:

Nice organ, Congressman.  

A mass in solidarity with the LGBTQ community was scheduled for today at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh but was cancelled in the face of "protesting emails and calls, some of them threatening."  The Catholic Church continues to demonstrate the moral leadership it displayed in 1940s Europe.

I'll just get the conspiracy-theory ball in play here:  WHO KILLED TED KACZYNSKI?  The Unabomber was 81 and suffering from late-stage cancer, and his death at the Florence supermax was ruled a suicide, but that won't matter on QAnon Island.  His manifesto about technology and modernity continues to be read and admired by all sorts of sociopaths.  

Trump is the gold standard for brazenness -- I know it makes no sense, stay with me -- but never count Boris Johnson out.  Among the names he submitted for a knighthood was his father, Stanley Johnson, whose response to the Brexit disaster his son created was to obtain French citizenship and an EU passport.  And a sensible response it was, but one not available to most people struggling with a Brexit-crippled economy.  (The inflation rate for food fell to "only" 19.1 percent this year.)  Sir Stanley didn't go through but others arguably worse did.  Polls and by-election results suggest that Joe Biden can stop worrying about Rishi Sunak and learn to pronounce Keir Starmer.