Notice: Engage brain before operating mouth

 Who is Robert Kennedy, Junior, outraging this week?  His own family, for a start.  Re-packaging a conspiracy theory he found on some website, Kennedy told the flatulence dinner that the covid virus was "targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people," while "the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."  His sister Kerry Kennedy responded, "I strongly condemn my brother's deplorable and untruthful remarks, while his nephew Joseph Kennedy III "unequivocally condemned" them.  Even the White House has had enough -- Karine Jean-Pierre labeled his racism "vile."  Of course Uncle Bob is claiming he was "smeared" by a New York Post reporter named Jon Levine.  It's our old friend the "mainstream media" trying to make him look like "a crank."  

For those who prefer lighthearted bigotry there was the event where pitchers Bronson Arroyo and Danny Graves and general manager Gabe Paul were inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame.  Pete Rose recounted how Paul initially signed him for $400 a month.  Paul's daughter remarked that it was cheap, causing Johnny Bench to observe, "He was Jewish."  The audience laughed.  The team is no longer owned by Marge Schott, who collected Nazi memorabilia, but some people didn't get the memo.  Bench later apologized without blaming the mainstream media.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal told Netroots Nation, "I think I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state."  Then she said, "I do not believe the idea that Israel as a nation is racist."  Rather, Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government has engaged in "discriminatory and outright racist policies."  Well, which is it?  Words matter.  For the record, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich describes himself as a "fascist homophobe," so the Congresswoman's confusion is not entirely unwarranted.

It was Turning Point weekend in Florida and all the usual suspects showed up spouting all the usual garbage.  The most surprising speech was Margie Greene's because she thought she could destroy Joe Biden by comparing his policies to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society -- the source of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.  The Republican inability to read the room was never more in evidence, but throw in Social Security and Roe v. Wade and they must have a cunning plan to lose the next five elections.  

Many prominent Black women have criticized the Supreme Court's decision destroying affirmative action, and Charlie Kirk took this to mean that no Black woman can achieve prominence without it -- not Ketanji Brown Jackson or Joy Reid or Sheila Jackson Lee.  He tipped his hand by omitting Harris Faulkner and Kristina Karamo, of course, and left some people puzzled by including Michelle Obama among those who "had to go steal a white person's slot."  Yes, the Great First Lady Replacement Theory.

Needless to say there was much discussion of the cocaine discovered at the White House, none more hilarious than Junior Trump's insistence that "I don't snort cocaine."  He's just had a persistent summer cold for the last seven years.  And allergies.  But it was for Daddy to label Joe Biden a "crackhead."  Even Republicans rolled their eyes.