Hot enough for you?

 I would bet good money that nobody is greeting casual acquaintances and fellow elevator passengers with that tired phrase.  Not in 2023, the year the climate change deniers said would never come, when people who fall down in Phoenix suffer third-degree burns from the asphalt and parts of Hawaii have literally burst into flames.  

August is not just hot but boring.  If it was split between July and September no one would notice.  I think I once read that everybody in France goes on vacation in August, or possibly that was the premise for a Jacques Tati movie.  Still, this one has had its compensations for those of us who refuse to leave our air-conditioned survival pods.  Right now I'm enjoying the police body-cam footage of Representative Doctor Ronny Jackson at the rodeo trying to "help" a young woman having a seizure and getting his drunken ass wrestled to the ground.  Thank you, Texas 13th.  If not for you, he might still be practicing medicine.

Has Trump adopted the vanishing Cockney practice of rhyming slang?  That's the suggestion after he Socialized, "They never went after those that Rigged the Election.  They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!"  His followers certainly agree, and "riggers" has joined "Let's Go Brandon" in their lexicon of playground abuse directed at Fani Willis, Letitia James and Alvin Bragg and subtly illustrated with images of gallows and nooses.  Suggestions that Jack Smith is a secret "globalist" have circulated for months.  When in doubt, pull out the racism.

It's not clear why Bradley Cooper decided he needed a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein (top) in the Netflix film Maestro but he may be regretting it now.  It's not exactly Alec Guinness as Fagin but it's jarring enough that people are calling it "Jewface."  The British actor Tracy-Ann Obermann wrote, "Bradley Cooper managed to play the ELEPHANT MAN without a single prosthetic then he should be able to manage to play a Jewish man without one."  Well, it's always been customary to play John Merrick onstage with the actor suggesting his deformity through posture and movement alone; film requires more in the way of realism, hence the hours of makeup applied to John Hurt.  That said, I think Cooper could have done without.  

"Trump of the tropics" indeed:  Authorities in Brazil are looking into some expensive luxury goods presented to Jair Bolsonaro during his presidency which can't be accounted for, including gifts from the generous governments of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.  Most seem to involve portable bling like watches, earrings, cufflinks and an Arabic rosary, the sort of thing you could absently slip into a pocket and forget to declare.  No classified documents so far.  The police investigation was called Luke Chapter 12, Verse 2.  You remember:  "There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known." 

In an unrelated story, the British Museum fired a staff member and imposed new security protocols after objects from the collection were discovered to be missing or damaged.  These included gold and gems from the 15th to 19th centuries.  Shiny things have an irresistible pull for some people.

Save the date:  Next Monday, August 21, Trump promises to hold a press conference and unveil his "irrefutable proof" of electoral fraud.   His long-ago lawyer Ty Cobb says this can only result in another count of obstruction, as it's "solely for the purpose of contaminating the jury pool."  The betting is that neither will happen -- Trump does not hold press conferences and invite possibly hostile questions, he talks to Sean Hannity.  Of course, he could surprise us with the information that Democrats set the Hawaii fires to destroy evidence of Barack Obama's fake birth certificate.  Anyway, I'm not making other plans.  Only nine more felony counts and Trump will score his "century," as they say in cricket.

With a straight face, as far as I can determine, Margie Greene says DA Fani Willis should stop wasting time on frivolous indictments for trying to destroy American democracy and instead concentrate on "going after murderers, rapists, car theft."  (Donald Trump has never been credibly accused of stealing a car.)  She has also been heard musing aloud about her future:  "I have a lot of things to think about.  Am I going to be a part of President Trump's Cabinet if he wins?  Is it possible that I'll be VP?"  And pass up a chance to star on The Real Housewives of Rome, Georgia?

We finally have Ted Cruz's reaction to the latest installment of Trump:  The Reckoning.  "I'm pissed," he told Sean Hannity.  Princeton and Harvard, take a bow.