Soreheads

 Joe Biden made the traditional visit to Florida to inspect the damage caused by Hurricane Idalia and Ron DeSantis refused to meet him.  Incapable of even the ceremonial duties of a governor, this gumboil of a man wants to be president so he can insult dignitaries from all parts of the world.  

The Witness, a propaganda film about the invasion of Ukraine, sounds considerably less subtle (and less skillful) than Triumph des Willens, which might explain why it plays to empty theaters in Moscow.  A Belgian violinist named Cohen arrives in Kyiv to play a concert and encounters people heiling Hitler and carrying copies of Mein Kampf, so he decides he must tell the world, etc.  Russian filmmakers need to spend more time studying the work of Eisenstein.  Or Barbie.  I'll know more when it's shown on Fox News.

Ted Cruz is mad!  Last week the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said his outfit might recommend that Americans limit themselves to two drinks a week.  In Ted's opportunistic little brain this sounded exactly like "STOP DRINKING!" so he made a video about how liberals want to control you just like Ukrainian Nazis, concluding with this unappetizing challenge:  "If they want us to drink two beers a week, frankly they can kiss my ass."  Nobody wants to kiss any part of Ted's flabby self, not even those of us who dislike beer anyway.  Was this in response to a tearful call from Bret Kavanaugh? you ask.  No, it was that idiot Doocy, still a credentialed White House reporter for some reason, bothering Karine Jean-Pierre while she was talking about important stuff.  So Ted got his name out there again and hardly anyone is laughing at him.

Alabama is in the news, too, and that's never good.  Last year they tried to execute Kenneth Smith by lethal injection and succeeded only in torturing him for hours.  Now they think they've come up with something foolproof -- nitrogen hypoxia.  If it works, Alabama will be the first state to suffocate with nitrogen.  If not, they could always try putting heavy rocks on his chest -- it worked with Giles Corey, the only man executed for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.  

In other news of the Yellowhammer State (I think it's a bird), attorney general Steve Marshall is still waiting impatiently for the legislature to make abortion punishable as murder.  Meanwhile he says he can prosecute those who help women travel out of the state to obtain medical care for "criminal conspiracy."  That's right, he wants to prosecute something that isn't a crime elsewhere.  We take one step closer to a federal law based on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring free states to return pregnant women to their masters.

Can a federal judge force lawyers to undergo religious indoctrination?  You damn bet he can, in Texas.  Southwest Airlines fired a flight attendant for sending obnoxious anti-abortion screeds to a colleague, and of course she sued.  A judge named Brantley Starr found for the flight attendant, ruling that the airline's lawyers had not adequately informed employees about its anti-jerk policy.  Further, the Trump appointee ordered three lawyers to endure eight hours of "religious liberty" training from a group of fanatics who go by Alliance Defending Freedom.  If this gets as far as Amy Copious Breeder and her five friends, the lawyers may as well resign themselves to having pictures of fetuses shoved in their faces all day.  These are the eyes of a cultist.

Wisconsin Republicans have been setting off smoke detectors with their hair on fire since voters elected Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court.  She has yet to hear a case but they want to impeach her based on comments she made during the campaign about flagrant gerrymandering in the state.  Could someone please tell these people what "impeach" means?  Before Squeaker McCarthy gives in to the back-bench squawk for Biden to be impeached?

Can you stand more Alabama news?  I'm sorry.  Remember how the Bidens were kept waiting at the door of the White House because the former tenants had given the butlers the day off before skulking out the back?  In 2020 Patrick Braxton was elected mayor of Newbern, Alabama (population 133), but again there was to be no peaceful transfer of power.  The former mayor dodged his calls and finally gave him the key to city hall.  When the new mayor arrived he found the place stripped.  Then his predecessor had the locks changed.  He's still being denied funding and even mail.  That Braxton is Black may have something to do with it.  It's kind of a passive-aggressive version of Wilmington, North Carolina 1898.