Interesting times
The queen of England is now in the liquor business. Buckingham Palace gin, made with ingredients from the palace gardens, sold out within eight hours of launch. (The bottle is most attractive.) Profits go to the Royal Collection Trust, which oversees the queen's priceless art collection and the public aspects of her various residences. Forty quid is steep, but it's for a good cause. This is not a time to hit the government up for more money just because the plaster is cracking on the ceilings of Holyrood House.
"Satire is dead, as of the second week of July 2020," writes David Von Drehle in the Washington Post. I seem to remember the death of satire being announced during the administration of Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon, and again in the days of George W. Bush. (It's pretty hard to beat "Is your children learning?") Based on yesterday's Rose Garden free-associative breakdown, however, that was clearly the bunny slope of incoherence. Based on only a partial transcript (thanks for the paywall, Newspaper of Record), I can confirm that Trump wandered over China (the supposed topic of the presser), coronavirus, how Obama and Biden used to bus murderers in from Central America, crime in Chicago, how police kill more white than Black people, Confederate flags, and apparently Biden's plan to abolish windows (the architectural feature, not the Microsoft OS). In other words, Infrastructure Week. No, really, he's in Atlanta to talk about federal pork projects he never got around to when Republicans controlled both sides of Congress, and certainly not because he and Sticky Fingers Loeffler and even David Perdue are in serious danger of losing the state. Satire is on life support.
Satirize this: Jair Bolsonaro, the "Trump of the Tropics," is quarantined at his presidential palace in Brasilia, and he doesn't like it. He caught covid because "masks are for fairies," and yesterday he was trying to feed a rhea when it bit him. He wants another test. The bird could not be reached for comment.
Elsewhere in South America, refusing to mask could be fatal. In areas of Colombia controlled by drug cartels, at least eight people have been killed by gang members for trying to leave their homes without a face mask. This seems extreme and ineffective: Colombia reports over 5,000 new cases a day.
Also kicking satire in the jimmies: the CEO of Goya Foods praised Trump last week, triggering a boycott. Today Princess tweeted this photo captioned "Si es Goya, tiene ser que bueno." I assume she asked one of the maids how to say it in Spanish.
The Department of Health (!) and Human Services (!!) sent an encyclical to all hospitals instructing them to stop sending covid data to the Centers for Disease Control as they always have, and to instead send it to HHS's own database. Nobody can understand why, unless it's somehow connected to Trump's theory (aired again yesterday) that less testing = fewer cases. Or possibly the op-ed by Peter Navarro, the alleged trade expert, attacking Anthony Fauci, which was so unhinged that even President Unhinged disavowed it. Fauci's response: "I can't explain Peter Navarro. He's in a world by himself." And today it's a very chilly world. Of course, HHS has no power to order hospitals to do anything.
The supposed topic of the Rose Garden Ramble was "Getting Tough With China," or "Communist China," as he has again taken to calling it. (Not "leftist anarchist Antifa Democrat China?") The reporters were so stupefied by the heat and the bullshit that no one asked why the administration had just lifted its ban on selling silencers (suppressors) to foreign buyers. Did it represent anything other than a gift to the firearms industry? That's a question the Germans are asking, too, as they investigate the assassination in Berlin of a Chechen asylum seeker last August. And such a coincidence that former gun lobbyist Michael Williams is now a "deputy assistant" to Trump. I'm pretty sure Russia can manufacture its own suppressors...but the Taliban?
Governor Doug Ducey still has not made masks mandatory in Arizona, but several counties have run out of space and ordered ice cream trucks to store the dead, 2,528 as of today. The mayor of Phoenix Kate Gallego says FEMA has denied her requests for help with testing. Apparently it's not an emergency yet. When does the weather get hot enough to destroy the virus?
I read an excerpt from Mary Trump's book and I may have to buy it, if just for the seriously geeky cover photo of Uncle Don. It reads good, as they say, and it seems to be full of jaw-dropping stories. Also she was screwed out of her inheritance and deserves financial vengeance. I'm just not sure it's a good idea to accept the rotten-childhood defense for this seriously fucked up individual, just because he has the power to end life on earth based on the voices screaming in his head. Lots of people had rotten childhoods and went on to lead valuable lives -- I'm hearing a lot about Frederick Douglass, for example, and I'd rather spend the time and the money on David Blight's new biography. Let me think about it.
"Satire is dead, as of the second week of July 2020," writes David Von Drehle in the Washington Post. I seem to remember the death of satire being announced during the administration of Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon, and again in the days of George W. Bush. (It's pretty hard to beat "Is your children learning?") Based on yesterday's Rose Garden free-associative breakdown, however, that was clearly the bunny slope of incoherence. Based on only a partial transcript (thanks for the paywall, Newspaper of Record), I can confirm that Trump wandered over China (the supposed topic of the presser), coronavirus, how Obama and Biden used to bus murderers in from Central America, crime in Chicago, how police kill more white than Black people, Confederate flags, and apparently Biden's plan to abolish windows (the architectural feature, not the Microsoft OS). In other words, Infrastructure Week. No, really, he's in Atlanta to talk about federal pork projects he never got around to when Republicans controlled both sides of Congress, and certainly not because he and Sticky Fingers Loeffler and even David Perdue are in serious danger of losing the state. Satire is on life support.
Satirize this: Jair Bolsonaro, the "Trump of the Tropics," is quarantined at his presidential palace in Brasilia, and he doesn't like it. He caught covid because "masks are for fairies," and yesterday he was trying to feed a rhea when it bit him. He wants another test. The bird could not be reached for comment.
Elsewhere in South America, refusing to mask could be fatal. In areas of Colombia controlled by drug cartels, at least eight people have been killed by gang members for trying to leave their homes without a face mask. This seems extreme and ineffective: Colombia reports over 5,000 new cases a day.
Also kicking satire in the jimmies: the CEO of Goya Foods praised Trump last week, triggering a boycott. Today Princess tweeted this photo captioned "Si es Goya, tiene ser que bueno." I assume she asked one of the maids how to say it in Spanish.
The Department of Health (!) and Human Services (!!) sent an encyclical to all hospitals instructing them to stop sending covid data to the Centers for Disease Control as they always have, and to instead send it to HHS's own database. Nobody can understand why, unless it's somehow connected to Trump's theory (aired again yesterday) that less testing = fewer cases. Or possibly the op-ed by Peter Navarro, the alleged trade expert, attacking Anthony Fauci, which was so unhinged that even President Unhinged disavowed it. Fauci's response: "I can't explain Peter Navarro. He's in a world by himself." And today it's a very chilly world. Of course, HHS has no power to order hospitals to do anything.
The supposed topic of the Rose Garden Ramble was "Getting Tough With China," or "Communist China," as he has again taken to calling it. (Not "leftist anarchist Antifa Democrat China?") The reporters were so stupefied by the heat and the bullshit that no one asked why the administration had just lifted its ban on selling silencers (suppressors) to foreign buyers. Did it represent anything other than a gift to the firearms industry? That's a question the Germans are asking, too, as they investigate the assassination in Berlin of a Chechen asylum seeker last August. And such a coincidence that former gun lobbyist Michael Williams is now a "deputy assistant" to Trump. I'm pretty sure Russia can manufacture its own suppressors...but the Taliban?
Governor Doug Ducey still has not made masks mandatory in Arizona, but several counties have run out of space and ordered ice cream trucks to store the dead, 2,528 as of today. The mayor of Phoenix Kate Gallego says FEMA has denied her requests for help with testing. Apparently it's not an emergency yet. When does the weather get hot enough to destroy the virus?
I read an excerpt from Mary Trump's book and I may have to buy it, if just for the seriously geeky cover photo of Uncle Don. It reads good, as they say, and it seems to be full of jaw-dropping stories. Also she was screwed out of her inheritance and deserves financial vengeance. I'm just not sure it's a good idea to accept the rotten-childhood defense for this seriously fucked up individual, just because he has the power to end life on earth based on the voices screaming in his head. Lots of people had rotten childhoods and went on to lead valuable lives -- I'm hearing a lot about Frederick Douglass, for example, and I'd rather spend the time and the money on David Blight's new biography. Let me think about it.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 2:31 PM
1 Comments:
I speak Spanish like a three year old,but i think she said it wrong. I'm gonna stick with Mexican brands from now on. Goyaway.
Post a Comment
<< Home