To the sea!

 

Generally speaking, the Organization is happy to leave dinosaur news to Charlie Pierce's shebeen but this was too exciting:  Some Egyptian paleontologists discovered the fossil of a four-legged whale that lived 43 million years ago.  The legs suggest that protocetid anubis lived at least part-time on land before deciding there was no future in it and returning to the ocean.  I'm not sure he was wrong.

The twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, but why is it such a big deal?  Trump has informed Hugh Hewitt that Osama bin Laden was a one-hit wonder:  "It was a bad one, in New York City, the World Trade Center," he explained, proud of his great memory, but Qasem Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were "bigger by many times...monsters."  He had them killed, ushering in an era of peace like you wouldn't believe, the greatest peace.  The previous day he told Sean Hannity about how he "knocked out a hundred percent of the ISIS caliphate [sic]," which has now regenerated as "ISIS-X," an apparent reference to Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K.  (Somebody's too vain to wear glasses.)  

I doubt Trump will be at ground zero two weeks from tomorrow -- too many New York process servers on his trail -- but you can be sure Rudolph Giuliani will, especially if there's a lunch.  America's mayor, last seen sprucing up in an airport restaurant, told NBC News's Melissa Russo that he's not the manic drunk depicted in I Alone Can Fix It and other books, but a victim of the Justice Department's malice and a social drinker of scotch who functions "better than ninety percent of the population."  His greatest achievement is his password, because the FBI still can't unlock his phone.  Have they tried sitting on it?

All these calls for Biden's impeachment might carry a milligram more weight if they hadn't begun last March when one of his dogs crapped in the White House.  Now it's on the cusp of becoming a joke, like Joe McCarthy yelling "Point of order!"  "He must resign," says Josh Hawley, presumably the same doofus who tweeted "President Biden should withdraw troops from Afghanistan by May 1, as the Trump administration planned, but better late than never."  (You don't suppose there are two Hawleys, do you?)  "This is the most dishonorable thing the commander-in-chief has done maybe in modern times," said Lindsey Graham, hiding his picture of Trump saluting a North Korean general.  Graham is also sure "Al Qaeda and ISIS are coming after us" and predicts "the likelihood of a 9/11."  Hasn't he heard it was a lucky one-off, no big deal?  Besides, ISIS is a hundred percent destroyed.  Keep up, Lindsey!  

If you were wondering about "sane" Republicans, here's 1/6 commissioner Adam Kinzinger:  "Trump set up a deal that would make Neville Chamberlain blush."  But Biden "owns this decision as much as President Trump."  So that makes Biden...Churchill?  Chamberlain thought he was preventing war by sacrificing half the Czechs, a lousy decision but hugely popular in a country still stunned by the horrific losses of the Western Front.  To me it sounds more like what Trump did to the Kurds when he gave Erdogan permission to invade Iraq and wipe them out.  But to paraphrase Chamberlain's adversary, who now remembers the Kurds?

A still-shaky Washington braces for two wildly contrasting events.  Tomorrow, the 58th anniversary of "I have a dream," the Make Good Trouble rally calls for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act currently blocked by (if we're honest) Joe Manchin.  On September 18 the "Justice for J6" event will demand that the "political prisoners" who smashed into the Capitol be freed and given a medal or a pony, whatever.  It will be interesting to see how police react to the two.  

I am returning to the sea.