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We're not going to make it

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  The American distrust of smart people has deep roots -- see Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life -- but at some point voting for people  because they're as dumb as paint is going to end this experiment in self-government.  As it probably should. Sarah Huckabee Sanders must have thought her service as The Leader's press secretary meant she could ask him for the occasional favor, like federal assistance for  Arkansas  as it recovers from tornados which killed forty people and destroyed entire towns.  Especially if she enlisted the help of Senators Tom Cotton and John Boozman, loyal votes for any MAGA atrocity.  But as a former White House insider, the governor should have remembered that loyalty is a one-way street. "Preparedness is most effectively owned and managed at the state, local and even individual levels, supported by a competent, accessible and efficient federal government.  When states are empowered to make smart i...
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Dying is easy -- politics is hard

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 Elon Musk does not like criticism , or as he calls it, "vicious and unethical attacks from the left."  Think how much we're going to be missing:  we won't have the Boer nazi to kick around anymore.  Yes, he's leaving "government," if that's the right word for the ninety-odd days of chaotic wrecking and gross illegality he helped his friend The Leader inflict on a country that was at peace with its neighbors and enjoying an economic renaissance that some economists called "the envy of the world."  We should throw him a party with balloons and orange punch. Hillary Clinton is still being pilloried for using the phrase "basket of deplorables" and even earlier for warning of "a vast rightwing conspiracy," but sore-ass whining is a bedrock feature of the right.  The phrase I referenced above dates from 1962, when Nixon was defeated for governor of California and conceded by blaming the press ("give him the shaft") ...
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Fighting in the War Room!

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 Fox News may not be the best source of government talent.  According to the  New York Times,  "chaos" is a polite term for the Hegseth Defense Department, where four members of his inner circle have already been pushed out, accused of leaking and other crimes by the Loyalty Squad.  Officials describe "screaming matches," distrust of employees that amounts to clinical paranoia, and "bureaucratic logjams" slowing down The Leader's agenda -- which we must hope includes his invasion plans for Greenland and Canada.  Sometimes chaos is better than competence, and credit for it has to go to the DOGE incels, though that tired old nemesis the Deep State is being cited. "If you harass a Congresswoman in public while wearing daisy dukes, maybe you're the problem" is a sentence I never thought I'd have to parse, but we live in peculiar times.  A spokesperson offered it as an excuse for the increasingly bizarre behavior of  Nancy Mace,  for whom ...
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Stasis

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Good news:  Ultra-orthodox Rabbi Meir Mazuz,  who blamed covid on gay pride parades and said Israeli soldiers had a right to rape Palestinian women, is dead. Sad news:  Pope Francis died.  One  inbred Georgia degenerate  celebrated. Funny news:  Kristi Noem was dining in a Washington restaurant when "an unknown white male wearing a medical mask" made off with her  purse.   Contents included her driver's license, keys, medication, DHS access badge, makeup, blank checks and $3,000 in cash.  Homeland Security?  She couldn't even secure her own handbag. Unexpected news:  John "No Relation to Roadkill Bob" Kennedy says the deportation of  Kilmar Abrego Garcia  resulted from "a screwup" by The Leader, who will never admit it.  He even opposes deporting American citizens, a radical departure from his cult's hive-mind. Other screwup news:    Jose Hermosillo,  an American citizen from Albuquerque, was visit...
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They are all afraid

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 "We are all afraid," Senator  Lisa Murkowski  told the Anchorage Daily News last week, without naming names or specifying what she fears.  A semi-literate Truth Social rant?  Having her house burned down while she sleeps?  Something in between?  "We're in a time and a place where -- I don't know, I certainly have not -- I have not been here before.  I'm oftentimes very anxious about using my voice because retaliation is real.  And that's not right."  Abraham Lincoln standing on Patrick Henry's shoulders could not have put it better.  So glad you're there for us. "What's Happening Is Not Normal.  America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal," wrote  David Brooks  on the op-ed page of the New York Times, where his drowsy prose in service of the status quo has appeared since roughly the Truman administration.  He lists the facets of civilization which "make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, b...
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Through the cracks

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  This is Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, the other one.  Actually thousands of people have been dumped in Gulag Salvador with nothing resembling due process beyond a series of lies about "gang tattoos," but attention is focused on the dad from Maryland, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.  Even with 24-hour cable news American media like to play up one story at a time. Hernandez Romero is a makeup artist who fled Venezuela and lived legally in California before being abducted and sent to hell.  Neither Adam Schiff nor Alex Padilla has gone to El Salvador to attempt a meeting with him.  Only the Human Rights Campaign continues to keep his story alive.  It's almost as if the LGBTQ community has become invisible again.   Also disappearing fast is the attempted murder of the governor of Pennsylvania and his family over the weekend.  Details about the accused arsonist continue to be revealed, the usual kind of thing (multiple arrests, a history of mental illness,...
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Birthright

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 Someone must have been telling lies about  Nicole Micheroni,  for she opened her email one morning and read, "DHS is terminating your parole.  It is time for you to leave the United States.  If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States."   Having been born in Massachusetts, Micheroni was confused.  Where was she to go?  Why?  But as an immigration lawyer, she recognized the totalitarian prose and was all too familiar with the peremptory tone, with its veiled threat of removal to Gulag Salvador.  Probably someone who usually worked for a car company or a Silicon Valley startup had confused her name with that of one of her clients.   Should she call DHS, thereby revealing her location?  She knew that the Castle did not acknowledge the possibility of mistakes.  She had never been called upon to pro...
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