Turkey Pardon Day

 This is why other countries split the job of president/constitutional monarch from the job of running the country:  Joe Biden has to take time out from the climate crisis, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the Houthi piracy in the Red Sea -- yes, a new one --  the borderline treason of Tommy Tuberville and his own birthday to "pardon" a damn turkey.  Because people expect it.  This nonsense was started on November 19, 1963, by John F. Kennedy.  Three days later he was dead, and it should have died with him.  Turkeys are ugly, overbred birds with bad tempers.  Nobody really likes to eat them but everybody does, because it's expected of us.  Which is almost never a good enough reason.  (I never ate good turkey.  Maybe it's all right barbecued.  My mom's was dry enough to inscribe with the Dead Sea Scrolls.)  If Biden wants to pardon someone, I nominate Leonard Peltier.

You know how the ghost of Hamlet's father appears in the bedroom of his skanky queen and Hamlet can see and hear him but Gertrude can't?  No such problem with the "ghost buses" spotted by Clay Higgins on January 6 but only mentioned by him last week.  Apparently Mike Lee saw them, too!  No way two distinguished Republicans could be "mad north-northwest," right?  This phenomenon is spreading like spectral evidence at the Salem witch trials.  Speaker Johnson says he will release 44,000 hours of security video from January 6 (something to watch this weekend if you don't like football), and I plan to really look for the spooky transport this time.

Trump had a good weekend because the courts are closed over the weekend.  He secured the very important Greg Abbott endorsement, so that nail-biter is over.  He went to Iowa and entertained some morons by pronouncing Jimmy Carter "the happiest person anywhere in this country right now" because his administration looks so brilliant compared to Biden's, as Carter sat at his wife's deathbed.  And he assured them that Melania never believed the stories about his pee kink because "he's a germophobe, he's not into that."  Nobody asked about this but he's still brooding over the Steele dossier from 2016, which is not at all demented.  Then he slandered some random women, pronouncing Nikki Haley a "birdbrain" and calling Governor Kim Reynolds "disloyal" (she supports DeSantis for some reason).  

If you want to see Illma Gore's nude painting of Trump, Barcelona's new Museu de l'Art Prohibit (in Catalan) is for you.  It brings together works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt, Goya and dozens of others who have outraged people all over the world over the toxic issues of religion, sex and politics.  Serrano is represented by Piss Christ, which moved mayor and art critic Rudolph Giuliani to threaten the funding of the Brooklyn Museum.  Gore's Trump, titled Make America Great Again, was threatened with legal action back in 2016.  (Link, but not for the squeamish.)  You have to wonder if any of these works are veterans of Munich's Entartete Kunst show of 1937.  Plus ca change...

Speaking of degenerates, they're lining up to send best wishes to Javier Milei, newly elected president of Argentina.  He promises to adopt the US dollar as the country's currency without explaining how that would work, and to move Argentina's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which apparently means something to supporters.  One of them predicted, "Things will either get better soon or they will really go to shit."  Argentina has a long history of shit.  I guess they're comfortable with it.

If you can get past the wig and the crazy eyes, I'll bet he's a sweetheart.  It says here that his dead dog told him to run.  The other stuff is more problematic.

Joe Manchin is leaving the Senate but he thinks there's something called "the radical middle" and that it is yearning for him to lead it.  Isn't that adorable?  Go play with your yacht, Joe.  You earned it by whoring for all those carbon companies.

Donna Brazile mispronounced Vivek Ramaswamy's first name and was slapped down by Bill Maher.  "I heard him do a rap and he said it rhymes with 'cake,'" he informed her.  How woke of you, Bill.  Ramaswamy then accused Brazile of racism, which is funnier than anything Maher has said in this decade.

None of this matters, of course, because Rolling Stone found video of Mike Johnson ranting about a 
"time of judgment" for our "dark and depraved" country, and especially for people who "identify as something other than straight."  (I know, it's hard to remember LGBTQ, they seem to keep adding letters.  Can you say "gay," Mike?)  Like most evangelicals, he seems to do most of his power-praying in public, ignoring Jesus's advice to go someplace and close the door.  And now the cult of the orange rapist/adulterer has given him his biggest platform yet.

For the world's biggest country, Russia can be hilariously petty.  Jamala has now been placed on its criminal wanted list, for spreading "false information" about the Russian military.  Jamala (real name Susana Jamaladinova) is a Ukrainian of Crimean Tatar descent who won the 2016 Eurovision contest with "1944," a song about the Soviet deportation of Tatars in that year.  It took the Russians seven years because they were busy compiling lists of people who can't visit Mother Russia, like John McCain and Orrin Hatch.

Here's a shock:  Texas doesn't believe in climate change.  Like history and sex, the subject cannot be taught to public school students.  Jesus says drill, baby, drill!

And here we go.  From the Washington Post:  "Biden turns 81, pardons turkeys, confuses Britney for Taylor."  Yes, hopelessly senile.  Who's Britney?