Eggplant!

 According to the Guardian Christmas in Britain is horrific, and not because of the risk of Spirits whisking you into your miserable past.  A compilation of seasonal injuries includes electrocution while watering the tree with the lights switched on; falling out of the loft (attic) while getting out decorations; splashing oneself with hot fat while cooking; eye injuries from champagne corks; Santa-related injuries to children such as falling off his lap or running away in terror; and of course seasonal heart attacks.  By far the worst, however, are penile injuries associated with vigorous sex.  As one urologist explained, "When patients present to their doctor their penis often looks like an eggplant."  Jeez, you people need to slow down.  (I nearly said "Get a grip" but this year a member of our national legislature re-defined that phrase.)

No matter how grim things get in the UK, no prime minister has ever had to assert, "I never read Mein Kampf."  That's because even the most anti-immigrant prime minister doesn't talk about asylum seekers "poisoning the blood" of the country.  On his worst day Boris Johnson never approached Trump for sheer vileness.  No one believes he read Hitler's campaign biography or any other book, so it's coincidence that he calls his opponents "vermin" and promises to expel as many non-white people as he can round up.  The army of 54,000 loyalists now being screened will just streamline the government and -- what do they say -- "drain the swamp."  We don't have storm troopers in America, don't be silly.  Martial law?  He could have done that on January 6, 2021, and didn't.  It's fine.

Hitler read books.  A lot of books about eugenics and "racial science" and the supposed origins of the Aryan race.  He also loved novels about the American West and planned to repeat the success the white pioneers had in wiping out indigenous people as soon as his armies secured Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia.  He was especially enthralled by American race laws known by the shorthand term Jim Crow.  Trump is such a stable jenius he doesn't need books -- he just knows what America needs.  

Trump is pouty today because the supreme court of Colorado says he can't be on the primary ballot there for the same reason that Alexander Stephens couldn't be a senator after his side lost the Civil War:  that exasperating Fourteenth Amendment.  He "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" as vice-president of the Confederacy.  Go home to Georgia, Alex.  The people you used to own are now citizens.

More bad news for Trump (and Stephens, I guess):  The Confederate monument which has disfigured Arlington National Cemetery since 1914 is going away.  So much beauty! No more will children learn about the past from seeing a Black servant holding up a white baby to kiss Daddy goodbye, or the faithful slave following him off to war.  

 

U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston -- you remember him, Donald, you appointed him in 2019 -- said demolition could proceed.  There was a claim of graves being desecrated but the judge visited the cemetery and saw that it was just another pathetic lie.  How did this thing get erected in the first place -- oh, right, Woodrow Wilson.

As for the Fourteenth Amendment case Trump is already defending his rights:  "Breaking news:  Colorado just removed me from the ballot!  Chip in now."  It seems implausible that the Flying Alitos will let the ruling stand, so grift while the grifting's good.

The next judge to face death threats and harassment will probably be federal Judge Loretta Preska of New York, who has promised us a New Year's present.  On January 1 she will release the names on Jeffrey Epstein's client list.  Oh, look -- she became senior judge of the US District Court in 2017.  That was one of yours, too, wasn't it, Donald?  Only the best people.  

Was it only last week that Elise Stefanik went full Joe McCarthy on the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania for failing to eradicate antisemitism on their campuses over piddling concerns for free speech?  Maybe she should stop by the Senate Judiciary Committee and do something about the Islamophobia of its Republican members.  During the confirmation hearing of Adeel Mangi to become the first Muslim appeals court judge, Cruz, Cotton and Hawley thought it was appropriate to ask him his opinions of 9/11, the Hamas-Israel war and the October 7 attack.  "I have no basis as a judicial nominee to cast a view on the Middle East," he sensibly replied.  Mangi was born in Pakistan but nobody asked for his views on Kashmir.

Let's be careful out there.