Buttermilk Sky

 Mitch McConnell is yielding back, as they say, after eighty-nine years or whatever it is spent weaponizing the Gang of Putin against all that is decent.  Joan McCarter writes his pre-obituary  here.   I will always remember the look on his face (if you can call it a face) during the drumroll-please vote to repeal Obamacare, when John McCain gave him the thumbs-down.  Let me cherish that, please. Unable to repeal Social Security either, the MAGA caucus makes us takers wait every month to see if we'll get our miserable pittance.  It seems there's a tentative agreement to pass a continuing resolution today (if mealy-mouth Mike can herd his cats) to fund bits of the government for -- a week.  Now all they have to do is figure out a way to support Israel without supporting Ukraine.  Last time I checked, Israel was not running out of ammunition.  The only Moses little Mike resembles is Grandma Moses, and she had a lot more gumption.  Clearly ...

Congratulations to  Nikki Haley,  who won four delegates in yesterday's Michigan primary.  Smells like Nik-tory!  Trump got twelve and the remaining 39 will be awarded at the state convention Saturday because the Michigan GOP does not care what its members think.  With an overdraft of $600,000 and a judge having to rule on who gets to be chair, they're a little preoccupied. Still district-shopping as she struggles to remain in Congress,  Lauren Boebert  Xweeted, "The Biden Crime Family will go down as the most corrupt political family in American history."  ("Biden Crime Family" is a Republican meme implying that Don Joseph is both mentally impaired and a criminal mastermind.)  Hours later her son Tyler Jay Boebert was arrested on 22 charges including criminal possession of ID documents and conspiracy to commit a felony.  His father Jayson Boebert was arrested last month for criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and obstruction.  To...

It's official:  The Gang of Putin is scared. The news of the weekend is not that Trump won the South Carolina primary.  It's that he only won 60 percent of the vote to Nikki Haley's 40 percent.  True, she is the former governor, but shouldn't the Anointed One be winning more decisively?  Has he TS'd about South Carolina  voters  who say they would hesitate to vote for him in November?  (Or as one woman put it, in terms he can understand, "Hope he chokes on a sandwich.") As Trump spirals into  incoherence,  the GOP is pushing the "Biden is senile" line like a boulder up a hill.  Scott Perry  wants Biden disinvited from State of the Union because he hasn't signed the border bill that the House refuses to pass.  Joni Ernst concurred, but cited "skyrocketing inflation," as if Trump's  lies about $8 gas had a basis in reality.  Colorado Congress-quitter  Ken Buck  even introduced a resolution calling on Kamala H...

 Circle the date:  March 19.  That's when we'll find out if  Clarence Thomas  accepts John Oliver's offer of a million dollars a year (Oliver's money, not HBO's) and a deluxe RV which makes his present one look like a turd.  All he has to do is resign from the Supreme Court, where he is underpaid and over-criticized (according to himself). I predict that he won't take the deal.  He probably takes in more than a million a year right now, between cash, vacations and other delights, and the loss in prestige would be incalculable.  More to the point, Ginni won't let him quit. She needs him on the court, as do her insurrectionist co-conspirators.  They tried violence last time and failed, and next January the President won't hesitate to send in troops.  I believe their next attempt will involve high-level legal flummery.  Hear me out. As soon as it becomes apparent that Joe Biden will be re-elected, the Federalist Society stooges will mo...

 Monroe County, Alabama, is home to just under 20,000 people, some of them easily manipulated.  On a Facebook page "appearing to be associated" with the Sheriff's Office, someone posted a pre-April Fool story about spy cameras concealed in  pine cones  featuring HD resolution, two-way audio, night-vision capabilities and the dreaded covid-causing 5G technology.  According to AL.com, residents have been doing some serious yard cleaning.  Moral:  If you believe life begins in a petri dish, you'll believe anything. Which bring us to the Alabama Supreme Court and its chief, one Tom  "Seven Mountains Mandate" Parker.  The Republican  Senatorial Committee , already pushed to the brink by the task of making doofuses like Tuberville, Lee, Johnson and Blackburn seem sentient, had to rush out some "talking points" about this explosive decision to avoid any further displays of doofusism.  Republicans are urged to "reject efforts by the g...

  Plenty of good seats available at CPAC.  Are MAGAts suffering from Charlie Kirk fatigue?   I'm sure the pace will pick up when President-for-Life Trump arrives.  Right now he's in South Carolina trying to stretch his thirty-point lead over Nikki Haley to forty points.  He's making a serious pitch to Black voters that must be heard to be believed.  Earlier this week someone called Raymond Arroyo on Fox News excitedly reported that Trump's line of hideous high-tops is making serious inroads into Biden support because "they love sneakers, they're into sneakers, certainly in the inner city."  Trump picked up the cue before the Black Conservative Federation:   "I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing.  And a lot of people said that's why the Black people like me, because they've been hurt so badly and discriminated against.  And they actually viewed me as being discriminated against." I hope Alina Habba was paying att...

 Tell me what it means.  Please. A judge ruled that Barbers Hill High School (Barbers Hill?) in Mont Belvieu, Texas, can discipline  Darryl George  for wearing his hair in locs.  If he did not, it would violate their no-hair-over-the-collar policy.  In North Carolina an elementary school forced two boys to cut their hair although their mother said it is part of Waccamaw Siouan heritage.  I can find no references to white boys being told to "lose the mullet," but I'll keep looking. Professional bowling has been largely scandal-free, but that's all over.   Brandon Novak  was arrested by US marshals in the middle of the US Open and charged with illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, i.e., kiddie porn.  Didn't even let him finish the frame.   It's generally agreed that this year's Major League Baseball uniforms suck mightily.  See if you can guess why. Trump went to the National Religious Broadcasters convent...

 After Principal Johnson scuppered the bipartisan border bill, his personal lord and savior told a prayer meeting, "A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they're blaming it on me.  That's OK, blame it on me, please blame it on me."  Trump wants credit for everything unless he doesn't.  Biden campaign, take note. Later in the same speech:  "We have to, we have to win in November or we're not going to have Pennsylvania, they'll change the name, they're gonna change the name of Pennsylvania."  Nobody knows where that came from.  Possibly he thinks it's named for Sean Penn.   In a rare moment of clarity, Moscow tourist  Tucker Carlson  told reporters, "I really do like it.  I'm not just saying it.  Why do I feel guilty like I'm betraying my country?"  What country exactly would that be? After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are babies  Nikki Haley  concurred:  "Embryos, ...

 The crossover record has been around, I suppose, since Caruso recorded "Over There" in French and sort-of English to support the Allied effort in World War I.  Singers of his era often incorporated pop songs into their recital programs, and eventually pop singers started to cross over from their side.  The results ranged from gobsmacking (Jan Peerce's "Bluebird of Happiness" must be heard -- once -- to be believed) to worthy of a participation trophy (Streisand is no Kiri Te Kanawa but "Classical Barbra" is very enjoyable).  Why stay in your lane if you can reach a wider audience?  Willie Nelson's "Georgia on My Mind" may be my favorite version, and if you love jazz and Bach you must know the Modern Jazz Quartet's "Blues on Bach."   So why is crossing over suddenly contentious?  Because everything is.  It's 2024 and the culture wars never experience a cease-fire.  I just heard Beyonce's "Texas Hold-Em" and...

 Cancel those CARE packages to loved ones in New York -- the big trucker boycott has been called off.  Food, medicines and Kentucky bourbon are reaching the city as normal.  Organizer Chicago Ray deleted his call to arms:  "I took that video down from Friday bc it went viral and my grandson seen it on TikTok," he explained yesterday.  Probably his boss seen it, too, and told him his ass is fired if the delivery doesn't get to the Gristedes warehouse by seven.  Ray "stands by Trump 100%" but people need their cornflakes. Cancel that "chemical analysis" of Alexei Navalny's corpse, too.  The internet knows how he died and it was a blood clot caused by the  Pfizer covid vaccine.   Proof is neither required nor offered, of course, but it certainly looks like the anti-vaxers and the Putin supporters make a neat Venn diagram.  "Why would you blame Putin for something Navalny did to himself by taking an experimental MRNA vaccine?" someone identi...

 This is the report we stay up late for, the  Presidential Greatness Project  Expert Survey, the experts being people who bothered to respond to an online survey by political scientists (fewer than thirty percent).  Lincoln is still at the top, Trump at the bottom, with Biden a very respectable fourteenth.  I hope Jimmy Carter knows he is now considered the most underrated.   Here's why the twice-impeached, multiply-indicted, legally-adjudged rapist brings up the rear:  "The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.  It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path of destruction.  Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA.  WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!  MAGA!"   Whether it's Navalny's "sudden death" or the first  Waf...

 You almost have to admire his refusal to grapple with reality.  Owing judgments that top out over half a billion dollars and with the criminal trials coming up in Act Two, Trump goes into the  shoe business. At a gathering called "Sneaker Con" (emphasis on con ) he hawked "Never Surrender High-Tops," with built-in lifts for the insecure narcissist who always needs to be the tallest person in the room.  I'm guessing.  Only $399 a pair, which I'm told is very reasonable for celebrity-branded gym shoes made by children in Mauritius.  Between Trump's cut and the  GoFundMe  started by some Florida woman, he's practically out of debt.  And think how impressed young Black voters will be with these exquisite kicks, partly gold like the dye in his hair!  I can't imagine who's actually making these things but it probably isn't Adidas, who had to end their partnership with Trump's pal Kanye when his antisemitism got out of control. No, I'm ...

  Remember the Fauci facepalm?  It was the meme of 2020 as the Bernie Mittens would be in 2021.  There was even a  bobblehead  (only one left in stock at Amazon!).  Dr. Fauci, meet Chairman Comer.  Chairman Comer's fourth and final Biden impeachment "witness" was arrested in Las Vegas yesterday, and he's wondering how to break the news to Trump that there won't be an impeachment this year.  "I have failed you, Sir.  I have tears in my eyes." FBI snitch  Alexander Smirnov  was arrested yesterday and charged with lying to the FBI about bribes supposedly paid to Joe and Hunter Biden in connection with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.  Merrick Garland gave the job of investigating the charges to Trump appointee David C. Weiss and this time it didn't bite him in the ass.  Before Smirnov there was  Tony Bobulinski,  a former business associate with an uncorroborated claim about the same alleged bribe.  Before...

 When ordinary mortals demand gun law reform it barely rates a mention.  How about professional football players?  How about professional football players who just won the  Super Bowl?   DE Charles Omenihu:  "A time of celebration ends in tragedy.  When are we going to fix these gun laws?...It is too easy for the wrong people to obtain guns in America and that's a FACT."  S Justin  Reid:  "This is SAD man!  Kids are being shot and somebody didn't come home tonight.  We cannot allow this to be normal.  We cannot ourselves to become numb and chalk it up to 'just another shooting in America' and reduce people in statistics and then move on tmrw.  This is a SERIOUS PROBLEM!!  I pray our leaders enact real solutions so our kids' kids won't know this violence." Justin Reid thinks this  serious public health problem can be solved by the time his grandchildren come along.  He is clearly an optimist.  We m...

Trump's epic social media posts have become a part of our lives, like salmonella, but he always puts special effort into holidays.  Who could  forget "May they rot in hell.  Again, Merry Christmas"?  And "Happy  Memorial Day!   Those who died for our great country would be happy and proud at how well our country is doing today [2018]"?  Last  Veterans Day still makes me choke up:  "...we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.  Lie, steal, and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and the American dream."  You can practically hear a bugler playing Taps... But this  Valentine's Day he surpassed himself to express love and devotion to the woman he once called Melanie:  "THIS IS A VALENTINE'S DAY LETTER FROM DONALD J. TRUMP" it begins.  "Even afte...