Gloomy Sunday

 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 government to restrict IVF" while condemning Democrats for trying to "manipulate the abortion issue for political gain."  Since Americans overwhelmingly support abortion rights, that shouldn't take a lot of manipulating.  The overriding issue, of course, must not be spoken aloud:  Women will be told how to become pregnant, what to do once they become pregnant, and how to avoid being charged with murder when they dispose of the extra embryos, or miscarry, or try to leave the state while pregnant, or help someone else leave the state.  By men, naturally.

And, as Jeff Tiedrich points out today, the majority of couples seeking in vitro fertility treatment are affluent white and Asian people who can afford the thousands of dollars it costs.  In other words, those most likely to contribute to and vote for Republicans.  It's even trickier to start or add to a family in Florida, where congenital syphilis is spiking, along with measles, Dengue fever and our friend from the Middle Ages, leprosy.  Public health in the state is, as they say, aspirational.  But the right's reverence for life?  Off the charts.

Take Oklahoma, whose governor claimed the state for God "in the name of Jesus" two years ago.  His fellow Republicans are taking that seriously.  The legislature introduced 89 anti-LGBTQ bills over the last two years and when state senator Tom Woods was asked about Nex Benedict, the non-binary 16-year-old who died after being assaulted in a school bathroom, he answered as Jesus would:  "We are a religious state and we are going to fight to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma because we are a Christian state."  It's not just the leprosy, all kinds of medieval phenomena are back.

Like hereditary guilt, the sin that made Jews toxic.  Do you know why Joe Biden is evil?  His great-great-grandfather Moses J. Robinette got into a knife fight in 1864 and was convicted of attempted murder.  Because he was a contractor for the Union army, he was pardoned by Abraham Lincoln, who would pardon most anyone. (Maybe it was hard to find good farriers.)  It's just genetic science.  I wonder what the Bidens were up to back in Ireland.  We know what Fritz Drumpf was doing -- operating a whorehouse.  The hospitality business is also in the blood, it seems.

Neurologists will one day have to determine what is going on in Trump's brain.  It's clearly past the "which one is camel?" stage and may already be beyond a CT scan.  This weekend was...let's just say unsurpassed.  The National Religious Broadcasters barbecue in Nashville was confusing.  As in, he confused the 2018 Mueller investigation with the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop follies, probably because both revolved around Russian election interference.  He went after pronouns:  "What is it with pronouns?  If you really study it and look at it, it's sick."  Watch out, conjunctions, you're next!  Those millions of cannibalistic mental patients pouring over the border -- I don't have time right now -- are "taking the parks from children.  No more baseball fields, no more soccer fields, no more anything.  It doesn't sound very serious, knocker [sic] fields and baseball fields, very serious.  Their way of life has changed."  "You heard the J6 hostages...the spirit, you would think they wouldn't have any spirit left but they have tremendous spirit.  What's happened to them has probably to that extent never happened in our country before."  (George Takei on line one.)  "They're weaponizing law enforcement to target parents, conservatives and Catholics.  Catholics!"  Finally someone is speaking up for the Catholics.

"Can you imagine foreign leaders coming in from other lands...and they're driving in dirty roads, potholes all over the place, medians that are falling down into the road, and crime and graffiti.  Graffiti all over those beautiful marble columns.  Swastickers [sic]."  Yes, Washington.  It sounds like Congress should vote more money for that dangerous infrastructure.  Why don't you mention it the next time little Mike calls to get his instructions?

"Ee-vangelis like the late, great Pat Robertson."  Applause line and off.

That was just the warm-up for CPAC, when he had a tough electoral victory to celebrate.  Off the Teleprompter and out of earth orbit, he promised "hard-working Americans" that "November 5 will be our new liberation day.  But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day...our ultimate vindication...my absolute and ultimate revenge!"  

Well, that sounds serious.  And despite the slapstick comedy -- the flag-snogging, the Biden funny walk -- it was a policy statement.  Those evil people, if they even are people, "came from mental institutions and insane asylums.  An insane asylum is a mental institution on steroids, OK?  It's 'Silence of the Lambs,' OK?  You know that!  Hannibal Lecter!  It's migrant crime.  It's a new category of crime...The people are pouring over.  We have languages coming into our country...that nobody in this country has ever heard of.  It's a horrible thing...It's sort of known as Steak Mountain, Steak Hill.  Snake.  Snake.  A lot of snakes..."  The old material ("I've been indicted more times than Alphonse Capone...") meets the new jokes:  "I stand before you today...as a proud political dissident..."  Back to the Teleprompter:  "The Stalinist show trials being carried out at Joe Biden's orders set fire not only to our system of government but to hundreds of years of western legal tradition."  Did you write that, Stephen Miller?  Because this is the first Trump has ever heard of the Moscow show trials and he has no idea what he just read.

A lot of snakes.   Well, I promised you cannibalistic mental patients speaking weird languages never before heard and depriving children of their knocker fields.  And what does old Joe Biden do?  Make the drug companies reduce prices so people can afford to go on living?  Forgive student debt for over 150,000 Americans?  Try to persuade Israel, a sovereign nation, to stop bombing Gaza?  But can he make this face?