Out of their mouths

 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, to me, are babies."  Today under ferocious questioning from Gayle King (I kid!) she clarified:  "Well, first of all, I didn't, I mean, this is again, I didn't say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling.  What the question I was asked is, do I believe an embryo is a baby...The difference is, and this is what I say about abortion as well, we need to treat these issues with the utmost respect."  Got it?

Lots of good stuff coming out of CPAC, like a panel discussion about whether Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama will replace old, decrepit Joe Biden at the last minute.  Or Taylor Swift?  What's wrong with Taylor Swift this week?  My favorite so far, from Kurt Schlichter, who sounds like he could be one of the Boys from Brazil:  "Richard Nixon had respect for norms and the United States of America.  Joe Biden is the capo of a criminal organization, The Biden Family.  He doesn't care about the country.  All he cares about is himself."  He seems...confused.  But glad to hear about the rehabilitation of Nixon.  He created the EPA by executive order, you know.  He wasn't completely vile like Trump.  He had respect for norms, up to a point.

Check out these guys for the last time.  I know, it looks like film smuggled out of a North Korean prison but it's actually Japan's Somin-sai Festival.  After more than a thousand years it has come to end because the Japanese population is aging and there aren't enough fit young men who want to wrestle almost naked in the cold to win a wooden talisman blessed by a Shinto priest.  Peter Zeihan is right -- demographics is everything.

Speaking of the Hermit Kingdom, Kim Jong-un got a lunar new year gift from his new BFF Vladimir Putin, an Aurus limousine.  "I actually didn't know there was such a thing as a Russian luxury car," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.  "I hope Kim got the extended warranty."  And the backseat bar/refrigerator.  That hound dog probably wrote beautiful love letters to Putin!

Biden, on the other hand, called Putin "a crazy SOB," causing Dmitri Medvedev to label him "a useless old geezer."  I guess Putin no longer prefers Biden to Trump, as he told Tucker Carlson.  Or does he?  Medvedev also called him "a Hollywood cowboy," which is kind of cool.  (Think Paul Newman, not Edgar Buchanan.)

While the world is focused on Gaza, Israeli "settlers" have been clearing the West Bank.  Sixteen-year-old Nihal Abu Ayash is reportedly the hundredth child to be killed since October 7.  Confronted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators near his Capitol office, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) said, "We should kill them all."  (We being the US, Israel and Ogles.)  He's not alone in advocating genocide, of course, just the latest.  He won't be the last.

But Margie Greene wins the day again.  She wants Judge Arthur Engoron "disrobed" for being mean to Trump.