Buttermilk Sky

Happy Transgender Day of Visibility to those who celebrate!  Not surprisingly,  Trump  and his type do not.  "We call on Joe Biden's failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only -- the resurrection of Jesus Christ," said a release from campaign press sec Karoline Leavitt.  Clearly it was dictated by the Bible hustler himself.  The "failing" is a giveaway, as is the weird distinction between Catholics and Christians.  (Not Orthodox Christians, who celebrate the Resurrection on May 5 this year.)  A quick search reveals that March 31 is also National Crayon Day, Eiffel Tower Day, and the birthday of Gordie Howe.   More important, it's the birthday of  Cesar Chavez,  who said, "Once social change begins it cannot be reversed.  You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read.  You cannot humiliate the...

 Breaking:  We are all Christians.  According to singer/publisher  Lee Greenwood,  interviewed by Real America's Voice, it's perfectly fine to package the Bible with the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and of course the words to his one hit song because his business partner Trump swore on a Bible to "defend the country and the Constitution."  Ipso facto we all believe the same thing.  "...he's actually telling the world and telling our country and all of its citizens, I will protect you and I will make sure that you know that I believe the same thing you believe in, that this country was founded on faith."   But it wasn't, nor do most Americans think it was, not even the less than half who identify as Christian.  George Washington declined to be addressed as "Your Majesty," which is good, but he took the oath of office with his hand on a Bible and we've been paying for it ever since.  Writing a song does not make yo...

 When good things happen, we owe it to ourselves to pay attention. Marilyn Lands,  a Democrat and a lawyer who had never held office, was elected to the Alabama House by a commanding 25 points.  She campaigned on reproductive rights and especially in vitro fertilization.   Trump creep  John Eastman,  here being applauded by fellow creep Rudolph Giuliani at the insurrection warm-up, wrote the memo urging Mike Pence to refuse certification of the electors.  He lost his teaching jobs at Chapman University and the University of Colorado, and tomorrow he will lose his law license.  Moreover, the judge livestreamed his disbarment hearing last Tuesday so everyone could laugh and point (and in Giuliani's case, drink and sweat).  Nice one! Don't ask me how but the  Nebraska legislature  (32 Republicans, 16 Democrats, one undecided) voted to recognize May 19 as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X Day, born in Omaha in 1925.  It's no...

 Many have denied the validity of the 2020 election; a few have made a career of it.  One such was Ronna McDaniel, former chair of the Republican National Committee.  (She had to stop using her full name, Ronna Romney McDaniel, because Trump hates Uncle Mitt -- much as the giant toddler demanded the name of the destroyer USS John S. McCain be concealed because he hates John McCain, and it wasn't even the same John McCain but his father the admiral -- I digress.)  McDaniel was pushed out of the cult to make space for seasoned political insider Lara Trump and snapped up by the people who run NBC News, where Joe Scarborough and Michael Steele already sort of work.    For those who have aways wondered what the final straw would look like, this is it.  Chuck Todd emerged from obscurity to display his new beard and commiserate with Kristen Welker of  Meet the Press,  which was a serious political discussion show in the days of  Lawrence Spivak...

 Early this morning a container ship called the Dali left the port of Baltimore and collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge, demolishing it.  The Coast Guard and the Baltimore Fire Department are still looking for six people who were in cars at the time or performing routine maintenance on the bridge.  The Dali veered off course and issued a mayday before the accident and then appeared to catch fire. The same ship scraped the quay in  Antwerp  eight years ago, but that has not deterred the Konspiracy Kaukus from jumping in.  Some decided that the shipping company must have adopted  DEI hiring policies,  resulting in less-qualified sailors, because the industry is notoriously woke.  (All 22 crew are Indian.)  The history-minded promptly found a reason to blame THE JOOZ!  "Israel cancels its visit to Washington after the US allows the UN Gaza cease-fire resolution to pass and then the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is attack...

 Trump would never compare himself to Christ -- that would be blasphemy, a word I'd love to hear him pronounce -- but he's happy to agree when one of his  disciples  notices the startling resemblance:  "It's ironic that Christ walked through his greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you."  Calling it "beautiful," he shared it with the rest of his followers and there was much rejoicing, for the appellate court reduced the bond he must post in the  fraud case to $175 million and gave the fraudulent billionaire another ten days to come up with it.  He is risen!   It's possible the judges listened to  Eric Trump  whining to Fox that no one in all history has ever had to post a bond so enormous.  Foxter Eric Shawn then displayed a graphic of several companies which posted bonds much larger.  Shut up, Eric, and go help you wife look for stuff the RNC can sell so Daddy doesn't lose his pr...

 It's the first day of spring and everyone is pissed. "The level of vitriol -- it's hard to know how intense that's going to be until the rotten fruit is being thrown at you," former DoJ lawyer and self-certified gerontologist  Robert K. Hur  complained to the New Yorker.  He apparently thought that his gratuitous portrayal of Joe Biden as "an elderly man with a poor memory" would cause the House Judiciary Committee to welcome him with flowers and sweetmeats.  Alas, he's getting it from both sides because he also said Biden's handling of classified documents did not amount to a crime, and because mean Democrats made him read his own words out loud in front of everybody.  "I don't have a particular ideology or crusade that I'm trying to go after," the Trump-era appointee insisted.  I haven't read the whole article but it seems the "rotten fruit" is a figure of speech.  Anyway, he just got a glimpse of what Monica Le...

 Everyone wave goodbye to Ken Buck, whose last day in Congress this is.  Be kind to him because he won't be getting a cupcake party from the  Freedom Caucus .  They voted him off Freedom Island, not because he said their stumbling attempt to impeach President Biden was a crock of shit but because he missed three meetings in a row.  Also, he said the 2020 election was not rigged.  They had no choice.  "Humankind cannot bear very much reality," wrote T.S. Eliot, and that goes for the Freedom Caucus, too. Impeachment is dead but nobody told  Claudia Tenney  (R-NY).  She's still assuring Maria Bartiromo that Biden is guilty of something, and she could prove it if she only had the evidence.  Verdict first, trial second.  Blink, Claudia, you don't look at all well. Mike Johnson is a smarmy little creep who seeks Trump's consent before selecting a tie, but that's not good enough for  Margie Greene.   Enraged by the House's p...

 For two days the official media (as opposed to us gnomes down here in Blogenheim) worried about Trump's "bloodbath" threats in Ohio.  Did he mean economic harm to the auto industry?  Surely he wasn't calling on his supporters to kill Democrats like that  Morrow  person in North Carolina.  When he assembled a mob within sight of the Capitol and told them to "fight like hell" he certainly didn't mean they should break windows and assault police...heavens.  What exactly is a bloodbath?  Etc., etc.  Nobody mentioned the bizarre episode a few minutes earlier, when Trump said that "Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama."  Has his mental incompetence become so ordinary that we don't even take note?  Did he mean the 2008 primaries?  Was it a Nancy/Nikki moment when the right name wouldn't come?  HELLO?   Speaking of Michele Morrow , she has stopped calling for pay-per-view executions of Democrats and will only utte...

  In the infamous  Citizens United  v. Federal Election Commission (2010) the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and other groups could pour as much money as they liked into elections regardless of the likelihood of corruption and influence peddling.  They based this on a novel interpretation of the First Amendment:  money is speech and cannot be regulated by the government.  Unsurprisingly, money has spoken loudest from the political right. So why is Trump's campaign drying up like the Great Salt Lake?  His campaign, his legal defense fund(s) and his organization are now more or less synonymous since the coup that installed  Lara Trump as co-chair of the Republican Party.  No one believes the appointment was based on her political savvy or experience -- he covets the party's bank account to pay his compounding judgments and legal fees.  Problem is, neither big bankrolls nor grassroots donors want to throw still more cash into the b...

 Pickled animals, anyone?  If you paid a lot for an animal in formaldehyde from the high period of  Damien Hirst,  check the receipt.  You may be in line for a refund.  Three of these objects -- he calls them sculptures -- dated from the 1990s (the era of his Turner Prize) were actually made by his assistants in 2017.  I have no idea whether the determination was made by an art historian or a chemist, but it's by far the most fascinating thing ever published about this overhyped taxidermist.    Cambodia went through hell in the last century courtesy of Henry Kissinger and Pol Pot, but now it faces another existential crisis:  musical car horns.  Prime Minister  Hun Manet  has ordered them torn out of all vehicles and replaced with the old, boring kind because people are dancing to the tunes they play, obstructing traffic and risking their safety.  Hun Manet is the kind of "strong man" Trump would love if he had ever h...

 On Friday White House counsel  Ed Siskel  sent a "cut the crap" letter to Mike Johnson, pointing out that six months of hearings, retracted testimony, disgraced witnesses and barely concealed threats had resulted in precisely bupkis regarding the impeachment of President Biden.  Siskel called on James Comer and his Comettes to "work with the President on our economy, national security and other important priorities" rather than waste more time on what departing Rep. Ken Buck called making impeachment "a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept."  Chastened, Comer agreed to cancel further hearings and act like an elected representative.  Sure he did.   These fools don't give a shit about anything but keeping Agolf Twitler off their backs.  "The White House does not get to decide how impeachment gets resolved, that is for Congress to decide," retorted Johnson's man Raj Shah.  Congress and Trump, he meant, because none of t...

  "Now if I don't get elected, it's gonna be a bloodbath for the whole -- that's going to be the least of it.  It's going to be a bloodbath for the country, that'll be the least of it." Close your eyes.  Imagine Joe Biden inserting that sentence into his "angry, partisan" State of the Union message.  Half the Congress would be howling for the 25th Amendment, the other half would be furiously scribbling articles of impeachment.  Including many Democrats.   It was, of course, politics as usual 2024 as Trump raged, stumbled, lied and ranted in  Vandalia, Ohio,  a name that could have been invented by Philip Roth or Sinclair Lewis for a satirical novel.  Even the Vandals were confused when he described how "Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama, has anyone ever heard of him?  Every swing state, Biden beat Obama, but in every other state he got killed."  What the fuck?  They were more comfortable with his description of mi...