Hard work, talent and luck

 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 passage of a $1.2 trillion spending bill that just about keeps the federal government open while screwing Ukraine and the UN Relief and Works Agency, she has moved to vacate the chair -- the second such motion since Putin took control of the House, if memory serves.  There is not much support for this, so she's calling it "a warning" to discourage Johnson from cooperating with Democrats or demonstrating interest in anything but chaos in the future.  Watch out, Mike, she's bigger and tougher than you.

Peter Navarro spent his first night in prison (minimum security) and he did not go with dignity.  Pronouncing himself "pissed," he fell back on the familiar Trump theme, "They come for me, they can come for you."  So don't commit contempt of Congress, he forgot to add.  But the prison gates may soon open for him because another Trumper, Liz Harrington, is on his side.  The "despicable" Chief Justice Roberts refused to prevent Navarro from becoming yet another hostage, but there is a higher authority:  "Our appeal is to heaven...We have a power that is so much greater than these evil people.  God laughs at them.  So we need to start using Jesus Christ and we need to pray."  Naturally, I was reminded of this:

Republicans have been going around asking, "Are you better off now than you were four, I mean three years ago?"  It depends on whether "better off" means "still alive."  According to the CDC between 2021 and 2022 life expectancy in the US increased by around a year.  Covid is now only the fourth leading cause of death, and death rates declined for males in every ethnic category.  Just getting Trump out of office made it easier for people to breathe and enjoy the sunshine.  It may not be scientific but that doesn't mean it's not true.

From Ministry of Truth Social:  "Through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash, a substantial amount of which I intended to use in my campaign for president."  Do you believe any part of that?  Maybe the luck.  If anyone but Merrick Garland was running the Justice Department he would already be showering with friends.  Anyway, the all-caps rant implies that Judge Engoron is trying to block his campaign and "THIS IS COMMUNISM IN AMERICA!"  Yes, he's as abused as Lincoln, Jackson and Tsar Nicholas, quite the trifecta.  So if he has a suitcase full of cash right now, why the big fundraiser next month?  And why are his "guests" being ordered to contribute up to $814,600 apiece?  Why not just post the bond and ruin Letitia James's weekend?  Something is not adding up.  Hard work, talent and luck...that's just delightful.

Almost as amusing as "Republican Study Committee" -- can you picture them poring over statistical abstracts or the works of Milton Friedman?  These smooth-brains released a budget proposal to raise the age for Social Security, restructure Medicare and promote life-begins-at-fertilization-but-not-in-vitro.  Something here to drive away voters by the million and they own it.  Well done, scholars.

But Joe Biden has been observed wearing sneakers again, specifically Hoka Transports, $175 a pair.  This can only mean that he is old, not that he prefers walking to being hauled around in a golf cart.  The other guy famously believes he was born with a finite amount of energy and that exercise just wastes it.

As usual, he's right.