Buttermilk Sky

 Let's see how our lawmakers and pundits are handling the criminal justice news: "We have to be willing to fight back.  We need to be subpoenaing Judge Merchan and his daughter."  (J.D. Vance, Ohio life-form)  You know nothing about the law.  Also, get John Roberts to tell you about "judicial independence." "New York is a liberal shit hole."  (Jim Banks, freshman Hoosier)  Elise Stefanik and Carl "Hitler is the kind of leader we need" Paladino are going to be pissed. "He has to appeal first through the New York system and the New York system are all judges that don't want to be responsible for freeing Donald Trump.  These are people with their families.  These are people that don't want to be Dershowitzed.  People know what happened to me when I defended Trump on the floor of the Senate.  Nobody on Martha's Vineyard would speak to me, Harvard Law School cancelled me after I'd been there for fifty years and judges don'...

 Are there any good studies about the effect of Aspartame on cognitive functions?  Specifically the cognitive functions of an old man who has guzzled it daily for decades?  After being convicted of nearly three dozen felonies, is it a good idea to keep attacking the judge who will make the decision about where he spends potentially the rest of his life?  I guess. "This was a rigged decision from day one, with a conflicted judge who should never have been allowed to try this case," he  ranted , in much the same language as after the last verdict.  But there was a jury this time, twelve New Yorkers who needed only two days to decide that the state's case was proven.  Trump sat there mostly awake while his lawyers conducted voir dire and agreed on the jury.  Judge Merchan did not select the jury, nor did he force Trump to hire incompetent lawyers.  Joe Biden did not involve himself in this case nor in any of the other criminal prosecutions curre...

 Two years ago Arizona passed a law making it illegal to film police from less than eight feet away.  A federal judge overturned it after a suit by the ACLU.  Now  Louisiana  has a law which forbids filming police from within twenty-five feet of whatever they're doing.  It seems police and their friends in the legislatures fear more cases like the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which might have passed unpunished without Darnella Frazier and her iPhone.   Trump has been preoccupied with the RIGGED, ILLEGAL criminal trial personally supervised by Joe Biden, the mastermind who barely knows where he is.  He was late hearing about Sketchy Sam Alito and his flag collection (which are all controlled by the missus, she loves flags, Sam doesn't even know what one looks like).  Today he got the story and is thrilled to have the great jurist on his team: Because even the appearance of impartiality is for FAR LEFT LUNATICS AND LOSERS!!! Alit...

 Donald Trump, historian, offered this insight to a gathering of Jewish  donors:   "You know, you go back through history, this is just like before the Holocaust.  I swear.  If you look, it's the same thing.  You had a weak president or head of the country.  And it just built and built.  And then all of a sudden you ended up with Hitler.  You ended up with a problem like nobody knew." If a fourteen-year-old came up with this in a class on twentieth century history, they would fail.  It's gibberish.  But I assume the checks got written because what they really came for was the pledge to support Israel until the Palestinian people have been expelled or exterminated.  That's the twenty-first century Holocaust and the MAGAs are here for it, from Trump promising to throw out of his country "any student that protests" to  Nikki Haley  writing "FINISH THEM" on Israeli artillery shells.  She may have called Trump unhinge...

 Buoyed by Rasmussen polls, timid judges and the groveling of the rump Republican Party,  Trump  may have convinced himself that he is halfway to another four years of dictatorship and revenge.  Nevertheless, he decided he wanted to be the Libertarian candidate, too.  It did not go well, which is to say it was glorious. Rand Paul may have convinced him that these people are pushovers.  But his usual bluster was greeted by booing and cries of "Bullshit!" which drowned out the small MAGA contingent.  He even promised to put a Libertarian in his cabinet, though he probably could not name one.  Apparently they don't care if the January 6 "hostages" are pardoned, though they applauded the promise to free Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road drug dealer.  A delegate from Alabama complained about the "eight million" border crossers, which sounds like the sort of thing Libertarians would encourage.  (She also worried about a war between Bosnia and Serbi...

 Welcome to the game show that's taking America by Stormy  storm.  Our first contestant is President For Life  Donald Trump,  who told a smallish gathering of the curious and the bused-in in The Bronx that the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 who have died would still be alive if the 2020 election had not been "rigged."  Compared to that, announcing that 30,000 people were present barely registers as a fib.  Or has he made a deal with Hamas to release the rest after the 2024 election? Trump loves to wail about gang members coming across the border in millions laden with guns and drugs, but he's not too proud to accept the endorsement of a  couple  who are out on bail just like him.  Meet Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow.  He introduced them in The Bronx because that gives him cred with "those people," just like gold sneakers. As part of its "Confiscate, Obfuscate, Obliterate" strategy, the  DeSantis  administration ki...

 Back in 2001 when Antonin Scalia told Lesley Stahl to "get over it" rather than justify the outrageous Bush v. Gore decision (and smirked), we should have known what was coming:  We can do whatever we want and you can't stop us.  Why is anyone surprised that Samuel Alito doesn't even try to look impartial in his support for Trump and theocracy?  He hasn't donned gold sneakers and a MAGA hat but he stops just short of taking responsibility for those flags that someone attaches to his flagpoles.  The only thing left is to yank open his robe and show America his flagpole. In the now predictable 6-3 pattern the "court" upheld  South Carolina's  racially gerrymandered first Congressional district.  Alito's decision suggested that it only looks gerrymandered because Black voters tend to vote Democratic, or as he put it, "when partisanship and race correlate."  A nice gift to Nancy Mace, who just happens to represent it.  Since the six do not...

 "They fear what's gonna happen if Trump becomes president again.  And I tell you, they should fear." I could not have put it better,  Ronny Jackson .  By the way, captain, can you hook me up with some 'ludes? "It's smooth, rich, chocolatey, and gentle on your stomach!"  What is?  Rudy brand coffee , the latest hustle of purportedly bankrupt process dodger and not-at-all-senile octogenarian Rudolph Giuliani, shown here in his East Side apartment after all the other furniture was repossessed.  Buy some today and help "America's Mayor" cope with his mounting legal bills.  Won't stain your dentures! "I made sure that he knew.  The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.  Does everyone get it yet???!!!!  What are Republicans going to do about it?"   Calm down, Rep. Butch Body .  I assume you're referring to the Motel a Lago search warrant(s), which authorized federal agents to u...

 The defense rested in the New York election fraud trial and the defendant did not take the stand.  It was disappointing for fans of perjury but not really surprising.  Trump needs all his energy to weasel out of his promise to debate, too. It was a bad weekend for the Laird of Motel a Lago.  Friday in front of the friendliest possible crowd, the  NRA Murder Lobby,  he froze McConnell-like for more than thirty seconds.  He and his minions have scurried about calling it a "dramatic pause" and ranting about "a dying Newspaper that I never heard of" and how Biden freezes all the time.  "Donald Trump doesn't freeze!" he TRUTHED.  Except every day in court, about which DONALD TRUMP NEVER STOPS WHINING!  If Biden clears his throat, seven Republicans immediately invoke the 25th Amendment. And if Biden nearly fell down and had to clutch the lectern, as Trump did in  St. Paul,  he wouldn't blame the "crappy" event workers.  "As far...

 On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education  let's see how America is doing with its peculiar institution, racism. Daniel Perry was serving a 25-year sentence for murdering Garrett Foster, a white man who was carrying a rifle while marching in a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Austin, both perfectly legal in Texas.  Greg Abbott  ordered his hand-picked parole board to "consider" the conviction and then pardoned Perry, restoring his gun rights, citing Texas's "Stand Your Ground" law and saying it cannot be "nullified" by a jury or a "progressive" district attorney.   Charlie Kirk  of Turning Point USA has spent months ramping up his attacks on Martin Luther King and civil rights generally, to the point where even some Republicans are backing away (quietly).  Not Trump, who welcomed him to Motel a Lago and praised his work in suppressing Black voters:  "Turning Point is a GREAT Organization doing critical work to ...

  Seize the Grey just won, easily, the 149th Preakness Stakes despite a sloppy track and the handicap of being trained by a man who will soon turn 88.  Surely that's too old for anything but sitting on the porch.  D. Wayne Lucas doesn't even know where he is!  Probably hopped up on something.  Let's ask this urologist at the two-dollar window.  Yes, sarcasm.  You saw right through me. In other sporting news, golf has a new bad boy.   Scottie Scheffler  only had three hours to make his tee time for the second round of the PGA championship in Louisville, so he ignored orders to stop for police investigating an accidental fatality at the front gate.  One thing led to another, you know how it is, and soon Scheffler was being charged with assault on a police officer and other things.  He's number one in the world so they rushed him right through booking and he teed off on time.  What a relief. "If Arizona authorities can't fin...

  We need to talk about language.  English has so many colorful expressions going to waste and we should honor this guy for his creativity and his sign-making skills.  It's even broadcastable. Margie Greene  thought she could play the Dozens, the time-honored game of insult, with Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The CrossFit Cracker soon found she had brought a spoon to a gunfight.  The alleged purpose of the Oversight Committee, which has already foundered in attempts to impeach Joe Biden, was to discuss a contempt citation of Merrick Garland for refusing to provide the Hur tapes over which Biden exercised executive privilege.  (They already have transcripts but they figure to make fun of Biden's stutter because they're desperate.)  Right off, Cracker began demanding to know if any Democrats had hired Judge Juan Merchan's daughter's consulting firm.  Crockett:  "You know we're here about AG Garland?"  Cracker:  ...

  The Dow broke 40,000 today for the first time in the history of capitalism.  I can hardly contain my joy.  I don't see how things could be better, although millions of Americans still live in poverty and Joe Biden will get zero credit from the legacy media because they hate him.  The nattering classes are beside themselves at the idea of two debates between Biden and the other guy.  Kristen Holmes (CNN) says she talked to "insiders" and "they're a little bit irked" that Biden accepted the challenge with alacrity and snark ("I hear you're free on Wednesdays").  So the Great Backing Away has begun, with  Lara Trump whining that "it's rigged so heavily in Joe Biden's favor but everything always is."  (Hollywood, the music industry, the Nobel Prizes, the Eurovision Song Contest.)  Rep.  Greg Murphy  (R-Justsayno) says his training as a urologist tells him Biden was "jacked up on something" for the State of the Union ...

 "The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information."  (Wikipedia) Someone should have told  Gina Rinehart,  described as the richest woman in Australia.  Rinehart is unhappy with a portrait of her recently unveiled in the National Gallery in Canberra.  She has repeatedly demanded that the work by Vincent Namatjira be removed from view.  So now, instead of museum-goers in one city, it has been seen all over the world. I think we can agree it's not flattering.  If you're worth more than $30 billion, why not get in touch with the artist and just buy it?  Then you can destroy it, as Churchill is said to have done with the Graham Sutherland portrait presented to him on his eightieth birthday.   Probably happened a lot when some titled git decided his Holbein portrait looked more like a Bosch.  We will never kno...

 Last week we reported on former Trump fluffer  John McEntee  and his mission to rid America of pornography.  He also has a side gig where he distributes counterfeit money to homeless people in the hope that they will try to spend it and get arrested and maybe even become famous if they're arrested by somebody like Derek Chauvin.  Isn't that so Trump?  After boasting about it McEntee wimped out, posting, "Just a joke.  Everyone calm down."  So you have a choice of lies to believe, just as with his ex-boss. A poll by  Florida Atlantic University  found that voters preferred Casey DeSantis in a fantasy match-up against Matt Gaetz, who apparently thinks he can shake off the hellhounds of the House Ethics Committee by running for governor.  In other Ethics news, they've begun investigating two  Texas  nuisances, Ronny Jackson and Wesley Hunt.  They're coy about the exact charges but it looks like Dr. Candyman was using ca...