Potted palms

 Happy Take Your Houseplants for a Walk Day to those who celebrate.  It's a new one on me, but they say plants get bored sitting on the windowsill year after year and benefit from a change of scene.  So while you make lunch plans for that English ivy, let's examine some other vegetables.

The Paris Olympics began last night with an opening ceremony that sounds absolutely demented.  I didn't get to see it because the local NBC affiliate thought some silly tornado warning was more important (fortunately no twisters and only a few power outages from falling trees).  A boat parade, Edith Piaf songs, simulated headless women at the Conciergerie, a little arson, Lady Gaga, lasers on the Eiffel Tower, I guess we're not in Kansas anymore.  I hope it's on YouTube.

There were drag performers re-creating The Last Supper.  I know because our valiant culture warriors lost their merde.  Elon Musk found it "extremely disrespectful to Christians," while Rev. Harrison Butker of the Church of the Chiefs posted a Bible verse (strangely, not the one about how women should shut up in church).  Former lawyer Jenna Ellis complained of "overt pagan and Satanic symbolism."  Does she know the Olympics began as a celebration of the Greek gods eight centuries before Christianity was invented?  If anything it needed more pagan symbolism.

Even if you don't care about the Games, here's a compilation of vile things said about female American athletes by Mark "King on Steroids" Robinson.  For someone whose chief form of exercise is picking up a fork, he seems to think he knows a lot about sports.  (His wife Yolanda Hill has to repay $132,000 to the federal government for a non-profit scheme called Balanced Nutrition, Inc.  She should spend more time thinking about her husband's nutrition.)

Turning Point Action, presumably the religious wing of Turning Point USA, held a revival meeting in West Palm Beach last night and guess what sweaty old man drove over from Motel a Lago:

"Christians, get out and vote!" he exhorted them.  "You won't have to do it anymore!  "You know what?  It'll be fixed!  It'll be fine!  I love you...in four years you don't have to vote again.  We'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote!"  Unclear whether "it" is the whole world or democracy, but rest assured his spokesmodels have already insisted he was being "sarcastic."  The preacher then turned to the real business of the evening, pride in his inability to pronounce "Kamala."  That's his path to victory, keep saying it wrong until she cracks.  Hey!  Let's call him Uglee Simple McFartsmell!

Incredibly, J.D. Vance is still his running mate and still doing his best to imitate an iron albatross around Trump's neck.  When Jennifer Aniston objected to his "childless cat ladies" remark because of her struggle to get pregnant, he went full "Hollywood celebrity" (it's code like "globalist") and implied she had said something objectionable about his two-year-old daughter.  Vance is sticking to his story that Democrats hate families while Republicans adore them, their opposition to IVF notwithstanding.  

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords has also had it with JayDee:  "Capt. Mark Kelly and I were trying to have a baby through IVF before I was shot and that dream was stolen from us.  To suggest we are somehow lesser is disgraceful."  Keep talking, hillbilly effluent, you've got them on the run.

Here's a two-fer:  Back in 2021 Vance was on some rightwing podcast with people tied to Project 2025, the blueprint for American fascism that Trump claims he never heard of.  That's when he attacked journalists in general, not just the unmarried female ones:  "They recognize that they're miserable and unhappy" because they don't have kids.  They pursue "racial or gender equity" to give their lives meaning, the poor sods.  "The elites have been told that it's very easy to start a family when you're 45.  Well, God says otherwise."  Why, in Ohio a ten-year-old can start a family, if she's been raped and can't find a brave doctor in Indiana.  God and the legislature said so.

Marc Siegel, MD (Maligner of Democrats) is Fox News's paid expert on people he has never met, much less examined.  He watched Joe Biden's speech on Wednesday night and it just didn't...move him.  "The words were fine.  He read them well.  But I didn't sense what he was really feeling, and what he was really telling the American people.  You remember when Nixon resigned?  I mean, you couldn't even get through that without breaking into tears."  Hold on, Doc.  Are we talking about Richard Nixon, the guy who got caught covering up the burglary and was about to be impeached?  Whose own party told him to bail before they threw him over the side?  I got through it fine.  A better parallel would be Lyndon Johnson in 1968 saying he would not seek the nomination, and he had won every primary at that point.  If only he hadn't insisted on that damn war, what might have been?  As for Tricky Dick, I don't know anyone who welled up except maybe Pat and the girls.  This is why they only put you on Fox Digital now.  Joe Biden is not responsible for your inability to feel, doctor.  You should buy back your soul from Rupert Murdoch.

Dr. Siegel likes to analyze body language.  What do you think of this, doc?