Buttermilk Sky

  Hold the front page!  Yesterday Trump said he might vote against Florida's six-week abortion ban.  Today he changed his mind, citing an imaginary  law that would allow abortion "in the ninth month."  The shrieks of outrage from the forced birthers had nothing to do with what Dana Bash would call a "flip flop" if Kamala Harris suggested it.  Trump has often complained of babies being aborted after birth, which is a thing that exists only in his brain. Today he's supporting  Amendment 3,  which would legalize recreational weed in Florida's constitution.  We'll see how long that lasts.  Always attacking, he still does not want it smoked in public places "so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat run Cities" (unspecified).  Ron DeSantis opposes Amendment 3, so it's really just a dick-measuring contest -- after all, the governor was not the one disparaged by Barack Obama at the convention. ...

 It has been forty days since Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election.  In forty days Kamala Harris has put together the most successful campaign in memory, with blinding speed and hardly a misstep.  And Trump has displayed an astonishing ability to self-destruct. The Arlington disaster continues to unravel.   Talking Points Memo  reports that it was never anything but a campaign stunt -- stage a memorial of the Kabul Airport attack and then shame Biden and Harris for not being there or even knowing about it.  Had Trump stopped at the wreath-laying he might have scored points, but he had to pose in Area 60 without the permission of most of the families involved, acting like he just sank a hole in one.  This was followed by news of a lone cemetery employee who was brutalized for trying to stop it, the insults to her ("a despicable individual"), the involvement of Speaker Mike Johnson, the unsurprising role of  Fox News  in ...

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 The Biden-bashing photo-op at Arlington is turning out to be even more of a disaster than the Medal of Honor-trashing.  We now know that two Trump-keepers had what  NPR  calls "a physical and verbal altercation" with a cemetery official who tried to keep them out of Section 60, the area where the most recent service members are buried.  Naturally Steven Cheung calls them liars and threatens to release footage proving the Trumpers were the victims.  Naturally, he has not done so, blaming some unnamed individual having a "mental health episode."   I assume that was the official. Speaking of mental health, isn't  Phil McGraw  supposed to be some sort of professional?  His credentials were not in evidence when he "interviewed" a clearly unbalanced Trump, who declared that he actually won California but was denied victory because "in California you have people getting seven ballots."  Deciding that wasn't mad enough for Dr. Phil's ...

 We're not done with the obscene visit to Arlington.  This is what the felon said on his ludicrous platform:  "Gross incompetence. -- 13 DEAD American soldiers, hundreds of people wounded and dead, AMERICANS and BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF MILITARY EQUIPMENT LEFT BEHIND.  You don't take our soldiers out first, you take them out LAST, when all else is successfully done..." He should have been at some depot laying a wreath on tanks and armored personnel carriers.  Always the money comes first.  Garbage in a baggy suit. Remember the line in Animal House about the Germans attacking Pearl Harbor?  Senator Blutarsky, meet Donald Trump.  During a private  tour of the Arizona Memorial in 2017, Trump turned to his chief of staff General John Kelly and said, "Hey, John, what's this all about?  What's this a tour of?"  Kelly did not resign on the spot, but neither did he allow the idiot to pose for a picture above the 2,400 entombed sailors grinni...

 The most refreshing thing about the Democratic National Convention was an almost total absence of complaining.  Anger, accusation, protest, sure, but no whinging self-pity.  Show's over, let's see what the playground thinks. Starting small in every sense, here's  Rudolph Giuliani  blubbing on behalf of federal prisoner Stephen K. Bannon, doing a very short stretch for contempt of Congress.  Did you know he's being tortured?  It's true:  They won't let him watch his very own podcast, which has the bombastic title "War Room:  Battleground."  Of course I immediately thought of something Robert Klein said years ago about the disparity of punishment within the United States:  "Smoke a joint in Texas and it's consecutive life sentences, no chance of parole or visitors.  Commit murder in Rhode Island, you can't watch television for three nights."   Of course he exaggerated because that's how comedy works, but what else was ...

  How do you get worse than denigrating the Medal of Honor and, when criticized by a retired  general who used to be your chief of staff, do it again? You go to Cochise County, Arizona, to demonstrate your toughness about fortifying the border and, on learning that police are hunting for an alleged  assassin,  suddenly end a  NewsNation  interview and scurry away ("We're in danger standing here talking").  Violence is not exciting when it might touch you. You tell your new bestie the  Daily Mail  that you have declined to receive security briefings ("They come in, they give you a briefing, and then two days later they leak it and then they say you leaked it"), not caring how paranoid it makes you sound.  Also, the Daily Mail may not know that the Biden administration thought it best to cut you out three years ago. You order someone to charge your phone and spend the night typing bizarre  comments about Kamala Harris's acceptance s...

 Don't ask me what toddling is.  I only know that Chicago was on fire last night in a good way, no cow, no lantern. Has anyone noticed how flat-out funny these Democrats are?  They can land a joke with the best of the pros, and they're not afraid to work a little blue, as when Barack Obama went after Trump's obsession with, uh, crowd size. You could practically hear the ketchup hit the screen. Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel connected with all women when she told the Supreme Court, "You can pry this wedding band off my cold, dead, gay hand.  And I'm retaining a lot of water, so good luck with that." Hakeem Jeffries  compared Trump to an old boyfriend who won't go away:  "Bro, we broke up with you for a reason."   Pete Buttigieg  observed that Americans "demand more from our politics than a rerun of some TV wrestling death match" -- a swipe at Hulk Hogan as well as Trump. By way of comparison, here's  J.D. Vance  at a deli in K...

To start at rock bottom -- but which one?   Josh Shapiro gave a rousing but generic speech about defending freedom, which must have triggered something in the man who was full of sympathy for the way "Democrat antisemitism" cost him a place on the national ticket.  The response :  "The highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, made a very bad and poorly delivered speech talking about freedom and fighting for Comrade Kamala Harris for President, yet she hates Israel and will do nothing but make its journey through the complexities of survival as difficult as possible...I am the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had..." etc.  "Shapiro has done nothing for Israel, and never will.  Comrade Kamala Harris, the Radical Left Marxist who stole the nomination from Crooked Joe, will do even less.  [Less than nothing?]  Israel is in BIG trouble!" And you thought the election was about this cou...

 Prediction:  There will be much disapproval of the way last night's Roll Call Rave "trivialized" and "cheapened" a venerable American tradition.  And four years from now the Republicans (or whatever replaces them) will try to copy it.  Imitation is their superpower --  Trump  deplaned in Michigan yesterday to Beyonce's "Freedom," the official Kamala anthem.  (The Harris-Walz campaign got permission first.) If there's no suspense about the outcome you can either skip the roll call or reconceive it as a joyous party -- and we'd all miss hearing someone say "Guam, where America's day begins..."  So the DNC hired DJ Cassidy and booked some guest stars and the United Center rocked down to its foundation.  Forgive me for being old and not knowing Lil Jon -- the only song I recognized was "Born In the USA."  It was nevertheless awesome.  Somewhere around Missouri I realized that they were going to have the same problem as ...

 Day One of the DNC was an embarrassment of riches.  They have so many dynamic people capable of setting a crowd ablaze that there wasn't enough time, and it was midnight in the east when the star of the show finished his farewell address.  Not quite as bad as 1972, when George McGovern secured the nomination at two in the morning, but the show needed cutting before opening night. Some things you may have missed: The  Guardian  devoted a long article to the significance of Kamala Harris's tan suit.  Or was it camel?  Was it a reference to the notorious tan suit worn by President Obama (and instantly banished to the back of the presidential closet) in 2014 to talk about Islamic State in Syria?  "I don't think any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday.  I mean, you have the world watching," thundered Rep. Peter King.  "Shocking to a lot of people," slurred Lou Dobbs. Women have more leeway in what they wear, of course, though I...

In less than five hours the Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago.  There will be no surprises unless Taylor Swift shows up to endorse Kamala Harris in song, and that's the problem.  Having cleared prime time for four nights, the media want some drama.  They're thrilled that the Illinois National Guard is on alert and they've got a loop of demonstrators gathering in  Union Park  with a banner I found (sorry) hilarious:  LGBTQ+ PEOPLE FOR A FREE GAZA.  No mention of zero emissions?  Cornel West is there to remind everyone that he's running.  But Gaza is not Vietnam and anyone yearning for a rerun of 1968 will be disappointed.  Instead of Abby Hoffman and the Yippies the noises offstage will be provided by clowns like  Mike Lindell,  who promises to shave his mustache so no one will recognize him when he sneaks in.   The clown-in-chief is engaged in what the networks call counterprogramming, desperate to keep ...