The name of the lotus

 This morning I ordered a book from Amazon that I really can't afford, even with Prime free shipping and the discount.  I feel better about it after reading that MAGA has declared war on Amazon.  Apparently Alexa had been urging people to vote for Kamala Harris.

I can't imagine asking for political advice from a machine for reminding you when Friends is on and suggesting the closest Thai restaurant that delivers, but people are strange.  Also hilarious.  They're running to another machine, Xwitter, to write complaints like "Alexa is a Commie operative!"  One woman posted video of herself protesting "election interference" by taking a sledgehammer to her device, which will certainly teach it a lesson.  (For Trumpers violence is always a first resort.)  Alexa has supposedly been re-educated and now refers you to the League of Women Voters or something, but it's a delightful way to start the blogging day.

Another delight from New York magazine:

Cry or deny?  Those are the choices when a preacher or politician is revealed to have strayed from the path of righteousness, and so far Mark Robinson hasn't cried.  I'm no expert but a five-day-a-week porn habit seems borderline psychotic for a would-be governor who says he found Jesus in the 1980s.  One store employee says of Robinson, "He was a cool dude.  He wasn't an asshole like he is now," which I will take as a potential vote for his opponent Josh Stein.  The revelation comes shortly after we learned that the Tarheel Triad Girl Scouts had to sue Robinson's grifty wife Yolanda Hill over a bad check for $2,956.03.  This will probably shift the spotlight off her.  Swings and roundabouts.

Tomorrow night just opened up for a lot of patriots -- the "January 6 Awards Gala" at Bedminster Cemetery & Golf-a-Rama has been "postponed indefinitely."  Did nobody express interest in a $50,000 VIP table?  Is it because there are no actual awards involved?  However will the families of the "hostages" survive without the few bucks they stood to collect after all the bills were deducted?  Do I give an actual bowel event?  One cancelled guest intrigues me -- Anthony Raimondi, author and podcaster who brags of connections to organized crime and says he was involved in the poisoning of Pope John Paul I (I don't link to the New York Post).  Was he scheduled to tell entertaining stories about Jimmy Hoffa or the Boston Strangler?  You meet the nicest people chez Trump.

Maybe Trump decided it's time to get serious about next Tuesday's debate in Philadelphia, or about finding a way to avoid it.  Back in August he filed one of his frivolous lawsuits against ABC News for defamation -- something about the wording Stephanopoulos used in describing the E. Jean Carroll verdict -- and then claimed he couldn't get a fair shake from them because "conflict of interest."  Then his crew insisted the microphone be switched off while Harris spoke so Trump's inability to control himself would not make him seem unbalanced.  Probably the studio will be too cold, or the lights too bright, or Philadelphia too woke.  Or he might show up.  (A year ago Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a clarification:  Hell, yes, it was rape.)

Former hostage Peter Navarro filled in for Steve Bannon on -- hey, how many podcasts does Bannon do every day?  Does he rush between studios in an ambulance like Orson Welles in the 1930s, doing one radio show after another?  Anyway, Navarro instructed the basement dwellers that they are not to refer to that woman as Kamala anymore because "it personalizes her and it creates a favorable impression."  (It derives from "kamalam," Sanskrit for lotus flower.)  "We haven't been able to do what needs to be done, turn Kamala into a four-letter word like Hillary was, so stop doing that, OK?"  Unless it's an official Trump-brand pejorative like "Comrade Kamala," of course, or "Kama Chameleon" (for the John Lennon demographic), because the essence of Trump's campaign is insulting nicknames.  He's right, nobody calls Trump "Donald" except family members who hate him or survivors from The Apprentice who witnessed his racism, drug abuse and incontinence for a salary.  Ivana used to call him "The Donald," so maybe it means something rude in Czech.

I'm a little torn on this issue.  I lean toward "Harris" because it's demeaning to call female leaders by their first names.  On the other hand, "Kamala" is rare enough in this country to be unique, like "Beyonce" or "Cher."  We only called Clinton "Hillary" to differentiate her from Bill.  If you want to make a fetish of mispronouncing "Kamala," knock yourself out.  The red hat already identifies you as a clown.

If it's not her name, it's her accent.  Fox idiot Peter Doocy took up time at the press briefing to demand why Harris tried to sound Southern (in his opinion) during a speech in Detroit, until Karine Jean-Pierre decided she had no time for his games.  Politicians who are any good match their speech to their audiences.  I doubt Joe Biden pulls out "malarkey" when he's talking to Macron or Netanyahu.  If this is all they have, we can all go sit in the park until election day.  

I write this every day because I learn so much.  For example, did you know that Winston Churchill was the "chief villain" of World War II because he refused to make peace with the Nazis in 1940?  Obviously he was responsible for letting the war get beyond being "primarily an invasion of Poland" which didn't concern the vital interests of the west.  Tucker Carlson made this clear in an interview with a "real" historian named Darryl Cooper.  You've never heard of him because he's ignored in favor of the "official" version, where genocide is a bad thing.  Churchill just refused to see the Germans' "legitimate concerns" about the Soviet Union.  Somehow, millions of "prisoners" taken in the east had to be dealt with, and killing them outright was more merciful than letting them starve, right?  Right?  Cooper explains that Churchill was a drunk, a psychopath, and "a dedicated booster of Zionism."  I think I know where this is headed, and why Carlson is one of the Trump Party's deep thinkers.  As crackpottery goes, I like it better than Nicholson Baker's contention that a committee of Quakers or other pacifists could have prevented the whole war.  He only claims to be a novelist.

No desecration, no desecration, they're the desecration!  Trump now insists there was "no conflict or 'fighting'" at Arlington last week, just a "made up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad."  He praises the "GREAT GOLD STAR FAMILIES," the two who went along with his antics, not the many who are now calling for an investigation.  There is no shutting him up.  He has at long last no decency.  But we knew that.  No one has seen the video which supposedly vindicates the thugs and proves the woman who tried to stop them was crazy.  No one ever will.  It's in the safe with Melania's college diploma.

The Harris-Walz campaign is rolling in money -- enough to share $25 million with down-ballot Democrats.  The Trump party, on the other hand, is broke.  It has to pay a lot of lawyers and run ads in Palm Beach County to soothe Trump, and co-chair Lara Daughter-in-Law is busy with her singing career.  (She and Roseanne Barr are collaborating on an album of Yoko Ono songs for their own Dog Whistle Records label.)  What became of all those billionaires whose taxes he promised to cut?

Here's another bauble the Republicult had to shell out for: 

It would have cost more if the "artist" had finished the left hand, and I apologize for making you see it.

Four people died and nine were wounded today by a gunman at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia.  Mike Collins (R-Whatelse?), who represents the district, favors "God" over gun laws.  Voters can shitcan him in two months but probably won't.