Buttermilk Sky

 "With Trump's fragility comes an increasing dependence on enablers who show a disturbing willingness to indulge his delusions, amplify his paranoia or steer his feeble mind toward their own goals.  Among those enablers is his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.  Should Trump be deemed unfit to serve, Vance would step into power." There it is, an editorial with teeth.  Not from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or USA Today, but the  Las Vegas Sun.   "Crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness" -- read it all. The makeup is decidedly on the Al Jolson/"Jazz Singer" side, too. The story so far:  On Sunday night Tony Hinchcliffe a/k/a "Kill Tony" (as announced on the event's webpage ) shat on an array of ethnic and minority groups, including the now infamous description of Puerto Rico as "an island of garbage floating in the ocean."  By Monday Trump was disavowing all knowledge...

 In normal times I wouldn't start with a Fox News screenshot, but I can't remember what normal times felt like. On the left, the son of a distinguished governor.  On the right, the son of a beloved senator and attorney general.  This is why hereditary monarchy has effectively vanished from the earth. Mike Johnson decided that Elon Musk didn't alarm enough potential voters by promising a time of "temporary hardship" as he redesigns the economy to make it more attractive to billionaires.  Johnson told a bunch of Trump volunteers in  Pennsylvania  that his party's priority will be the "massive overhaul" (destruction) of the Affordable Care Act and its replacement with Trump's concept of an idea of a plan.  "No Obamacare?" asked one, hopefully or plaintively it doesn't say.  "The speaker, wearing a personalized Trump-Vance jacket, responded, 'No Obamacare.'"  This is Little Moses's idea of helping Ryan Mackenzie de...

We haven't seen fallout like this since Chernobyl blew up and farmers in Wales had to slaughter their lambs.  I'm sure Trumplandia is telling itself that Tony Hinchcliffe is a Democrat mole.   It would be delightful if the history books noted that the 2024 election hinged on an Andrew "Dice" Clay wannabe who probably thought he was going to host SNL and get his own sitcom. Incredibly, Hinchcliffe was apparently talked out of the line that would have brought down the house, calling Kamala Harris a word that refers to female genitalia.   The stuff about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins, no problem.  The extended riff on Puerto Ricans, dynamite.  Say this for Tony, he has no idea what he did wrong but criticizing him is "wild."  Comparing a man who doesn't think you're funny to a menstruating woman (yech, am I right?) -- comedy gold. According to  NBC News  Hinchcliffe tried out his routine in a New York comedy club the ...

Earlier this year Trump promised a mob of evangelicals that this is the last time they will have to worry about elections.  For once, he was telling the truth. Yesterday's fascist rally in New York was a vanity exercise for the world's most unappeasable narcissist, no more.  Its very ineptitude may have changed some minds, but mostly the geek from Queens always wanted to play the Garden despite a total lack of athletic or musical talent.  It couldn't matter less because the machinery of election theft has been in place for years and is already beginning to power up.  Republican legislatures have devised ways to disenfranchise voters while MAGA thugs intimidate them.  There are sophisticated schemes involving lawyers at one end of the spectrum and  ballot boxes  set on fire at the other.  The postal service, inexplicably in the control of Louis DeJoy, can drag its feet about delivering ballots or simply "mislay" them.  Even if your vote surviv...

 NewsNation held a town hall with Chris Cuomo and  J.D. Vance  last night, and they took a phone call from a Mr. Trump: Trump:  "The answer should be easy:  How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?" Vance:  "Well, first of all, sir, you're very brilliant.  We both agree that it's important to have very smart people running our government." But Senator Cushion-pushin' wasn't done abasing himself.  In Michigan he was asked about General John Kelly's description of Trump's admiration for Hitler.  "John Kelly was fired by Donald Trump and he's pissed off about it and he won't stop talking about it...even Mike Pence's chief of staff said that John Kelly is making up a bunch of crap about Donald J. Trump.  So who do we believe?" Clearly, we believe the "very brilliant" Trump over the four-star Marine general, a "disgruntled ex-employee."  (Makes him sound like Anthony Scaramucci.)  Also, Kamala Harris should stop ...

 Trump has frequently promised to unleash the military against "the enemy within," like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, as soon as he seizes power, but his cult are not waiting for Der Tag.    Jeffrey Michael Kelly  was arrested for shooting at the Democratic National Committee office in Tempe, Arizona, three times in the past month.  He had 120 guns and 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his house and a machine gun in his car, among other playthings.  Police think he was planning "a mass shooting."  In other election news, an unnamed county in the suburbs of Atlanta thought it wise to spend $50,000 on panic buttons for election workers and $14,000 to hire an extra security guard.   Also in Arizona, ballots were damaged when someone set fire to a collection box in heavily Democratic  Maricopa County,  the epicenter of election fuckery in 2020.  A 35-year-old man was arrested when identified from surveillance video.   Repub...

 I feel as if I've read Jeffrey Goldberg's article in  The Atlantic  at least once before.  General John Kelly's account of his conversation with Trump about the superiority of Hitler's generals was reported in somebody's bombshell book or on somebody's bombshell podcast.  Goldberg may have elicited more detail (Kelly:  "'Do you mean Bismarck's generals?'  I mean, I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was...")* but the admiration for all things Nazi will not jolt anyone, least of all those MAGAs who share it.  The story of Private Vanessa Guillen seems new but it's just Trump 101 -- fake generosity for maximum credit, with a side order of racism. Private Guillen was murdered at Fort Hood, Texas, in April 2020, and Trump decided to treat her death as a campaign opportunity.  He invited her family to the White House and offered to pay the funeral expenses for this "spectacular person" -- until he got the bill.  "It doesn...

 Two weeks from today the voting ends and the lawsuits and violent threats begin, if 2020 is anything to go by.  Where are we? From the start, Trump has promised to make America "great again," wink wink, and we finally know when he thinks it was:  1798, "when we had real politicians that said 'we're not going to play games.'"  Somebody told him about  John Adams  and the Alien Enemies Act, authorizing the deportation of any non-citizen over the age of 14 for any reason.  Wait till he hears about the Sedition Act, outlawing criticism of the federal government (i.e., John Adams).  It expired in 1800 but why get bogged down in details?  It was a golden year, 1798 -- slavery was legal, women couldn't vote, there was no birthright citizenship and "real politicians" could arrest the owners of annoying newspapers.  In  Greenville, North Carolina,  he again promised mass deportations and the "rescue" of every "invaded and conquered...

 Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear...October 15, 2012:  Republican vice-presidential candidate  Paul Ryan  went to a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio, where he rolled up his sleeves, put on an apron and washed pots which had already been washed.  Imagine, some called this a cynical photo-op.   October 20, 2024:  Republican presidential candidate  Donald Trump  went to a McDonalds in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which was closed and ringed with security.  Carefully selected Trumpanzees played the role of "customer," pretending to order food from the adjudicated rapist, who manned the drive-thru after spending up to five minutes pretending to make fries.  This was said to be clear evidence that Kamala Harris never worked at a California McDonalds forty years ago.  Unlike Ryan, Trump did not bring his wife.  Nor did he wear gloves or a hairnet. Asked if he supports raising the minimum wage, Trump we...

 You have to admit, he's full of surprises.  I was wondering how Trump would follow last week's Philadelphia karaoke.  I thought he might pull down his diaper and take a giant dump on a picture of Kamala Harris.  (He's probably saving that for Madison Square Garden.)  A ten-minute tribute to  Arnold Palmer's  wedding tackle was not on my bingo card.   It didn't come out of the blue.  The rally was held at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Unity, Pennsylvania, as Trump rallies tend to be because he won't pay for indoor venues.  Palmer's daughter  Peg  had some choice remarks about how her father would view Trump ("I think he'd cringe").  Even  Fox New s cringed, cutting away from the dick talk to a Harris rally in Atlanta.  To protect Grandpa Sundown or because the Baier-Harris interview had sky-high  ratings ? Mike Johnson,  the cult's chief prude, had to go on CNN and assure Jake Tapper that long,...

 If you want to know why Generals Kelly, Milley, Mattis and McMaster came to despise Trump, it's because his response to aggression is surrender.  On  Fox & Friends  he told a ten-year-old named Daniel that he would not have fought back after the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter ("I've always said why wasn't that settled").  He thinks Ukraine should respond in the same way to being invaded by Russia, of course, and the sooner Palestinians get out of the way so Gaza can be developed for tourism, the better.  I wish some ten-year-old would ask him about Pearl Harbor. Putin's army might be doing better if they didn't have to abandon their golf-carts  personnel carriers and go looking for the eighteen  North Korean  soldiers who deserted as soon as they arrived in the front line.  They were only four miles from the Ukrainian border, so they're probably renting apartments and enjoying the local cuisine by now. Maureen Dowd  is furiou...

  Since Trump's career began in show business it may as well end there.   In U.S. News on October 16,  John D. Miller,  who used to head up marketing for NBC, begged America's pardon for promoting The Apprentice and persuading people that Trump was a successful businessman, mostly because real CEOs had no time for game shows.  Multiple bankrupt Donny had nothing but time, especially if it involved flattery.  "He has an unfillable compliment hole.  No amount is too much."  He's also easy to manipulate, thin skinned and contemptuous of facts, but we knew that.  ( The Apprentice was never first in the ratings, no matter what you will read for the next week on TruthSocial.)  Miller says he regrets taking so long to speak.  He's not the only one. The Archdiocese of New York probably regrets inviting Trump to bring his comedy stylings to the Al Smith dinner.  Dinner, not roast, although they may as well change it to accommodate ...