First grift, second round

 

And some impersonally signed.

When I think Leader, I think music.  The MOTR easy-listening pap he plays at hate rallies and Motel a Lago wedding receptions.  The music he steals from artists like Isaac Hayes and Neil Young to raise his cred with people under 70.  The Irving Berlin knockoff "God Bless the USA" (originally "God Bless Canada" -- see John Oliver's YouTube video about Lee Greenwood).  And now, for a limited time or until the Chinese factory runs out of plastic, this distinctively ugly item which probably can't be tuned much less played.  My respect to the photographer who posed him in front of those shit-stained chairs.  We may have someone on the inside.

Who uses Venmo to pay underage sex partners for silence?  Have you met Matt Gaetz?  "Love you" and "Joy!" are self-evident, but Gaetz being Gaetz a lot of the others are equally suggestive.  "Refreshments" is an interesting euphemism, but what are these "cartrages," a word unknown to my dictionary?  This is only one page.  What else do the radical leftist lunatics at Venmo have to reveal?

Minutes ago Gaetz withdrew his nomination, so we may never get to enjoy the rest of the evidence.  Let's see if he tries to un-resign from Congress.

Never mind, we still have gruesome God-warrior Pete Hegseth.  Police in Monterey, California, shared details of his activities in 2017 "two months after his mistress gave birth to their child."  Exactly when did this guy become a Crusader?  The Leader's minions are starting to wish they had vetted him more carefully, or indeed at all.

The chaos in Transitionville may be imagined from the news that someone with actual qualifications could be appointed to run the Food and Drug Administration.  Martin Makary is a surgeon at Johns Hopkins and co-author of the Surgery Checklist, which is credited with improving patient outcomes worldwide following its adoption by the World Health Organization.  He advises a rightwing think tank called Paragon Health Institute and has written a book criticizing "massive overtreatment," which probably caught the attention of those who want to spend less money on health and more on rounding up Enemies Within.  He's probably not wrong about the overprescription of antibiotics, leading to drug-resistant strains of disease.  He also opposed vaccine mandates during the pandemic, which doesn't mean he shares the view of Roadkill Bob (his putative boss) that all vaccines are evil.  At any rate Dr. Makary would be a glimmer of light in the kakistocracy ("government by the shittiest"), a term which dates from 1644.  Before then it was probably not advisable to be critical of the ruling class.

Elsewhere in the Department of Everybody Dies, Get Over It (formerly Health and Human Services) it's the same manic glee.  Ron DeSantis's surgeon general Joseph Ladapo, who doesn't even believe in masking during an airborne pandemic, is up for CDC director.  Casey Means, who gave up medicine to become a "wellness influencer" (I have no idea) is also on the shortlist, as is his brother Calley, who was a food industry lobbyist.  Ben Carson was approached, but someone remembered that he used to be a neurosurgeon.  If Mehmet Oz succeeds in "privatizing" Medicare and Medicaid, and Congress finally buries Obamacare, it won't matter to millions of Americans because they won't be seeing a doctor for four years anyway.  As it probably says someplace on Pete Hegseth, "Vaya con Dios."

Never mind.  We still have music.  Play us something, kids.