Beyond the fringe

It is a truth universally acknowledged that on the lunatic fringe of politics, there's always someone more fringe.  Introducing Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, anti-choice fanatic and border hardliner.  The Ukrainian-born Spartz established her quirky credentials last spring when she voted against $61 billion in aid to Ukraine.  Now she says she won't caucus with the Republicans so she can put all her energy into the fictitious Department of Government Efficiency.  Nobody would care except the people who elected her but this leaves MAGA with a wafer-thin House majority.  If a member is out sick or drunk or otherwise unavailable, they might have trouble passing a resolution that Trump is the greatest American of all time, or even a budget.  Thanks, Congresswoman!

MAGA continues to lose its hive mind about drones and President Biden's assurance of "nothing nefarious" will certainly spur it to new levels of nuts.  (He would say that, wouldn't he?)  Pennsylvania state senator and failed gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano Xitted this picture of a Star Wars prop being trucked along a highway in the Philippines to prove something...

...and there was much hilarity.  Margie Greene is not waiting for information; she's saddled up and ready to ride, along with her constituents, or at least those who have mastered the secret of fire.

Yee ha.

Nancy Mace has raised her profile as far as she can by slandering trans people and has now latched onto the menace in the skies.  (It's my opinion that she wants to be a senator, assuming South Carolina is ready for an openly straight one.)  "I hope that it's us.  I hope that it's not our adversaries or something from outside the universe," she told Clay Travis.  Jeff Tiedrich says she's afraid they could be "gender fluid."  There's a man who's read Ursula LeGuin.

James Comer is also on alert:  "If they start flying drones over my district in Kentucky, if people have the ability to reach those drones with their Second Amendment capabilities, those drones are going to be removed from the air."  Sure, let's us go shoot our assault weapons into the sky because gravity is just a theory, like evolution and vaccine effectiveness.  Anything to distract from the sorry truth that Comer's "investigation" of the Bidens collapsed like a Chinese weather balloon the other day when Alexander Smirnov admitted he made the whole thing up.  Look over there -- Martian!

The Guardian sent Ben Makuch to Asbury Park on a Vinnie Safari, similar to those Times reporters hunting Trump voters in a Pennsylvania diner.  One vinnie suggested the mysterious aircraft originated on an "Iranian mother ship" at sea; another reported a rumor about al-Qaeda.  A diner employee told him, "They've been having, like, drone watch-parties out on Long Beach Island."  The sanest explanation seems to be someone shooting a movie.   You can see why New Jersey tends to elect Democrats.

Now that the Ethics Committee report has dropped, Matt Gaetz acknowledges that he used to smoke, drink and dance the hoochie-koo, but now he's saved.  He pronounces himself FULLY EXONERATED in Trump-like caps, but adds, "In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated -- even some I never dated but who asked."  It's customary to send flowers.  Martian!  Right over there!

Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes the grand master of the Stonecutters?  Of course you do -- the one with the voice of Patrick Stewart.  He's let in on all kinds of secrets, including the emergency number 912 (911 is for losers).  Life again imitates art:  After Governor Hochul's big meeting with 175 masters of the universe New York may set up a hotline for corporate CEOs to report threats of "domestic terrorism."  The first rule of death threats is that those who threaten don't act.  The threat is enough for your basic basement-dwelling choad, especially if it involves a graphic sexual threat to a woman.  Conversely, murderers don't call ahead.  Luigi Mangione didn't call Brian Thompson to confirm his location.  What the governor has in mind will only cause more resentment of CEOs whose Fortune 500 companies are financially capable of hiring bodyguards for them, unlike parents who send their children to school hoping they will come home again.  

I love an animal retribution story after the way we've loused up the planet they share with us.  I can't find an account of orcas sinking a yacht since July, but how about a bear?  In Lunenburg County, Virginia, on December 9, a group of hunters was tracking a bear.  It ran up a tree and one of the men shot it, causing it to fall on another man ten feet away.  Lester Harvey, 58, died of his injuries.  The article doesn't say what became of the bear.  Apparently this has happened before, wherever hunters stand around staring up at bears.  

Gravity.  Respect it.