A delicate moment

 


One picture says it all.  Is this what the 77 million voted for?  And are you going to believe the Anti-Defamation League or your own lying eyes?


An "awkward gesture"?  "A bit of grace"?  "People are on edge"?  This is the ADL, whose mission statement is "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people," not "can't we all just get along?"  

In 2022 Admiral Linda Fagan became the first woman to head the US Coast Guard, and yesterday she was dismissed.  No one will say exactly why, but she's accused of investigating sexual assault cases too vigorously, failing to secure the borders and you guessed it, too much DEI.  Her biography has already been scrubbed from the Coast Guard website.  Others honored with "YOU'RE FIRED!" were Jose Andres (President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition), Mark Milley (National Infrastructure Advisory Council), Brian Hook (Wilson Center for Scholars) and Keisha Lance Bottoms (President's Export Council).  Mysteriously, Hook was a Trump appointee to the State Department.

The expression "to swear on a stack of Bibles" has never been taken literally, to my knowledge, but there was Melania with an actual stack -- all right, two -- and her husband declined to rest his diminutive hand on it.  I would love to think this represents, at long last, a symbolic wall between church and state but it's probably more like Napoleon brushing aside the pope and placing the imperial crown on his own head.  Perhaps he disdained the books because neither was a genuine Lee Greenwood Bible, on which he gets a cut.

Since we are now ruled by decree (a/k/a executive order) here's one for the ages:  "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government" (all capitalized, but DWFGIEARBTTTFG doesn't mean anything I can discern).  It's just basically trashing trans people and should please Nancy Mace and J.K. Rowling.  I haven't seen where the vast majority of women feel the need for such an order, but the Leader did say he'd "protect women" whether they want it or not.  So reassuring from an adjudicated rapist who started his day by firing Admiral Fagan.

Here a golden oldie from 2017:  "Protecting The Meaning And Value of American Citizenship."  I'm sure several people tried to explain that you can't amend the Constitution by executive order but it's like training a goldfish to jump over fences.  There was an effort to pretend that Kamala Harris was disqualified from running for president even though she was the actual vice president because her parents were not yet naturalized at the time of her birth, but that didn't work either.  We have to go through this every time the proles elect some doofus who hasn't read the Constitution.  So, twice now.  The ACLU is on the case.  At least someone isn't already hiding in the attic, ADL.

Obersturmbannfuhrer Homan also has a plan.


I guess I missed the Big Speech but there's a good analysis here.  "Is he evil or merely stupid?" kos asks.  "Why not both?" I respond.  It's all what Stephen Fry would call "ass gravy of the first order" but here's my favorite:  "After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America."  Finally we can dust off those racist and sexist epithets which have been illegal for so long!  By "restrict free expression" I assume he means the words that used to get you kicked off social media in the bad old days, along with disprovable lies and fascist fantasies.  Or could it be the very concept of "classified documents" like the ones that led to jackbooted FBI agents searching Motel a Lago with nothing but a warrant from a judge?  Let a hundred flowers bloom in every tacky bathroom!  

Did he remind the faithful of the "assassin's bullet" that "ripped through my ear"?  Of course he did.  He works in self-pity as Michelangelo worked in marble.  "I was saved by God to make America great again!"  Now I get it.  For millennia people believed God spoke to them in the words of the prophets and the evangelists.  The Leader requires no written word -- he's on a perpetual conference call with the Big Guy.  Besides, reading anything but praise is an uphill struggle for this semiliterate.

                                                                         ***********



Garth Hudson died today.  He was the last surviving member of The Band.

Jules Feiffer died on January 17.  He drew amazing cartoons and wrote the play Little Murders and the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge.  Asked last year about where society is headed, he said, "I think it's an endless fight and it goes on.  Endless fights go on endlessly."

Yes.












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