Good trouble

 "Tonight I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble.  I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able.  I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis, and I believe that not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my office in pain, in fear, having their lives upended -- so many of them identify themselves as Republicans."

Cory Booker set out quite consciously to break the non-stop speaking record set in 1957 by Strom Thurmond (to block a civil rights bill, of course) and he did it.  As any MAGA will eagerly remind a black audience, the Democrats were the party of Jim Crow segregation in those days, before Lyndon Johnson overcame his Texas origins and guided the 1964 Civil Rights Act through Congress.  "Lincoln was a Republican!" they love to shout, and then they return to chiseling away at the Fourteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act and every other bit of progressive law.  Nothing was at stake yesterday, really, except a meaningless record that now belongs to a black senator from New Jersey, 25 hours and five minutes.  The Leader's address to Congress last month felt longer.

Senator Booker's marathon happened to coincide with a much more significant event, the election of Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  The Boer Nazi might as well have spent $20 million ordering takeout for everyone in the state, for all the effect his money had on "the future of America and western civilization."  (Funny, that's how Putin likes to describe his atrocities, although he usually mentions Christianity, too.)  

As if that weren't sad enough, Tesla reported a 13 percent drop in sales for the first quarter, the worst since 2022.  Not vandalism, not "terrorism," just people deciding, for whatever reason, not to buy one.  It will be interesting to see what the Bondi Department does about it.  This is the only country where shitbox cars have more rights than people.  It's not much of a selling point that the company refuses to accept used Tesla trucks as trade-ins.  The free market, however, has spoken.  Blessed be the free market.

The cultural impoverishment of America continues unchecked.  Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, had his visa revoked because he described The Leader as behaving "like a Roman emperor," which you might expect Him to regard as praise.  Arias says the revocation was unexplained, but Little Marco was in Costa Rica in February promising the current president, Rodrigo Chaves, his help in "punishing" anyone who still supports cooperation with China (like Arias).  Neil Young holds dual Canadian-US citizenship but has a long history of hostility to The Leader; he tried to stop the unauthorized use of "Rockin' in the Free World" back in 2015.  At 79 he does not relish the idea of being "put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminum blanket."  Random Canadians have been treated worse.  That's why Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Cindy Switzer advises would-be visitors to the land of the free to censor their phones (or buy a burner phone) before attempting to cross the border:  CBP isn't checking for evidence of crime anymore, at least in the legal sense.  It's still harder to get into North Korea, but not much.

But the crackdown on thoughtcrime is good news for house-hunters in places like Florida:  Canadian snowbirds who winter there are selling their vacation homes from a combination of economic uncertainty and patriotic anger.  A hundred thousand Canadians winter in Arizona, pumping $1.4 billion into the state's economy.  If it's warm weather you want, Mexico is just a short drive farther and you don't have to register with the police.  Probably cheaper, too.  Wouldn't it be fun if yet another MAGA tantrum benefits Mexico, and they still don't have to pay for a wall?

On the Jesse Watters Airing of Grievances hour, dead-eyed Stephen Miller was making his usual reasoned argument:  "They have the temerity to say that every single invader that Joe Biden let in should get their own individual judicial trial before they are deported.  One at a time each one gets a one-million-dollar trial in front of a communist judge..."  And I suppose they want turtle soup with a gold spoon, Josiah Bounderby would have added.  I wouldn't have taken Miller for a Dickens reader but it doesn't surprise me that he identifies with the phony, self-aggrandizing plutocrat in Hard Times.  Now, who are these communist judges?  Are they here now?  

Trump bootlicker Ed Martin is at it again.  In an unprecedented move (aren't they all?) the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia is trying to invalidate the pardons Joe Biden issued to family members and others in his final weeks as president by questioning his "mental capacity."  Last month he tried to claim they were invalid because Biden used an autopen, an easily disproved lie.  It was too much for Adam Schiff who, possibly inspired by Cory Booker's epic performance, issued this:

Could the Democrats be finding their voice at last?  Stay tuned.  And speaking of mental capacity, The Leader's inevitable ALL-CAPS RANT about "Shifty Schiff" writes itself.  As we used to say before CDs, turn the record over, Donny, we've heard this side.

"We built China," declared the Stupidest Senator in History.  (There was a poll!)  "We built the Middle East.  We built Europe.  So now it's time they help us build back our country...and that happens to be with tariffs."  We didn't "build China," coach, we exploited it during the 19th century like the British, the Germans, and everyone else who noticed that it was weak and ripe for plunder.  We re-built a significant part of Europe to prevent the Soviet Union from encroaching on it, and I don't remember the Marshall Plan including a bill.  As for the Middle East, here are your tax dollars at work:

"Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip (AP):  Palestinians held funerals Monday for 15 medics and emergency responders killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza, after their bodies and mangled ambulances were found buried in an impromptu mass grave, apparently plowed over by Israeli military bulldozers."  Shot one at a time, one with his hands tied.  The UN wants answers.  I think we already know the answer.

So go play with your football, coach. 

The Leader is scheduled to unveil his tariffs (which he still doesn't understand) in the Rose Garden (which his current wife destroyed).  This should go well.

"Fuck that doctor with a rusty canoe" is my Phrase of the Week, and it's getting John Oliver sued for defamation again.  The doctor he allegedly defamed used to be medical director of AmeriHealth Caritas, whose name fairly shouts We'll Be Rejecting Your Claim, and told an anti-Medicaid hearing that it was fine if a wheelchair-bound man didn't get a clean diaper too often.  Now his feelings are hurt.  With Mr. Oliver may I say, "I hope he gets tetanus of the balls."  

To humor the mad king the White House budget office is calculating how much the invasion and occupation -- sorry, that should be liberation and democratization -- of Greenland might cost.  Denmark subsidizes Greenland with about $600 million a year and they're pretty sure we can do better at buying the consent of the people who cancelled an important dogsled race rather than invite the Vances.  In other words, a bribe.  They have learned nothing from the debacle in Wisconsin.  Good.