Just end!

 As Tom Eliot said, "April -- what the fuck?" or something like that.  This month has been a series of personal and political disasters (the personal ones needn't concern anyone) and I can't wait to wave it goodbye.  It's my fond (i.e., foolish) hope that May will be better.

Some chance.  Although when I finally got the computer working today (never mind), there was Lindsey Graham back from his long winter nap with the most batshit praise anyone has ever praised:

Now I can't decide whether this man, who is an actual United States senator, is revealing a previously unsuspected talent for satire or has lost the last atoms of his mind.  It probably doesn't matter.  Just imagine all the damage of the last hundred days inflicted on the Catholic Church, too!  And can he become the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party on the same day?  He's not Chinese?  Well, he's not Catholic either.  As the little man says, keep an open mind.

But Pope Imbecilicus I is not waiting for the conclave.  He is forging ahead with his threat to sue everyone involved in the Kamala Harris interview with the surprising exception of Kamala Harris -- 

60 Minutes, CBS, Paramount and now the New York Times for writing about it.  I watched the interview so I expect to be served any minute.  See you in court.

You too, Terry Moran.  In the course of interviewing the Unholy Father, Moran brought up the photo of gulag prisoner Kilmar Abrego Garcia with "MS-13" photoshopped on his hand.  "Terry, I've given you the big break of a lifetime," Trump bleated.  "I picked you because frankly I've never heard of you.  Terry, you're not being very nice."  Sensing that he could not win, Moran tried to pivot to Ukraine but Trump persisted:  "It's such a disservice.  Why don't you just say yes, he does, and go on to something else?"  Moran might have observed that servicing Trump is Lindsey Graham's job but what's the point?  For that small act of dissent he will probably be sued for defamation or election interference or aggravated bravery along with ABC, which folded like a warped Jenga set in the Stephanopoulos case.  When you give in to a bully you have to keep on surrendering.

If you like graphs you'll love today's Guardian, illustrating everything from the price of eggs ($6.20 per dozen) to censored government websites.  Here's my favorite:

That's his approval rating.  Pretty, isn't it?  I smell another lawsuit.

Perhaps in a show of festive mercy (think Pontius Pilate) a Palestinian green card holder and Columbia student has been released from ICE detention on orders from Judge Geoffrey Crawford in Vermont.  Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested on April 14 while attending a naturalization interview and never charged with anything beyond having been born in a West Bank refugee camp.  Marco Rubio protested that his very presence here could "undermine the peace process in the Middle East," which is quite a burden for one student.  But Rubio, who has weaponized the State Department to combat "perceived discriminatory actions against Christians," has work to do right here at home.  Yesterday three Christian clerics were handcuffed and arrested in the Capitol rotunda for praying against the MAGA budget bill.  Rev. William Barber, Rev. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Steve Swayne protested a "conspiracy of cruelty" and were expelled along with the press, presumably charged with afflicting the comfortable.  What are you going to do about that, Mr. Rubio?

Whether he gets white-smoked or not, Trump has achieved a level of corruption that would be the envy of a Renaissance pope.  Investors in his personal cryptocurrency $TRUMP were invited to a banquet where they could bask in his marvelousness, and it looks like official government infrastructure has already been incorporated into the supergrift under the domain name thetrilliondollardinner.com, formerly known as the Department of Commerce.  Is it only a hundred years since the Ohio Gang toted suitcases full of cash back to Marion every weekend for the Harding administration?  Chump change.

Trump once lavished praise and a Medal of Freedom on Miriam Adelson to reward her wealth and generosity, observing that the MoF is better than the Medal of Honor because you don't have to get all shot up and unsightly.  He may want it returned now than the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which she owns, published an editorial critical of the Michele Fiore pardon ("a debasement of presidential pardon power").  Adelson had better drop the hammer on her underlings as Patrick Soon-Shiong has done at the Los Angeles Times, where an "AI bias meter" ensures that no incorrect opinions mar the op-ed page.  Of course his trumpification methods have cost it $50 million in lost ad revenues and readers, but as Charles Foster Kane remarked, "At this rate I'll have to close the paper in sixty years."  Billionaires buy newspapers instead of yachts and diamonds.

Here's an arresting headline:  "Alex Jones Warns Trump's 'Dangerous' Citizen Deportations Idea is 'Really bad':  'That's unconstitutional!'"  It can't be, I thought -- must be Alex Jones, the Welsh woman who presents The One Show on the BBC.  No, it's him, the sleazebag who caused so much grief to the Sandy Hook parents.  What's more, Nick Fuentes kind of agreed.  What the hell is going on?

Remember how happy Trump was when Time named him Carbon-based Lifeform of the Year?  Oh, my.