We're not going to make it

 

The American distrust of smart people has deep roots -- see Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life -- but at some point voting for people because they're as dumb as paint is going to end this experiment in self-government.  As it probably should.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders must have thought her service as The Leader's press secretary meant she could ask him for the occasional favor, like federal assistance for Arkansas as it recovers from tornados which killed forty people and destroyed entire towns.  Especially if she enlisted the help of Senators Tom Cotton and John Boozman, loyal votes for any MAGA atrocity.  But as a former White House insider, the governor should have remembered that loyalty is a one-way street.

"Preparedness is most effectively owned and managed at the state, local and even individual levels, supported by a competent, accessible and efficient federal government.  When states are empowered to make smart infrastructure choices, taxpayers benefit."  Translation:  Fuck off, I'm busy crashing the world economy.

After all these years, places like Arkansas should be used to dealing with tornados.  If they're not, why not move somewhere else?  Like a congressman refusing to respond to constituents but on a national scale, The Leader expects everyone to support him and then shut up and go away.  Buy insurance.  Make smart infrastructure choices.  FEMA no longer provides trailers but maybe Clarence Thomas can get you a deal on an RV.  He knows a guy.

The better to economize, Acting (of course) FEMA Director Cameron Hamilton has a new metric based on population to focus federal assistance on large disaster declarations and ignore the small ones.  Rural and small-town victims can just suck it up.  Hurricane season begins in two months, good luck, keep voting MAGA.

And start filling sandbags because The Leader has bigger problems to obsess over -- like a poll by the only "news" outlet he recognizes showing that his hundred-day approval rating is an anemic 44%.  Which is Rupert Murdoch's fault!

I always suspected the Wall Street Journal of being a tool of Beijing.  Thanks for confirming.  Everyone knows China is desperate to make a trade deal with us.  Except China.  They couldn't care less if the shelves are empty at Walmart and its competitors -- they already made The Leader change his story about firing Jerome Powell, just to calm the panicking markets.  Hey, anybody know what the China tariff is today?  245%?  150%?  12%?  How 'bout we pay them to load anything on those container ships that used to keep West Coast ports humming?

But the geopolitical triumphs make up for the economic disasters, right?  

Figuratively?  In jest?  But just the other day The Leader was laying down the law to that man in Moscow:

...right after assuring Vladimir that he can keep Crimea and any other Ukrainian territory he occupies and do whatever he has planned in Belarus and how about a shiny new Tesla?  That's how strong men stand up to aggression.   His envoy Steve Witkoff was sitting down with Putin when a car bomb killed General Yaroslav Moskalik in a Moscow suburb.  Another "blame the war on Zelensky" post in three...two...one...

Most White House "reporters" now represent fascist podcasts and far-right platforms (despite a court order the Associated Press is still locked out), and they understand that their questions must fawn and flatter.  Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway lost a bet and had to eat McDonalds with The Leader, after which he was asked if he thinks "Trump, for his activity in Ukraine and otherwise, deserves to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize."  To his credit, the PM did not laugh but rolled out some generalities about the need for a ceasefire and working together.  Donnie kvelled:  "Thank you very much for that question.  I like that question."  No, you don't get a gold medal and a trip to Oslo for not invading Panama and Greenland or for not drone-attacking Mexico or for unilaterally re-naming international bodies of water.  You get nothing!  

How is the war against Americans going?  Yet another executive decree targets ActBlue, the main online fundraising platform for liberal office seekers, on the risible grounds of preventing donations from foreign sources, which is already illegal.  The FBI was dispatched to Milwaukee to arrest Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, to charge her with obstructing an immigration arrest and send a chilling message to other judges and sanctuary cities.  "MAGA influencer" Rogan O'Handley -- you probably know him as DC Draino -- recommends that The Leader counter the "foreign invasion" of illegal aliens by suspending habeas corpus.  I thought he already had.  More than 350 organizations which combat opioid addiction and gun violence have lost their funding because the Bondi Department decided they "no longer effectuate Department priorities."  Hundreds of thousands of American citizens are becoming internal refugees, moving from one state to another fleeing book bans, punitive medical restrictions, political interference in schools and even the criminalization of being trans.  Tourism and agriculture may be suffering but it's already a golden age for moving companies. 

Bill Maher not only dined with the man he once called a "pissy little bitch," he bragged about being conned by a con man ("Everything that I've ever not liked about him...was absent").  Larry David's response was a New York Times op-ed called "My Dinner With Adolf," about a cordial dinner at the Reichschancellery with Der Fuhrer and his top people.  Turns out the man he thought was a monster has feelings like everyone else.  Maher went on Piers Morgan's show to complain, not for himself, you understand, but on behalf of "six million dead Jews."  He probably has a bet with Morgan to see who can book Trump first.  Very wise, Bill, not to try to compete with David in writing something funny.  You are not qualified.

The White House issued a Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation with the curious phrase "Never again means now," but failed to mention that the Pentagon has eliminated it from the DoD calendar along with Black History Month, Women's History Month, Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth and Native American Heritage Month.  Things are a little wobbly there, with Piss-Drunk Pete turning into Paranoid Pete as he tries to find out who's leaking the stories about his makeup studio and his flagrant disregard for security.  "I'll hook you up to a fucking polygraph!" he screamed at the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who he suspected of letting it be known that Elon Musk was getting briefed on possible war with China, nothing classified about that.  His own chief of staff Joe Kasper became the fifth top official fired in the past week after it got out that he and the head of a veterans group spent the evening at a strip club.  Yes, but Lloyd Austin went to the hospital and didn't tell anyone!

"Never again means now"?  Oh, wait.  I just got it.