Firing on both cylinders

 It's midweek and they're scurrying like cockroaches.

Chef Geoff's, a restaurant in Washington owned by Geoff Tracy, was raided by ICE thugs on Tuesday morning.  Turned out everyone who worked there was legal and showed ID, resulting in no arrests.  Geoff Tracy is the husband of CBS News anchor Norah O'Donnell but that had nothing to do with it.  Other restaurants were raided to make it look less vindictive.

In other CBS retaliation news, Trump has decided that what is still known as the Kennedy Center is not opulent enough to reflect his glory.  Now he wants CBS to pay for tarting it up in return for settling his ridiculous 60 Minutes suit.  ABC is also in the shit for hiring Lin-Manuel Miranda as an American Idol judge, with nominal KC boss Ric Grenell threatening them with the FCC.  I'm so glad the government is no longer being "weaponized" against critics.

The Television Academy is not known for its sense of humor, so the nomination of 60 Minutes in the Outstanding Edited Interview category (for that interview) was delightfully sly.  And provoked exactly the response you'd expect.  "Totally discredited Emmys...dubious 'honor'...Fake News Puff Piece..." after ten years of these tantrums you can write it yourself, random caps and all.  Is the Bondi Department investigating the Academy?  I don't know, probably.  

Rudolph Giuliani is MIA as he tries to avoid paying Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, as well as various ex-wives and Noelle Dunphy, but his useless son Andrew is in the news, named "Executive Director of the President's Task Force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup."  FIFA is renowned as one of the world's most corrupt sporting organizations.  "Hold my Gatorade," said the Trump administration.

Trump didn't quite get his face on before meeting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.  When the "press" was invited in he began babbling about "that artificially drawn line" someone drew long ago ("I'm a very artistic person but when I look at that beauti -- I said, that's the way it was meant to be").  He won't shut up about it because "I'm a real estate developer at heart," whatever that means.  If straight lines offend him he should do something about the middle of this country -- Wyoming is practically square.  

In response to outraged veterans the threat to rename Veterans Day had to be dropped, so someone gave him a Sharpie and a map to keep him quiet.  He's off to visit his LIV Golf partners in Saudi Arabia next week and he decided that the Persian Gulf will now be called the Arabian Gulf.  I guess that will show those guys in Tehran, who long ago changed the name of their country to Iran to reflect the many non-Persian ethnic groups it encompasses, but OK, whatever.   Maybe Prince Bone Saw will give him an orb to take home.

Salt Lake City is best known for its LDS Tabernacle and matching Choir, but it appears to be one of those islands of defiant sanity in a sea of red.  Utah banned the display of the Pride Flag practically everywhere so SLC adopted it as one of three official flags (the others honor Juneteenth and transgender).  Three flags, three cheers for Mayor Erin Mendenhall!  Where are you, Austin?

(This just in:  Boise has done the same.)

Can't anybody here figure out this internet deal?  First Pissdrunk Pete discussed a pending attack on the Houthi on Signal, looping in Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic.  Yesterday, possibly to distract from the near collapse of Newark Airport, Sean Duffy decided to celebrate his #LatinaWife and her "home cooked steak tacos" with a link that led to a porn site called @GloryholeBabes.  What else is on Duffy's phone?  Is "steak tacos" a euphemism?

If Truth Social isn't unhinged enough for you, now there's a streaming service that will take your money provide "news, Christian content and family-friendly programming that is uncancellable by Big Tech."  Trump Media & Technology Group kicked off with a documentary called Lizard People:  Rulers of Time and Space.  It's about the "serpent-like aliens who created humans and the religious systems used to control them."  It sounds remarkably like the work of David Icke, the British ex-footballer and conspiraciologist who believes "Holocaust denial should be taught in schools," and that's not even the weirdest.  I wonder if TMTG's proprietor knows that Icke has identified the British royal family (whom Trump venerates except for the Sussexes) as lizard people.  

Icke's troubles appear to stem from the rheumatoid arthritis that curtailed his soccer career at age 21.  You have to wonder if John Fetterman is undergoing a similar personality change after his 2022 stroke.  The news from Salt Lake reminded me that he flew the Pride Flag at the state house as lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, defying the then-Republican state legislature.  Now he calls for the bombing of Iran, supports Trump nominees and was seen arguing with a flight attendant about wearing a seat belt.  He still relies on a computer to understand what is said to him and is supposed to have stopped taking medications.  If true, it's tragic, and not just for him.

According to the Independent the CIA, NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency have been ordered to "step up" spying on Greenland.  This is how Skunk Stripe Tulsi organizes secret activities, so don't tell anyone, 'kay?

I'm not sure if the administration has noticed what with abusing the media and threatening judges and elected officials with arrest, but India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, are engaged in a shooting war.  In retaliation for the shooting of tourists in Kashmir last month India shelled what it called "militant hideouts," killing fifteen civilians.  Of course Pakistan has vowed to retaliate.  The State Department is "urging restraint," because that's been so effective in Ukraine and Gaza.

Without being attacked the USS Harry S Truman has lost three fighter jets this year.  At $67 million each, that's almost enough to restore the budget of Meals on Wheels.  

New Yorkers who paid a shitload of money for condos in 432 Park Avenue on "Billionaires Row" are suing the developer CIM Group, alleging that they were not told of cracks in the facade (it was opened in 2015).  Coincidentally the South Beach III condo in Sand Key (Clearwater), Florida, has been evacuated after a crack was discovered in a support column.  In other news, fuck the rich.