Beautiful asphalt

 

HEY!  Pay attention!  I'm distracting you!  Some sanitized Epstein files are being delivered to the subservient Comey committee today but that doesn't matter.  Check out this important stuff that is definitely going on!

K$H Patel sent FBI agents to raid the home and office of John Bolton completely on his own, without being ordered by Trump who knew nothing about it.  Patel was deeply concerned that Bolton might have used classified documents to write the book he published last year, possibly storing them in the bathroom.  Again, Trump knew nothing, but he doesn't object because he hates Bolton.  "He's a real sort of a lowlife.  He's not a smart guy.  But he could be a very unpatriotic.  I'm going to find out."  

Whitehouse.gov issued a Joint Statement on a United States-European Union Framework on an Agreement on tariffs and such -- still some distance from a finalized deal -- never expecting that anyone would read it.  But someone did and you know what?  There isn't a trace of the $600 billion "gift" Trump boasted about.  "That's not a loan that oh, gee, three years comes up, we have to give it back.  There's nothing to pay back."  He's right.  It was another hallucination.  Musk is gone but Trump is still doing ketamine, it seems.

Another hallucination involved the Putin-Zelensky meeting Trump promised.  Not scheduled in Budapest, Anchorage, beautiful downtown Burbank or anywhere else.  The Russians love playing Lucy-and-the-football with Donnie.  He is, however, very upset because Ukraine retaliated for all those drone and missile strikes by bombing the Druzhba oil pipeline which supplies Russian oil to Hungary, Slovakia and other countries via Ukraine.  "Viktor" got a handscrawled note he was happy to share:

"You are my great friend" -- sure, but do you wish him well like the sex trafficker Maxwell?  I wonder why Zelensky is in no hurry to visit Budapest.  

How much does he wish her well?  The UK's Daily Mail reports that another Club Fed guest inmate dissed Maxwell in a newspaper interview and was abruptly transferred to Houston's Federal Detention Center where violent prisoners are housed.  That will teach Julie Howell (one year for theft) to call Lady Ghislaine (twenty years for sex trafficking) "disgusting." 

The ICEstapo is no longer even pretending to hunt down dangerous immigrants.  Acting director Todd Lyons admitted he will "flood the zone" with thugs after Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city will not "bow down to unconstitutional threats or unlawful coercion."  Sorry, Mayor Wu, that's all they have.  Lyons calls it "Operation Patriot March" because "They're eating the cats and dogs" is so 2024.

When in doubt, tariff.  Trump hates wind so much that he wants a special super-duper tariff on imported wind turbines.  On behalf of all the whales and birds whose lives will be spared, the oil and coal industries thank him with tears in their eyes.  I can't wait to read how turbines "threaten national security."  

Three fascists walk into a train station...no, not a joke, not intentionally.  Vance, Hegseth and Stephen Miller decided to burnish their images by going to Shake Shack in Union Station and pretending to buy lunch for some members of the occupying National Guard force.  They forgot to clear everyone else out, though -- it's a train station, after all -- and things did not go to plan.  Vance was greeted with the now traditional "GO FUCK A COUCH!" while "PUSSY BOY!" may have been directed at Greasy Pete.  As for Miller, he is not accustomed to such, such...well, it was dreadful.  "All these demonstrators that you've seen out here, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been.  We're gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old."  Check your math, Steve, you may be thinking of beatniks.  Were they still active in Santa Monica with their bongos and their goatees when you were losing the high school class presidency to a Latina?  Did it make you mean and nasty, Steve?  You don't have to answer.  

Having pimped the White House beyond recognition, Trump is moving on.  He wants Congress to give him $2 billion dollars to "beautify" Washington.  Apparently there are still a lot of parks that need paving, benches that need spikes to prevent the homeless from sleeping and buildings without gilt decorations.  The place is also lousy with "woke" monuments which are hurtful and divisive -- a huge statue of Lincoln, for example, and nothing honoring Jefferson Davis.  Many roads require paving with  "beautiful well done asphalt" because some asshole drove tanks over them.  

The trucking industry is estimated to be tens of thousands of drivers short, since 18% of commercial drivers are foreign-born and all must now demonstrate proficiency in English for some reason.  A red light is a red light in any language, no?  The State Department is addressing this problem by refusing to issue new visas to commercial drivers, presumably until they pass the "good moral character" test.  I don't understand it, either.  Is no sector of the American economy to be left undamaged?  Farmers can't get their crops harvested, tourism is at pandemic levels, retail prices are rising inexorably as tariffs kick in, and telling homeless people to go away is not lowering rents.  If there's a strategy to all this I can't figure it out.

There are still a few reporters working for the Washington Post and three of them published a story about Warfighter Hegseth's enormous Praetorian Guard, who are pulled away from criminal investigations to protect his far-flung residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and DC.  A Pentagon mouthpiece demands "severe punishment for what Tara Copp, Dan LaMothe and Alex Horton are doing," i.e., reporting facts.  Don't be surprised if they're fired when Jeff Bezos is finished making Lauren Sanchez a movie star or an opera star or whatever it is.

Are you distracted yet?