Buttermilk Sky

 When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election for July 4, he could have held on until autumn.  The move was seen as wanting to get it over with before most people left on their holidays, "it" being the mother of all arse-kickings that the Tories anticipate.  As he stood in a sudden downpour he seemed to be thinking of ways to make sure nothing would go wrong, i.e., right, how to drive the last nails into his premiership.  Nail number one was a bizarre announcement of the possibility of restoring military conscription for eighteen-year-olds.  This was quickly  clarified:   only twenty-five days of actual service for only 30,000 boys (and girls?), and although compulsory, no repercussions for failing to participate.  It sounds like not a lot of thought went into this, and polls suggest that only people over 70 support the idea.  Nail number two was Sunak's hasty  exit from the D-Day commemoration in Normandy to go home and ca...

 "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.  For what is the worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?"  (Cicero) History can be weaponized like anything else, and it's always easier when your opponents are unarmed.  We begin today in the sad state of North Carolina, where forklift operator-turned-lieutenant governor  Mark Robinson  has been revealed as a Pearl Harbor Truther.  In a 2018 interview uncovered by the UK's Daily Mail he combined the hoary FDR-knew-about-Pearl-Harbor story with the Patton conspiracy theory to explain how Roosevelt rigged the whole war to help Stalin.  General Patton wanted to keep going east straight to the gates of Moscow, of course, so he had to be stopped by the reds in Washington.  That Roosevelt died months before Patton is just one of those inconvenient details.  Should Robinson become governor, history teachi...

  "It must be because of MIT, my relationship with MIT, very smart, I say what would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater and there's a shark that is approximately ten yards over there...do I get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark?" As parables go, it's a deep one.  But preaching to the multitude in the wilderness of Nevada is hard work and it doesn't always make sense to sane people.  Like Jesus, Trump sometimes has to work without a Teleprompter (heat malfunction?) and has to watch while his disciples get free water from the organizers.  (Unlike free tampons, free water does not lead to communism.)  "I'm up here sweating like a dog.  This is hard work," he whined.   You don't have to be the nephew of an MIT professor and heir to his smart genes to know that dogs don't sweat.  Lacking sweat glands, they pant and drool to lower their body temperatur...

 The weather is superheated and so am I.  This will be in the nature of blowing off steam, so feel free to check back on Monday. Yesterday, on the eightieth anniversary of the invasion of Europe, leaders of France, Canada and Great Britain gathered in Normandy and the President of the United States delivered a powerful and moving speech.  The climactic sentence was, "Isolation was not the answer eighty years ago, and it is not the answer today."  That was a reference to another head of state, the president of Ukraine.  You can hear it  here  (and see President Zelensky's interaction with an American veteran) because you probably did not see it yesterday.  CBS had a soap opera and a talk show which could not be pre-empted, and NBC had a tennis tournament.  Only ABC carried it.  If they're worried about having the convicted felon's campaign demand equal time, Reagan abolished that doctrine forty years ago. Probably they were enjoying the f...

 Some days it just feels like they're coming from all directions. Remember  Jared Kushner?   He has a deal with the Serbian government to build a "luxury hotel" where the Yugoslav Defense Ministry used to be.  It will contain a "memorial dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression," like the operation to end the genocide of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.  (Today is the eightieth anniversary of D-Day, another American-Allied act of aggression which ended the genocide of European Jews.  How words like "aggression" have changed.) The Serbian deal will keep Kushner busy while he waits impatiently for  Israel  to finish "cleaning up" the valuable real estate known as the Gaza Strip so he can start work on hotels and condos.  These would provide opportunities for Palestinians to "build up their livelihoods," as hotels provide careers like bellhop, maid and food service worker.  In the meantime people could be moved into the Negev...

 I hope the woman in this photo, a commander of the  Indianapolis Metro Police,  has not experienced the worst day of her life since being identified as "Rohondra Williams Trumps Probation Officer."  Someone on Threads thought it would be amusing. Her name is Nikole Pilkington and she is not tasked with compiling a sentencing recommendation on Trump or any other New York felon.  That person's name has not been revealed for obvious reasons. Delegates arriving in Milwaukee for the Republican convention next month may be disappointed that it doesn't look like the website, or the way the website looked until yesterday.  That's when a picture of  Ho Chi Minh City  was hastily replaced with one of the Wisconsin metropolis.  Could there be a mole inside the RNC trying to make Chairwoman Trump look incompetent?  Could it be a subtle reference to the party's nominee and his Vietnam-era bone spurs?  I'm just asking questions. Does anyone know...

  TRUST JESUS Trump bus after collision with Biden utility pole in non-shithole Staten Island.  Fortunately no Con Ed customers lost power. Eric Trump  told Maria Bartiromo that Black voters now identify with his father because so many of them are felons.  "Look at the African American vote, right?  That's swinging over to Donald Trump in spades."  When she looked stunned he went on, "I mean they're coming out of the woodpile.  They recognize that Biden has no sense of rhythm.  Loose shoes, tight pussy and Trump -- that's all you need, right?" Despite  Fox Business  predictions of a thousand-point drop, the Dow saluted the Trump convictions with a jump of nearly 575 points, the best day of the year.  One of the rare losers was  Trump Media & Technology.   Capitalism, huh? Trump  has now incorporated the upside-down or "Alito" flag into his campaign videos.  This has led many supporters to flock to retail outl...