Buttermilk Sky

  Oh, sweet Jesus!  Either there's sabotage in the Fox makeup department or Kellyanne is decomposing before our eyes.  Stop lying before it's too late!  Nobody else thought it was worth mentioning but the  Guardian  advises that the NSO concert graced by the presence of the Vances was all-Russian.  Not easy Tchaikovsky selections, either:  Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 2 and Stravinsky's Petrushka.   Good for them, even though Vance told an interviewer in 2016 that he was "astonished" to learn that "people listened to classical music for pleasure."  By Monday the US may have broken off relations with most of the world.   Travel restrictions  are planned for people from 41 countries, while the ambassador of South Africa is being expelled.  According to Marco Rubio,  Ebrahim Rasool  is no longer welcome because he is "a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS."  Rasool gave a webin...

 It's been a while since we checked in with the reconstituted all-American Kennedy Center.  Meet board member and Leonid Brezhnev impersonator  Paolo Zampolli. Zampolli ran a "modeling agency" in the 1990s and is credited with introducing The Leader to his current consort.  Nevertheless he was appointed to the board during the glorious first term.  As senior member he has given much thought to the Center and how to Make it Great Again.  He has already identified one of its problems:  the absence of a marina.  "The Kennedy Center is very difficult to access.  You put in a little marina and on the weekend you go there.  The yachts park there.  You go to a beautiful restaurant.  It will be a beautiful experience."  Why would you go there?  "We can have a  fashion show with Valentino, the top designer in the world, in honor of Jacqueline Kennedy."  (I'm not a fashionista but I seem to remember she favored Oleg ...

 In the first act of Mussorgsky's masterpiece Boris Godunov  the monk Pimen sits in his monastery writing a chronicle of his age, known in Russian history as the Time of Troubles.  He wants people to know what the reign of the Tsar Boris, who came to the throne through murder, was like.  I'm starting to feel like Father Pimen, recording the daily insanity, violence and inexplicable bizarreness. "Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned.  He's become a Palestinian.  He used to be Jewish.  He's not Jewish anymore, he's a Palestinian."  So proclaimed The Leader to the Taioseach, Micheal Martin, who was understandably a little confused.  Every year around this time, Ireland's prime minister comes to Washington to visit with the president and say the usual things about Irish-American friendship during the runup to St. Patrick's Day.  Of course The Leader has a beef with Ireland, whose comparatively low taxes have stolen the entire US...

 Is MAGA at a turning point? We have watched, amused and a little sickened, as they bought an array of crap disguised as "fundraising" merch -- hats, diapers, watches, Bibles, trading cards, worthless currency, mugs -- mostly made in China, as gaudy and shoddy as The Leader's personality, all to express their loyalty and love.  They ignored the buyer's remorse of the marks who enrolled in "Trump University" and not only didn't get rich but had to sue to get their money back.   They took their "Trump Bucks" to real banks and tried to exchange them for real money.  They mocked Governor Walz as "Tampon Tim" while gluing sanitary pads over their ears in imitation of Nearly Martyred Leader.  Some of us laughed; others wondered what they were skimping on to keep their cult leader in luxury (vacations, child support payments, clothes, dentistry, nights out?).  We quietly updated Phineas T. Barnum -- there's one born every four seconds, m...

 The United Nations passed a resolution proclaiming July 12  International Day of Hope .  It promotes "international peace...practicing tolerance and living together in peace as good neighbors."  The vote was 161-1 with India, Paraguay, Peru and Turkey abstaining.  It's the sort of thing that could have been formulated by the Girl Scouts, Sesame Street or your local Kiwanis Club. Guess who voted no.   Hint:  The same country opposed resolutions in favor of democracy and an independent judiciary. One might expect the United Kingdom to hesitate.  July 12 is already Orangemen's Day, when these blokes dress up in whatever this is and march around Ulster to mark the Battle of the Boyne (1690) and annoy the Catholics.  If you don't care about Glorious Revolutions, it's also Pecan Pie Day, Paper Bag Day and National Different Colored Eyes Day, when we try not to find heterochromia creepy.  (Robert Downey, Jr., yes, David Bowie no.)...

  The Leader's weekend was ruined when he saw the pictures -- King Charles invited President Zelensky to his private residence at Sandringham, greeted him on the steps and didn't once complain that he hadn't stopped in Savile Row to buy a suit.  Now he feels  "less special " about his own pending visit.  If he bullies and abuses another head of state, all must do the same.  Right now the Keeper of the iPhone is trying to hide it so he won't launch a series of Social Truths about how Charles has "sausage fingers" and was mean to Diana and will never be as good as his mother.   J.D. Vance had a bad time, too.  He was set upon by a mob of angry demonstrators who terrified his three-year-old daughter.  At least, that's his version.  The one captured on video suggests otherwise:  a group on their way to a protest in  Cincinnati  passed him (and his security, presumably) and engaged him in conversation, during which he slipped a...

  We are nowhere near bottom yet, no matter how it feels. The  Defense Department  is carrying out an Orwellian purge of its past.  Any and all references to women, Black and Hispanic people in the services must be memory-holed by next Wednesday.  For comic effect, the order requires the removal of the word "gay," including images of the B-29 bomber which dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945.  Col. Paul Tibbets's orientation is not in question; his offense was in naming the plane after his mother: The original  Declaration of Independence  is displayed in the rotunda of the National Archives where just anyone can look at it, in a high-tech case filled with argon.  The Leader is afraid for its safety and wants it moved into the Oval Office where he can show it off to visiting Russians and Musk brats can wipe boogers on it.  Coincidentally, during a recent brainstorming session on  Fox & Friends Weekend,  Charlie Hurt hinted...