Buttermilk Sky

With Labor Day nearly coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we are reminded that the National Guard -- James Madison's "well ordered Militia" -- has been used for many purposes from strike breaking to disaster rescue.  To my knowledge it has never before been deployed for gardening.  Yesterday in  Lafayette Park  uniformed Guardsmen could be found spreading mulch and planting grass, jobs normally performed by the pre-DOGE National Park Service.  When there's no more litter to collect and no crime to stop, what better way to spend a late-summer Sunday?  (Under a legal loophole the Guard are on multiple  29-day orders  so they don't get paid the Basic Allowance for Housing Type 1.  Take care of the pennies and the billionaires will take care of themselves.) From the nearby presidential palace the sound of the Beatles' "All You Need is Love" was distinctly heard at high volume such as a defiant teenager would use. ...

I have no idea why K$H Patel has inserted the FBI into yesterday's shooting at  Annunciation Catholic School  in Minneapolis.  Could it be because the shooter, who is dead, was transgender, presenting an opportunity to further demonize and vilify this vulnerable community?  Was it because he decided to portray it as a hate crime against Catholics?  It couldn't just be that Minnesota is a blue state with an outspoken governor and they needed a justification for military occupation. Although it was only a week ago, no one beyond Austin seems to be paying attention to the shooting outside a Target store which also claimed three lives.  Maybe if I use the phrase "naked, carrying a Bible" to describe the condition of the gunman when arrested...is it coming back now?  Unlike Robin Westman,  Ethan Nieneker  has an extensive criminal record.  He has been charged with murder, attempted murder, robbery and assault in this case, accused of killing ...

 You can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, goes the cliche, and having been forced to serve on two of them I'm inclined to agree.   So the refusal of a grand jury to indict  Sean C. Dunn  for assault in calling a CBP officer a "fascist" and hurling a (non-ham) sandwich at him is both newsworthy and fun.  It's also a metaphorical hoagie flung at Jeanine Pirro and the fascist who hired her.  There was video!  Dunn was taken into custody by a dozen police!  But the jury was drawn from residents of the District of Columbia and they didn't consider standing up to fascism a crime.  Trump would like to abolish the federal judiciary, or at least the members who fail to understand that they have no  power  to foil him.  Can we expect an Executive Decree doing away with grand juries? Here are some other residents of the District, National Guardsmen who undergo military training and also prepare to deal with emergencies like...

 "I fought for every single one of your rights to express yourself in however you feel that you may want to express yourself.  There's a First Amendment right to burn the American flag.  No president can make a law, period." With those words a still anonymous  man who described himself as a 20-year veteran of the Army set fire to a flag in Lafayette Park "as a protest to that illegal fascist president that sits in that house."  The Park Police arrested him for having a fire in a public park.   Meanwhile the fascist was holding one of his typically incoherent pressers from behind the desk.  Today's Nobel bid was a boast about the wars he has ended.  This time  the number was three, including "Rwanda and the Republic of the Congo" where "nine million people were killed with machetes."  He put a stop to it, "deep into deepest, darkest Africa," which proves that ordering troops to occupy majority black American cities with non-whit...

 "If we didn't go to Los Angeles you would literally have had to call off the Olympics.  It was so bad." That was  The Leader explaining how he saved the 2028 Olympics by ordering armed troops into Los Angeles.  That's how bad it is.  I guess the occupation of Los Angeles will continue for the next three years.   Barely able to walk or focus his eyes, Trump has decided to focus on other people's health and appearance.  He managed to find the remote and turn on the television yesterday and was appalled by ABC anchor  Jonathan Karl's  hair.  Karl was interviewing "Sloppy Chris Christie," who left office as governor of New Jersey in 2018, and Trump decided to retaliate for something Christie said by threatening to prosecute him for "Bridgegate," a minor scandal/traffic snarl that nobody can remember.   (Trump suffers from a condition my mother once described as "Irish Alzheimer's," where you forget everything but the grudges...

  Either Trump took time out to help paint some new White House atrocity or he thinks this layer of Preparation H matches his skin tone.  And does his hat say THIS MAN NEEDS HELP? In spite of insistences that he's healthy as a particularly healthy horse, Trump continues to obsess about his approaching death.  "People of faith, there's a feeling, they wanna be good, y'know?" he confessed to  Todd Starnes .  "They get punished if they're not good, right?  If you're not a believer...what's the reason to be good, really?  There has to be some kind of report card up there someplace, like 'let's go to heaven, let's get into heaven.'  It's sort of a beautiful thing."  And if you're a "believer," he implies, you're all set.  You can rape, steal, lie, fornicate, wreck people's lives, and get straight A's.   It's not rare.  Many, maybe most people confuse religion with morality.  Morality is a code of e...

  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 -- ...