The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. … This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. — Plato, The Republic
The Congress shall have Power to … declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water. … — the U.S. Constitution
My impression of what an MRI of Pestilence Piggy’s noggin might reveal.
We pulled the plug(s) on the 2025-26 holiday season after breakfast this morning.
Herself boxed up all the small stuff — Bicycling Santa, Fat Cowboy Santa, Cat Santa, etc. — and then we disassembled and bagged the fake Christmas tree before dragging the unwieldy sonofabitch out to its corner of the garage, where the bicycles jeer at it.
“Ha ha, ha haaah, ha, you only get out once a year!”
Then I set about pulling down all the lights out front. I got a little carried away this year, adding a strand here and a strand there, until PNM sent us a thank-you card for using more power than the Coronado Center.
As a consequence, dismantling my creation took longer than I had expected, and by the time I started dragging all the bits and pieces back into the house the clouds were right behind me and splish, splash, my bike ride got rained out.
And yes, those are skulls you see in the pile there. Leftovers from Halloween that I decided to leave up for a while.
Far as I’m concerned, it’s still Halloween. It ain’t over until the last ghoul’s been staked and baked. And the White House is still possessed by devils.
Trump announced that the new Trump-class ships will be “battleships,” but they seem to be supersize versions of the existing workhorse of the Navy, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. … The Navy has also announced the development of a new class of frigates. Destroyers and frigates, as the Navy knows (and as the commander in chief should know) are not battleships. Battleships are huge and powerful, and are meant to dish out — and withstand — serious punishment. Destroyers and frigates are less rugged, and perform missions that require more speed and agility than battleships can muster. But none of that matters: The goal, apparently, was to give a childlike president a new toy, named after himself, in exchange for gobs of money that the Navy will figure out how to spend later.
Jesus H. Christ on a tugboat. Swear to Dog, this egomaniac would put his name on his dingus if he could find a sharp-eyed tattoo artist used to a small canvas.
“Sorry, dude, I’ll be lucky to get a ‘T’ on this thing. Yeah, right, gold, I heard you the first three or four times.”
The only thing I want to see his name on is a tombstone, after the profligate sonofabitch chokes on a mummified Filet-O-Fish that did too much hard time in the Mickey D’s storage cabinet (bad food, unlike bad presidents, doesn’t get good lawyers on the taxpayers’ dime).
And on that glorious day I plan to be well hydrated, with a little Steve Earle on the headphones.
Thanks to His Excremency King Piggy the Sticky-fingered, Despoiler of Poorboxes and Underage Girls, it is now possible for a 71-year-old cyclist with zero upper body to grip $150 worth of groceries in the left hand — yes, the one with the two dislocated digits — while opening the hatch of the Forester with the right.
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
This is the first thing one learns in law school. Or so it seems to me, anyway.
And it dollars up on the hoof right smart, too.
You may think of Jeffrey as just another wrinkled weenie on the roller grill in the Devil’s 7-Eleven, but lawyers have been dining out on him for years, and the feast ain’t over yet.
The lawyers in Congress have demanded that his files be released, and the lawyers in the Justice Department have been (and still are) cherry-picking them with a liberal application of the black Magic Marker, which means the elected ambulance-chasers may bring obstruction-of-justice charges, contempt charges, or even impeachments, which would cause the executive shysters to hire top-shelf mouthpieces of their own, and you didn’t exactly have to be brilliant to see this bullshit coming, though you do have to foot the bill.
Merry Christmas. No, don’t unwrap that box. We’ve got the receipts, but they won’t take it back.