Hire a clown, expect a circus.
Pennywise and pound foolish
Category: Assholes
Battle lines being drawn
We had just found a small patch of shade at the No Kings rally when Herself showed me the first reports of the assassinations in Minnesota.
Another psycho with a gun.
The first one I can remember was John F. Kennedy. I was nine. Next was Malcolm X. Then Martin Luther King. Bobby Kennedy. Fred Hampton. Harvey Milk. John Lennon. The list goes on.
Tell you what. This sort of thing does not make you feel good about being in a strange place surrounded by people you don’t know, with a DJ working one side of the park and some sort of drum circle going in the other.
Herself caught me looking around and wondered why.
“I’m trying to make sure I know how we can get the hell out of here,” I said.
She thought I meant at the end of the festivities. I was thinking about the beginning of someone’s fantasies.
A young woman came up with a tray of sliced bananas and oranges and asked if I’d like something.
“No, I’m good,” I replied. “But thanks just the same.” Head still on a swivel.
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away
I tried to cling to the spirit of the moment — small-d democrats old and young and in between, with imaginative signs and fashion choices, dancing, music — Sly and the Family Stone’s “Stand,” because of course “Stand” — but it slipped away from me. It was a large park, but a cramped space, with a lot of noise and people milling around and a sound system that was not up to the task.
We about half heard Rep. Melanie Stansbury from the drum circle, then changed locations to see if we could find a better listening post. Nope.
I tapped Herself on the shoulder and gave her the old thumb over the shoulder.
“Ready to beat it? ” I asked. She was. We did.
I’m glad we went. I’d do it again tomorrow. I’ll do it as long as I can still take some hope from it.
Because it beats the mortal shit out of killing people.
Taking care of business
Well. Seems the Israelis went and stole some of the pomp and circumstance from Der Trumpenführer’s little parade.
Saturday’s expensive, theatrical pud-pulling in DeeCee will soon be forgotten, even by fanboys, late-show wiseguys, and meme-makers. But people will be talking about what Israel just did to Iran for the better part of quite some time.
Discussing the differences between preemptive strikes and preventative war in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols likened the Israeli decapitation of the Iranian military’s chain of command to Michael Corleone’s settling of the family business near the end of “The Godfather.”
But Trump is straight out of Jimmy Breslin’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” A guy who, like Kid Sally Palumbo, couldn’t even promote a bicycle race worth a damn.
Remember the Tour de Trump? Yeah, neither does anyone else. That little Tour de France thing he promised to topple is still ticking along nicely, though.
He kept his big bazoo shut for hours after the Israeli strikes on Iran — yeah, I know, Fatso keeping it buttoned sounds like fake news to me, too — and when he finally got medicated enough to fart out a few syllables they were all about “deals,” as if the existential Israeli-Iranian saber dance on the razor’s edge of Armageddon were just another real-estate pitch.
You want a bomb shelter with that casino? There will be a small additional charge.
Time to flip the bird?
Is it time to replace the bald eagle as a symbol of what used to be the United States of America?
Not with the turkey, which Benjamin Franklin considered “a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.”
Rather, with the oozlum bird.
The oozlum, clearly a cousin of Ed Abbey’s fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird (see “The Monkey Wrench Gang”), flies backwards. This is either so it may admire its own lovely tail feathers, or because while it has no idea where it’s going, it likes to know where it’s been.
And when startled, it will fly in ever-tightening circles until it vanishes up its own asshole.
Though the oozlum clearly has the chops to be our national symbol, it must be noted that the bald eagle remains a distressingly apt depiction of the modern American character. In criticizing the bird’s inclusion in the Great Seal back in 1784, Franklin actually made a strong case for it in 2025. In a letter written to his daughter, Sarah Bache, Franklin wrote:
For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice, he is never in good case, but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: the little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the king birds from our country, though exactly fit for that order of knights which the French call Chevaliers d’Industrie.
“Bad moral character … sharping and robbing … a rank coward.” Good ol’ Ben. Still giving us the bird after all these years.
Felonious funk
On this date last year, Beelzebozo became the first former president to be convicted of a felony — 34 felony counts, to be precise — stemming from a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush-money payments to a porn actor who said the two of them did The Nasty.
Less than six months later he won re-election to the presidency.
Some of the 77,302,580 Americans who voted for him probably thought they were pulling the lever for a Republican candidate. But what they actually pulled was his stubby little finger.
And on Jan. 20 of this year, the Great Rumbling began.
Small wonder the weather has been so unsettled.
When it comes to dealing with an asshole of this magnitude, there just ain’t enough air freshener in the world.
Mad Blog Media 