When it came to nut up or shut up, guess what Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina did?
Lemme give you a hint: They won’t have any trouble hitting the high notes in choir come Sundays.
The two alleged senators had refused to bless Todd Blanche’s bid to rock The Big Chair at Justice unless the former mouthpiece for You Know Who committed in writing to (a) dropping a $1.8 billion slush fund for traitors, fart-sniffers, and ring-kissers, and (2) getting a hammerlock on the issuance of “Get Out of IRS Jail Free” cards for blood kin and pretty much anyone else with a whiff of damp, wrinkly ass on their breath.
And then hey presto! Blanche pops back with assurances scribbled on — hell, who knows what? One of Whiskey Pete’s bar tabs or Ka$h P’tui’s monogrammed buttfloss — and these two fold like Mar-a-Lago beach chairs in a category-five hurricane.
Killjoys dismiss Blanche’s assurances, written or otherwise, as “a political solution to a political problem, not a legally binding document.”
The original terms of the documents creating the fund said it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the parties” — a reference to Mr. Trump, his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., the Trump Organization and specific government agencies.
Mr. Blanche’s order, however, is a government document signed only by him. “So absent any new executed agreement that they enter into, all of this is meaningless as a matter of law,” said Matthew Platkin, a Democratic former New Jersey attorney general now in private practice, representing various people suing over the fund.
“Law.” It is the hee, and also the haw. To this gang of brigands, it’s the law that is meaningless.
Pucker up, Jeanine. The Great Builder has a boo-boo that needs kissing, and since you put it there — you know where — you’ve got the duty. | AP photo by Jacquelyn Martin
In an extraordinary motion filed Friday evening, the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, said she was seeking to dismiss a felony charge against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist who was accused of pulling up a piece of the [Lincoln Memorial Reflecting] Pool’s lining two feet square.
In doing so, Ms. Pirro — a longtime ally of President Trump’s — directly contradicted the president’s repeated claim that the Reflecting Pool’s peeling liner was caused by people slashing its coating with knives. Instead, she said, “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”
Earlier this month, Ms. Pirro herself had echoed the president’s claims, calling a news conference to announce Mr. Hearn’s indictment on July 2. She said that she had “tremendous evidence” that Mr. Hearn had committed a felony, and noted that he faced up to 10 years in prison.
Except, uh, not so much.
But on Friday, Ms. Pirro said that her prosecutors had been misled by the Interior Department, which had awarded a no-bid contract to a first-time government contractor to repair the iconic landmark.
Ms. Pirro said that the pool’s new blue coating had actually started to peel within two days of the project’s completion, and that the Interior Department kept that fact from prosecutors, telling them that “nearly all of the damage” was done by vandals.
Later, Ms. Pirro said, prosecutors visited the pool themselves and saw that could not be true. The lining was peeling in many places, some far from the edge where Mr. Hearn had stood. After that, she said, prosecutors had demanded more information from the Interior Department, which made clear that the pool’s problems had developed during the renovation itself.
Do tell. Polygraphs for everyone!
I guess Jeanine skipped the “Investigate Before Charging” seminar at Albany Law School. Bad case of brew flu, p’raps?
In any case, The Great Builder was not amused. Writing on “Truth” Social, he screeched:
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
Couldn’t agree more. Charge the senile old saboteur who peed in the pool!
And a word to the wise, fatso: Get yourself a real ambulance-chaser if you want this kind of shit to stick to someone other than you. This boozy bag of hot air couldn’t deliver a case of beer to a frat house if one of the brothers was driving. She’d probably drink it all before they got there.
The Rio Gonzo, as seen last Friday by Your Humble Narrator.
What a difference a day makes. Or even a few short hours.
On Friday I rode down to the bosque because why the hell not? I was sick of all my usual foothills routes and wanted to log some respectable mileage for a change, so off I went.
The New Albion Privateer sails the Paseo del Bosque.
Also sick of its usual route was the Rio Grande, which has buggered off to parts unknown. You can tell because rivers don’t usually sport tire tracks, not even if Jeebus is driving.
I knew the Rio had run dry since I last saw it back in April. But it’s one thing to know and another to see.
Anyway. The dearth of river notwithstanding, it was a lovely day, if warmish — 81° when I got a regrettably late start, 10 degrees hotter when I finished — and then Thor woke from his nap, got his clouds in a row, and began swinging Mjölnir like he meant business. Hammer time!
Boom! Our rain gauge showed 0.90 inch in less time than it takes to type “Our rain gauge showed 0.90 inch.” The National Weather Service told the Urinal that 1.74 inches fell at Indian School and Moon in a half hour, with near-record winds that peaked at 78 mph.
Photo liberated from what remains of the National Weather Service.
I mean, that storm flat parked itself overhead and let go, like a cow pissing on a flat rock.
“Remind me to turn off the sprinkler system,” I said to Herself. And it stayed off. Y’can’t touch this.
• • •
Now, of course, Loki is back on the job. Regular heat advisories from 1 to 8 p.m., high 90s to low triple digits.
No records set, as far as I know, but 9 in the a.m. is starting to feel a little late for the twice-weekly Geezer Rides. A second bottle goes in the seat-tube cage. Attacks are few and far between.
And mowing the lawn post-ride, like I did yesterday? That’s just stupid.
Having a lawn in the desert is stupid in and of itself, but having one and mowing it noonish moves the bar up a few notches.
Still, there’s the lawn, growing, and it won’t mow itself. I’ve been watching. That shit does not happen.
Maybe what I need is a bicycle with rotary blades attached. A velo-mower. And an early start. I could create a whole new thang and a magazine to chronicle its adventurers.
Nah. That’s even dumber than having a lawn in the desert.
• • •
Speaking of greenery stuffed into the ground, it seems that we may finally be getting the fabled fiber optic here in the cul-de-sac.
The Company Formerly Known As CenturyLink, a.k.a. CenturyTel, Qwest, et al., now calling itself Lumen Technologies, has provided our internet service for ages, even before we moved here in 2014. But for some reason Duck! City DSL is twice the price for half the speed we enjoyed in Bibleburg.
Even there, the tales of comically inept customer service were endless. Once we had a modem croak on us and The Company agreed to send us a new one. In that they proved better than their word. They sent us five of them, one after another, like Red Chinese soldiers marching to B-burg from Beijing over the bodies of their comrades.
Miss Mia loved her some Qwest modems on a chilly day in Bibleburg.
I may still have one in an old-tech box around here somewhere. I’m fairly certain I brought one with us when we moved because, hey, you never know, amirite? Miss Mia Sopaipilla loved toasting her po-po on one of those Qwest-branded Motorola jobbers Back in the Day®.
But I digress. We were talking about getting some fiber in our digital diet.
The water-company boyos were out in the cul-de-sac yesterday afternoon, spraying their blue cryptograms and hieroglyphics ever’ whichaway, so I asked one what was up. Thus I learned that the diggers are coming to bring us The Future, which we had in the B-burg a dozen or so years ago before time-traveling back to the stone knives and copper wire of Albuquerque.
“Take photos of your property before they get started,” the water dude advised. And I followed his advice. At least three of the companies charged with bringing fiber optic to Duck!Burg have been slapped with temporary stop-work orders after reports that they made a shambles of various properties.
I won’t lie. It’ll be great to have a faster, cheaper on-ramp to the Infobahn. But be careful what you wish for. The news of the day — a river of sand in Duck!Burg, shit monsoons in DeeCee — is already bad enough at a piddling 13.5 Mbps.
And it comes in a whole lot faster if it’s breaking just beyond the office window, where some rando rocking a backhoe is uprooting your sewer line.
I woke up way too early — 3 a.m. — then rolled over and went back to sleep until 6. Miss Mia was not amused, and said so, loudly, otherwise I might still be asleep even now.
Except Herself would’ve thundered in eventually to kick me up the hole, because she is a working woman and has a full day ahead involving the making of money, the care and feeding of the 401(k), retention of health insurance, and like that there. Some slacker is in charge of breakfast, which clearly was not making itself.
So up, up, I got, and set about my morning chores, which do not dollar up on the hoof nearly as nicely.
The Morning Star Grocery, circa 2025
As I was emptying the litter box, making coffee, toasting bread, cooking oatmeal, brewing tea, medicating Miss Mia, and so on, I was thinking in terms of where to ride today. Forecast was for a slight chance of rain after noon, so I was considering a medium-long outing to the Morning Star Grocery and back. Haven’t been out there all year.
And then it started raining.
Well. Shit. Lucky me. If I hadn’t slept in, I’d have been out in that rain, dodging swings of Thor’s hammer instead of kicks from Herself’s tiny sandals.
• • •
Speaking of hard rains a-fallin’, I don’t expect there’s much that could go wrong — cough, cough, “Armageddon,” cough, cough — with helping Saudi Arabia plunge its bloody paws into Pandora’s nuclear box.
To the outside observer, there’s no reason to trust either end of this deal. The American side is being run by grifters and incompetents. The Saudi side is being run by people who have settled accounts with bone saws and beheadings and who also are sharper about money than the Americans ever will be. The idea that the current Saudi regime will be able to resist the temptations of enriching uranium without using it to build weapons feels laughable. I wouldn’t trust any government on earth that far, let alone an authoritarian theocracy with murder in its heart.
Alas, Babylon, etc. The Gospel according to Frederic Brown would seem germane here, if young Harry Graham were the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and not a bit slow. I take little solace from any headline that includes the null phrase, “Trump says. …”
Crossing over I-40 near Winrock Town Center aboard the Soma Saga (canti edition).
We’ve been enjoying the occasional sprinkle in late July, all told about a half-inch of moisture in our dusty little corner of the sandbox.
Sure helps keep the mercury on the down-low. The air conditioning gets to take five, as does the irrigation system.
Why, a fella can even wait until 9 in the a.m. to get out for a bike ride without risking spontaneous combustion. Luxury!
I’ve been logging more miles lately — 131 last week, 123 the week before, 130 the week before that — not just because the weather has been delightful, but because it gets me away from the MacBook Pro, which seems to have visited Taco Bell without me and has been shitting all over my desk.
I’ll spare you the links. You’ve seen them all anyway.
Now, I could take a claw hammer to that laptop, make it shut up. But the MacBook Pro is not the news; it’s just a delivery system. It’s not the Beast; it’s not even letting it in. It’s just making it available in case I want a peek.
“And now, here’s Ash with the weather!”
Remember Parker beating the tar out of Ash in “Alien” and all the good that did him? Ash was a grinning, disembodied head in a puddle of goo — literally a talking head, still bringing the news and analysis, like some interstellar anchorman for “The Weyland-Yutani Newshour” — and before long everyone on the Nostromo was Purina Alien Chow except for Ripley, Jonesy the cat, and the alien.
And Ripley was still getting nothing but bad news. Especially when, just as she was getting ready to back the escape pod out of the garage, up pops the alien with a solid impression of Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” — “Heeeere’s Johnny!” — and she had to have been thinking, “Goddamnit, all I wanted to do was take a little ride, get away from all this ‘Wet cleanup on Aisle 4’ shit for a while. …”
And Ripley didn’t even know about the next three movies in the queue. Talk about your long days in the office.
The bike is my escape pod. I check it for aliens before I hop aboard.
And while I bring a bot along, I keep that sumbitch locked down tight. If he manages to pop off somehow, well … he’s just a feeble old iPhone 13 Mini, and I’m pretty sure I can whup his ass in a fair fight.
