Buzz(ard) off

Carrion, my wayward son. There’ll be peace when you are done.

A fat orange vulture lifts off the carcass of the Republic and flaps slowly off to the south.

He hadn’t finished his meal, but there will be others. Right now, the idea is to perch in Florida for a spell, let the stomach settle. But the neighbors there are restless. Something about a contract.

Yeah, and good luck with that. This zopilote treats paper the same way a broke-ass budgie would. You lay it down, he’ll shit on it. Then what you got is a bloated, grunting buzzard and a piece of paper, and both are full of shit.

There are ways to deal with invasive varmints, but paper — unless it’s some old-school wadding in a 12-gauge shotgun shell — generally isn’t much help.

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Now, all evidence to the contrary, I am not entirely insane. I know in my heart of hearts that this bird is not really going anywhere today, regardless of where he roosts. He will be very much with us for many a dark moon, hissing and flapping and shitting on everything, because these are the only things he’s good at, other than lying and grifting and pissing away other peoples’ money.

He’ll still be doing that, too. The pension for the job he couldn’t be bothered to do between tweets is a cool $219,000 per annum at the moment, and he also gets office space, staff, access to health insurance, plus Secret Service backup to ensure that his beak will never write a check that his fat ass can’t cash. And the dummies will send him whatever pennies they’re not spending on guns, ammo, and camo’.

I remain hopeful that a good deal of this money and manpower will be pissed away on a fruitless battle to keep him out of prison before he dies of syphilitic insanity, simple apoplexy, or a bad Big Mac (is there such a thing as a good Big Mac?).

But there will be hissing and flapping and shitting aplenty before — if — this bird is finally and properly caged.

In the meantime, as Joe and Kamala roll up their sleeves, arm themselves with mops, shovels, and buckets, and get to work, we will be treated to the peacocking of various buzzards-in-waiting, each claiming to be the rightful heir to the Throne of Bones.

The Chosen One will proclaim himself a mighty eagle. But don’t you believe it. He’ll be just another goddamn vulture, hunting a meal. There are still a few toothsome tidbits on the carcass.

• And now, some video of the swearing-at ceremony.

Poll dancing

My avocado toast is actually guacamole toast, but whatevs.

Some things should be a no-brainer.

This just in: Americans oppose militant dipshittery, though electing seditionists, traitors, and eejits is apparently A-OK.

Avocado toast, for example. You don’t need a Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,002 U.S. adults to know in your heart of hearts that a big-ass slice of homemade whole-wheat bread slathered with mashed avocado, onion, tomato, lime juice, and salt makes a delicious start to the morning.

And you’d think you don’t need a poll with an error margin of +/-3.5 percentage points to know that a riot is an ugly thing, especially when it involves the storming and sacking of the U.S. Capitol by the Village Idiot People.

But we got one anyway.

What the hell. Even Inspector Kemp was of two minds on the subject. You wanna know, you gotta ask, I guess.

Fly-Pence 2024?

Hat tip to the inimitable B. Kliban.

“Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects … don’t have politics. They’re very … brutal. No compassion, no compromise.” — Seth Brundle, “The Fly”

‘Wicked, tricksy, false!’

“I’m just peachy, really. Tip-top, actually. Never better. Back at the ol’ desk any day now.”

Well, we seem to have blown right past the question of whether Bugsy Sméagol has The Plague and are now deep into the slimy weeds of lies surrounding just how bad his case might be, O yes, my precious.

This, oddly, may be the one thing about this “presidency” that is not unique, as Chazbo Pierce points out in his weekly letter from The Shebeen (subscription required).

Diseases have croaked as many presidents as have bullets (four apiece). And plenty of administrations have concealed the fact that the president was teetering on the edge of eternity, or at least a couple tacos short of a combo plate.

Now instead of trotting out a platoon of generals or economists to give us the old hocus, and also the pocus, Bugsy’s handlers send us a squad of Walter Reed whitecoats to add their spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, i.e., what The New York Times calls “conflicting accounts” of his condition.

Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum draws our attention to the sociopath behind the curtain, giving us the timeline as he sees it and calling the conduct of Bugsy and his goons “reckless beyond belief.”

I find it entirely believable, but hey, let’s agree to disagree.

This is a cult of personality we’ve been dealing with since Bugsy surfed the golden escalator into the GOP presidential pissing match, in which he proved to be the biggest dick.

You don’t get stand-up guys in a cult. What you get is scabby-kneed old hoors with calluses on the insides of their mouths. Bloated ticks sporting American-flag lapel pins. The occasional professional rat who knows the fastest way off a sinking ship and through a publisher’s office into the talk-show green rooms.

Nobody had the stones to get a hammerlock on Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, either, mostly because those gentlemen would have had them ground into puppy treats for the guard dogs.

This guy may kill a few of his punks too. Not because they stood up to him, but because they bowed down to him, with their faces hanging out in his toxic wind.

Until and unless The Plague gets them, the only thing these spineless hooters are scared of is missing out on their sip from the gravy boat as it goes around The Big Table.