Pestilence Day

One of these things is not like the other.

“Not dead yet, I suppose?” I remarked to Herself as I set about my morning chores.

“Nope,” she replied.

Humph. And they call this a national holiday?

I haven’t checked the news yet, being only a cup and a half of joe into my day. Has His Excremency ordered up a platoon of virgins to take turns massaging his tiny wand? Good luck finding any in the immediate vicinity. Nothing but worn-out old pros with scabby knees and callused lips in that shabby, shameless army. (And yes, I’m looking at you, Lindsey Graham.) The USS Nimitz has fewer years on the job and has seen less action, too.

Speaking of elderly vessels, has Hair Füror ordered a strike group to menace the emperor penguins at Antarctica? Probably in league with the terrorist sheep of the Falkland Islands. Show ’em what a real emperor looks like! Bonus: Antarctica has coal! Clean, beautiful coal!

Mustn’t forget the terrorists right here at home, of course. The proles actually expect to be able to vote during the midterms! Ho ho. That’s easily managed. While Congress is out of town this week, just change all the locks at the Capitol, issue the appropriate executive orders — “Thank you for your service, kapow, kapow, etc.” — and achtung! 535 fewer speedbumps on the autobahn to 1933. If anyone turns up at the polls, well … ICE already has all the funding it needs. Danke, suckers.

Nevertheless I remain hopeful. Herself and I have birthdays coming up and if our good buddy Jeebus loves us we may yet be treated to the sight of a regiment of flag-pinned toadies doing it hand to hand over who will be The One to “don” (har de har har) the departed cult leader’s Depends of Domination as he rides that golden escalator down to his cardboard condo at the Lake of Fire.

A word to the unwise: Just because those drawers are yellow doesn’t mean they’re golden. Pulling them on with rubber gloves and burning eyes will be a Feat of Strength that will make Arthur pulling the sword from the stone look like Stephen Miller pulling his pud in a rental van parked across from an elementary-school playground at recess, unaware of the bomb attached to his gas tank.

Because no matter how this shit shakes out, nobody wants that dude around to sing his songs. He knows where all the bodies are buried. More than a few of them are probably in his basement freezer.

Achtung, beeyotch

Obersturmführer Greg “Jethro” Bodino in an undated file photo.

Double-naught spy Greg “Jethro” Bodino is apparently the designated fall guy — “Sündenbock,” in the original German — for the blitzkrieg in Minneapolis whose blowback may have mussed the coiffures of Kristi “Reichstag Barbie” Noem, her chief of “staff” Corey “Simple Battery” Lewandowski, and their famously erratic patron, Orange Hitler.

Bodino, believed to have been a button man in the notorious Clampett Gang before his appointment as Obersturmführer of the ICEholen SS, reportedly has been banished to El Centro, Calif., where there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that he, his photogenic Nazi greatcoat, and the lifts in his jackboots will be in command of a meter-maid’s Cushman cart.

El Centro grannies beware — you may expect a ruthless press conference if you overstay your welcome while parked outside yarn shops, thrift stores, and doctors’ offices. Also, and too, a good pepper-spraying and perhaps a dozen or so bullet wounds. In the back, of course.

Breaking the ICE

Alex jeffrey Pretti. Photo provided by Michael Pretti to The Associated Press.

Enough.

Time to rip off the Band-Aid — or, in this case, the masks.

Eliminate the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Period. It was a bad idea from the get-go — “homeland” me bollocks, leave that fascist shit in 1933 Berlin where you found it — and it hasn’t aged at all well.

Anyone who’s serious about shrinking the federal government should start with DHS. Tear down the superstructure and let’s see whether any of its components can be salvaged.

One should go straight to the trash: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Shitcan the whole shitshow. Anyone who hasn’t already resigned in horror is part of the problem. Anyone who still wants to work there should be encouraged to emigrate (I hear Hell isn’t half full).

Anyone still on the job? Off you go. Lt. Aldo Raine, U.S. Army (ret.) will escort you off the premises after presenting you with a small memento of your service.

Piece in our time

“Ve vant only piece … a piece of Venezuela, a piece of Greenland. …”

Maybe I should count my blessings.

Herself has a good job, plus a small pension from PERA set to start in a couple months. I have my Social Security. We have health insurance. The house and cars are paid for, we live frugally, and our financial adviser says we’re in fine shape.

But I just can’t stop thinking about Nazis.

Goddamnit, I fucking hate fucking Nazis. Especially the homegrown variety. We should be making them jump off bridges. And not into Venezuela or Greenland, either.

Michael O’Hanlon recently wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs that noted, accurately, and with the usual disclaimers, that when it comes to national security policy the current federal management really isn’t that much different from a number of its predecessors.

Ohhhh-kay. Thanks for the history lesson, Mickey. What say we try learning from our mistakes? Remembering the past to avoid being condemned to repeat it? The name George Santayana ring any bells in your cerebral carillon?

It’d be comical if it weren’t so serious. Which of the various Marvel timelines are we experiencing now, in which an unelected strutting fuck-bubble like Obergruppenführer Stephen Miller is running the country, giving Kent State scholarships to educate anyone who won’t do as they’re told, while his alleged supervisor whiles away the hours nailing Hobby Lobby kitsch to the White House walls, cheating at golf, and watching on TV as “Happy Hour” Hegseth punishes another two-bit dictator for stealing the boss’s dance moves?

If they were mine, I’d leave them out on the street with a handlettered sign reading, “Free.” Or maybe just park them in the shitter at Mar-a-Lago next to all those classified documents that should’ve served as his ticket to Leavenworth until Thanos snapped his fingers. Or was it Eileen Cannon? Whatever.

“Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys here?” asks Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in an interview with Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic.

Not according to the gin pig at the top of the DoD org chart, who’d like to hang Kelly’s pelt on his office wall, no doubt in part because (a) Kegsbreath would like to see what a pair of actual testicles looks like, and (2) Kelly is making presidential noises just in case we ever have another one of those elections.

But first we have to make damn sure we have some midterms, this year. Take the House and the Senate; impeach, convict, and remove Comandante Piggy — take a seat and another fistful of Bayer’s finest, Porky, watch those cankles swell like poisoned puppies in the summer sun— and then, in 2028, reclaim the White House.

And none of this “let’s not look back” bullshit. Not this time. What’s the phrase? Oh, yeah: Never again.

Call me selfish, but I wanna get back to scribbling my little tee-hees, and I find this relentless “America über alles!” screeching a huge distraction.

Yo, Nazis. Here are your MAGA hats, there’s your bridge, what’s your hurry?

Julius Seizure’s bananas republic

Gilbert Shelton, being right as usual.