Reflections from the Heart of the Empire: The Week of Living Hysterically
But one happy dog cares nothing for any of this
RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard took the stage for their Senate confirmation hearings, and I was reminded of Jim Hightower saying whoever created C-SPAN was a genius, for now anyone could simply turn on their TV, watch for a few minutes, and think,
I’ve seen dust bunnies smarter than my Senator.
Bernie Sanders tried to channel Joe McCarthy, but instead of demanding a yes or no answer to “Are you a member of the Communist Party?,” demanded the same to “Do you support onesies stenciled with phrases my Big Pharma donors don’t like?”
RFK Jr.’s response was right out of Scooby Doo.
Not to be outdone, Elizabeth Warren demanded that Kennedy promise not to sue pharmaceutical companies even though the ability to sue them is in the first line of his job description. That got her crapped on by another Senator, el Crapo del Idaho, and what a dandy defecation it was.
Tulsi Gabbard exposed the Dust Bunnies to the antigen of integrity by refusing to call Edward Snowden a traitor, prompting an allergic reaction on their part and that of the corporate media. (Below: Portrait of Integrity)
Meanwhile, at my county job in Democrat-controlled Cleveland, there was panic in my world. Rumors of doom and just plain silliness swirled in the email system.
Trump froze all Medicaid and Food Stamp payments.
Fact: the government portals did go down, just like they have gone down on at least a weekly basis ever since the pandemic. What do you expect from the cheapest Microsoft and Amazon systems money can buy?
Trump said all noncustodial parents with a child support order can claim the children on their tax deductions.
Fact: This story was posted on Facebook by some rando and went viral, causing mass wishful thinking and panic, depending on who you are. Also fact: The IRS grants the tax deduction to whoever files first; if it’s fraudulent the other party has to tell the IRS. Child Support has nothing to do with it.
Trump repealed the Civil Rights Acts.
Come on, presidents can’t repeal statutes at the stroke of a pen, you idiots.
ICE made a couple of local raids, one of which was at the Cilantro Taqueria in Cleveland Heights. Rumors said the owners were arrested and the restaurant permanently closed.
It was open for business the next day.
And to top it all off, top officials told us to tell clients we were waiting for further information, which just tells them the rumors might be true, leading to even more hysteria and barnyard comparisons.
Hamas completely embarrassed Israel in the hostage exchanges.
Panic gripped the “foreign aid” moneylaundering community as rumors swirled that Trump is going to dissolve USAID, a CIA cut-out for funding color revolutions and other fun imperial shenanigans. Naturally, Ukraine screamed the loudest.
My free advice to Trump:
The Department of Education issued a list of DEI programs it is terminating. Just reading their names is an exercise in postmodernist psychobabble, the forced reading of which may be reasonably construed as a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Federal employees were ordered not to include pronouns in their email signatures, The ACLU squawked that Trump’s plan was to “erase transgender people’s existence under the law.”
Finally, an Arizona man and his dog, who were separated in Oklahoma 8 years ago, were reunited when an Oklahoman found a chip in the dog. The dog was ecstatic.
Thank you for reading, good day or night, good luck, and don’t panic.
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Wonderful, yet effing depressing compendium! Except for the dog, which is happy days!
So, if and when Congress does not confirm RFK Jr., Tulsi, and Kash Patel, do you think Congress will be forced to not take any recesses, so Trump cannot make recess appointments? Stay in session for four years, out of spite and revenge? Bwahahaha!
I have seen memes of Bernie in a onesie, and cannot ever unsee them. What a pathetic way to end a career. Warren did not surprise me, she was exactly as she really is. Bernie sure was desperate to not let RFK Jr say how much Bernie got from Pharma.
The horrible crash of the medevac plane in Philadelphia - evidently the Learjet was taking a little girl and her mother to Tajuana, and there were four crew members. Left from a Shriner's Hospital. The company had a similar crash in 2023. I wonder if flying will start to seem iffy.
As a very shallow aside -for some reason, as a person born in Philadelphia, and who lived there until I was twenty years old - annoys me when folks who were NOT born in Philadelphia refer to it as "Philly". Someone would have to pronounce "Schuylkill" correctly on the first try to earn that. Humph. Everybody get off my lawn.
I will file that with not needing to see movies about singers that I grew up with. I am not interested in Timothy Chalamet's version of Bob Dylan, I still have Bob Dylan. Maybe it is the singing that bugs me. And I still love Ray Charles too much to consider watching Jamie Fox act and sing like him.
Some murderous and way too open idiot in Europe is calling for a plan to murder Putin, saying that every EU citizen should be told how murdering Putin would benefit them individually. Masks and
gloves off time, eh? I am a bit worried that Trump is going to wildly overreact to not having Putin and BRICS and China bend the knee. If Trump is so interested in trade, maybe he could drop all the sanctions and see what happens.
Also, in case anyone does not know, Rubio hates Cuba. He is a warmonger. Also, he wrote a book and said his parents "escaped" Cuba. Nope. They merely came here to start a business. No escaping involved. The Cuban community that did escape knows that. So now his parents left Cuba to pursue the American Dream. IMO, Rubio is Trump's worst pick. My hope is that he messes up sooner rather than later, gets dismissed, and has to work for a living because his Senator slot is
gone.
Lovely list, just the right amount of satire, thanks!
My grandson told me that much of the Geneva Convention was based on how nasty Canada was in WWII. Have to look that up.
Yes, as they said in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic.
The modern left is built on hysteria from climate change to Covid to gender ideology to whatever gets the their masses riled up.
I have actually enjoyed seeing all the Canadian politicians from left to right freak out about Trump and the tariffs. The only exception has been Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Love to see the bums that continually give themselves pay raises sweat a bit. Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) have had pay increases from 2020 to 2024. My provincial politicians just gave themselves a big pay raise. Yet, regular Canadians: stupid hosers!