No one believes that his own town can produce true artists, but most people accept it as fact that in other places they fall off the trees like ripe fruit. —Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle
1.
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?” asked the orange-faced private citizen caught with more than 20 boxes in his McMansion in the gator state. But such distinctions are likely to be lost for many voters, especially as Republicans and rightwing media capitalise on the apparent misstep and accuse the justice department of double standards. Reports of a second batch of documents are likely to add fuel to the fire. It also seems that WTF, it doesn’t matter as there is no punishment for this particular offense, seemingly. But this will tie in nicely for the rabid Republicans who are "already moving to unleash an investigative machine" to prove that Dr. Anthony Fauci conspired with Chinese Communists to create COVID-19. This is no more a valid use of the Congress' investigative power than what's coming on the Biden documents. The only validation the two investigations can receive is if they are treated as serious news stories and not as the transparent ratfcking they obviously are. Moreover, almost every news operation that has joined in the snipe hunt also makes a point to remind us that the Biden situation has absolutely nothing in common with the Pool Shed Papers.
Which leads to why the f-bomb has that orange seditionist not been dragged off to jail yet? What happened to the special counsel Jack Smith who was appointed by Merrick Garland to take down the drumpf? Turns out, according to Glenn Kirschner in the video below, that Smith has been working remotely from Europe while recovering from a bicycle accident. Huh.
Glenn’s manner is pretty polite regarding all of this. I prefer the likes of Lee Papa when he writes The timidity with which Trump has been handled would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. I mean, he held a rally at the US Capitol to protest the legitimacy of the election. He invited his idiot hordes to join him in marching on the Capitol. I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll say it a thousand more: I will never understand why Trump wasn’t cuffed and dragged out of the White House on January 6, 2021. Or, if you're thinking, "They'd never arrest the president" (which is just sad), then howzabout on January 20, 2021, as soon as Biden took the oath. I will also never understand why the niceties of an impeachment took precedence over law enforcement when he so clearly broke the law. And you can say he has a First Amendment right to say the crazy shit he says, but, and I say this again for the fuckteenth time, the First Amendment is not a suicide pact.
As it turns out, Smith and associates have been making some non-headline-grabbing progress. They have been quietly digging into the ties between the Drumpf organization and such entities as the Make America Great Again PAC, the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, and his bogus Election Defense Fund, they’ve been stirring up enough shite to prompt the Orangeman to proclaim on Truth Social yesterday, The Special “Prosecutor” assigned to the “get Trump case,” Jack Smith(?), is a Trump Hating THUG whose wife is a serial and open Trump Hater, whose friends & other family members are even worse, and as a prosecutor in Europe, according to Ric Grenell, put a high government official in prison because he was a Trump positive person. Smith is known as “an unfair Savage,” & is best friends with the craziest Trump haters, including Lisa Monaco who runs “Injustice.” The Boxes Scam is a HOAX...
Bravo!
2.
And the other guy just as responsible for January 6th, the International Seditionist Steve Bannon as labeled by the Bulwark this week, has been running around stoking the fires of fascism in the Southern Hemisphere. "The Criminal Atheistic Marxist Lula stole the Election and the Brazilians know this. Now see Lula crackdown like all Communist dictators,” he bleated on Twitter. As far back as November Bannon was working with Bolsonaro to do the exact thing he did previous to January 6th in our country.
Thus, according to Reuters and other newspapers, On Sunday, angry mobs rampaged through Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential offices, smashing windows, furniture and artwork in the worst attack on state institutions since Brazil's return to democracy in the 1980s. One upside is that Bolsonaro was admitted to a hospital in Florida on Monday with stomach pains related to a stabbing he suffered during the 2018 election campaign. Thoughts and prayers.
3.
The Kansas GOP are out to turn back the clock once again on abortion, even though the majority of Kansans voted to keep abortion legal in the state. When the votes came in on the ballot measure in 2022, it was 543,855 No votes (to not restrict) to 378,466 Yes votes. That’s a pretty big margin, folks.
Senate President Ty Masterson, according to the Kansas Reflector, breathily mouthed “The most radical view of abortion right now is actually the Democratic Party view, that unregulated abortion up to and, in some cases you see around the country, after birth,” Masterson said. “That is the most radical view of abortion there is. And with Hodes in place, we have the potential of that. All our commonsense restrictions are under attack.”
The Reflector article also covers the Republicans still getting their panties twisted up about “sexualized woke agenda” across the state, though conservative lawmakers have differing opinions on what the woke agenda is, and how to prevent it. Masterson said, “Woke means the focus on identity and dividing us up into different groups and causing fractions. That’s the woke agenda. Woke has all kinds of meanings to different people. That’s what it means to me, is this focus on somebody’s individual – your innate characteristics, about somehow you’re different than everyone else.” Well, we certainly don’t want any kid to be ‘different’ from the others. Might be an artist.
You can read their eight-point legislative agenda here.
4.
In other news tidbits, government committee formed to investigate government. Hmmmm. You can imagine the glee emanating from Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) tiny brain as he gets to chair this farce. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said, “Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy claim to be investigating the weaponization of the federal government when, in fact, this new select subcommittee is the weapon itself. It is specifically designed to inject extremist politics into our justice system and shield the MAGA movement from the legal consequences of their actions. In order to become Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy sold out our democracy by handing power-hungry Jim Jordan subpoena power and a green light to settle political scores under the phony pretext of rooting out conservative bias.” Along with all that, the Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) is jumping right in going after the Bidens…specifically, he wants officials to explain what was behind the company’s decision in 2020 to block users from sharing coverage of Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Zzzzzzzzzzzz. And Allen Howard Weisselberg, the former Trump Organization CFO, was sentenced on Tuesday to five months at New York's notorious Rikers Island jail. He will likely only serve 100 days in jail with time off for good behavior but the good news is that it’s a a facility known for violence, drugs and corruption. Harsh? Maybe. Still waiting for the BIGLY takedown…
5.
And what is going on in the Pima County (Arizona) Jail? 26-year-old Yunan Mohammed Altib Tutu died in custody this week after "eating feces for a couple of months." Jail staff had seemingly not "had much contact with him because of his mental state and hygiene," one source with information about the incident conveyed to the Tucson Sentinel. Billy Peard, the lawyer representing family members who have died in the jail (nine deaths in 2022 and ten inmate deaths in 2021), said that instead of a new jail, the county needs more corrections officers, better training and acculturation, or to “create a better culture among the staff, among the sergeants, among the supervisors in that facility.” According to the Arizona Luminaria’s John Washington, Many of the people who live, or die, in the Pima County jail are not guilty. Most of the people detained in jails are pre-trial detainees, meaning that they have not been convicted of any crimes, and remain innocent. However, some people convicted to sentences of less than a year do their time in jail instead of prison. A former employee, anonymously, said that they quit because of the “ugly, ugly atmosphere” inside. The former employee did not want to be named due to fears of retaliation and the “toxic” work culture that made them fear their bosses. They’re (the guards) not trained to help. They just see them as criminals.”
6.
On the brighter side of Tucson, the New York Times compiled a list this week of 52 Places to Go in 2023. We made the list. Pictured below is Barrio Viejo, the neighborhood just south of downtown where I lived when I first moved to Tucson in 1989 and resided until we moved to midtown in 2004. Just don’t go to jail while you’re here…
And now…