Former Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters is one of the holiest men in all the land. He worked tirelessly for many years to use the power of the state to convert children to Christianity, without care or regard to how “unconstitutional” that was. A Bible in every classroom! Every wall straight up papered with the Ten Commandments! State funding for Catholic charter schools! Forcing kids to watch videos of him praying to Donald Trump! Sure, many of his initiatives failed, but he did ultimately succeed in one thing: spending over $100,000 in taxpayer funds to pay PR firms to promote his “personal brand” and secure over 400 media appearances for him.

To be fair, he was also really good at sending and showing porn to his colleagues.

And now he is about to be very good at being alone.

Last Friday, Ryan Walters filed a petition to divorce Katie Walters, his wife of 15 years and mother to his four children. In the filing, Walters’s attorney cited "a state of complete and irreconcilable incompatibility" as the reason for the divorce, claiming that this "destroyed the aims of the marriage of the parties and rendered its continuation impossible."

In other words, a no-fault divorce.

If you haven’t been paying too much attention to the worst people in the world, you may not be aware of the Right’s hysteria over “no-fault divorce” these last few years, which they claim has just ruined everything by allowing women to leave their shitty husbands without needing to prove abuse or adultery.

Sure, it’s also significantly decreased suicide rates in married women, decreased domestic violence across the board and led to far fewer men being fed arsenic-laced ham sandwiches by wives with no other recourse for getting out of a bad marriage. But it’s really inconvenienced men who would like to force the women they feel they own to stay married to them, as God intended.

While all states now allow for no fault divorces, Oklahoma allows for both no fault and fault divorce, which means he had the option to have a divorce of which his Christian Nationalist pals might have approved, but he decided against. One of the benefits, we might note, of no-fault divorce, is that people don’t end up having their dirty laundry made public in court records. Does Walters have something to hide? Did he send porn to too many people? Were there not enough Ten Commandment posters in their home, causing him to lapse and break the sixth?

Of course, it doesn’t actually seem as though Christian Nationalists are that mad at no-fault divorce when it’s the man who files, so perhaps that is the difference here? They haven’t been too clear about how they want this New Gilead to work beyond just, you know, women giving up all of their rights so that they can be happy.

After all, they seem to be pretty okay with all of Trump’s divorces in pursuit of younger women (though perhaps, in their world, it is a more valid reason than escaping domestic violence).

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While it’s totally possible that his wife is just as awful as he is, it’s hard not to be happy for any woman who no longer has to wake up every morning and gaze upon that insipid face. The children, too, are pretty lucky, as this gives them at least a fighting chance if they happen to not turn out to be heterosexual, cisgender Christianists.

Hopefully, between this and the defamation suit he is currently facing from a teacher he accused of “threatening” Donald Trump because his kids posed with a Trump mask and a sword in an old Facebook photo found by the crack team at Libs of Tiktok, he will be kept busy and thus unable to continue his mission to force-convert the children of Oklahoma.

Or, you know, send out any unsolicited porn.

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Last week the Tennessee Legislature, given the green light by the US Supreme Court, wiped out the state’s sole remaining majority-Black congressional district, cracking the city of Memphis into three districts that are now majority white and Republican. Yesterday, Tennessee’s Asshole Speaker of the House, noted asshole Cameron Sexton, helped hasten along Republicans’ consolidation of one-party rule in Tennessee by stripping House Democrats of all their committee assignments, to teach them a lesson for protesting Jim Crow 2.0.

It seems that the Democrats’ protests against the Republican power grab were very indecorous, particularly the part where state Rep. Justin Jones burned a (paper) Confederate flag in the rotunda of the Capitol.

In a letter to House Democratic Leader Karen Camper, Sexton explained that her caucus simply had been quite rude indeed, and for no reason at all beyond the state’s largest city, and its Black majority residents, losing any voice at all in Congress.

As everyone knows, when democracy is being overthrown by white men, one must only show disapproval by not joining in the applause. One may also frown, but not in a manner that would detract from the solemnity of the Klan takeover of the state.

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Among the offenses to the dignity and order of the power grab, Sexton grumbled, Democrats had sinned by “interlocking arms in the well of the House,” “blocking aisles on the House floor” and “the use of prohibited props and noisemakers on the House floor.”

Also, to make clear just how conspiracy-brain-rotted Republicans are, even in official communications, Sexton also accused Dems of “instigating and encouraging disruptions of the legislative process in coordination with paid protestors and attendees in the gallery. [emphasis added — Dok].” After all, no one in their right mind could possibly object to eliminating Black representation, so George Soros must have paid people to come to the Capitol to protest. Sexton didn’t offer any pay slips to back up that claim.

Sexton didn’t specify when, if ever, Democratic members’ committee seats would be restored. Perhaps that’ll have to wait until after the Lege redraws all the state legislative district maps to eliminate all 24 seats still held by Democrats in the 99-member House. Once they no longer hold office, they can have their committee places back. It worked for Major Major.

Perhaps the Klan Lege will also recalculate the state’s more than 1.1 million Black residents, counting them as 660,000 persons, and then apportioning them into white Republican legislative districts. We’re sure it’d be possible to persuade Sam Alito and colleagues with an originalist argument for that compromise.

Tennessee Democrats were not at all surprised, because Sexton’s a sleazy fucker whose only tool is a hammer and everyone looks like a nail to him. Previously as House speaker, Sexton led the 2023 Republican vote to expel Democratic Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for standing — out of turn!— on the House floor to demand protections for their constituents from gun violence. After that, voters sent them directly back to the House in special elections.

Jones posted to Instagram the letter Sexton sent to strip him of his committee assignments, and wrote that no, he will not be moved:

As Evan noted in Tabs this morning, other Tennessee Dems were just as wonderfully defiant and unwilling to give up the fight for democracy.

State Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) said Sexton’s action was entirely predictable, because Sexton himself is entirely predictable: “We were protesting maps that destroyed representation in Memphis,” Johnson said. “The speaker's response was to deny representation. His only response is to deny representation.”

Johnson noted that Sexton’s action doesn’t simply affect the members he’s punishing, but also their constituents:

“Each person he kicked off committees represents 70,000 people,” Johnson said. “The committees are education, they are health, they are criminal justice, civil justice. Everything that affects your lives is gone over in these committees.”

OK, but those people, mostly in the state’s very sinful and illegal big cities, went and elected Democrats, knowing full well that Republicans run the state. It’s not like Sexton is required to give them the time of day. House Democrats represent some two million people in Tennessee, and they all need to learn their lesson about who the (white) boss is, like the (Republican) Constitution says.

[CNN / Knoxville News Sentinel / Democracy Docket / WKRN]

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We're Saying 'Fuck These Fuckers' A Lot

Todd Blanche is the bestest American lawyer. Just ask his boss!

But even the bastard child of Matlock and Clarence Darrow isn’t a shoo-in for the attorney general job left vacant after Pam Bondi got banished to wander in the Everglades. Our Todd’s gotta work for it! Indicting Jim Comey for seashell murder plots and accusing the SPLC of funding the KKK is just table stakes.

Counselor Blanco is committed to giving Dear Leader whatever his little heart desires. And today, his heart desires a thorough trampling of the First Amendment. Per the Wall Street Journal:

Blanche vowed to secure subpoenas specifically targeting the records of reporters who have worked on sensitive national security stories, one official said. In one meeting, Trump passed a stack of news articles he and other senior officials thought threatened national security to Blanche with a sticky note on it that said “treason,” another administration official said. Senior Justice Department officials have met with counterparts from the Pentagon to discuss the investigations, according to officials familiar with the meetings.

The Journal says it received a grand jury subpoena last week over a February 23 article revealing that General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Trump before he started this pointless war that the US military might not have the capacity or the appetite for a protracted conflict. He also suggested Iran might have a few cards — or tollbooths! — to play of its own.

Treasonnnnnnnnn!!!!1!

And so Blanche dusted off the knees of his suit and rushed to find out who was blabbity-blabbing to reporters Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman, and Shelby Holliday.

(Spoiler Alert: It is everybody. This admin leaks like a sieve, and those three have been developing Defense Department sources forever.)

The Journal, which is already fending off an eleventy-trillion-dollar lawsuit over Trump’s booby birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, vows to fight the subpoena in court.

Fingers crossed the motion to quash goes to Chief Judge James Boasberg, who just shredded DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro for trying to subpoena Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. It’ll be worth it for the tweets alone.

Who will Todd Blanche lock up next? Let’s spin the demented wheel and see!

Oh, lookie loo! It’s a screenshot from some sci-fi writer posted on Truth Social time to arrest California Senator Adam Schiff for …

Ughhh, OK. Only for you, darlings, would we watch the attached video of Jonathan Turley, turley-et-ing his sagging ass off on Fox News about locking Adam Schiff up for leaking classified information. Pay no attention to the Speech or Debate Clause, kids — you know Turley won’t.

Add Schiff to the conspiracy pile. Because Todd Blanche isn’t just locking people up in ones-and-twos. He’s going to tie ‘em all up in one great conspiracy. A grand conspiracy! One conspiracy to rule them all!

Written in seashells!

Sure RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA is far outside the statute of limitations. But if you think about it, aren’t all things part of one big plot to get Trump?

As the underpaid and overworked scribe of the Washington Post Perry Stein put it:

The wide-ranging investigation is based on an unusual and untested legal theory: that previous administrations conspired for years to violate President Donald Trump’s rights through a series of investigations, beginning with the Obama administration’s examination of ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Seen in just the right light (probably one of those that they use on CSI to find the spooge), isn’t the raid on Mar-a-Lago and the Mueller investigation and the dastardly framing of poor, sainted Donald Trump by Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton and Schiff’s leaks all part of the same plot, and thus … inside the statute of limitations?

Also probably racketeering?

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Well, no. And Obama can’t be charged for anything he did in office thanks to six robed hacks who gave Trump that special handy back in 2024. But by the time a real judge sorts it out, Blanche will already be attorney general. That’s why they parked this fever dream in Fort Pierce, Florida, home of Judge Aileen “Pick Me, Daddy” Cannon and no other federal judges.

And who better to operationalize this quintuple bank shot than OG hairball Joe diGenova! Pam Bondi kept Joe, who hasn’t been a federal prosecutor since 1988 and acted as the beating prostate of the 2019 Ukraine smear, far away from this case.

And now she’s out of a job, which just goes to show ya!

COUGHA COUGHA COUGHA COUGHA HACK PTOOEY:

Before Bondi got the boot, she managed to turn herself into a South Park meme about brown nosing.

By the time Blanche bets the farm, God knows what kind of characters they’ll have created for him.

[Washington Post gift link/ Wall Street Journal gift link]

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While the American president and his fascist regime are taking turns kicking every minority they can find right in the stomach, the leader of Spain posted this yesterday on Facebook:

That says, roughly, “For the first time Spain tops the Rainbow Map of LGBTI rights and freedoms in Europe. This is a recognition of our country’s social and legislative progress, and of all the people who have fought tirelessly to live with equality and without fear. In the face of those who strive to drag us back into the past, we move forward with strength, dignity and joy. Proud of our country.”

Speaking of hot Spanish stuff that makes gays and everyone else happy, y’all see that Vanity Fair cover shoot of tennis superstar Carlos Alcaraz? Holy shit.

Part of us just wants to say that’s the end of tabs for today, but we guess we’ll look for a couple more stories, not that there’s anything out there better.

How is Bari Weiss beclowning the entire profession of journalism today?

Speaking of “beclowning” and “in over their head”:

These absolute losers would get off so hard if there was a terrorist attack, because they are desperate to believe Americans would rally around Trump’s flag, just like they did for Bush after 9/11.

Not a chance, losers. Trump owns everything that happens on his watch. Everything.

Next up, KA$H PATEL IS NOT AS THINK AS A DRUNK YOU ARE, OSSIFER SENATOR, YOU ARE A DRUNK AS A KA$H YOU ARE, SENATOR OSSIFER! You gotta watch this absolute meltdown. Ka$h just doesn’t have what it takes. If you were his mom, that’s what you would probably say to him a lot.

And a reminder of the debunked conspiracy theory, spread by limpdicked fascists the Trump regime loves, that Ka$h is slurring at the good senator here:

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Sounds like, speaking of soft men a preschooler could beat up, Donald Trump’s and Pete Hegseth’s stupid war, all these weeks later, still hasn’t destroyed Iran’s ability to shoot missiles. [New York Times]

For the crime of opposing the Tennessee legislature’s little white supremacist bitch boy gerrymandering parade, little white bitch boy himself House Speaker Cameron Sexton has taken pretty much all the Tennessee state House Democrats off their House committees. Here are some reactions from Democrats you might have heard of to that development:

Tennessee’s got some powerfully cool people in elected office, y’all. It’s remarkable that little bitches like Cameron Sexton think they’re going to get away with this and that the decent people of Tennessee are going to just lie there and take it.

Next up, Ozymandias! With arches and ballrooms and swimming pools with blue water that the dementia-brain-in-chief understands!

Been needing to get your finances under control, or just always like a new cheerleader/strategist to keep you in check? Been loving this account we found called Women’s Personal Finance or WomensPF on Instagram. They’re super progressive, super women-owned-and-controlled, and just really practical and smart and cool. Every day they have these posts with little assignments, here’s one:

And finally, can’t find the exact fish you need for a recipe and it’s giving you the doldrums? That was us last night! But then we found this handy fish substitution chart! Take that, SOLE! We’re having HAKE for dinner tonight! [Alaskan Salmon Company]

OK, that’s enough, byeeeee.

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High fossil fuel prices caused by Donald Trump’s stupid war on Iran pushed inflation in April to the highest level in almost three years, according to the monthly Consumer Price Index report released by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning. The most important questions for the Trump administration are now who to fire at the Labor Department over the bad news, and how exactly to pin the inflation increase on Joe Biden and/or undocumented immigrants.

Inflation on a year-to-year basis rose to 3.8 percent, the highest it’s been since May 2023, when the rate was on its way down from a 2022 peak caused by post-pandemic supply chain disruptions. If inflation keeps rising this month, that’ll make next month’s inflation report headlines a lot easier to write since it’ll be a nice round three years. This small boon for headline writers is just one of the blessings of the Trump presidency for which the Great Leader may not even get proper credit.

Gasoline prices rose 5.4 percent in April, up by about 30 percent from last year. The BLS statement notes that energy prices overall rose by 3.8 percent, “accounting for over forty percent of the monthly all items increase.” The gasoline inflation rate would have been 11.1 percent in plain old at-the-pump price increases, but for statistical purposes was adjusted to the lower 5.4 percent to reflect the normal cost shift for “summer blend” gasoline. Electricity rates were up 2.1 percent, and fuel oil, which yikes, people still use, was up 5.8 percent.

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While oil prices have been the biggest direct driver of inflation in the months since Trump went to war against Iran without (probably) knowing there is any such place as the Strait of Hormuz, high fuel prices have only just started to drive up costs of nearly everything else, because the world’s economy remains over-dependent on fossil fuels. In a message to clients Monday, Citigroup predicted that “Energy costs likely would not start to feed through to core goods prices for at least a few more months.”

But the rise in fuel costs has already hit airfares, which are up 20 percent over last year, as well as apparel, especially your super-wasteful “fast fashion” that’s shipped directly from China and elsewhere. Jet fuel is up 60 percent since the start of the Stupid War, resulting not only in higher airfares but also new baggage fees. The jet fuel crisis that’s hitting Europe and Asia is only incrementally reflected in the US inflation rate, in the form of surcharges by some international carriers serving the USA.

Even the US Postal service introduced a “limited time price change” due to fuel costs in April; we’re sure that will be reduced once everything is back to normal, whenever that may be.

Grocery prices rose by the highest amount in four years, for a total rise of 0.7 percent. That was driven in large part by the increasing cost of beef, up 2.7 percent. As you’ll recall, higher beef prices are entirely the fault of “Biden vegans” who hate America and think climate change is real, although even administration mouthpieces acknowledge that persistent drought has played a large role. But darn it, those vegans wouldn’t allow overgrazing because they think it’s “bad” somehow.

In related beef news, we got yet another reminder Monday that nobody in the Great Dipshit’s administration knows what the fuck they’re doing from day to day. Trump was initially scheduled to sign an executive order to reduce his own tariffs on imported beef, but then the administration delayed that plan (Wall Street Journal gift link) because US beef producers and Republicans in Congress had a cow, for which they wanted as much money as possible. That fuckery was not reflected in the April inflation numbers, but as with the economic ripple effects of the Stupid War, just give it time.

Housing costs also blipped up in April by 0.6 percent; the Washington Post notes (gift link) that shelter prices “had been artificially suppressed by a data quirk tied to last fall’s government shutdown.” In defiance of Donald Trump logic, it turns out that not actually measuring the costs didn’t keep them from rising, a problem that could be solved by never reporting them again.

The higher cost of nearly everything also is gobbling up workers’ buying power, since for the first time since 2023, inflation is going up more rapidly than wages. Haha, remember how just last week Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was lying about that, claiming that wage growth only outpaced inflation since Trump came to office? Per NBC News,

The pace of wage gains has been slowing over the past two years. In November, wage growth continued to rise at a pace of almost 4%. April’s jobs report, which was released on Friday, showed that wage growth had slowed to 3.6%.

We’ll close with one more reminder that All Trump Fuckery Is Connected, even when it’s not related to the Stupid War: The New York Times reports that food prices have been impacted ever since Trump raised tariffs on imported steel. His goal was to boost US steel production, but of course there aren’t many US steel companies making “tin plate,” the thin steel that’s coated with tin to make food cans. Eighty percent of it has to be imported. For canned fruits or vegetables, the can itself accounts for about a third of the wholesale cost, so pricier imported tin plate equals more expensive food.

But hey, huge good news for Trump! US Steel, the biggest tin plate manufacturer, announced it will restart a factory in Gary, Indiana, sometime in early 2027, creating about 225 permanent jobs. The plant was idled in 2022 because US Steel couldn’t compete with lower-priced imported tin plate. But now steel costs more (and is driving up grocery prices) so hooray, one factory is reopening and the economy is saved! Just one little teensy problem: even with the projected increase in domestic production, the Times points out, “American can makers are likely to import over two-thirds of their tin plate in the coming years, steel executives and analysts said.”

And because the Trump administration demanded that the US government get a “golden share” in US Steel before it could be sold to Japan’s Nippon Steel last year, the administration has a say in its US operations, so it’s not even clear whether the factory in Gary is being restarted because it makes good business sense, as the administration claims, or because it’ll give Trump a “victory” on tariffs.

Ultimately, that won’t matter anyway, because once Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden are jailed and all the traitors at BLS are fired, we will officially have the greatest economy with the most jobs and lowest inflation in human history, as reflected in numbers it will be illegal to question.

Also, before leaving for China today, where he’s almost certain to say something insane, Trump acknowledged that he really doesn’t care, do U? Asked whether the rough times for Americans play any role in his thinking — to put it charitably — about his Stupid War, Trump said nah, the only thing that matters is stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, which Barack Hussein Obama already did before Trump tore up that deal.

Acyn shoulda definitely added “…” to show that “Not even a little bit” was followed by Trump’s super tough talk about not letting Iran get nukes. For fairness.

But considering all the times Republicans have lied that Hillary Clinton promised to put coal miners out of job (and to get them training and new work) or that Nancy Pelosi believed Obamacare was a secret (not even remotely what she said), we won’t complain too much if Trump is permanently saddled with having said, “I don't think about Americans’ financial situation. I don't think about anybody.” Sure, we’ll add the footnote about nukes, too.

OPEN THREAD.

[Bureau of Labor Statistics / NBC News / WaPo (gift link) / WSJ (gift link) / NYT]

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Let's Just Can Trump Instead

America’s uterus-havers have once again been granted a reprieve! For the next three days, at least, it will continue to be legal for doctors to prescribe mifepristone over the internet and have it mailed to their patients, as per an order from Justice Samuel Alito. The extension will allow the court time to consider an emergency request from two manufacturers of mifepristone to halt a ruling from the Fifth Circuit in the case of Louisiana v. FDA, which would once again require in-person prescribing and distribution of the medication.

The in-person requirement was lifted during the COVID pandemic, largely because there is no real medical reason for it beyond “some people don’t like abortions and would prefer others not be allowed to have them.” Louisiana says the rule undermines its state law that bans abortions in all cases. However, it is not the FDA’s job to enforce individual state laws, it is to create rules based on what is safe for consumers. And whether Louisiana likes it or not, it is perfectly safe to prescribe mifepristone without an in-person visit and to distribute it through the mail.

One of the key plaintiffs in the case is Rosalie Markezich, who says her boyfriend bought the pills online from a doctor in California, and then coerced her into taking them, claiming he would not have been able to to do that if doctors were required to only prescribe and distribute the pill in person (because of how all abortion is illegal in Louisiana). It’s practically a dream scenario for anti-abortion rights advocates, who like to pretend that a significant portion of those who have abortions were pressured into them, either by a partner or a family member, or by nefarious feminists who just want to kill all of the fetuses for some reason.

But here’s the thing: it’s already illegal, in every state, to force someone to take an abortion pill against their will. Louisiana, in fact, has specifically made it a felony punishable by five to 20 years in prison to coerce someone by "force, control, or intimidation" into having an abortion.

The fact that a substance can be used for harm or in an illegal way by an abusive person or in an illegal manner isn’t a good enough reason to restrict its usage for everyone else who is not using it that way. Somebody could order antifreeze on the internet and then murder someone with it. It doesn’t mean we ban antifreeze for its common and correct purposes!

Ironically, the US Postal Service is currently “mulling over” a proposed rule from the Trump administration that would allow people to send guns to one another through the mail. Since 1927, only licensed firearm dealers have been able to mail certain kinds of guns, but the Trump administration considers that to be “unconstitutional.” So I guess that means that they’d have less of a problem with Rosalie Markezich’s boyfriend shooting her than with him coercing her into having an abortion.

Kansas Abortion Foes Still Trying It

In 2022, Kansans voted by an incredible 59-41 margin landslide to keep the right to abortion in their state constitution. Since then, abortion rights foes have been trying to find a sneaky way to make abortion illegal, despite the wishes of Kansas voters.

That’s why this year, they’re pushing for an amendment that would appoint judges to the state Supreme Court based on elections rather than on merit — believing that Kansans would elect justices who would issue conservative rulings on abortion and school funding — and also allow Supreme Court justices to engage in political activity.

Via Kansas Reflector:

The Marion County Record in December reported that [Ty] Masterson, the Senate president from Andover who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor, told a Patriots for Liberty group that electing justices would reverse Supreme Court decisions on abortion rights.

“But you can’t go out there and say it because they’ll say that if you elect your Supreme Court, you won’t have any right to abortion anymore,” Masterson said.

He added: “If we elect our Supreme Court, they won’t force you to spend money on schools.”

Yes, because they want to force people to have kids against their will, but they don’t want to fund the schools that those kids will go to. Nice people!

Abortion rights advocates, however, are working hard to make it very clear that “if you elect your Supreme Court, you won’t have any right to abortion anymore.”

“I know that Kansans will rise to the occasion, and they will understand that this is about overturning abortion protections,” Sandy Brown of the Kansas Abortion Fund told the Kansas Reflector. “This is about electing Supreme Court justices where big money will be thrown in. And we all know what that what that’s going to look like. It’s going to get ugly.”

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Trump Administration Launches ‘Moms.Gov’ To Help You Find A Fake Abortion Clinic Near You

On Mother’s Day, the Trump administration debuted its very creepy and pronatalist Moms.gov website, geared towards pushing women into having babies, whether they want them or not. In addition to general nutritional advice — drinking raw milk and mainlining ivermectin? Just guessing — the site includes a directory of so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” the organizations that lure in women looking to terminate their pregnancies by pretending to be abortion clinics, only to try to talk them out of having one.

You know, the ones that almost never have an actual medical professional on staff (one study found that only 16 percent of CPCs had a physician and only 26 percent had a registered nurse) and are, rather, usually staffed by volunteers whose only actual qualifications include hollering at people outside of Planned Parenthood?

Yeah, those.

It also includes information about how to get Trump accounts for your kids and TrumpRx pharmaceuticals for yourself, because why miss a branding opportunity?

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Last week, our country’s greatest armchair epidemiologists started spreading the word about how ivermectin, the crap they pretended could cure COVID-19, also cures hantavirus. This was particularly impressive, as many of them had only heard of hantavirus days or even hours before.

Unsurprisingly, the South Carolina House of Representatives was on it. They moved very quickly to pass a bill making the anti-parasitic available over-the-counter, for those who wish to use it for this purpose and any other. Provided it passes in the state Senate, it will be over-the-counter but dispensed by pharmacists, sort of like Sudafed is now.

The bill will also require the Board of Pharmacy to institute guidelines for dispensing the medication, including:

1) Providing the patient with a screening risk assessment tool.

(2) Providing the patient with information on the indications and contraindications for the use of ivermectin, the appropriate method for using ivermectin, the importance of medical follow-up, and any other information considered appropriate by the department.

(3) Prohibitions on dispensing ivermectin that contains any ingredients determined by the department to be harmful or in conflict with any current medications.

So … no cutting anyone’s ivermectin with fentanyl. Got it.

The pharmacists will not be held liable if they follow the rules, but it seems like they should probably also inform the “patients” that ivermectin does not work in this way, and that there are some pretty serious side effects.

“Even doses of ivermectin for approved human uses can interact with other medications, like blood-thinners,” the FDA website says, for now. “You can also overdose on ivermectin, which can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension (low blood pressure), allergic reactions (itching and hives), dizziness, ataxia (problems with balance), seizures, coma and even death.”

I am, admittedly, pretty libertarian (actual meaning of the term) when it comes to what adults put in their own bodies. While I think there should be consequences to promoting fake cures (especially when people are making money off of it), I truly cannot get it together to care, one way or another, if these freaks want to gorge themselves on ivermectin.

In fact, I’d argue that the best way to handle this is to just let them have it, with the caveat that if it goes terribly wrong (and it could, there can be some pretty serious side effects from using it regularly), the only person they or their family can sue is the person who convinced them that it was a great idea in the first place.

The fact is, there is only so much you can do to talk someone out of a very obviously bad idea — and with these folks, it certainly seems like the more you try to talk them out of it, the harder they dig their heels in. The best we can do, frankly, is to just say “Hey, I wish you so much luck with avoiding explosive seizures and possible coma, just don’t sit next to if there’s a vomiting and/or explosive diarrhea portion of your little experiment here.”

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In related news, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lamented that he was prevented from signing a bill that would have done the same thing in his state, which was actually thwarted by some in his own party. While the state Senate approved of the measure, the House did not, and poor Ronnie’s dreams were dashed.

That bill, by the way, also included an exemption for parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children due a conflict with their “conscience or religious beliefs.”

I am definitely in favor of it being legal in Florida, of all places. After all, if it’s sold with the Sudafed, those folks might just think it can also be used to make crystal meth, and that would actually be a whole lot more safe, when you really think about it. It’s unlikely to explode or result in the creation of any meth-gators, and I think we can all agree that’s a pretty good thing.

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The clowns on the Supreme Court have done it again, the clowns.

Late Monday, SCOTUS vacated a lower court decision that had blocked the state of Alabama from using gerrymandered congressional maps that eliminated one of the state’s two Black majority districts. The lower court had found that this action violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14^th Amendment. SCOTUS had actually upheld that decision in 2023, telling Alabama it had to use the old maps.

But we all know how our wingnutty Supreme Court feels about the VRA deep down. If you don’t know, SPOILER ALERT: they do not care for it.

So in the wake of the decision in Callais v. Louisiana that was released not even two weeks ago, Alabama asked the Court to reconsider its earlier decision, so tha tthe state could fulfill every stereotype of itself as being the province of a bunch of backwards, inbred, hayseed-spittin’, cornpone eatin’, straw-hat-wearin’, Black-folk loathin’ redneck bigots.

Apologies to any Wonkette friends in Alabama. You people are good. Unfortunately, the assholes there are running the place.

SCOTUS was mighty happy to oblige Alabama. In a one-paragraph order, they remanded the case, Allen v. Caster, to the district court for “further consideration.” In the meantime, with primaries starting in a week, Alabama is free to use the previously blocked maps that the lower court had found, and painstakingly laid out in a 168-page opinion, to be incredibly racist.

There are a couple of things going on here, both of which pretty much lay bare (as if anyone still had any doubt) just how blatantly partisan SCOTUS is. The first is that telling Alabama now, a week before the primaries, that it can use the gerrymandered maps violates the Purcell Principle, the SCOTUS doctrine that prohibits courts from interfering when elections are this close at hand.

It turns out SCOTUS only believes in Purcell if it hurts Democrats. If an action helps Republicans, as Monday’s does, then Purcell is out the window:

The Texas case is this one, where Democrats fled the state last summer to deny the legislature a quorum so it could not approve a new map that drew five districts with Black and Latino majorities out of existence. When they bowed to the inevitable and came back, the Republicans tried to assign them all state trooper escorts to make sure they didn’t leave town again. They also locked one legislator, Nicole Collier, in the chamber overnight, after she refused to go along with everyone getting their own personal prison guard.

The other grotesquerie here is that the SCOTUS order specifically orders the lower court to reconsider its ruling “in light of” the result of Callais v. Louisiana. But in the majority opinion in that case, Sam Alito specifically said that Callais had nothing to do with the Alabama case. Sonia Sotomayor noted this in her dissent on Monday:

Nothing in the District Court’s Fourteenth Amendment analysis is affected by this Court’s opinion in Callais. Most obviously, Callais changed the legal standard for vote-dilution claims under §2. See 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 19) (“[W]e must understand exactly what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands”). It said not a word about the standard for Fourteenth Amendment intentional-discrimination claims like the one that the District Court decided on remand in round two.

Callais also insisted that this Court’s prior decision in Allen remains good law.

And yet here we are, not even two weeks later, with SCOTUS telling the lower courts, Hey, that thing we said about this case having nothing to do with that case? We lied. Sue us. No wonder lower court judges are supposedly frustrated with the Supremes.

One can picture Alito sneering as he read Sotomayor’s dissent. Maybe he went to the SCOTUS cafeteria for lunch, paused next to her table, leaned down, and yelled “PSYCH!” in her face.

Now theoretically, the lower courts could slap an emergency injunction on the map again, perhaps with the argument that they need more time to reconsider earlier rulings. We’re hoping this happens simply because we know how much it would annoy Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

Then SCOTUS can grant Alabama’s inevitable appeal of the injunction, and the courts can just keep passing this dog’s breakfast back and forth to each other, forever and ever, amen.

It has not even been a week since John Roberts sat down at a legal conference and sniveled — out loud, where people could hear him — about how unfair it is that the public thinks the court is partisan, how incorrect, how the judges are really doing their best to “figure out what the Constitution means” and how to apply that understanding to the cases before it.

And it has been all of four days since we wrote that the next SCOTUS decision that would piss everyone off and send Roberts “into a whiny shame spiral” should be coming down soon enough. We didn’t think it would be this soon, for some reason. Obviously we lack the imagination.

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It’s really crazy how this very serious partisan hack Supreme Court always finds a way to rule that voting rights for white supremacists are good but the rest are bad. It’s like they don’t actually have a “judicial philosophy” beyond racism.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Virginia have asked SCOTUS to overturn the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision striking down their new maps. We are sure they will get right on that. [New York Times]

If you have an abortion this week, name it after Samuel Alito. [AP]

Meanwhile, this anti-abortion whine from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council about how the Trump FDA is making abortion great again is pretty hilarious. [The Christian Post]

There’s been an article going around about how New Orleans has passed the point of no return when it comes to climate change, that the only way forward now is to start relocating people. This article makes the moral argument that actually “saving New Orleans is not optional.” We really would like to believe there exists the will among good people for the latter to be the right answer for what we agree is “the most important cultural center in America.” (“Sorry, New York,” the authors add.) [Current Affairs]

Did you read this week’s Moral High Ground? You shoulda because we cross-posted it at Wonkette! But if you didn’t and if you didn’t subscribe, you still have time! It is about the golden calf of Donald Trump that his religious adherents would really like you to stop calling a golden calf. (It is a golden calf.) [The Moral High Ground]

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Huh, sounds like Commerce Secretary Howard Nutlick has been less than honest about his very close ties with Jeffrey Epstein all this time! [Politico]

New data says there’s been a 42 percent drop in Canadians visiting major US cities during Trump 2.0, and we doubt that means they’ve decided to do all their honeymoons in Cat Butthole, Oklahoma. It means Trump is making America great again by absolutely drying up the American tourism industry. [Guardian]

Meanwhile, a US citizen has asked for asylum in Spain on the island of Mallorca. Will it get approved? Very unclear, but doubt it’s the last we’ve heard of such a thing. [The Olive Press]

Dr. Oz is saying creepy things about people being “under-babied” again.

This is neat!

Want to watch Chelsea Handler completely lay into Tony Hinchcliffe at the Kevin Hart roast? Hinchcliffe is that loser piece of garbage who told that joke about Puerto Rico at the Madison Square Nazi Trump rally or whatever that gathering of valueless human skin tags was.

Handler knew exactly what she was doing, and we thank her for her service.

More stories when we have them!

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There were tabs.

There was this from Evan (I, me):

This was this also from me, but it was a crosspost from my side project The Moral High Ground. Do you subscribe to The Moral High Ground. You should be!

There was this from Robyn:

This from Michael:

This weirdo creeper guy, from Gary:

And then finally me one more time! Wow, lots of me today!

OK bye! See you tomorrow!

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did an interview this weekend with Obama guy David Axelrod, and it’s getting a lot of attention for how good it was. As is often the case when AOC speaks freely, away from people’s preconceptions about her!

The clip that’s getting the most attention is how she handled the question of whether she’d like to run for president in 2028. Or for the Senate. What are your ambitions, young woman, so that we may tear them down! (Not that we’re suggesting that was Axelrod’s motivation here.)

And her response was whaaaaat? President? No, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is thinking much bigger than that.

“My ambition is to change the country,” she said. “Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go. But single-payer healthcare is forever. A living wage is forever, workers’ rights are forever, women’s rights, all of that.”

Huh, it’s almost like politics are supposed to be good for something.

The beginning of Ocasio-Cortez’s answer there was fun, because she referred directly to “this op-ed that Jeff Bezos paid for in the Washington Post” attacking her. In fact there have now been two pissy little whinyass blog posts from the Washington Post editorial board in the past few days attacking AOC, one about how you CAN TOO “earn” a billion dollars, the other about how she is being very mean to AirBnb.

It’s almost like they’re terrified of her. The way the rest of her answer unfolded demonstrates why.

“There was this line […] about ‘As a potential 2028 contender, X, Y, Z.’ And in the context of that it was very clear this was a veiled threat. Right? So it was the elite thing, ‘If you want this job, you just stepped out of line, and we want you to know where the real power is.’ And it’s in the modern-day barons who own the Post and own the algorithms, and ‘We’re gonna — we’ll make an example out of you.’”

Correct assessment of situation. Then she counter-attacked and got to the part we quoted above:

“And what’s funny about that is they assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.

Well then, that is much bigger. It almost seems like she’s not even going to want us to make a graven image or golden calf unto her divine glory.

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Ocasio-Cortez continued, and in the process took aim at all those out there who are obsessed with the titles and offices:

“When you aren’t attached, right, when you haven’t been like fantasizing about being this or that since the time you were seven years old, it is tremendously liberating.

“Because I get to wake up every day and say, how am I going to meet the moment. And conditions change radically all the time. So, I make my response less to an attachment to some positional, like, you know, title or position and working backwards from there, but I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window and observing the conditions of this country. And saying what move or what decision can I make today that is going to get us closer to that future, stronger, faster, better than yesterday.”

And if she’s not obsessed with the title of office, she’s going to be a lot less susceptible to people like Jeff Bezos offering to buy it for her, we reckon.

As many have noted, that’s approximately the best answer to that question anyone has ever given, and that most politicians offer up “pablum” in response to anything resembling that subject matter.

Mehdi Hasan responded to that clip, saying, “The reason Republicans are so freaked out by AOC is because they know when normie Americans of any party hear her speak like this, they all agree with her.” He added later, “So I think AOC’s super power in 2028 is that a bunch of terminally online Republicans and addicts of Fox have convinced themselves AOC is dumb or extreme, totally underestimate her, and they don’t have any clue just what a powerful and inspiring communicator she is and how much ordinary Americans - as well as Republican base voters, will be impressed by her mission statement.”

This is actually a good piece of what we have to get back to if we’re going to have a prayer of actually changing the country after we beat the absolute shit out of these fascists, or of making sure the fascists are never allowed to spring forth and take power again.

There was another moment in the interview that got a lot of attention on certain weirdo corners of the Bluesky and Twitter internets, where AOC got loudly condemned by some for saying that she doesn’t trust Marjorie Taylor Greene — “a proven bigot and anti-semite” — on subjects of Gaza or Israel. She said, “I don’t think that it benefits our movement, in that instance, to align the left with white nationalists.” Radical stuff, we know!

What do we keep saying about that, whenever a nutbag like Greene or Tucker Carlson is technically correct about something for four seconds while still coming from an extremely questionable and bad place? That’s right, we say “Under no circumstances do you have to hand it to this or that insane batshit white nationalist anti-semite garbage person,” whichever one we are currently talking about as we chronicle the rending apart of the MAGA right into all these little fighty factions.

We don’t really want to spend any more time on this, but we will say that if you’re memoryholing everything Marjorie Taylor Greene has ever done, putting her on a pedestal and turning AOC into your enemy, you’re an idiot.

Want more AOC content? Here is the Rev. Senator Raphael Warnock welcoming her to the Ebenezer Baptist Church this weekend, whereupon she spoke with fiery passion to the congregation about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and more.

She tweeted, “As legislatures across the South seek to draw Black Americans out of power, we gathered this Sunday to steel ourselves for the work ahead. We will always stand together, and we will not go back.”

To which we reply … um, could this be a 2028 ticket? And then AOC would reply back to us, Did you not see what I said to David Axelrod up there? And then we would reply back, OK, OK, fine.

Here, have the full hour and a half conversation with Axelrod, put it on if you have time, it is all excellent.

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Elderly lesbian Greg Bovino has seen some shit in his hard-bitten career, man. Crime. Drugs. A hundred million illegal immigrants flooding America’s streets, opening restaurants and running our fair nation’s bodegas and convenience stores. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion ...

Whoops, we mixed up our vaguely androgynous villains there for a moment. It’s hard! One is completely fictional, and the other is such a caricature of bigoted and ugly American nativism that you have trouble believing he’s not.

But Bovino is very real. And if you are both undocumented and an HIV patient in eastern Oklahoma, he hates you and wishes you would go back to your own country and die in some obscure shantytown far away from him. He’s even offering to help:

Bovino got this number from a story on Border Hawk News, a cheap-ass right-wing site that proclaims the Great Replacement to be a real thing. So right away, you know you are dealing with people playing with less than a full deck. And Bovino already has a penchant for bald-faced lying.

How many HIV-positive patients does Greg Bovino think must be in Tulsa and the greater eastern Oklahoma area where OSU Medicine operates, anyway? And of those patients, how many does he think are being treated at OSU Medicine, a health organization that has worked hard to increase access to healthcare for “rural and underserved communities in Oklahoma”?

It is hard to say. We did find one federal government website run by HHS that says there were all of 380 HIV+ diagnoses in 2023 in the entire state. The per-capita number of cases is 11.4 per 100,000 in a state of 3.3 million people.

It is kind of a miracle that OSU’s HIV treatment even exists at the moment. It is funded largely through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which is a product of the federal government and the Department of Health and Human Services. Advocates were expecting huge funding cuts to Ryan White for FY 2026, but those did not materialize. In fact, the program’s funding hasn’t been cut by nearly as much in the Trump era as you would expect, given the Trump-captured Congress’s indifference to brutal human suffering.

In other words, Bovino is threatening a very, very small group of people. It’s what sociopathic bullies do but does not make it less inhumane or pathetic.

Of course, Bovino has never been much of a numbers guy. He has been very public in his belief that there are 100 million illegal aliens living in America. That’s right, he thinks nearly a third of the entire nation is undocumented. What’s more, he has long claimed to have a plan to round all 100 million up and deport them. He also says he would have implemented that plan, but the Trump administration — the Trump administration — went soft and started caring more about its poll numbers.

He has even been slagging Tom Homan, of all people, for a lack of aggression. This is a little like slagging Cocaine Bear for not being aggressive enough after snorting a gym bag full of cocaine.

Greg Bovino does not care about your poll numbers, man. Greg Bovino cares about not having a dude named Jose serve him a Whopper in any Burger King anywhere in America, and he is not shy about it.

The nation was introduced to this ambitious ladder-climbing prick from America’s Zollgrenzschutz during the Trump administration’s ICE and Border Patrol blitz of American cities last year. Who can forget watching Bovino strut around Minneapolis in his greatcoat from the Hugo Boss “Berlin 1942” collection? Who can forget watching Bovino cosplaying as a tough law enforcement officer, with tear gas grenades clipped to his bandolier, wearing a helmet that made him look like a five-year-old playing laser tag?

Bovino eventually was pushed out for being too much of an asshole for even Donald Trump to stomach. Eventually he retired from the Border Patrol, bragging on his way out the door that his aggressive immigration crackdown had resulted in “very, very few civilian casualties.” Wow, what relief the public can feel knowing that Greg Bovino’s stormtroopers hardly killed any of the Guatemalan Uber drivers it kept yanking out of cars and dragging off to concentration camps.

In his retirement, Bovino has turned himself into an even bigger Internet troll. As best we can tell, he spends hours a day on X tweeting out wingnut propaganda from rightwing ragebait sites, then replying “TRIGGERED!” at anyone to the left of Genghis Khan who bothers to remind him that he’s the biggest smallest loser in Trump’s orbit. And Trump’s orbit is nothing but try-hard losers.

He seems like the type of guy who would punch down on HIV patients, doesn’t he? Shoot, he seems like the type of guy who would punch his own grandmother if she asked him to pick up something from Chipotle.

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Time, flat circle, yadda yadda.

It seems once again we are doomed to repeat history just within our lifetime. Some of us can’t even enjoy a proper midlife crisis because we’re too busy dealing with another unnecessary Middle East war, another pending economic collapse, and, now, a possible new pandemic!

Let’s dive into the Sunday shows and see how many lessons we never learned.

Jay Bhattacharya

We begin on CNN’s State Of The Union with Jake Tapper interviewing National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.

But Bhattacharya did not exactly inspire confidence in the possible response to another possible pandemic as he stammered through basic questions from Tapper.

TAPPER: Well, unlike all the precautions we're seeing this morning, a few weeks ago, when these seven people flew home, they flew home with lots of other passengers. Has there been an effort to do contact tracing and let those other passengers know who interacted with those seven?

BHATTACHARYA: So, those passengers — those those passengers on the ship that flew home were not symptomatic when they flew home. So the cont — the — because the virus doesn't spread unless somebody has active symptoms, those passengers on the planes are considered contacts of contacts. So, again, there's not — not — not a reason to do that kind of like, you know, sort of recursive contact tracing. The idea is that you assess the risk of the pay — the person who has been exposed. If — If they don't have symptoms, they're not at risk of — of exposing others. But, um, you do want to make sure that you check them regularly, so that they don't have — if they — if they — if they develop symptoms or if there's other — other considerations, gi — give them advice especially to — to — to, ah, if they’re — if they are — a — to reduce their contacts with others — others when it's appropriate to do so.

This transcription does not properly convey the stammering and flop sweat Jay Bhattacharya displayed if you watch the clip above.

Tapper also asked about rumors of Trump wanting to fire the FDA Administrator and Fred Armisen impersonator, Dr. Marty Makary. While Bhattacharya said some nice words and denied hearing it firsthand, we suggest marking him down as a possible next elimination in Trump’s reality show Cabinet. But the response so far by NIH and the possible replacement of the FDA Administrator at this very moment is very worrisome and concerning … before you remember who’s president, what they did during the last pandemic, and that our country’s health response now is being overseen by the Kennedy who eats what he kills with his vehicle like some sci-fi necromonger.

Personally, we’re gonna go look up everything on hantavirus and see if we can invest in hand sanitizer manufacturing stocks now.

Chris Wright

Over on NBC’s Meet The Press, host Kristen Welker interviewed (Low) Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Welker asked Wright if Trump had received the anticipated response from Iran to his latest proposal to end the war that Trump/Netanyahu stumblefucked us into.

WRIGHT: I don’t think we’ve heard a clear resolution from Iran yet. Given the state of the government in Iran, things just move slowly. Communications are difficult; there are multiple factions. This is a regime under serious stress.

They’re ghosting Trump.

How do we know? Just a small feeling we get.

Wright was also asked about a statement he previously made regarding gas prices and when we could expect them to (please) go back down.

WELKER: Do you think it’s still very possible that gas prices will dip below $3 a gallon in time for summer, which is about six weeks?

WRIGHT: I can’t make any predictions about, you know, oil prices or gasoline prices.

Welker tried again to get an answer.

WELKER: Just to go back to this central question, though, do you anticipate gas prices will drop below $3 a gallon this year?

WRIGHT: I can’t make predictions about that.

Welker tried a third time to get an answer by even rephrasing.

WELKER: Should Americans be prepared for the possibility of paying $5 a gallon for gas?

WRIGHT: Look, again, I can’t predict the price of energy in the short-term or even the medium-term […]

We think the non-answer is the answer.

Kristen Welker seemed to sense this, too.

WELKER: I know you’re saying you can’t predict how high gas prices will go, but I don’t hear you ruling out the possibility that they could in fact go to $5 a gallon.

WRIGHT: Well, I’m just avoiding price predictions. But I will say the United States is in a tremendous position.

Is it?! Because right now, it looks like all of our future hand sanitizer investment windfalls might have to pay to fill up our cars!

Welker didn’t seem to buy this, as she brought up states suspending gas taxes and the head of the International Energy Agency stating the severe harm to oil-producing facilities. After asking Wright, and him being evasive, who controls the Strait of Hormuz, Welker asked a very logical question.

WELKER: Why didn’t the U.S. secure the Strait of Hormuz when the war first began in February?

WRIGHT: It’s about focus. It’s about focus. […] We challenged the long-term things first.

Are you “focusing on the long-term things first”? Really??!

Because every time the president shows what he’s focusing on, it’s his beloved ballroom and his gaudy reflecting pool “renovation.”

To us, it seems that if the hantavirus doesn’t get us, the future economic and military collapse will.

Have a week.

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I think about Betty Broderick a lot these days.

For the last few years, manosphere stooges have been desperately trying to convince young women that they need to marry young — because, they insist, men are absolutely disgusted by women older than 29, and in some cases, 26 — and spend their 20s having children, even if it means they have to struggle financially. And unless they do this, they’ll all be sad and lonely like all of the millennial women who spent their 20s and later years out enjoying themselves and doing what they wanted.

Of course, the problem with that is we’re all actually doing pretty great and it’s the menfolk who are out here having a loneliness crisis. Multiple studies actually show that the happiest subgroup of human beings are unmarried, childless women. Additionally, other studies show that as much as the incels may screech incessantly about how older men are fine being single because of how they can “fuck 20 year olds” for the rest of their lives, single women are usually happier than single men. And married women. (Though this is actually changing to some degree — because women now get married because they want to and not because they are economically screwed if they don’t.)

But hey! It’s not as though these men ever actually talk to women in person, so how would they know? I guess they think if they can make women as insecure as they are, they have more of a chance.

You know who also might have been a whole lot happier if she had spent her younger years being, as these men claim, “selfish,” taking care of herself, having a good time and waiting until she was educated and financially self-sufficient before getting married and having kids? Betty Broderick.

Betty Broderick died on Friday at the age of 78, having spent around 36 years in prison for the murder of her ex-husband Dan Broderick and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick.

She met Dan Broderick when she was just 17 years old, and he was 21. According to her account, he aggressively pursued her in a way that would be pretty unseemly today.

“Dan never once wavered from his goal of making me his wife. He would wait, he would do and say whatever was necessary, even agreeing with me when he didn't, and doing things I wanted to do when he didn't, until he had me. Nobody ever used the terms ‘obsessive-compulsive’ or ‘stalker’ back then, but that is what he was,” she wrote in her 2015 memoir, Telling On Myself. (This is obviously not what obsessive-compulsive means, but it’s clear what she meant.)

Eventually she did marry him, in 1969, and got pregnant on their honeymoon. While taking care of that child and the other three they would eventually have together, keeping house and cooking his dinner, she worked her ass off, working multiple jobs and going through her savings to put him through medical school. Then, he decided he didn’t want to be a doctor, so she kept working so he could go to Harvard Law School.

In 1982, not very long after his career took off, he hired 21-year-old former flight attendant Linda Kolkena as a legal assistant, despite the fact that she was not a paralegal, had no college education, and could not type. She did, however, look strikingly like a young Betty Broderick, before she had four kids and spent 16 years caring for them.

By 1983, it was common knowledge at his firm that they were having an affair. Betty suspected it was happening as well and every time she confronted him about it, he gaslit her and told her she was crazy. In 1985, he filed for divorce. She couldn’t get a lawyer anywhere in town, because he was a prominent lawyer (president of the San Diego Bar Association!) and no one wanted to cross him. He also refused to pay the retainer for the lawyer she did get, and then complained that she didn’t have a lawyer. He sold her house without her approval, which did piss her off so much that she drove into his house … after which he had her committed to a mental institution on a 72-hour hold, which was easier for him to do than it might be for others because he was also a “doctor.” He asked for a bifurcated divorce (where the divorce is official before the financials are worked out) and full custody of their four children, which he got. He asked for her to not be allowed to make a claim on his law firm, which he got. She got half their assets (which came out to $28K, total, thanks to all the financial maneuvering he did before she even knew he planned to leave her and the several years he dragged the divorce out) and spousal support, along with the realization that he planned to simply recreate their whole life, just replacing her with Kolkena, who he married that same year.

Because she’d spent all that time taking care of Dan Broderick and raising their children, she didn’t have a life outside of that. She didn’t have an identity outside of that. She didn’t have a way to start a new career for herself, all of a sudden, at age 45, in the year 1989. She was, more or less, totally fucked, and that kind of sent her off the deep end.

And then, November 5, 1989, at approximately 5:30 a.m, Betty Broderick let herself into his house with her daughter’s key, shot and killed them both in bed.

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Now, everything she went through wasn’t an excuse for a double murder, but it was a reason. And a whole lot of women out there had a lot of sympathy for her, either because they’d been through something similar, seen another woman go through something similar, or were worried they could, someday, be in her position.

Hell, there are still women who end up in that position today.

Betty Broderick wasn’t a saint, but she was a warning — and, quite frankly, not just to women. There is a reason we all stopped doing things this way.

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There was this thing that happened in Exodus 32 that really pissed God off. Among the early Bible sins, it was way up there.

“Don’t look back or I will turn you into a pillar of salt!” She looked back. “Eat all the fruit except this one!” She ate that one. (God’s early habit of testing people by giving them one thing not to do and then waiting for them to roll their eyes and do exactly that thing is a whole other subject.)

And then there was Exodus 32. The Golden Calf.

So the story, if you remember, is like this:

Back in Exodus 20 the Ten Commandments had been laid down, and the first of them were “You shall have no other gods before me,” and then “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Right there at the beginning, it’s “Don’t worship other gods” — which seems to suggest that there were other gods and Yahweh knew it, an interesting thing to explore in Gnostic tradition — AND THEN it’s “don’t make graven images and worship them, I will fuck your grandchildren’s grandchildren up, for I am very sensitive and fly off the handle easily.”

Point is, it’s really really really clear what God thinks about idolatry, especially really extremely on-the-nose idolatry.

So in Exodus 32, Moses is up on the mountaintop with God getting the law written down in tablet form, and all the people were like WHERE IS HE? So they went to Aaron, Moses’s brother, the high priest, and said “We need some weird statue gods to worship. Can you make that happen?” And Aaron was like “OK sure, everybody in the whole town, take off your jewels!” and they did, and he melted them down and turned them into a golden cow so they could all worship it, like totally normal people.

And they made a festival for the very next day, with food and drink and metallic cow worships. Like totally normal people.

And God saw it and looked at Moses like OMG what the fuck are they doing? And Moses really had to talk God off the ledge, because God was talking shit like “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.” (He still ended up striking them with a plague.)

There’s more to it than that, but point is, making golden calves and other similar idols is kiiiiiiiind of a “Did I stutter?” situation in the Bible.

So of course here is super-Trumpy MAGA pastor Mark Burns this weekend consecrating a golden calf of Donald Trump at Trump’s Doral resort in South Florida, so that Trump’s followers can worship it.

Burns tweeted that picture, accompanied by a long, defensive explanation that can be boiled simply down to “Shut up, stop saying it’s a golden calf of Trump!”

(It is a golden calf.)

Some text from that tweet:

One of the greatest honors of my life was leading the dedication of President Donald J. Trump’s statue to the world.

Aim higher in life?

What amazes me is how quickly some people have compared this beautiful statue, created and made possible by more than 6,000 patriots, to a golden calf or idol worship.

Well, if it moos like a golden calf …

Let me be very clear.

We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone.

Objection, facts not in evidence that you hateful perverts and creeps have ever so much as met Jesus Christ, give the Lord’s people a fucking break.

The Word of God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Exodus 20:3.

It does say that.

It also says, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.” Matthew 4:10.

Does he know that he should be arguing his side, not ours?

That is the line.

Honor is not worship.

Respect is not idolatry.

Celebration is not bowing down to a false god.

Ohhhhhh, so that’s how we’re gonna split hairs. “I was only HONORING and RESPECTING Trump with my tongue up his ass. Honest, Jesus!”

Romans 13:7 says, “Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”

Lord, Lord, I swear, I was just rendering!

Giving honor where honor is due is biblical.

Bowing down and worshipping an idol is sinful.

There is a major difference.

And Trump-fellating MAGA cultists are the only ones who can see it.

This statue was not created for worship. It was created as a symbol of resilience, patriotism, courage, and gratitude. It was created to honor a man whom many may disagree with, but millions of Americans believe has done extraordinary things to make this nation stronger.

If he renders Trump any harder Trump’s dick is gonna fall off.

People celebrate athletes, musicians, entertainers, and cultural icons while they are still alive. Michael Jordan has a statue in Chicago. Cristiano Ronaldo, Taylor Swift, Shakira, Ed Sheeran, and many others have been honored publicly in different ways. Yet Christians were not screaming “golden calf” over those moments.

It is true, nobody has ever accused anyone of golden calfing Ed Sheeran.

Of course, nobody much believes Ed Sheeran, or Taylor Swift, Shakira, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Michael Jordan is a pagan king being guided by the hand of God for the glory of His kingdom, to take dominion over the Earth.

Which is a common strain of belief about Trump in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement, with which holy nutfuck Pastor Mark Burns is affiliated. As is the belief that Trump has been “saved” from one or more assassination attempts, by God, for special God-ordained purposes. (Which Burns alluded to in his first tweet about the golden calf, where he also felt the need in the fifth sentence to protest that it’s not a golden calf.)

It feels like those details matter.

You may dislike President Trump. That is your choice.

But you are in gross error if you think for one second that I worship this magnificent statue or anything made by human hands.

Oh no, he worships Donald Trump, and fuck off if he says differently. He might not literally pray to Trump, but Burns’s subservience fetish for Trump is absolutely a form of particularly pathetic worship.

(Fun fact: I met this dude on the street in Cleveland at Trump’s first convention, watched him arguing with people on behalf of his conman lord and savior. He’s a weapons-grade loser of a MAGA cultist, it’s really sad to watch up close.)

Anyway, the rest of that tweet is just babbling about how he worships Jesus not Trump, not sure who he’s really trying to convince. He comically suggests, as if he’s earned our respect, that we should use spiritual discernment. As if Matthew 7:21-23 — really the entire book of Matthew, and the rest of the Gospels — isn’t quite clear about how we should go about discerning actions like those of Pastor Burns.

And he’s been babbling about it ever since. It’s not a golden calf! It’s not a golden calf! It’s not a golden calf! (It’s a golden calf.)

And now here come more Trump-worshipping cultists to babble about if you refuse to suck their golden calf’s weird Mario-Kart-mushroom-shaped dickhead, you must have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Say it some more!

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As the Christian Post explains, the golden calf is 22 feet tall, including its platform, it’s called “Don Colossus” (LOL), and it is supposed to look like Trump when he got shot, shoving his fist in the air, we guess before his ear miraculously closed back up. It doesn’t really look like Trump, but don’t assume it’s because the sculptor sucks or is too blinded by their own Trump worship to provide an accurate rendering.

It’s stupider and Trumpier than that.

The sculptor, Alan Cottrill of Ohio, tells the Miami New Times that this crypto-bro-funded golden calf was a “clusterfuck” to create. It doesn’t look like Trump because Cottrill was asked to remove Trump’s signature ugly gross turkey vagina neck, and to shave off a few (bunch) of pounds. Also it was reportedly a gigantic pain in the ass to get the weirdos who commissioned the statue to actually pay the final payment for the statue. Just a great experience all around.

When asked if Cottrill would ever work with the crypto bros or Trump’s team again, specifically for the upcoming Trump Presidential Tower in Miami, which, according to renderings, will include a large, gold-leaf Trump statue, he didn’t need to hear the full question before responding, “Fuck no.”

“Once somebody has shown that they can’t be trusted to do what they say,” he adds, “you don’t work with them anymore.”

Trump, bless his heart, appears to think the statue is solid gold.

Trump also thinks all the tacky dementia decorations he’s put all over the White House are solid gold.

So that’s sad.

In conclusion, what have we learned today? We have learned that the new golden calf statue of Donald Trump at Doral is actually not a golden calf, but a gold-leafed calf.

We have learned that his pathetic worshippers — especially the ones who are such losers that they think the God of the entire universe would choose somebody as inferior and worthless to the human race as Donald Trump as his emissary on Earth — are going to split hairs over whether they are literally worshipping Trump or whether waking up with his ass hairs between their teeth is just something that happens after a hot hard night of rendering unto Caesar.

And finally, we learned that if you think any of this is weird, you are the one with something called Trump Derangement Syndrome, which sure does sound like an accurate description of whatever is afflicting Mark Burns.

Now hit that collection plate for more spiritually nourishing lessons!

Here’s a fucking Veggie Tales episode about idolatry.

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If it’s a week in the Trump administration, Saturday Night Live just got finished making fun of Secretary Shitfaced Hegseth OF WAR — S.S. Whiskey Pete for short, and for the ship that’ll never be named after him — and Shitfaced is in turn babbling whiskeydicked threats at Senator Mark Kelly. It is his kink, we guess.

Recently we got the absolutely humiliating news that Hegseth had the Navy secretary John Phelan pushed out partially because he was jealous and upset that guy was DMing his Daddy Donald Trump about shipbuilding late at night behind his back and not including him in the group chat. Pete is jelly and territorial about Daddy’s attention, as any casual observer can see by his body language during every Cabinet meeting.

But there was another reported reason that was even more humiliating, namely that Hegseth had tried to force Phelan to come up with a cool way to punish Kelly for that video where he calmly explained to the troops that they swore an oath to the Constitution, which by definition means they are duty-bound to ignore illegal orders from the Secretary of War Crimes and the decaying orange blob of makeup and poopsmells he calls boss. He wanted Phelan to ignore a judge’s ruling — Dubya Bush appointee District Judge Richard Leon — so that they could bring Kelly back into active duty and then demote and punish him.

And it appears Phelan wouldn’t do it.

Perhaps Phelan doesn’t want to be on the hook for involvement in war crimes at The Hague or the American Nuremberg Trials one day, once worthless fascist MAGA men start facing accountability for what they’re doing to the United States on Trump’s behalf. As we wrote at the time, “Phelan, an art collector and Trump fundraiser with no military experience, nonetheless was not stupid enough to ignore the Constitution to try to go after Dear Leader’s enemies for reminding them that Dear Leader is not actually Dear Leader, and he wasn’t willing to be a party to Hegseth using the Uniform Code of Military Justice like his own personal drunken cum towel.”

But, well, Hegseth is kind of like that guy at the end of the bar who’s at that moment of shitfaced where he gets fixated on a thing he wants and can’t let it go, who thinks he’s being excessively clever about it, and he’s just going to keep humiliating himself while people find new ways to tell him “no.”

Hegseth is now apparently under the impression that he’s NAILED Mark Kelly for leaking super top secret information about the Iran war, which is funny for obvious Signalgate reasons.

So last night, he did his affirmations in front of the mirror, popped whatever it takes to get up the manly courage he needs to confront men of true honor like Kelly, and he wrote this tweet:

A couple of the top replies to that tweet right now are “You’re an actor. You’re playing Secdef. At least try to play a good one” (Adam Kinzinger) and “Oh fuck off you drunk cunt” (JoJoFromJerz).

People receive the respect they earn.

But the response from Kelly is even more brutal, as it reminds Hegseth that the thing he said that got the little bitch SecDef’s dander up, the thing he’s now accusing Kelly of “blabbing on TV” from a “CLASSIFIED” briefing was actually … information he received in a conversation with Hegseth that happened in public, on television, last week.

“That’s not classified, it’s a quote from you.”

Oh, humiliating.

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As the Daily Beast explains, what Kelly said on Face the Nation yesterday that upset Pete so much was pretty general, about how much the US military is squandering its munitions capabilities for this stupid fucking pointless war it’s losing:

Speaking to host Margaret Brennan, Kelly said that it was “shocking how deep we have gone” into U.S. weapons stockpiles during Trump’s war on Iran.

“Because this president got our country into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline... because of that, we’ve expended a lot of munitions. And that means the American people are less safe,” Kelly said.

The Daily Beast points to a tweet from Washington Post military reporter Dan Lamothe, who explained that “the comments from Kelly that Hegseth is claiming are an issue do not address specific munition numbers. That's generally where classification comes into play. No sign of that here.”

We understand why Hegseth might be confused about what is and what isn’t classified. He doesn’t have much grown-up big boy job experience, especially regarding military or government matters.

Of course, it’s entirely possible Hegseth just completely forgot that public hearing last week. Maybe it’s blacked out of his memory, for some reason.

In extremely related news, Whiskeydick was in another court last week, trying to get permission to punish Kelly, and two of the judges on that three-judge appeals panel clearly signaled that they are well aware Whiskeydick is full of shit, and that Mark Kelly did not do anything resembling sedition when he reminded troops they have a duty to defy orders to commit illegal war crimes.

This is the appeals court they’re begging to overturn the judge’s ruling we alluded to earlier. In other words, that case is reaching the end of the line.

So there are a lot of reasons for Hegseth to be feeling humiliated right now, on top of all the usual ones.

Here’s that video of Kelly humiliating Hegseth about how fucking hard he’s losing this war, in case it’s still not ringing a bell:

And here’s that SNL cold open, it’s about Hegseth, Ka$h [hic!] Patel and Supreme Court Justice Partisan Hack Brett “Beer Pong” Kavanaugh.

You know that thing when a person gets so drunk and then the next day people show them videos of what they did last night?

Don’t know why we just thought of that.

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Monday again! Are we all ready for another week of enigmatic adventures together on our collective crazy train?

What should everybody freak out about the most this day and week? Well…

Hantavirus used to be an empty threat parents muttered at preschoolers to keep them from crawling under restaurant tables, but no mas. Thirty years ago it made its first leap to humans, then in 1993 the human-to-human kind reached the US, and has been going more viral ever since, with a 35 percent mortality rate. Now the same strain has been cruising its way on a ship from Tenerife to Argentina, passengers are on their way back to their home countries, including 17 to the US. (Reuters / WSJ)

“China Sees a ‘Giant With a Limp’ as U.S. Drains Weapons on Iran War,” says The New York Times. Shirley not just China and it is called OPERATION FREEDOM now! No ceasefire, you’re the ceasefire! (New York Times Gift Link)

Day 72 of Operation Whatever, and Israel is continuing to attack, the US and Iran are exchanging fire over the past week empty frameworks of deal-plans floating upon the telephone lines, and the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. (Al Jazeera)

Seems kinda bad for Democracy, man, the way John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, over the course of 16 years:

mischaracterized more than twenty million dollars in household income from law firms appearing before the Supreme Court. He concealed his wife’s equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years. He failed to recuse from more than five hundred cases argued at the Supreme Court by law firms that had paid his household millions in commissions. He architected the Court’s first ethics code and designed it to be unenforceable.

If corruption was a Zen koan! (Christopher Armitage)

Related: McSweeney’s “Excerpts from Chief Justice John Roberts’ High School English Essays.” (McSweeney’s)

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker thinks Kamala Harris should and probably will run again in 2028. What do you think, dear reader?

Two US soldiers have disappeared off the coast of Morocco during a training exercise, if this was Barack Obama, etc. etc., yadda yadda. (Task & Purpose)

Do you want to read or listen to a 10-minute story about the decline of Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire empire? We know you do, you sick freak. (Washington Post gift link)

Be the change you want to see in the world, sign a change petition to bring back Quinnipiac women’s rugby! (Front Office Sports / Change.org)

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On May 10, 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines met at Promontory Point, Utah. The railroad itself was key to the growth of the American nation after the Civil War, but it came at a terrible cost to workers, particularly the Chinese working for the Central Pacific. Examining the treatment of the Chinese shines a light not only on the labor conditions for the most despised group of workers in the United States, but also on the limits of the Republican Party’s free labor ideology, which had no taste for workers’ rights.

While the Union Pacific relied largely on Irish labor, the Central Pacific hired mostly Chinese laborers to build the railroad. There were certain dangers with all railroad construction and the UP did build across the territory of still pretty powerful Native American tribes, but the land itself was slowly rising and without major physical obstacles in the way. On the other hand, the CP had to build across the Sierra Nevada and then through the difficult terrain of Nevada. It was going over the Sierra that tells the most compelling labor history of the Transcontinental Railroad.

The Central Pacific hired James Strobridge as its construction superintendent. It was his job to hire the men and build the road. Strobridge liked to beat his workers with a pick handle. While Charles Crocker, one of the CP top executives, objected to this treatment, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, and Mark Hopkins, were fine with it. Stanford, well known in his time as a very stupid human being, founded Stanford University when his son died, one of the great ironies of American history.

In 1865, Strobridge started hiring Chinese laborers, the most easily dominated workers in the country at that time, even more so than the newly ex-slaves. The low wages meant that even the Irish were hard to get. The Central Pacific wanted 4,000 workers and had 800. By 1868, 80 percent of the now 12,000 member CP workforce were Chinese. The Chinese presence was hated in California but was also necessary in the early years to do the work white miners did not want to do, such as cooking and cleaning. When everyday whites left mining after not striking it rich, they saw the Chinese as competition for the white man’s republic they hoped to build in the Golden State.

Few California whites would object then if Strobridge turned his legendary labor methods on the Chinese. And turn on them he did. He only brought the Chinese on when the Irish began demanding higher wages. The CP explicitly divided workers by race, forcing the remaining Irish to take lower wages. They wanted about $50 a month. The Chinese were paid $30 and the Irish $35. The Irish had their food and board provided, but the Chinese had to pay for theirs. The Irish of course blamed the Chinese for keeping wages down. American workers have always been happy to divide themselves by race and employers were happy to facilitate that.

The conditions of work were extremely difficult. Building through the Sierra meant cold, rain, and lots of snow. The Chinese labored on blasting 16 tunnels through the Sierra, an extremely dangerous proposition at any time, and especially during an era when employers had no legal responsibility for workplace safety. It is impossible to know how many Chinese workers died building the railroad, from avalanches, explosions in tunnel building, and other causes. No one kept track because the CP didn’t care. An 1870 story in a Sacramento paper reported that a train carrying the bones of 1,200 dead Chinese workers had passed through town on the way to San Francisco. We can probably see that as a bare minimum of the dead and the number was almost certainly much higher.

As word of the horrible conditions got back to San Francisco, fewer Chinese signed up. Strobridge raised the wage rates for the Chinese to $35, but this was not enough. In late June 1867, thousands of Chinese went on a short strike. They had concrete demands. They wanted $40 a month, a 10-hour day for above-ground work and an 8-hour for tunneling work instead of the 12-hour day they faced, an end to beatings, and the right to quit without harassment from the company.

Strobridge’s response was to stop feeding the workers. Crocker looked into hiring newly freed ex-slaves (at the same time that southern planters were exploring hiring Chinese) to replace them but this was unrealistic. So simply refusing to send supply trains carrying food was the best answer. The Chinese were high in the mountains, far away from home, and with no means of survival. They were at the mercy of the Central Pacific. After a week, the strike ended and they returned to their brutal, deadly work.

Once they crossed the Sierra and started building in the baking hot and dry alkali flats of the Great Basin, the Chinese had enough. Hundreds of workers fled back along the railroad lines to California. Strobridge sent horsemen to round them up just like they would round up cattle. Rope, lasso, forced work. Free labor this was not.

This story suggests the very strong limitations of Republican labor policy and I want to once again push back on the idea that the Republican Party was a revolutionary political party. The vast majority of the nation’s railroad executives were Republicans, many active abolitionists. Many Republicans were perfectly fine with coerced labor so long as it wasn’t the actual conditions of slavery in the American South. That’s because for them, the problem with slavery was not the treatment of Black people, but the effect on white people, making them lazy, violent, and unconcerned with industrial progress. The abolitionists had different views and at least some of them were not horrible toward the Chinese, but they were always a pretty stark minority in the Republican Party. Far more common and growing ever more powerful in the years after the war were people like the Central Pacific executives, who would happily drive labor to the point of death for profit.

The Chinese would go on to build many western railroads, facing discrimination and violence wherever they went. Hatred of the Chinese eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first legislative victory for organized labor in American history. Violence however continued and it was only with the rise of Japanese immigration and declining Chinese populations due to the immigration restriction that the violence subsided.

FURTHER READING:

Mark Fiege, The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States, which is not primarily a labor history, but which contains details of these issues in its railroad chapter and which is worth reading for more on the importance of nature for understanding key events in American history.

Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America

Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America

Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930

Michael Hiltzik, Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America

Pete Hoekstra is the first US Ambassador to Canada to become a household name, which isn’t a sign things are turning around.

Not one of the list of top diplomats for the past century rang a bell personally, including Biden’s pick, David Cohen, who’s now running a non-profit journalism shop in Philly. Hoekstra quickly earned a reputation for complaining about how hard it is to find anyone who agrees how awesome it is that Trump is back, and there’s even an official petition on the House of Commons website citing action “inconsistent with diplomatic protocol or detrimental to Canada’s interests” as fair play to give Hoekstra the hook.

“I’m disappointed that I came to Canada, a Canada where it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship,” he bitched to a business gathering in Halifax last year. “You ran a campaign where it was anti-American, elbows up, me too. [Emphasis Yr Wonkette.] You know, that was an anti-American campaign. That’s disappointing.”

Speaking of disappointments, imagine how attendees at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Ottawa — essentially CPAC of the North with even less attention paid to it — must’ve felt when they heard he wouldn’t be appearing as promised on Friday!

The White House said Hoekstra was called away last minute for “urgent meetings” after the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Maryland to help arrange new bribes for Dear Leader. It’s hard to imagine any of them will be coming from Amsterdam given his equally disastrous turn as ambassador to the Netherlands back in Round One.

This year’s slogan was “A Winning Vision,” which seems suitably ironic for an event held in Alanis Morisette’s hometown given the only winning Conservatives are doing lately is the Charlie Sheen version circa 2011.

The Tories not only blew a once-in-a-lifetime lead in last year’s election but also three subsequent byelections handing Mark Carney’s Liberals a majority government and the one ring to rule us all for now. The final tally saw them drop an average of 12 points overall, and that’s on top of four members of Parliament jumping ship to Team Carney in recent weeks. Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives aren’t doing so hot either, currently trailing the leaderless Ontario Liberals by two points in the aftermath of the Gravy Plane crash-and-burn and going the full Big Brother on FOI rules.

Hoekstra was replaced on the banner alongside Peewee and Aunt Danielle from Alberta with National Post columnist Tristin Hopper, a man best known outside Canada for kicking a raccoon to death. But at least one Trump insider still made it!

It’s also possible Hoekstra got called away last minute because former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got some laughs at Trump’s expense the night before when discussing the challenges facing the two countries:

“I worked for President Trump, so I I get it. I mean, like, I would wake up every morning, check my phone, make sure I had a job, and then go into the office! No, I mean, think about it. I was the 70th secretary of State. He’s the 45th president. I know how my successor got booted! Like, okay, I get the joke...”

He presumably meant his predecessor Rex Tillerson, who was famously fired on Twitter, and then offered an impression of the dutiful tongue baths:

TRUMP VOICE: Michael, how many electoral votes did you get?

REEK VOICE: Sir, zero!

TRUMP VOICE: Yeah, just remember that…

The comedy stylings of a slimmed-down Michael Pompeo, ladies and gentlemen! We’re all at the hands of an elderly madman with the nuclear codes but at least we’re all in it together! It’s not much consolation but at least deep down and amongst themselves they’ll admit how ridiculous they truly are.

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[Philadelphia Citizen / Global News / HuffPo / Wonkette Blueskies]

I first watched The Jerk in the movie theater when I was a junior in high school. And I feel like I should add the words “the film” in front of The Jerk otherwise it sounds a bit creepy.

I remember how totally hilarious my friends and I found the movie to be, along with the entire rest of the theater. As I sat down for a rewatch I wondered if it would hold up now that I had just turned 63. I am happy to say it does and to quote Rebecca, “it still slaps!”

The film opens with Navin Johnson sitting on skid row, unshaven and intoxicated, surrounded by trash and other down and out souls. As the camera zooms in, Navin says,

Seeing a silver haired, super white guy start with those lines tells you this is going to be some crazy shit. The story was written by Steve Martin and Carl Gottlieb (who co-wrote the screenplay for Jaws); which itself had sprung from one line in Martin’s stand-up act, “It wasn’t always easy for me; I was born a poor Black child.”

Martin was gaining stardom from his stand-up act and he wanted to translate that success to the movies with a script he had been working on. A story of a young man full of energy and naïveté who ventures out from his childhood home to find himself.

Where he finds himself is in the phone book. Okay for any youngs out there, a phone book is where they took everyone’s contact lists and put them on tissue paper in a big white book. I will admit that the first time I found my name in the phone book I yelled out,

Through a variety of odd jobs Navin discovers the world, love and wealth. But the wealth brings out the jerk. The end of the film brings us back to the beginning, where Navin admits to being a jerk and maybe this discovery will be the thing that helps him find where he truly belonged all along.

There was actually a made for TV sequel in 1984, The Jerk, Too; I’ve included a link if you want to torture yourself.

The Jerk stars Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Carl Reiner, Mabel King, Richard Ward, Bill Macy, Catlin Adams, Jackie Mason, M. Emmett Walsh, and Carl Gottlieb. Directed by Carl Reiner.

The Jerk is available for free on OK RU; free on the Internet Archive with old ads (go to number 38 on the list, FF to 2:57); with subscription on Prime; $3.99 in the usual places.

To make requests and see the movie lists and schedules go to WonkMovie.

The animated short is Candy Apple by Luke Tianxiang Liu. It is one of those that requires a Kleenex alert.

Next week’s Movie Night selection is A Street Cat Named Bob, available for free with ads on YouTube; free with ads on Tubi and Fandango at Home. $3.99 in the usual places. This trailer also requires a Kleenex alert.

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