Snoop and Diet Coke and Oral Roberts and virtual birthday cards

Today’s column is my weekly free offering. However, if you don’t become a subscriber, I’m gonna do that Oral Roberts (see below) thing so….fair warning.

Subscribers get all 3 columns a week, plus access to the entire archive. Plus all that good karma.

I can't sleep. It's way-too-early-o'clock and I'm up and listening to old Lyle Lovett records and feeding the dogs and waiting for the promised sun to burn away the fog that's lying on top of the ring of mountains I can see from my back porch, presumably as clear as Sarah Palin sees Russia from hers. The humidity out there is the kind that fogs up glasses. Last night's promised severe storms and tornadoes never materialized, and I started thinking that NEPA meteorologists swing and miss more than Dave Kingman in his prime. Nice work if you can get it I guess. Whatever. But at least it's quiet, and I can sit and focus on whatever it is that I can wrap my head around these days, which means I sit and try to come to terms with the kaleidoscope whirling in between my ears…as confused as Herschel Walker on Father’s Day.

I need caffeine but hate coffee, so I crack open my first of way too many Diet Cokes, the favored drink of Rudy Giuliani when he's not swilling whiskey from the bottle in the midst of insurrection meetings. Hours earlier the Jan 6 committee laid out an even more astounding list of crimes committed by Donald Trump and his craven cowardly cyborgs, including grifting a quarter of a BILLION dollars from his cult in the name of an "official election defense fund" that didn't exist. He instead used most of the money to fund his own PAC, from which he dipped into to pay his ever mounting bills. Whatever was left he gave to his kids and their spouses…for speaking fees and cocaine and the like.

Team Trump was so unperturbed by this information becoming public that Don Jr immediately sent out mass emails to the same dumb morons, charging them $1 to virtually sign a birthday card for his Father, the guy who thought it would be funny to murder his Vice President on live TV. The level of stupidity we're dealing with here is so mind-numbing that the hearings are not making a dent in the skulls it needs to bore holes into.

Trump has bragged that he could "shoot somebody and not lose voters" and Attorney General Merrick Garland is apparently waiting for just that to happen before he brings charges against the guy who merely tried to overthrow the republic on camera. Garland reminds me of Snoop Dogg in the Corona beer commercials.....just sitting back and grooving in socks and sandals and repeating "that's the fine life, baby" while the rest of the world burns like a large blunt. Even if he wanted to send a strong message he could slap the faces of 100 of these clowns on a dartboard and bring charges against any bullseye. How about looking into the line of congressmen and women who went to Trump FOR A PARDON before anybody bothered to charge them with any crime? He could get a fucking intern to work on that one, couldn't he?

I've worked with plenty of folks who couldn't be arsed to do their job over the years, but Garland is the GOAT. I know he's still probably pissed about the Supreme Court thing, but Attorney General is kind of an important job too. Ask Bill Barr, who at least showed up for work in the morning, even if it was merely to provide cover for a rampaging pack of amoral hyenas.

So yea, I'm in a great mood this morning contemplating all this as I try to get the dogs to shit in the yard and not in the house and try to settle in to do work. I'm searching for any rainbow, yo.

The new narrative is that Liz Cheney and Mike Pence, two crazed homophobic haters who enabled Trump for 4 years, have suddenly morphed into bastions of democratic principle. Pence especially, whose bootlicking was so obsequious even Trump couldn't stand to be in the same room with him. But because Pence refused to disrobe and take a shit on the constitution, he's suddenly Ben Franklin? Despite the fact that even after his boss called him a "pussy" and then suggested that he might be better off dead, he still can't quite come out and and quit Trump totally...boasting of the "Trump-Pence" agenda to court the MAGA vote, or at least the portion of that vote who don’t think he should have been hanged from a make-shift gallows. And you thought Cruz was bad sucking up after Trump called his wife ugly.

It's still morning, but the fog is gone and the heat is oppressive, chasing me back into climate control. Diet Coke number 4 is beside me as my lack of sleep is cashing in. I’m trusting its jolt to open my eyes. My feelings for this liquid swill must be comparable to MAGAs opening their email every day and having a Trump beg for even more money.

Both of us keep opening up our wallets and puckering up.

I’ve never seen a supposed billionaire so desperately short of cash. Recall that in 1987 Oral Roberts told his followers that God ordered him to raise $8 million dollars in 3 months, or he (Oral, not God) would die. One of the all-time great grifts. He raised more than $8 million, then more than doubled-down by saying they had to raise the same amount “every year until Jesus returns” or he would die anew, which is kinda open ended but whatever. Trump and his klan haven’t quite gone this far yet, but there’s still time. Hell, it ain’t even the mid-terms yet. And just wait until DeSantis says he’s running. Next birthday card is gonna cost WAY MORE than a dollar, Bro.

I hope I can sleep tonight.

In a bit…

—tf