Typically, I
make breakfast for Emily and me, then feed the whining, sniveling cats who are,
according to them, starving because no one has fed them for a month or two. I then
do the Sudoku, Jumble and crossword (in that order) before reading the day’s
news. Sometimes I find something amusing
to scribble about, more often recently, not. Sometimes I putter around, musing the
news, and then get around to it. Today is one of those.
First, a word or
several re: one (of too many) of our fair state’s political embarrassments,
Matt Gaetz. This member of Congress, who allegedly represents Florida’s 1st Congressional
district, only has no criminal record because his several DUIs were quashed
because daddy was president of the Florida Senate. Recognized as a blustering
bully while in the Florida legislature, he has continued in that role in the US
House, although with his olfactory appendage firmly ensconced in the Trumpian
sphincter, it’s difficult to imaging him having time for anyone or anything
else.
This isn’t new. In 2018 during a gun control
hearing, Gaetz, a darling of the NRA, got into a shouting match with two
fathers whose kids were among the 17 victims killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School. During the public hearing, Gaetz was rightfully jeered by the
crowd after suggesting that a southern border wall will somehow protect us from
school shootings, for which he was called out by Parkland parents Manuel Oliver
and Fred Guttenberg. Gaetz bullied the parents and attempted to have Oliver ejected from the public hearing.
This is made even more ludicrous in light of the fact that Gaetz has, on one occasion, staged a
photo op with a high school student who was bullied, proclaiming that bullying actions
(such as his own deportment on numerous occasions!) are wrong.
Not content
with his role as Trump Toady of the House, He apparently has chosen to pick a
fight with Ron Perlman. Like many Americans, myself included, Mr. Perelman, an
actor of some renown, has been vocal in his support of the need for police
reform and against racism. Gaetz’s reaction to this free expression was to
twitter negatively about Perlman’s role as a white supremacist in the TV series
Sons of Anarchy. Implying that a role played by an actor is indicative of the
nature of the person is insanity even, for Matt Gaetz. At this point apparently
feeling sorry for Gaetz, a fresh moron entered the fray – Senator Ted Cruz, who
also suggested that Perlman should wrestle Congressman Jim Jordan (14 years Perlman’s
junior) because Jordan and Perlman had some discussion related to standing
before soccer games and the US soccer team. It’s enough to make you shake your head.
A Senator and Congressman gang bullying an actor who, at 70 can still kick both
their asses.
And as an afterthought, if the individual is truly
characterized by a role, Tom Cruise drinks blood, Robert Downey Jr is Black,
and Hugh Jackman is (pick one) Jean Valjean or P.T. Barnum and probably has retractable
adamantium claws.
In case you missed
it, here is Cruz’s tweet, uninvited and out of the blue:
“Listen Hellboy. You talk good game when you’ve got
Hollywood makeup & stuntmen. But I’ll bet $10k—to the nonpolitical charity
of your choice—that you couldn’t last 5 min in the wrestling ring w/
@Jim_Jordan w/o getting pinned. You up for it?
Or does your publicist say too risky?”
(It should be pointed out that Jim Jordan was an
intercollegiate wrestler and coach.)
Cruz at 49, and 21 years younger than Perlman,
got this response:
“I tell you what teddy boy, since mentioning jim jordan and
wrestling is... problematic, why don’t we say fuck him and just make it you
& me. I’ll give 50k to Black Lives Matter and you can keep all the tax-payer
money you were thinking of spending.”
 |
| My bet is on the guy on the left, not the pimp on the right |
Cruz wisely had no response which involved him putting his
money or his body where his mouth had taken him. Apparently bullying is
contagious, huh?
On another issue,
and one with far less humor involved, Boris
Johnson, The UK Prime Minister and walking bad hair day, broke completely with
Trump and said he considered that any efforts by Israel to annex any more currently
Palestinian territory was a violation of international law. Period.
This of course
runs counter to the “peace” plan delineated by Trump’s poster boy for
undeserved or unmerited nepotism, Jared Kushner.
Kushner’s plan,
for which Trump would love to get a Nobel Peace Prize (gag) was derived after
Kushner sought and diametrically disregarded advice from every learned expert
in the field. It involves an “almost
exclusively beneficial for Israel, Palestinians, not so much”, theme, which is
unsurprising since Kushner is Jewish and his father in law has, for decades
curried favor in that community. Kushner and a small circle of Trump officials rejected
the traditional process path of brokering talks between the two parties that
could lead to a joint proposal, choosing instead to hand one down from Washington.
The plan would discard the longtime goal of granting the Palestinians a
full-fledged state. Trump called it “a win-win” for both sides; Palestinian
leaders immediately rejected it. Some have voiced the opinion that the real purpose
was to buck up election possibilities for Israeli prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, who is already facing corruption charges at home.
Kushner’s plan
would guarantee that Israel would control a unified Jerusalem as its capital
and not require it to uproot any of the settlements in the West Bank that have
provoked Palestinian outrage and alienated much of the world. It also fragments
what is now considered a single boundary and specifies Israeli “enclaves” within
this now significantly “gerrymandered” and oddly shaped “Palestinian state.
It’s very much as if Massachusetts was redrawn
into a somewhat smaller and misshapenly odd partially deflated basketball shape
and was told that Connecticut would control 12 sovereign cities within that new
border. Jordan disapproves, but of course Trump’s Saudi “friends” are sort of
OK with it.
One hopes
fervently that the Nobel Committee has the courage to do the right thing or,
more specifically, eschew the wrong thing.
Speaking of
Benjamin Netanyahu, the ostensibly corrupt Israeli has petitioned to be allowed
to accept a $2 million “gift” from a Detroit financier to help defray the cost
of his criminal corruption trial in Israel.
And that, dear reader, is about all I can stomach for today.
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