(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

So, this was the middle of my day on Friday. I got in my car just as the president* was beginning to address the adoring throng at CPAC. On Fridays, I tape my segment on Only A Game, the NPR sports show on which I crack wise with the great Bill Littlefield every week, so I listened to the president* all the way down to the station. I parked the car, walked three blocks, taped my segment, and walked back to the car, and…

Holy mother of Christ, he’s still talking!

It is far too little remarked upon that, when the president* takes the podium, the members of his audience are in for a longer exercise in self-love and prevarication than they might have expected when they walked in. This is generally because the president* departs from his prepared text for the purpose of reminding you (again) what a towering success he is.

On Friday, we got all the hits—the electoral college, Crooked Hillary, The Wall, the incredible bullshit about how the Democrats are going to get rid of the 2nd amendment, and we even got The Snake. But I’d like to concentrate on some of the characteristic indecency that larded up the text of Combover Castro’s harangue.

First, once again, he laid out praise for what he calls “beautiful clean coal.” He still apparently believes that someone washes each individual chunk as it comes out of the ground.

And we have ended the war on beautiful, clean, coal, one of our great natural resources. Very important for our defense, coal, very important for our defense, because we have it. We don’t have to send it through pipes, we don’t have to get it from foreign countries. We have more than anybody. And they wanted to end it, and our miners have been mistreated and are not being mistreated anymore. We’re doing tremendous business.

Just this week, The New York Times ran a horrific report about the recurrence of black-lung disease in coal country, particularly among younger miners.

The severity of the disease among miners at the Virginia clinics “knocked us back on our heels,” said David J. Blackley, an epidemiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, who led the research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was equally troubling, he said, that nearly a quarter of the miners with complicated black lung disease had been on the job fewer than 20 years. Across the coal belt in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, “there’s an unacceptably large number of younger miners who have end-stage disease and the only choice is to get a lung transplant or wait it out and die,” Dr. Blackley said.

No, you fcking idiot, our miners are not being “mistreated” any more. They’re dying in their 30s with 80-year-old lungs. Do you think he has any idea this is happening? And he hasn’t even really got rolling yet on cutting back the regulations aimed at keeping people from dying this awful death. Do you think this story even will cross his desk? Please.

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Second, when talking up Republican prospects in the 2018 midterms, he paused to throw a cheap shot at a dying man. This got him a big hand from the CPAC cheap seats.

“And except for one senator who came into the room at 3 in the morning and went like that, we could have had health care too. Remember — one person walked into a room when he was supposed to go this way and he walked in and went this way [thumbs down] and everyone said, ‘What happened? What was that all about? Who was that?’ I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t want to be controversial so I won’t use his name. What a mess.”

John McCain has brain cancer, you human sludge. Two weeks ago, his daughter said you promised not to mock her father anymore. Now, you don’t even have the guts to use his name while you do it again.

Last, he went out of his way, as he had all day, to question the courage of the deputy on the scene in Parkland who didn’t go in and confront Nikolas Cruz.

And something I thought of this morning, you know what else, I thought of it since I found and watched [Scot] Peterson, the deputy who didn’t go into the school, because he didn’t want to go into the school, okay. He was tested under fire and that wasn’t a good result. But you know what I thought of, as soon as I saw that, these teachers, and I’ve seen them, and a lot of schools where they had problems, these teachers love their students and the students love their teachers in many cases. These teachers love their students. And these teachers are talented with weaponry and with guns. And that’s — they feel safe. And I would rather have somebody that loves their students and wants to protect their students than somebody standing outside that doesn’t know anybody and doesn’t know the students, and frankly for whatever reason decided not to go in even though he heard lots of shots being fired inside.

He tweeted pretty much the same thing before his speech, and he took another shot at Peterson later at a press availability with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia. This is the president of the United States shaming a guy who must be going through hellish guilt right now without having Cadet Bone Spurs heaping more on him by questioning his courage. Jesus H. Christ, what a bag of rancid sins this man is. Of course, we knew damn well he was a snake when he got elected.

Anyone who thinks that the kids from Stoneman Douglas High School aren’t in this for the long haul should consider how quickly they got into the head of Governor Rick Scott of Florida. The other day, some of them showed up at Scott’s office and a staffer said that Governor Bat Boy was “too busy” to see them. (To be fair, Scott was attending the funeral of one of the victims. That staffer must be in some real trouble.) Scott met with survivors on Thursday. By Friday, he was singing off-key in the Republican choir. From the NYT:

The governor, a Republican, backed raising the minimum age to buy any firearm, including semiautomatic rifles, to 21 from 18, a restriction opposed by the N.R.A., one of the most powerful special interest groups in Tallahassee. The minimum-age limit already exists for handguns, and it would have prevented Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old shooting suspect, from lawfully purchasing the AR-15 the police say he used to massacre 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. Mr. Scott’s plan, largely endorsed by House and Senate leaders, would not arm teachers, though lawmakers said their own proposals would create a “marshal” program to allow teachers who have had enough hours of training with law enforcement to be armed on campus. “I disagree with arming teachers,” Mr. Scott said. “My focus is on bringing in law enforcement. I think you need to have individuals who are trained, well trained.”

Scott got off lucky. You may recall that, the other night on CNN, Senator Marco Rubio got wrongfooted on the subject of taking campaign money from the National Rifle Association. His answers were not satisfactory. On Friday, Sarah Chadwick, a Parkland survivor, took to the electric Twitter machine:

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We should change the names of AR-15s to “Marco Rubio” because they are so easy to buy. — Sarah Chadwick (@Sarahchadwickk) February 23, 2018

Yeah, they’re coming for all of you. And they’re better at this whole social media thing than you are.



While we’re on the subject of governors, Eric Greitens of Missouri got hauled away by the local cops on a charge of felony invasion of privacy. This involves a really messy charge arising from an affair to which Greitens already has copped. Now, though, the Missouri GOP, and Greitens himself, have found the real culprits. From the Topeka Capital-Journal:

Greitens released a statement saying he made a mistake but “did not commit a crime.” He accused Gardner, a Democrat who was also elected in November 2016, of playing politics. “With today’s disappointing and misguided political decision, my confidence in our prosecutorial system is shaken, but not broken,” Greitens said. “I know this will be righted soon. The people of Missouri deserve better than a reckless liberal prosecutor who uses her office to score political points. Missouri Republican Party Executive Director Sam Cooper echoed those sentiments Friday, calling the indictment a “political hit job.”

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And, in case you didn’t get the point, the Missouri GOP was a little more specific. From the Riverfront Times:

“Kim Gardner has received more than $200,000 from George Soros groups. Missourians should see this for what it is, a political hit job.”

Oooooh, Soros! Boogedy-boogedy. It's a dogwhistle you can hear on Mars. This is incredibly lame.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: Parlez-Nous a Boire (Sweet Crude): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.



Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here’s a guy drinking tea on a tightrope strung across some mountains in Germany. “Rocking away in a cradle of death.” Narrators are such bummers.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, The Hill? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

The researchers, who were working on a Bureau of Land Management grant, announced their discovery at the Western Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists annual conference last weekend. The crocodile-like phytosaur dinosaur fossils were found in what the group of paleontologists said, "may be the densest area of Triassic period fossils in the nation, maybe the world." "Based on our small, initial excavation, we believe that this 63-meter (69-yard) site may be the densest area of Triassic period fossils in the nation, maybe the world. If this site can be fully excavated, it is likely that we will find many other intact specimens, and quite possibly even new vertebrate species,” said Rob Gay, the group's leader.

The punchline, of course, is that these fossils were found in what used to be part of the Bears Ears National Monument until the current administration* decided to trim the monument’s size, probably in preparation to sell it off to the highest bidder. Now, it’s got tremendous ideological value. Even in the places they chose to die, dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee is always glad to hear from visitors to the shebeen from overseas, especially from the Motherland. So, when Top Commenter Matt McAuley checked in from the banks of the Liffey regarding the CNN town hall on the Parkland massacre.

Thanks for your article. Long time reader, 1st time commenter. I live in Dublin. During the "Troubles" in NI the favourite weapons of terrorism, apart from bombs, were the Armalite and the AK47. 3000+ people were killed over 25 years. I had no idea that the "AR" meant Armalite. Killers gotta kill. Merchants of death gotta profit.

Always a pleasure to have you aboard, lad. Here are 77.19 Beckhams. Slainte!



I’ll be back on Monday with some of what I am sure will be very thick gobshitery regarding the country’s insane attraction to its firearms. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and don’t be blaming George Soros for not hitting the PowerBall.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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