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

I had the week’s entire concluding screed almost finished. It was about how this was the week in which all the smoke cleared, and all the wires were revealed, and all the illusions dispelled, and all we were left with was the simple, terrifying fact that the President* of the United States is a half-senile old fool whose own people don’t think is up to the job of selling apples from a steam-grate, let alone running the Executive branch of an established democracy. It also was about the shameful cowardice and dereliction of duty on the part of the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the members of which would rather destroy the lives of the poor and unfortunate than undertake their constitutional duty of reining in a White House gone completely mad.

I had a nice line in there about how Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, hate Democrats far more than they love their country. I put Michael Schmidt’s Friday morning scoop together with the revelations from Michael Wolff’s sensational book and determined, rather loudly, that we are governed by people who, if they do not fit the constitutional definition of being traitors, are behaving like traitors in all but name. I hung some bright lights on the fact that, just in the last week, Republicans have called for investigations into Hillary Rodham Clinton, James Comey, Huma Abedin, and Jerry Brown, none of whom have done anything except inconvenience the grifter-in-chief and his worthless spalpeens. It was all set to go.

And then this happened. From The New York Times:

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier, and they urged the department to investigate. The committee is running one of three congressional investigations into Russian election meddling, and its inquiry has come to focus, in part, on Mr. Steele’s explosive dossier that purported to detail Russia’s interference and the Trump campaign’s complicity.

Come on.

I mean, really, come the fck on.

Graham, Grassley, and Trump Getty Images

Not long ago, the Republicans defending the president* committed themselves to a line of defense that depended vitally on the FISA warrant issued against the Trump campaign having been prompted by the now-famous—and largely substantiated—“Steele dossier.” They then broke a lot of rock trying to convince people a) that the dossier was a fake, and that b) it was a Democratic plant in the first place. That particular barricade detonated over the past few weeks.

First, we learned that the warrant was prompted by the fact that a Trump aide named George Papadopolous drank himself sockless in a London wine bar and ran his mouth to an Australian diplomat. (Pro tip: drinking with Aussies is not for amateurs.) Then, the two principals in the firm that engaged Steele’s services wrote a savage op-ed denouncing the Republican efforts to investigate the investigators as a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a sham of two mockeries of a sham.

Getty Images

Now, it appears, the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are so dedicated to protecting a dangerously incompetent president that they’re willing to do almost anything. Grassley is just an old crank having fun in his legislative dotage, but the conversion of Lindsey Graham into a Southern-fried Lewandowski has been a dark wonder to behold. I’m not an adherent to conspiracies about kompromat but, Jesus H. Christ on a covert wiretap, this transformation cannot be explained by conventional political science.

Mr. Grassley’s decision to recommend criminal charges appeared likely to be based on reports of Mr. Steele’s meetings with the F.B.I., which were provided to the committee by the Justice Department in recent weeks.

Or on something some staffer’s grandmother emailed after having a hot dream about Sean Hannity dipped in butter. Who the hell knows at this point?

It was not clear why, if a crime is apparent in the F.B.I. reports that were reviewed by the Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department had not moved to charge Mr. Steele already. The circumstances under which Mr. Steele is alleged to have lied were unclear, as much of the referral was classified.

They aren’t going to pull back. They aren’t going to stop. They aren’t going to do their jobs. Their patriotism extends only as far as a donor’s wallet and their devotion to the Constitution can be measured with an eyedropper. Nobody truly can be said to be NeverTrump anymore who is not also NeverMcConnell, NeverRyan, and, frankly, NeverGOP, at least in its current manifestation. The prion disease has triumphed completely. The patient is brain-dead, but still deadly in its contagion.



This should work out splendidly. From Politico:

With rumors swirling that Jeff Sessions could depart the administration and two members of the House Freedom Caucus calling on the former Alabama senator to resign, Pruitt is quietly positioning himself as a possible candidate for the job. “Pruitt is very interested,” a person close to him said. “He has expressed that on a number of occasions.” It’s unclear whether Pruitt would be on the shortlist for the position, but people close to the president said Trump has grown to like him. Pruitt has emerged as the face of Trump’s deregulatory agenda, taking steps to overturn former President Barack Obama’s climate change regulations. He was also a leading advocate for pulling out of the Paris agreement on climate change.

You can do worse in this administration than position yourself as the president*’s favorite vandal. Or so says Politico, anyway, and Pruitt has more than qualified on that score. Most recently, the administration* announced that it’s all hands on deck for offshore drilling, including in and around the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the Arctic waters around Alaska. (Even Governor Bat Boy in Florida thinks this is a terrible idea, and environmental protection groups are predictably agog.) Pruitt’s work at the EPA is probably done and I have no doubt that this administration* will find someone worse than him if and when he ascends to the top spot in the Department of Justice. There’s never been a better time in history to fail upwards in high office.



Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: “Hill Country Hoodoo” (The Jake Leg Stompers): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathe Archives: Fifty years ago this week, Alexander Dubcek replaced Antonin Novotny as First Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. This began the series of events that led to the Prague Spring and to the eventual invasion of Czechslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops the following August. Here is a very strange British film about the events that apparently was shot by the people convinced they were making a movie about Jean Shrimpton. History is so cool.



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

A new research report has concluded that a lizard whose fossils were found inside a dinosaur skeleton in 1859 is indeed a new species, putting to rest a puzzle that has baffled scientists for more than 150 years. Prior to this finding, the gekho-like creature, which was found inside the gut of a fossilised carnivorous dinosaur Compsognathus longipes, was thought to be an extinct lizard in Germany (Bavarisaurus macrodactylus)… The report points to the unique shape of the lizard's skull stitchings and skull bones. Dr. Conrad named the lizard Schoenesmahl dyspepsia, which roughly means “beautiful meal that is difficult to digest.”

Imagine. You’re a little dinosaur who gets gobbled up by a bigger one. Millions of years later, you baffle even the smartest of the highly evolved primates who came after you. Then, when one of them finally figures it out, he gives you a funny name that sounds like the translation of something on the menu at a high-end noodle shop. Tell me that dinosaur isn’t immortal, and that it didn’t live then to make us happy now.

The Committee struggled through bombogenesis in order to complete its weekly deliberations. While huddled over a fire in an oil barrel in the center of the shebeen’s function room, The Committee members knew that the winner probably would come from the news that The Girl With The Faraway Eyes was, well, eying a comeback.

Sure enough, Top Commenter Lisa Van Sickle came through with a reminder of one of the high points of the Bachmann for America Padded Bus Tour in 2012.

Anyone who confuses John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy will keep the race exciting.

I have to admit, even I’d forgotten about that one. Here are 78.29 Beckhams for having a good memory for past cray-cray.

I’ll be back on Monday with some further presidentin’-is-not-for-idiots gobshitery as our elite political press continues to ponder how we got ourselves into this terrible mess. Oh, yeah, the DOJ is investigating the Clinton Foundation again. Can’t imagine how we ended up with this president. Anyway, be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and keep your movie stars and serial killers straight.

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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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