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

This is the headline at the website of the New York Times atop its story about El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago's appearance in the Rose Garden on Friday.



Trump Declares National Emergency to Build Border Wall

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From the Washington Post, we get:



Shutdown averted: President Trump has signed a sweeping spending bill hours before funding expired for parts of the government

And from the Wall Street Journal:

Trump Declares Emergency, Plans to Allot Billions in Additional Wall Funds

There are fine journalists who work at all three of these respected publications. I know many of them and, most of the time, I hold their work in high regard. But I fear they missed the story that was staring them right between the eyes on Friday. To wit:

The President* is A Delusional Maniac With Sawdust Pouring Out Of Both Ears.

My sweet bearded Lord, what a performance. I don't know what my favorite part was. It might have been when he admitted to NBC's Peter Alexander that he was only declaring an emergency because he wanted to get his mitts on the money as fast as possible. It might have been the moment when he recalled how Barack Obama told him that he was planning on launching a "very big war" on the Korean Peninsula (And this was after the president* said he wouldn't speak for Obama, and then made up a bullshit story about him.)

Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

Was it is revelation that Shinzo Abe of Japan had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize? Was it the way he repeatedly hung Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen out to dry, telling the reporters that the statistics on immigrants and crime produced by DHS didn't match up with the secret "stats" he has? It may have been when he shouted out his favorite wingnut celebrities, and then said that not only did he not know Ann Coulter, but that he hadn't talked to her in a year. Oh, OK. If you wanted to produce a commercial to sell the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, this was it.

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But the most singularly terrifying moment came when the president* explained how he likely is going to have to fight his emergency declaration through the courts.

So the -- the order is signed. And I'll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office. And we will have a national emergency, and we will then be sued, and they will sue us in the 9th Circuit, even though it shouldn't be there, and we will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we'll get another bad ruling, and then we'll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we'll get a fair shake and we'll win in the Supreme Court.

It wasn't what he said, but the way he said it. He lapsed into a sing-song cadence that was half-middle-school-taunt and half-serial-killer. No president in my lifetime ever did voice acting, let alone a voice that made you want to make sure he was kept away from the White House cutlery. The man is not all there. Everybody knows it. If your uncle behaved like the president* behaved on Friday, you'd hide his car-keys, lock up the booze, and drive him to the neurologist.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI Getty Images

The only person who said it out loud was Bill Weld, and he said it at a breakfast in New Hampshire, a couple of hours before the president* emerged into the Rose Garden and had his episode.

The answer to all these questions, and I say this with a heavy heart, is that we have a President whose priorities are skewed toward promotion of himself rather than toward the good of the country. He may have great energy and considerable raw talent, but he does not use them in ways that promote democracy, truth, justice and equal opportunity for all. To compound matters, our President is simply too unstable to carry out the duties of the highest executive office – which include the specific duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed – in a competent and professional manner. He is simply in the wrong place.

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The key word in there is "unstable." People should start using it.

Praise be to federal judge Amy Berman Jackson. On Friday afternoon, she slapped a gag order on the unredeemable Roger Stone, and on all the attorneys involved in his trial in Washington. It was getting preposterous the way that Stone was able to command the attention of the television cameras, especially those belonging to Fox News, and spread disinformation around like it was the old days before he was indicted. Anything designed to shut him up is a blessing.

Roger Stone ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS Getty Images

Out in Wyoming, the state senate defeated an attempt to repeal that state's death penalty. No surprise there, except one state senator let fly with a defense of capital punishment that I'd never heard before. From the Casper Star-Tribune:

Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, argued that without the death penalty, Jesus Christ would not have been able to die to absolve the sins of mankind, and therefore capital punishment should be maintained. “The greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty for you and me,” she said. “I’m grateful to him for our future hope because of this. Governments were instituted to execute justice. If it wasn’t for Jesus dying via the death penalty, we would all have no hope.”

If Jesus does come back here, I'll lose all respect for Him. Seriously.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Shreveport Stomp" (Wilbur de Paris): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: In celebration of Valentine's Day events in the city of Chicago, here's Al Capone's funeral from 1947. Pallbearers look cold for a Florida funeral. Of course, the overcoats covered a multitude of sins back then. History is so cool.



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Oh, goddammit. I'm so fcking tired of this.





The Mars Opportunity Rover Getty Images

One of the most heartwarming things on the electric Twitter machine this week was the great outpouring of thoughts and prayers aimed at the Mars Rover Opportunity as it reached the end of its mission. It lasted far longer than it was expected to last, and we are a smarter, richer people for its having done so. I don't know why, but the song, "Daisy," keeps running through my head.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in space, My Favorite Machine is still cranking out the goods. West Wing fans will remember the Orion Nebula as the view that gobsmacked Josh Lyman through the telescope, occasioning some inexcusable snark aimed at Joni Mitchell.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Science Daily? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

The OHIO team identified and named the new species of dinosaur in an article published this week in PLOS ONE. The new dinosaur, the third now described from southwestern Tanzania by the NSF-funded team, is yet another member of the large, long-necked titanosaur sauropods. The partial skeleton was recovered from Cretaceous-age (~100 million years ago) rocks exposed in a cliff surface in the western branch of the great East African Rift System. The new dinosaur is named Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia (Mm-nya-ma-wah-mm-too-ka mm-oh-yo-wa-mm-key-ah), a name derived from Swahili for "animal of the Mtuka (with) a heart-shaped tail" in reference to the name of the riverbed (Mtuka) in which it was discovered and due to the unique shape of its tail bones.

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A massive creature with a heart-shaped tail? And on Valentine's week? Tell me that dinosaurs didn't live then to make us happy now.

As you know, The Committee is a great fan of sophisticated interjections, so Top Commenter Frank Armstrong won this week's Top Commenter of the Week in the first four words of his Top Comment about the Wisconsin legislature's garbage take on Colin Kaepernick—who, it should be noted, got paid on Friday.

Sweet thundering moon ducks, Jesus was a controversial figure!

That is the way to grab the reader's attention, boyo. Here are 81.11 Beckhams for your amusement.

I'll be back Monday, if we all survive the state of National Emergency over the weekend. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, avoid the thunder of the moon ducks, and give thanks to our president*, who declared a National Emergency so imminent and profound that it required his immediate presence in a sand trap at his golf club in Florida.

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