It has been a long time since I’ve lived in my hometown of Washington, D.C. I don’t have much sentimental affection for the place. But as I joined my fellow Americans in watching a mob lay waste to the Capitol building on Wednesday, I felt grief as well as rage. I wanted to scream, but I wanted to cry too.
Let’s not resort to euphemisms about what happened. There were no “very fine people” among these rioters. They are trash. They trashed the people’s house so they could feel right at home. They are heartless and brain-dead. They laughed and preened and took selfies as they smashed windows, threatened the lives of public servants, vandalized Congressional offices, and made a mockery of a building and a flag that stand for the idea of America the Beautiful, unrealized as that idea too often is.
More information continues to emerge about the events of Wednesday. They point to a broader conspiracy than it first appeared. Calls for Trump’s removal from office are growing. The Republican Party is tearing apart. Power in the nation is shifting almost by the minute.
[Please note that information from the January 6 riot is changing almost hourly, and it is virtually certain that something I have written will be incorrect. I have tried to stay exactly on what we know to be facts, but those could change.]
WASHINGTON — The mob of Trump supporters pressed through police barricades, broke windows and battered their way with metal poles through entrances to the Capitol. Then, stunningly, they breached the “People’s House” itself, forcing masked police officers to draw their guns to keep the insurgents off the chamber floor.
“I thought we’d have to fight our way out,” said Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a former Army Ranger in Iraq, who found himself captive in the House chamber.
As more and more detail emerges about the events in the nation's capital Wednesday, it becomes clearer that this was a planned revolt and that it was organized within the Republican establishment. So much so that the Republican Association of Attorneys General (RAGA)—the chief Republican law enforcement officers for their states—used its dark money group to help organize the mob. The Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), a "nonprofit" set up by the RAGA, appears in a list of groups "Participating in the March to Save America" along with Stop the Steal, Turning Point Action, Tea Party Patriots, and others.
LONDON — Britain started 2021 in a new relationship with its biggest trade partner, and it has immediately brought a litany of headaches and lost business.
Within a week, implications of the Brexit trade deal with the European Union are being felt by businesses up and down the country as food deliveries are delayed for not having the right customs paperwork, logistics companies halt the shipment of goods, and retailers discover their supply chains might be obsolete.
This is just the beginning.
I’m shocked, positively SHOCKED I TELL YOU, that Trump’s minions resorted to violence and broke into the Capitol. Who woulda thunk it? EVERYBODY!
I just didn’t feel it when Trump hassled Raffensperger. What I mean is it was heinous, but it was not palpable. Maybe it’s covid lockdown, maybe it’s the broad spectrum internet era, but when something as bad as this happened in the last century, you’d feel the buzz amongst the populace, that something unique was going on, something dangerous. Just ask anybody who lived through Kent State, never mind the assassination of President Kennedy. It’s like our entire nation has become blasé.
LOS ANGELES — It starts with spider sex.
Louise Linton, in character as Catherine Black, an exquisitely attired bisexual sociopath, watches a hairy spider tiptoe across her desk. It comes a little bit closer. And closer. In steely voice-over, Catherine contemplates the peculiarities of arachnid biology: how some females kill and consume their partners after sex. Why are some males willing to risk anything, even copulatory suicide, to get it?
And then she tosses the critter into her mouth: chomp.
While in China, an Australian man is very sexually promiscuous and does not use a condom the entire time he is there.A week after arriving back home in Melbourne, he wakes one morning to find his penis covered with bright green and purple spots.
Horrified, he immediately goes to see a doctor.
The doctor, never having seen anything like this before, orders some tests and tells the man to return in two days for the results.The man returns a couple of days later and the doctor says, "I've got bad news, you have contracted Mongolian VD. It's very rare and almost unheard of here in this country, we know very little about it. "
The man looks a little perplexed and says, "Well, give me a shot or something and fix me up, Doc."
The doctor answers, "I'm sorry, there's no known cure. We are going to have to amputate your penis."
The man screams in horror, "Absolutely not! I want a second opinion!!! "
The doctor replies, "It is your choice. Go ahead if you want, but surgery is your only option."
The next day, the man seeks out a Chinese doctor in Little Bourke Street, figuring that he'll know more about the disease.
The Chinese doctor examines his penis and proclaims, "Ah, yes, Mongolian VD. Vewy ware disease."
The guy says to the doctor, "Yeah, yeah, I already know that, but what can we do? My local GP wants to cut off my penis!"
The Chinese doctor shakes his head and laughs. "Stupid local docttah, always want opawate. Make more money dat way. No need amputate!"
"Oh, thank God!" the man exclaims.
"Yes," says the Chinese doctor. "Wait two week. Fall off by itself!"
"An old, blind cowboy wanders into an all-girl biker bar by mistake...
He finds his way to a bar stool and orders a shot of Jack Daniels.
After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender, 'Hey, you wanna hear a blonde joke?'
The bar immediately falls absolutely silent.
In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says, 'Before you tell that joke, Cowboy, I think it is only fair, given that you are blind,
that you should know five things:
1. The bartender is a blonde girl with a baseball bat.
2. The bouncer is a blonde girl with a 'Billy-Club'.
3. I'm a 6-foot tall, 175-pound blonde woman with a black belt in karate.
4. The woman sitting next to me is blonde and a professional weight lifter.
5. The lady to your right is blonde and a professional wrestler.
'Now, think about it seriously, Cowboy ... do you still wanna tell that blonde joke?'
The blind cowboy thinks for a second, shakes his head and mutters, 'No ... not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times"...
she happily sits upon her rocking chair, watching
One sunny afternoon out of nowhere, appeared the
The fairy godmother replied, 'Cinderella, you have
Cinderella was taken aback, overjoyed, and after some
Instantly her rocking chair turned into solid gold.
Cinderella said,
The fairy godmother replied,
Cinderella looked down at her frail body, and said,
And then the fairy godmother spoke once more:
Magically, Bob suddenly underwent so fundamental
The fairy godmother said, 'Congratulations, Cinderella, enjoy your new life.'
For a few eerie moments,
Then Bob walked over to Cinderella, who sat transfixed
He leaned in close, blowing her golden hair with his warm breath as he whispered...
