You certainly remember Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s former foreign policy advisor and current right wing freak.

Poor Gorka got himself worked into a lather over the culture wars. Specifically, he started clutching his pearls over “Arthur,” the animated PBS children’s series about an anthropomorphic aardvark.

Gorka, who brandished the insignia of a historically Nazi-aligned Hungarian group called the Vitezi Rend at an inauguration ball in January 2017, flew into a rage because the season’s Monday premiere featured a gay wedding. Arthur’s third-grade teacher, Nigel Ratburn, exchanges vows with a local chocolatier, an aardvark named Patrick.

Be assured that the gender of the two people was never discussed and no to-do was made over a gay marriage.  It was treated as any other marriage would be.  How Gorka can identify the gender of a cartoon aardvark is something I really don’t want to know about.

He raged. He snorted. He declared western civilization dead, dead, dead. “This is a war for our culture, and that’s why we exist here, on ‘America First,’ on the Salem Radio Network,” Gorka said, on his radio show.

Look, the only indication from the whole event that western civilization is dead is Gorka. Someone should probably explain to Sebastian Gorka that if you’ve been reduced to attacking cartoon aardvarks on PBS it isn’t so much a sign of a cultural ‘war,’ as it is a sign of diminished capacity and not on the part of the aardvark!

Thanks to Deb T for the heads up.

We all know that John Bolton hates everyone and everything Iranian.  He desperately tried to get GWB to bomb Tehran back to the stone age, but still licking his wounds from his folly in Iraq, even HE wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Bolton’s bullshit on Iran.

Well, Bolton’s got a president now who is remarkably more stupid that GWB, so it’s Deja Vu all over again, and this time Trump IS stupid enough to go along with him.  Even while he denies he’s planning on sending in 120,000 troops into the Middle East, the defense department is planning on…sending 120,000 troops to the Middle East.  As we talked about yesterday, he’s already moved a carrier battle group into the region, and B-52 bombers are being staged into the area.

Now the State Department has ordered the consulates in Iraq be evacuated.  US central command in the Middle East has troops on high alert citing threats from Syria and Iran.  The problem, though, is that no one outside of the US government sees ANY increased threat from Iran.  In fact, the senior British officer in the coalition anti-terrorism operation in the Middle East confirms there is no increased threat; Trump responded to his comments as “fake news”.

In 2002, I was highly skeptical of all the bullshit that Bush/Cheney was peddling to whip up a war with Saddam Hussein.  Nothing they said made any sense, and there was NO evidence that Iraq had anything whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks.  This drumbeat to war feels the same to me.  No one with the government has given ANY evidence that Iran or Syria are doing anything that is more threatening that their normal hostility.  Because of these circumstances, I’m going to continue calling bullshit on Trump and call this what it is – Wagging the Dog to win the next election.  Nothing more, nothing less.

It appears that Jared has it floored in neutral.

Jared met in a closed-door meeting with senate Republicans to discuss his plan to to overhaul the immigration system.

It did not go well.

… privately, Republican officials said Kushner did not have clear answers to some questions from the friendly audience, prompting Trump’s other senior adviser, Stephen Miller, to interrupt at times and take over the conversation.

Honey, if you are dumber than Stephen Miller and an assorted collection of Republicans senators, you need to find suitable employment over at the car wash.

Thelma says the reason you never see Stephen Miller smile is because when he smiles, he looks like he’s fixing to eat a liter of baby kittens.

“Resistance is not futile.”  A great read from Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen Restaurant who asked Sarah Sanders to leave.

Bill Barr, Attorney General In Name Only, has assigned the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut to examine the origins of the Russia investigation.

Little by little we are getting the answer to Kamala Harris’s question to Barr about who did Trump ask you to investigate?

His inquiry is the third known investigation focused on the opening of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation during the 2016 presidential campaign into possible ties between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates.

The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is separately examining investigators’ use of wiretap applications and informants and whether any political bias against Mr. Trump influenced investigative decisions. And John W. Huber, the United States attorney in Utah, has been reviewing aspects of the Russia investigation. His findings have not been announced.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but who is going to investigate these guys?

Okay, so come to find out, the NRA didn’t disclose the $250,000 it spent lobbying in Florida in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting.

The NRA paid a Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer, to fight gun control and lobby the legislature after the massacre, but didn’t report it.

There were additional payments. NRA tax returns show that Hammer received $147,000 in 2014, $172,000 in 2015 and $206,000 in 2016. The total: $525,000. For each of those years, the NRA reported she worked an average of five hours per week. None of it was reported to state lobbyist regulators.

She works half a day a week and makes three figures?  I need that job, y’all, and if it wasn’t for the selling your soul part, I’d apply for it.

Somebody get some marshmallows and sticks because the NRA is gonna burn itself up.

Yeah, that just makes my day.