The UK is suffering a deep gasoline shortage, with panic buying, long lines and even violence at gas stations breaking out all over the country.  Oh, there’s plenty of gasoline, but it can’t get to gas stations.  Why, you ask?  No truck drivers.  No truck drivers? Where did they go?  The answer? Back to their homes in Eastern Europe.  When isolationist conservatives in the country managed to pull off the almost impossible task of pulling out of the European Union, all free immigration between member countries and the UK came to a screeching halt.  So, not only did EU trade agreements end with Brexit, so did immigration.  So, the jobs that Brits don’t want, wait staff, dishwashers, slaughterhouse workers, housekeepers, and yes, truck drivers, have gone unfilled because of the isolationist policies of conservatives who push the same policies pushed by Trumpist Republicans in the US.  Boris Johnson has just put the British army on standby to put them into trucks to move gasoline from the ports to gas stations.

If you’re looking for how Trump’s plan to stop immigration would work out, you only need to look at the UK. Trying to wall off the country doesn’t work, has never worked, and will never work.  Countries’ economic prosperity is dependent on being a member of a global society which includes global markets and the ability of people to move to where the jobs exist.  That’s not what we’re seeing the in the UK, and conservatives in the US are trying to run us over the same cliff.

Well, the results of the AZ GOP led Fraudit are in, and guess what?  Biden won again, but by a wider margin.  What is this, like 6 times?  By my last count of counts, recounts, hand recounts, audits, and now fraudits, Biden has won something like 720 electoral votes.  Of course, The Former Guy is not letting up, now convincing Mini Me Greg Abbott to “audit” Texas (where he WON, BTW) grasping at any little straw to throw to his base, which is starving for more lies so they’ll go buy more cheap Made-in-China TFG flags to add to the already overflown collection on their trucks.

Trump will never give up, and short of his major health problem or felony conviction, he’s the candidate for 2024.  Come On, Cyrus Vance.

Rightwing extremists who continue to support the insurrectionists arrested in the aftermath of the attack on the US government at the Capitol on January 6th are organizing a “rally” at the Capitol for tomorrow to protest the arrests, charges, and detention of hundreds of criminals who destroyed property, assaulted police, and attempted to stop the Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote.  To publicize their rally, they’re spreading the hashtag #JusticeforJ6 all over social media.  Ironically, supporters of insurrectionists are calling these criminals “political prisoners”.  Worse, The Former Guy took a break from golf and commentating at cheesy boxing matches to publicly support the insurrectionists and the rally.  Yesterday, still banned from social media, he issued a statement saying:

“Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election.  In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice. In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”

So, the guy who incited the riot and attack on the US Capitol is STILL fomenting violence against the US, the country he’s trying to take over again for his own benefit.  The Great Unwashed Brainwashed white supremacists are beyond redemption, believing they are in the right and following a dangerous ideology where they actually the “patriots” when they are actually the problem.  The fact that the police and national guard are being called on to reinstall the perimeter fence around the Capitol with HD cameras and 24 hour patrols should tell normal people everything they need to know about the danger of disinformation and hate.

Trumpists are using #JusticeforJ6 for publicity. I say that’s fine as long as you add #JusticeforJ65to20 to represent the prison sentences they should receive. I’ve got another idea, also; in June, Facebook banned Trump for 2 years with reinstatement conditioned on him changing his behavior.  They should modify the ban by extending it for 2 years from the date of his latest self-serving, anti-government rant.  That should do it.

#JusticeforJ65t020

We’ve talked at length about QAnon adherents bending reality, believing wild conspiracy theories, being anti-vaxxers, anti-mask, anti-science, and anti-common sense.  Most amazing about this phenomenon, though, is there absolute devotion to their delusion to the point of dying for it.  To wit, I give you Veronica Wolski, a high profile QAnon advocate from Chicago, who publicly protested against masks, vaccines, and against all things not Trump and who died of COVID this week.  Her dying is not the story, though; the story was that Lin Wood (yes, THAT Lin Wood) whipped up a QAnon protest last week in an attempt to force the hospital she was in to administer Ivermectin, the horse de-wormer, as treatment for COVID.  He has now declared that the hospital, Amita Health Resurrection Medical Center, caused her death through…wait for it…malpractice. He’s also made the same claim against the hospitals where Herman Cain died and another right wing activist and GOP party operative Presley Stutts.  Of course, Cain and Stutts died after being infected while not practicing normal masking and distancing protocols.  In fact, it’s likely that Cain was infected at the Trump campaign rally in Tulsa.

In an unrelated story, the fifth hate radio talker died this week.  He was Bob Enyart, an anti-science talking head and bible thumping preacher.  He was a charming fellow who made his career by bashing AIDS patients, calling for the death penalty for women who received abortions, and spreading the lie that the vaccines were made from aborted fetal tissue.  The irony is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

The stupidity of these people wouldn’t be so bad if they were only killing themselves, but they’re risking the lives of many other people AND stressing the medical staffs who are having to risk their own lives to treat these self destructive idiots.

Jesus.  Literally.

Yesterday, notable public figures paid their respects at solemn ceremonies at Ground Zero, Shanksville PA, and the Pentagon to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.  At ground zero, the Bidens, Obamas, and the Clintons were all present plus Schumer, Pelosi, Bloomberg and other well known public figures.  Bruce Springsteen even played and sang at the ceremony.  GWB & Laura, along with Harris attended the Shanksville ceremony, and Biden later stopped there and laid a wreath at the Pentagon late in the afternoon.

The glaring absence? Trump.  A spokesperson for the 9/11 Museum and Memorial confirmed to the NY Times that all former presidents were provided the same information about the ceremony, but Trump mercifully didn’t show.  How did he spend his day remembering 9/11?  Indeed he was also in New York, but he spent his day releasing statements attacking Biden about Afghanistan and playing some of his greatest Oldies, then visited a NYPD precinct and a firehouse, where he continue talking about himself and Rudy Giuliani and attacking Biden.

After, Trump was scheduled to address a religious rally virtually on the National Mall in DC called Let Us Worship led by religious nut and anti-government activist Sean Feucht, whose security team has included at least one of the insurrectionists charged in the January 6th attack on the Capitol as his security team.  I haven’t heard how that went, and actually don’t care.

Keeping it classy to the end, Trump finished his day commemorating 9/11 by…wait for it… guest hosting a Pay Per View boxing event with Jr. at a casino in Hollywood Florida hired by Triller, a social media competitor to TikTok.  The fight night included a “professional match” between 58 year old Evander Hollyfield and some mixed martial fighter. Oscar De La Hoya had been scheduled to fight, but is hospitalized with COVID.  Hollyfield was a last minute addition, and the results were as you might expect.  The event really wasn’t a fight night, it was really a publicity stunt by Trump for Trump, as the crowd at the casino was waving printed signs saying “Bring Back Trump” and “Trump Won”.  Watchers also participated in a live chat where viewers floated QAnon conspiracy theories, insults about Hunter Biden, etc, etc.  Since the entire evening was the cheesiest of cheesy, Trump, the King of Tacky, was right at home commemorating one of the most solemn days in modern US history.

Right-wingers and Trump’s media loudmouths are howling after the Biden administration ousted 18 Trump appointees from service academy boards, calling the ouster a “power grab” and “politicizing the service academies”.  Well, it’s just the opposite.  What most media is not reporting is that Biden’s move is part of his effort to clean up the open sewer Trump left behind when he finally vacated office on January 20th.

The rest of this story is this – after Trump lost the election, his acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller (you know, the guy who refused to send the national guard to the Capitol on January 6th), ousted dozens of academy and other board members and replaced them with Trump loyalists.  He packed the boards of at least 3 service academies as well as the Defense Business Board and added HUNDREDS of Trump appointees to boards within the DOD on 42 boards in all.  To contain the damage, new defense secretary Lloyd Austin suspended all board activities to do a “zero based review” of all the boards that Trump polluted with partisan, cronies, and loyalists. Biden’s move to oust 18 Trump appointees is just a part of the massive cleanup underway at DOD and other departments Trump infested.

Now you know the rest of the story.