I made a collage of these two guys in a similar circumstance. In each case they were having a meal with a president-elect. I would caption it “Deer in the headlights.” But that’s just me.

Since dumping Xitter earlier this year, I don’t hear much about parody users there anymore unless their posts show up on platforms other than Elon’s. I used to howl at “sitsnexttokimdavis,” who used to troll former county clerk Kim Davis, who famously refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

But this parody user had me going for a few minutes until I decided to find out who the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks was behind the “@realdogenews” handle.

It wasn’t Elon, that’s for sure.

The personna or “voice” of the “X” poster behind Department of Government Efficiency Parody (yes, “parody” is in the title) sounds like a scheming middle schooler, or you could say and not be wrong, exactly what Elon Musk must be thinking.

The post that caught my attention was this one:

I shall explain.

At a meeting this weekend in DC, McConnell was heard to remark, “There will be no recess appointments,” in reference to Trumpelstiltskin’s requirement that his outrageous cabinet appointments be given a pass in what is termed “recess appointments,” a process of nonconfirmation confirmations.

The remark was immediately xeeted by a staffer on The New Yorker magazine, only to be quickly taken down. Too late. MAGAs saw the tweet and went ballistic with comments that may be summarized by this remark from the chair of the GOP Youth Advisory Council: “Nobody gives a damn about what Mitch McConnell has to say anymore.”

But @realdogenews captured their reactions perfectly by channeling what any given 13-year-old bully would say.

No one said that the demise of the American democracy couldn’t be fun.

We’ve all been watching with a mixture of horror and amusement (the latter of which was intended), while presidential appointments have been handed out as cavalierly as razor blade-bearing Halloween candy can be. But many important appointments have yet to be made by Don the Con (or whoever is actually making them), so I thought I’d try and help with a few suggestions of my own. They are not particularly well thought out, so they should match the appointments already made rather well, if I say so myself.

Labor. Doug McMillon. McMillon is CEO of Walmart and makes 1000 times the median income of a Walmart associate. McMillon was the driving force to replace the unionized butchers with prepackaged frozen meat at all of his stores.

Commerce: Peter Thiel. VP JD Vance once regarded him as his Sugar Daddy. Mutton gourmets will rejoice because Thiel will ensure that tarrifs on products imported from New Zealand, his recently adopted second country, remain the lowest in the world.

Treasury: Paul Cassano aka Paulie Roast Beef. A well-known associate of the Lucchese family of New York and New Jersey, Paulie knows where the bodies are buried, having dug a few of the interment sites himself.

Agriculture: William Anderson. CEO of Bayer AG, Bayer acquired Monsanto, which developed GMO technology. GMO seed production is akin to putting all of one’s eggs in one basket, so that when only one biological agent kills the world’s corn crop, it will make it ever so much easier to identify which one it is.

Transportation: Mark R. George. President and CEO of Norfolk Southern RailwIay, here is a CEO who knows about train derailment. Not about how to prevent them, which is defeatism writ large, but in cleaning up devastated derailment sites and burying bodies which is more hands-on.

Education: Herschel Walker. As a former NFL running back, Walker knows the value of a good education, having received a lesson in humility from Senator Raphael Warnock in 2022. He is noted for his work in Lycanthropy, having been the first to identify werewolves as the principle predator of vampires.

Housing: Vince McMahon. Formerly the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), McMahon knows absolutely nothing about housing or urban development. But neither did prenatal brain surgeon Dr. Ben Carson, who Donnie D Cups previously chose for the job.

CDC: Aaron Rogers. As yet another professional football player/appointee, Rogers is well-aware that one’s performance is related to his overall health and will work well with RFK, Jr’s mandate to nullify all vaccination mandates in the nation’s school systems.

Surgeon General: Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Yes, he’s still dead, so that should keep him from identifying any further life-threatening habits that Americans love and American businesses enjoy providing for.

Taken as a package with those already nominated, this rogue’s gallery of appointees should ensure that the 47th president’s next (and God willing, his last) term lives up to all of our expectations.

While MAGA Mike Johnson busily obstructed the release of a certain Ethics Report on a certain Congressman from Florida known for botox and boinking, he neglected to take into account that there might be others who might want to illuminate the matter with kleiglights.

So AG wannabe Matt Gaetz has to contend with the fact that an eyewitness “saw” Gaetz having sex with a girl who had not yet reached the age of consent, and said as much once Johnson decided to keep a lid on Gaetz’s Ethics Report.

From ABC News: “My client testified to the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed Matt Gaetz having sex with a minor,” Florida attorney Joel Leppard told ABC News.

I don’t really want to know how it was possible to witness Gaetz and his partner having sex. No, not really. Well, yeah, kinda. Was it a Diddyesque Freak Off?

Johnson said that he didn’t want to release the report because it would “open a Pandora’s Box”.

Aptly put.

Do you know how the term “Fake News” was coined? The term first appeared in the 1890’s when newspapers, mainly in New York, competed for subscribers by printing the most sensational news. Another term for fake news that I learned in school was “Yellow Journalism.” In this case, the term refers to a cartoon strip that appeared in Hearst newspapers called ‘Hogan’s Alley,’ which featured a character called “the yellow kid.”

The Yellow Kid

It was sensational news coverage in Hearst papers like the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor that whipped up American anti-Spain sentiment that resulted in an actual war with Spain. And the Yellow Kid got the blame.

Fast forward to 1988, and The Onion started publishing satirical news articles. The term “Fake News” was firmly attached to The Onion and its many copy cats.

Then Donnie D Cups got his hands on the term and applied it to legitimate news that criticized him for his many faults and misdeeds.

So it is not without a little irony that today we hear that “The Onion” made headlines in the legitimate news when they bought, at Alex Jones’ Infowars bankruptcy auction, Jones’s website, its social media accounts, its studio in Austin, Texas, its trademarks, and its video archive for an undisclosed sales price. 

Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, asks Alex Jones questions about his emails and text messages during trial at the Travis County Courthouse, Austin, Texas, U.S., August 3, 2022. Briana Sanchez/Pool via REUTERS

This is all brought to you by the lawsuits filed by Sandy Hook parents who successfully sued Jones for a collective $1.5 billion (yes, a billion with a “b”). No way these assets will cover his tab, but that wasn’t the point was it?

Fake News absorbs Fake News, and we go full circle.

I have to admit, the appointment announcements that we have heard about recently make absolutely no sense at all, which is not surprising in the least. It’s sort of like last time, but this time, it looks like someone is playing a parlor game.

I mean, really. Why did Don the Con appoint former Texas governor Rick Perry to head up the Department of Energy at the beginning of his previous term of office? His expertise? Hardly. His degree was in Animal Science, and his expertise before politics was driving Air Force cargo planes.

So why was he tapped by Bronzer Boy to be his Secretary of Energy? In the end, the only thing I could come up with at the time was that it resulted from an on-stage, on-camera primary debate faux pas when he forgot which executive branch departments he would eliminate as president. He forgot that one of his target departments was the Department of Energy. Remember his “Oops” moment?

So what could be funnier than appointing Rick Perry to the department that he forgot he wanted to eliminate?

Making appointments to critical government positions has apparently become a parlor game at Mar-A-Lago these days. The game apparently begins with the question, “Wouldn’t It be funny if…” And the winner is the one that comes up the most uproariously funny answer. And then it’s funnier still when Donald does the deed.

Or so it seems to me.

For example. Wouldn’t it be funny if child sexual trafficking Matt Gaetz was appointed Attorney General? Oh man, the Libs are gonna scream bloody murder. What an opportunity to collect some Liberal tears.

Wouldn’t It be funny if Libertarian and Pro-Putin propagandist Tulsi Gabbard was appointed Director of National Intelligence? That would be a knee slapper! They’re gonna think she’s passing information to Vlad!

Wouldn’t It be funny if Pete Hegseth, a clownish Fox News Weekend anchor, got appointed Secretary of Defense? Sean Hannity will be livid!

Wouldn’t It be funny if Christy Noem was appointed Secretary of Homeland Security? Undocumented migrants won’t know who she is, but disobedient puppies will all run for cover.

Parlor games. It has to be something like that, or it doesn’t make any sense. If this keeps up, Andy Borowitz’s comment that “we’re gonna need a bigger clown car” is more truth and less funny.