Before we let Matt Gaetz ride off into the sunset, it is fair to mention that Gaetz, along with his bomb-throwing partner in slime, Marjorie Taylor Greene, are now being tapped for a cool $547,800 to compensate six separate public entities’ lawyers for defending them in a frivolous lawsuit brought by the pair in federal court here in California.

The story, largely going unnoticed in most other areas of the nation, is here at the Law and Crime website.

Back during the pandemic, Gaetz and Green were hosting MAGAniferous events in cities from coast to coast.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., left, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., raise their arms after addressing attendees of a rally, Friday, May 7, 2021, in The Villages, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

They had lots to talk about, what with the ongoing Big Lie brouhaha that brought in MAGAheads with empty minds and open wallets for an evening of grift and treachery.

Even here. But California isn’t a blue monolith. It is a red/blue mixture with blue counties squeezed in along the more populous coastline and red counties everywhere else.

Especially in Orange and Riverside Counties.

The duo contracted with Anaheim, known for Disneyland and The John Birch Society, and the City of Riverside to hold their events.

“Not so fast,” the NAACP, LULAC, the League of Women Voters, Unidos Por La Causa, the Riverside Democratic Party, and Women’s March Action seemed to say. “This isn’t a fact-free zone like you have back home.” And they protested the meetings. They did it so well that both Anaheim and Riverside decided to opt out.

Gaetz and Greene cried foul and sued the cities, a business, and the 6 above-named groups under a 153-year-old law (42 U.S.C. § 1985), the so-called Ku Klux Klan Act, meant to keep the KKK from conspiring to interfere with civil rights. That was just too clever by half. And wouldn’t you know it, their lawyer, you may have heard of, was John Eastman. Eastman is currently in the process of losing his license to practice law in The Golden State.

The Biden-appointed judge (i.e., one of the good ones), Judge Hernan Vera, thought they were justified in suing the cities and the business, but including the 6 protesting nonprofits was a step too far: their conspiracy theory relied purely on conjecture, a known “hard fact” among the MAGA-prone, but a non-starter with everyone else.

So Vera dismissed the protest groups from the suit and allowed that it would be good if the two sides just took care of their own costs and attorney’s fees.

But that didn’t work for the protest groups. They went back to the judge with the argument that they shouldn’t be punished simply because they were exercising their 1st Amendment rights. The judge agreed and this week put Gaetz and Greene on the hook for all six of the groups’ lawyers’ fees.

So that’s $273,900 each to Marge and Matt. My guess is that they’re going to fight it because that’s what MAGAs do. My free advice to both is to fundraise on the issue. After all, according to the election totals we’ve seen so far, PT Barnum horribly underestimated the basic rate at which suckers are born.

The Matt Gaetz Affair is now history as the miscreant/AG Appointee has now ended his quixotic charge at DOJ leadership.

Stick a fork in him. He’s done.

The endgame is clear, and Gaetz has no further options as a person of significance. It’s too bad it came to such a quick end before the media coined the term ‘Gaetzgate’. That would’ve been fun.

One other thing I’ve noticed. I have a background in pattern recognition in terms of morphology and have theories that I could bore you to tears with. That is a preface to this observation of mine: Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth look like they could be brothers.

See what I mean? The other commonality is that, from all reports, they enjoy similar alternative sex practices. This is a classic example of my rule that one’s “ethical content” is expressed externally.

Except for Margaret Hamilton. She was a nice enough person from all reports.

8

The news this week out of red Texas and blue California is a tale of priorities in regard to the education of our children.

In the left corner, we have this news item from the Modesto Bee. California, you see, was initially settled by Franciscan monks who built 21 missions from San Diego to San Francisco using the forced labor of the indigenous people. Then, the state-to-be was wrested from their control by Americans who took over the role of abusing the locals.

This depiction of California history has been untaught in the California curriculum in California’s public schools.

No longer.

Governor Newsom signed AB 1821, which will require elementary through high school education regarding the Mission and Gold Rush periods to include the treatment and perspectives of Native Americans. And as you can well imagine, the backlash was … well … non-existent. History may be written by the victors, but eventually, the truth will out.

In the right corner, we have a proposal to teach the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum to K-5 Texas children. Not a class in flower identification, this is an attempt to teach lessons from the Bible in a public school setting. This extends from a bill passed by the Texas Lege in 2023 (HB 1605) that turned the official Texas curriculum on its ear.

You can well imagine the angsty hearings that this new curriculum engendered. Eight hours of testimony by 150 speakers. Let’s see. Eight hours divided by 150 passionate speakers from both sides of the argument equals 3 minutes per speaker (rounding down). It was so much fun they’re doing it again next week.

California and Texas are two states separated by two states. And two idealogies.

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.