Matt Gaetz has a podcast and Marjorie Taylor Greene was his guest last week and I think we should all be grateful that such an event didn’t tear a hole in the space/time continuum.

On this show – which I have not and will not listen to – Greene outlined her demands of Kevin McCarthy if he wants to get her vote for Speaker.

“First she wants Rep. Adam Kinzinger get (R-IL), who is retiring, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to be kicked out of the GOP Conference and effectively booted from their committee posts. Next, she wants the other 11 Republicans who voted for impeachment stripped of their leadership positions on committees.”

Now, you see, here’s what’s odd about that. You’d think if she had like even one demand she’d ask for the name of a decent hairdresser. I mean, I hate to be cruel, but her head is as fried on the outside as it is on the inside.

She then whines that McCarthy says they can’t do that because it would take too many Republicans off of committees.  “They did it to me,” she sneers.  Honey, self awareness does not appear anywhere on her psychological chart. Also, she alone is not too many – it just seems that way because she never shuts up.

Several books, published and soon to be published, have reported how Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, fought a full time battle after Trump lost the election to keep him from using the military to attack Americans and even start a war with Iran to stay in power.  Even thought Milley hasn’t publicly confirmed this story, enough journalists have, including Susan Glasser of The New Yorker who independently confirmed what others have reported.  This story gave me chills down my spine.

Despite his supporters’ delusions and continued support of Trump’s Big Lie, the rest of us have to make sure that he never comes near the White House again.

So, happy Thanksgiving morning.  Since I did dressing, fresh string beans with mushrooms and bacon, and cranberry sauce yesterday, somebody else is doing the turkey, Brussel sprouts, and pecan pie today so I have some free time which I’m spending perusing the Washington Post. This story caught my eye.

“Consequences” and they put it in quotation marks because they knew that every single person reading it – but especially Russian spies – were laugh/snorting out their noses.  Woo woo – threatening me with “consequences.”

I’m real scared of consequences and, yes, sarcasm is just another of the free, friendly services we offer here at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon.  We just went through four years of something a jillion times worse than a Havana Syndrome and there were no consequences whatsoever.  None. Not even one damn slap on the hand.

What are we threatening them with?  We will go to a secret lab and develop the dreaded Florida Man Syndrome?

Hell, they don’t even know what Havana Syndrome is! I mean, it sounds like it ought to be “cigars give you hangovers” or some damn thing like that.

Y’all, I gotta quit reading the newspaper.

For a man who couldn’t run a twenty yard dash even if there was Piles O’ PAC Money on the other end, Ted Cruz has some majorly strong thoughts about the upcoming Olympics in China.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on Sunday that he hoped U.S. athletes “go over there and kick their commie asses” at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

First, commie? Really? It’s so much fun to dust off the Cold War.  Think of military industrial complex in these times of trouble we face.  We have radical rightwing theocracy threatening our survival but Ted is worried about the commies? Trump’s friends?

Ted ran for president and pretty much showed he’s out of the ass-kicking business.  He kow-towed to Donald Trump. Look, you gotta turn in your ass kickin’ keys when you allow a man to insult your wife’s appearance and call your father a murdered. That’s in the ass kickin’ rules. Look it up.

I think maybe Ted Cruz is just Louie Gohmert with hair and a weird accent.

Oh y’all, he’s running for Texas Attorney General due to his firm grasp on law and reality.

Bringing you up to date on this Disney Land Adventure, our current AG in Texas is an indicted felon who has been successful in postponing his trial since July of 2015 on three counts of security fraud. He’s a big buddy of Donald Trump.  Already in the race are George P Bush (Jeb’s son) and a very popular Republican Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman.

So why is Louie running?

Okay, Madam Swami Juanita looks into her rhinestone bedazzled crystal ball and gives it her damn best:  I cannot find anywhere online an answer if he can run for both a federal and a state office at the same time in Texas.  Thanks to Lyndon Johnson, you can run for both Vice President and senate for the same time in Texas, but I can’t seems to find a definitive answer in this case.  Glen says yes but I dunno, so I am checking it out.

But, the biggest take away on this is that Louie is broke – both personally and professionally. Well, and intellectually and morally.  PACs don’t give him money because nobody knows where his head will be on a given day.  His constituency is dirt poor so they don’t give him money, just prayers.

But, here ya go, Cocomo –

Gohmert announced earlier this month that he would join the GOP lineup against Paxton if he could raise $1 million in 10 days. The 10th day was Friday. Gohmert said in an announcement video that he has “reached our initial goal of raising $1 million in order to start a run for” attorney general, though he did not confirm whether he was able to collect it in 10 days.

Gohmert needs money for lawyers to cover his Donald Trump shenanigans.  Nobody is going to give money to a goofball in a safe Republican district who has accomplished exactly zero in his years in congress. So, running for a statewide race where he can attack the scientific basis for … well, everything and that includes s-e-x, Louie can part crazy people from their money, which is genius.

December 13th is the filing deadline in Texas, so don’t place any bets on what Louie will do until then.  If he can raise enough money by then, he’ll be back to running for congress.

He’s a whore, y’all.

We’ve talked about this before. We’ve talked about it all before. We are struggling to combat people that have no sense of shame. Doing so can be unsettling and confusing for those of us that operate in a world that has shame. Shame limits us and so there are suggestions that we shut off that portion of our mind that allows us to feel it. We fight fire with fire and guns with more guns. That’s not the answer in my opinion.

The gerrymandering of districts was originally designed to just provide one part with an advantage over the other, but it has done so much more and probably more than the architects of it originally intended. Those that study the competitiveness of House races have noticed something over time. Well under half are decided by ten points or less either way. Since the Supreme Court neutered the Voting Rights Act, the gap has been widening.

Of course, the Supreme Court is just one example of how gerrymandering has reared its ugly head. The Republicans have won exactly won election by majority since 1988. Yet, there is a 6-3 court on the conservative side and prominent Republicans are trying to convince us the country is center-right. What exactly is the evidence of that?

The damage is two-fold. Sure, we could look at this narrowly and say there are more Republicans in government than the demographics suggest there should be. Yet, that’s a small way to look at it. The secret lies in the non-competitive nature of those districts. Well over 300 of the 435 districts are currently non-competitive. If I don’t have to convince a majority to vote for me then I don’t have to be reasonable. I don’t have to compromise. In fact, the more extreme I can be the better.

If you want to fix what ails us you fix our democracy. Simply put, Congress needs to reflect the values of the people. If you look at individual planks of the legislation that passes the House (but not the Senate) then you’ll see that even a majority of people that consider themselves Republican consider them to be good ideas. So, it isn’t about Republicans vs. Democrats or any kind of a shift in the values that people actually have. Most people believe in fairness. Most people believe in compassion. Most people believe in human decency. We just have a system that rewards people that don’t believe in those things.

Those people then get to appoint our judges. Those judges then become the arbiters of justice. Sure, we notice huge trials like the Rittenhouse trial, but the key are the smaller ones no one pays attention to on a daily basis. They are the ones that incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people on drug charges or fail to protect women from would be predators. When heads repeatedly becomes tails it can catch up with you. When up is repeatedly force fed to us as down it takes its toll. People of a lesser mind come to believe justice is actually being served. People of a greater mind see the injustice and become either angry or apathetic. Neither serves us well.

We know how to fix it, but the question is whether we have the will to do it. We simply take the drawing of districts out of human hands. Studies have shown that computers can draw districts that can flip the switch. Instead of over 300 non-competitive districts we would have over 300 competitive ones. Politicians that just throw stink bombs into the process would be drummed out. I imagine some would adapt and some wouldn’t. What would remain would be a body politic that would reflect the real values of those that vote for them. Then come the judges and everyone else on down. It won’t happen overnight, but we didn’t get here overnight either. It just seems like we did.