Chuck Todd, that’s who.

Todd was not a journalist, reporter, or fact finder.  He let both sides say outrageous things, lie, and deny reality and then congratulated himself on presenting both sides.

Vanna White could have done a better job.

Chuck Todd wasted the slot supposedly intended for truth-finding and replaced it with letter turning.  “Okay, there are 2 Ms in the puzzle.  Do you want to take a guess?”

You know, I screamed obscenities at him but he just kept breathing and that’s about all he ever did.

I wonder if Vanna is looking for work.  I think she could be trained.

Chuck, don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

Some years ago, Jack Black was cast in a comedy called “Shallow Hal”. The idea behind the movie was that Tim Robbins met him in an elevator and hypnotized him so that he would see someone’s inner beauty on the outside. He famously met Gwyneth Paltrow and saw who we normally see. In the movie, she was playing someone that was morbidly obese. One of the more interesting scenes had him viewing a woman that looked hideous to him, but to everyone else looked beautiful. They really didn’t explore that portion of the story that much. It seems that his altered perceptions went both ways.

The movie was a low budget comedy and wasn’t really meant to be a huge philosophical treatise on the world around us. It would seem that Kimberly Guilfoyle is beginning to look like that other woman in the film. There seems to come a time when what is on the inside and outside match. It is a fascinating thing for someone my age. She isn’t much older than me and I expect to see a number of women like her at my 30th high school reunion this summer.

If there’s ever a need for a warning about the long term effects of heavy drinking and drug use on a person’s face, this is it. pic.twitter.com/4Ll6Qq4noW

— Sgt Joker (@TheSGTJoker) June 2, 2023

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t enjoy this as much as it looks like I enjoy it. Schadenfreude is shameful as we noted in an earlier piece. There is the very real consideration that enjoying something like this too much makes you an ugly person on the inside. The whole point of the exercise is that the ugly on the inside eventually makes it to the outside. I typically enjoy these types of events because you get to catch up with people you liked in school but also get to take a look at the road not travelled. In my case, there were obvious road blocks on those roads so that a part of me enjoys seeing that life turned out better because I wasn’t allowed to travel down that road.

Guilfoyle has lived an interesting life. She was once married to Gavin Newsome, then became a very popular and appealing face on Fox News, and finally wound up with Donald Trump Jr. Obviously, that arc could be seen as pointed up or pointed down based on your perception of those events. I imagine most people here see that as a pointedly dissenting arc from the top shelf to something someone might kick into the dustpan of history.

So, I leave this with only a few jokes and comments. Someone wise once said a picture paints a 1000 words and far be it from to me add a ton of words to that picture. As people around here know far too well, I could write 1000 words about just about anything. So, I stop and leave this for everyone to enjoy.

Y’all, I’m finding this hard to believe but  New York Times has reported that a Trump aide, Margo Martin, routinely recorded interviews Trump gave, so there might be more audio recordings in the hands of the special counsel.

More. Tapes. Kapow!

And since even Nixon had a better grip on reality than Trump, Bozo Boy will claim the tapes are AI with enhanced audio affects provided by Elon Musk and Jimmy Carter.

Every picture I’ve seen of Jack Smith he looks serious and downright grim.  You know he’s smiling in private, right?

One more thing.  Republicans are saying that Joe Biden is senile. Okay, let’s pretend that is true.  Then, I gotta say this: a senile Joe Biden is still a helluva lot smarter than Kevin McCarthy.

Well, he’s selling off his other airplane.  The little (9 Seater) jet, probably to pay for the renovations to his big ole honker airplane with gold plated seatbelts.

I just thought you might want to go have a look at it before some Saudi pays five or six times its worth. It’s a nine seater that is called sky rocket because it goes so fast.

I kinda think Trump should have kept it around, so he could fly his supporters to come visit him in prison.  A couple of the seats will be empty, and I don’t think his Trump Force One will be kind on his dwindling bank account.

Sorry to be so totally absent for a few days.  But, I’m well and have some thing to share today.

It’s always nice to know that Louie Gohmert is outta sight but still screwing up.  Come to find out, the unscrupulous sumbitch tried to make off with peoples’ money. Although he wasn’t running for Congress because he quit Congress to run against the currently impeached Ken Paxton and lost in a landslide, he tried to make money under the table.

The FEC caught him and he’s gotta pay it back.

Kinda makes you smile, doesn’t it?

After yesterday’s news that Ken Paxton has been referred to the full Texas House for impeachment, my only question was, which crime was finally bad enough to finally tip the scales of justice against him?  Did Republicans finally awake from an 8 year coma?  Did they finally turn on the news?  Identifying crimes and conduct that have been obvious to normal Texans for years, the House General Investigating Committee filed 20 articles of impeachment against Paxton listing crimes and corrupt conduct such as bribery, misuse of funds, abusing employees, using the power of his office to help a friend in a private lawsuit, lying on the record, and dereliction of duty, among other acts not generally associated with a state’s top law enforcement officer.  Paxton’s defense?  It’s rich – you can’t impeach me for any crimes I committed BEFORE the last election.  His argument is that each election washes away any prior misdeeds from previous terms.  This  claim not the only issue, though.

Paxton has been under felony indictment for securities fraud, among other crimes, FOR EIGHT YEARS.  He has successfully buried that case for that extended period after the legislature passed a 2015 law at Abbott’s urging to dismantle the Public Integrity Unit run by the Travis County DA and move cases against statewide officials to the Texas Rangers and local prosecutors in officials’ home jurisdictions.  Paxton’s felony case was moved from Austin to Collin County and was buried and remains bogged down to this day.  In fact, since that law was enacted, prosecutions of state officials have virtually disappeared.  90% of investigations result in no charges, and the people who are charged are generally low level employees.  This is not a flaw in the law – it’s a feature; the legislature and Abbott successfully blunted the only tool Texas had to prosecute corruption by taking away the only independent watchdog in the state.  Paxton’s unchecked corruption and criminality is the logical (and obvious) result of dismantling the existing justice system.  And it’s not just Paxton – high level officials in Austin can pretty much do what they want as long as their local DAs protect them, and that is exactly what’s happening.

What kicked off this entire episode this session was a request by Paxton that WE, the taxpayers, pay $3.3 million to settle one of the lawsuits against him that had been filed by his former employees for abuse and retaliation.  House speaker Dade Phelan had opposed the payment and the investigation into this settlement was begun.  That investigation then turned into an impeachment inquiry as the evidence against Paxton became so mountainous that not even Republicans could ignore it.

So the question is, which crime tipped the scales of justice?  Was it one crime, or did the collective weight of them all finally do the deed?  In my view, any of these well known crimes should have resulted in Paxton’s removal and jailing years ago.  That it hasn’t happened is a direct result of Republican corruption and the Texas Rangers looking the other way while local prosecutors selectively charged other low level officials.

I’ve believed since Rick Perry that Texas was lost.  It’s still lost, but have we finally reached bottom after 30 years of decline?  I’m a long way from popping champagne and tossing babies in the air, but maybe we’ve finally gotten there.  There’s no way but up from here.