Why I don't stroll down Fifth Avenue any more

Over on No More Mister Nice Blog this morning, I found blogger Steve M. speculating on what would happen if instead of Donald Trump, it was Bernie Sanders who shot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

Could we all please stop talking about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue? 

I know it's only a metaphor, but I live in New York, and every time I walk down Fifth Avenue it gives me the creeps. Why don't we give some other town a shot at Trump going berserk with a pistol in his hand?

How about Donald Trump shooting someone on East Wacker Drive in Chicago? Or Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles? Or California Street in San Francisco? Or Main Street in Columbus Indiana, Mike Pence's home town? 

Come to think of it, what if Donald Trump shot Mike Pence in the middle of Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, close to Mar e Lago? This would eliminate the need and subsequent embarrassment involved in firing the VP if we end up with a widespread Corona Virus epidemic, now that Pence is Trump's official Virus Czar. (It might also discourage some very wealthy people from joining the Mar e Lago club, so there's that.)

Or what if Bernie Sanders shot Donald Trump in the middle of Main Street in Burlington, Vermont, thus eliminating a lot of difficult decisions confronting undecided voters? 

Just speculating, of course. And you know that I'm only kidding.

But also, I'm not kidding. So, if there is still, anywhere in the White House, a grownup wandering the halls, maybe you could find a way to relieve Donald Trump of any firearm he happens to possess before he decides to test out his own theory.

Meanwhile, don't look for me on Fifth Avenue. I'll be on Madison. Or Lexington. Or Third. Or Broadway. And even so, I'll be looking over my shoulder.

Pope Donald I proffers papal indulgences. Drug cartel hippo poop pollutes hapless lake. Bloomberg’s Turbo-fib. Fate bites Senator Susan Collins’ butt. Plus 3 headlines to hope for.

Emotional support animal? I'll get to that  right after
Rob Blagojevich. So start reading

As Blago goes, so goes the nation. 

Oh look!  Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, now white haired and sporting a prison pallor after eight years in the jug, stood before the press showing all the remorse of a pit viper who had just bitten and swallowed a large and rather tasty rodent.

Blago had been sentenced to 14 years for corruptly trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after Obama had been elected President. Donald Trump just pardoned him. Here are a few nuggets of — dare I call it “Blagovian” self pity? — from the middle of a New York Times story by Julie Bosman:

He described himself as a “freed political prisoner” and said he hoped “to turn an injustice into a justice.”And he spoke of his eight years in prison, the solitary nights behind “the iron door that can shut you in, a small window with bars on it, and a bunk bed.” 

“I slept on the top bunk,” Mr. Blagojevich recalled. “Often late at night I would look through that window and past those bars out into the night sky and I’d think of home, I’d think of my children, I’d think of Patti. Sometimes I could almost feel her near me,” he said.

Hey, as they say where I come from, if you do the crime, you do the time. But Blago had his time sliced in half thanks to the pardon from Trump, who lately has been flinging Presidential pardons around like the late John D. Rockefeller flung dimes. Among still other crooked recipients of Trumpian largesse were Bernie Kerik, New York’s crooked former police commissioner; and Michael R. Milliken, the former inside trader and junk bond impresario. One wonders if there’s any, umm, quid pro youknow involved. 

Some people think Trump is acting as if he thinks he’s the king. My own theory is, he’s way past that. Now he thinks he’s the Pope, and he’s handing out papal indulgences. Unless, of course, it turns out that he’s selling them, like Pope Leo X back in 1517. Hey, a buck’s a buck.

The good that men do dies with them. 

The evil pollutes lakes. 

A case of post-mortem pollution in point: the late Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar. He was, when he lived, prima facie proof that even a multi-millionaire (or perhaps billionaire) gangster needs an emotional support animal. Or in Escobar’s case, whole herds of them.

Perhaps Pablo’s most prominent support critters were his pet hippopotami, which he kept in a Columbian lake. For more on this I refer you to Jessica Leigh Hester’s article in Atlas Obscura, “Pablo Escobar’s Hippo Herd is Treating Colombia’s Lakes Like One Big Toilet.” Among the info you never thought you’d need or want to know, Hester’s article tells us:

The hippopotamus is native to sub-Saharan Africa and grazes on land but spends most of its life in water, and treats rivers and lakes as big toilets. Each year, a single hippo can dump more than 1,650 pounds of carbon and other nutrients into the water—and it does so mainly by pooping, says Jonathan Shurin, an ecologist at the University of California, San Diego.

Escobar is dead, but his rapidly multiplying herds of hippo are now polluting Colombia’s waterways. And there’s no end of this shit in sight.

Bloomberg’s Turbo fib. With the implicit suggestion that he was acting like Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg was asked during Wednesday’s debate why it was taking him so long to release his taxes. Well, blubbered Bloomberg, his taxes are so terribly complex, you see, that you can’t just use Turbo Tax. No no, Mike. You don’t need Turbo Tax, or a team of accountants. These are tax returns that you’ve already filed with the IRS. All you need to make them public is a Xerox machine to photocopy the copies you were required to retain. Then hand out copies to the press. So cut the hippocrap.

Spineless Susan suffers serious setback in polls. After voting to affirm the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Senator Susan Collins (Republican) of Maine declared that her approval of the extreme right-wing, beer guzzling, accused girl molester demonstrated that she’s a “centerist.”

“I’m an important voice for the nation in an increasingly polarized environment,” she said. “There are so few members left in the center.”

Yeah, sure. Next this “in the center” Senator from Maine voted to acquit already-impeached Trump of his crimes and misdemeanors, declaring that he had learned his lesson. Right, and that lesson is, grab everything you can, from pussies to quid pro quos with both hands and bully the living bejesus out of anybody who stands in your way. However, even in rock-ribbed Republican Maine, voters aren’t buying Collins' act. Salon magazine reports

Collins is in a virtual tie with Maine Speaker of the House Sara Gideon, one of four Democrats running to face the GOP incumbent, according to a new Colby College poll first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Gideon leads the Democratic field in the poll by more than 50% and is the overwhelming favorite to face the Republican in November. 

The Colby College poll finds that 54% of Maine voters have an unfavorable opinion of Collins, compared to 42% who have a favorable opinion of the senator.

Admittedly, Collins has been caught in a sticky wicket. Had she voted against Trump, he quite likely would have reached out to punish her. My own philosophy is, if you’re going to get shot down, at least get shot down for being one of the good guys. Spineless Susan chose to stick with Trump. She may yet survive, I fear. If not, I’d advise her to lie very still while the bus rolls over her.

3 unlikely headlines to wish for:

World Methane Level Drops

As Trump is Rushed to Hospital With

His Rectum Krazy-Glued Shut

Mitch McConnell Refuses to Release

DNA Test Results After Rumors That

He is 25 Percent Galapagos Tortoise

Trump and Bloomberg Collapse of

Simultaneous Heart Attacks

During First Presidential Debate

How to make a Trumpista laugh. How to get busted for kindness. And how to speak out of both sides of your mouth and be Attorney General at the same time.

Where CNN viewers prefer to find their humor vs. where Fox News
viewers find their favorite yacks. (Or, Bill Maher vs. the Three Stooges.)
Source: an e-mail from Ad Age Datacenter, dated Feb. 11, 2020.

Proof that America is broken in half. The trade newspaper Advertising Age recently reported on a new study conducted by a group called Inscape. The study reveals the comedy preferences of CNN viewers vs. Fox News Viewers. It’s terrifying. 

CNN viewers get their laughs from the likes of Bill Maher, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, and Samantha Bee. Meanwhile, the Fox news crowd slaps its knees at “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” Tom and Jerry cartoons, The Three Stooges, and Looney Toons, among the prime examples. It all somehow echoes a line from the "Network," movie written by Paddy Chayefsky.  "She learned about life from Bugs Bunny." Ditto, evidently, Trump followers and other aficionados of Fox News. 

Is there any overlap? Yeah, a little. Conanan and Jimmy Fallon draw significant numbers of fans from both crowds, as do a piddling puddle of others. See the Venn diagram above. Then, dig a very deep hole, climb in, and pull in the soil after you.

“Whosoever shall take pity and give food unto the poor, verily he shall be thrown in the slammer.” — City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Sorry to get around to this a bit on the late side, but in case you missed it, I thought you ought to know that Fort Lauderdale solved the homeless problem. They've done it by outlawing anything that will help people who can no longer afford a roof over their heads to stay alive. In January, the city announced that people in its confines are restricted from activities that include food sharing and engaging in other “life sustaining activities.” 

The so-called “Right to Life” crowd has been curiously silent about this, even after the city busted a 90-year old man for leading a group of volunteers that handed out more than 100 plates of hot chicken stew, pasta, potatoes and fruit salad to homeless people. 

The volunteers are part of a Love Thy Neighbor charity. 

Next time somebody withholds birth control from his employees on the grounds of “freedom of religion” but acquiesces to jailing people daring to “love thy neighbor” by feeding the hungry, punch that damn hypocrite in the nose. 

The marvelous machinations of two-faced Mr. Barr. Hardly a blink and a hiccup after administration toady and Attorney General William P. Barr triggered the withdrawal of four prosecutors from the Roger Stone case by countermanding their recommendation that the convicted felon go to prison for seven to nine years, Barr rebuked the president. He claims that Trump pressured him to do it. And you know how Barr wilts under pressure, the poor baby! 

Trump’s attacks on the Justice Department make it “impossible for me to do my job,” said Barr. Not that he said he’s planning to resign or anything like that, alas. 

Thus Barr became the first U.S. Attorney General in recent memory to eat his cake and have it, too. If he can teach that trick to the homeless in Fort Lauderdale, maybe the people who feed them will be impervious to arrest.

Will some kind lady PLEASE teach Donald Trump how to wear his makeup and a bra?

Nancy Pelosi had the right idea. It's time for outraged Americans to rip up Donald Trump.

Should there be a national Tear Up Donald Trump's Picture Day?

Talk about snowflakes!

Nancy Pelosi listened politely to the end of Donald Trump's divisive, falsehood-laden State of the Union Address.

Then she tore up her copy of his speech. What was she supposed to do with it? Carry it home and pickle it in aspic? Wrap it in silk and bury it in her sachet drawer? 

She was given a copy. She followed along during its delivery. Then, even as you or I might do, she tore it up for easier disposal. 

You'd have thought she pulled out an AR-15 and sprayed the Republican side of the hall with bullets. Republican poop hit the fan and splattered far and wide over America.

Liz Cheney, for example, had a tantrum during which she accused Nancy Pelosi of having a tantrum.

Liz Cheney

✔@Liz_Cheney

Tonight @realDonaldTrump laid out a bold & optimistic vision for our nation, honoring our heroes and lifting up our children. @SpeakerPelosi had a tantrum, disgraced herself and dishonored the House. She is an embarrassment and unfit for office. #EnoughIsEnough

8,767

10:46 PM - Feb 4, 2020

Umm, and how is that, Liz? Speaker Pelosi followed along quietly. At the end she had a pile of old news, a used speech, no different in utility than yesterday's newspaper, which at best is useful for lining a birdcage. 

In facts, lining a birdcage might have been a high suitable gesture, had the Speaker thought to bring a parrot to the State of the Union.  Instead, Pelosi did what you might do with any old newspaper, or a flyer for a sale that had come and gone. She ripped it up and tossed it. 

Then there was the White House itself, looking for some vulnerable place in Pelsoi's anatomy to insert one of its stilettos. It missed.

The White House

✔@WhiteHouse

Speaker Pelosi just ripped up:

One of our last surviving Tuskegee Airmen.

The survival of a child born at 21 weeks.

The mourning families of Rocky Jones and Kayla Mueller.

A service member's reunion with his family.

That's her legacy.

232K

10:46 PM - Feb 4, 2020

Shall we try to get this straight? She didn't rip up an airman. She didn't rip up a child's survival. She didn't rip up any mourning families. 

She ripped up a copy of a speech that everybody had just heard — a speech in which Donald Trump, cynically tried to disguise his racism to praise, at long last, the Tuskee Airmen. A speech in which he took advantage of a child who survived premature birth, and of mourning families, and of a service member's family — all to further his own political agenda and self aggrandizement.

No doubt he did it with all the tender regard that he had for the Ukraine when he tried to hold up the Ukraine's anti-tank missiles while Russian troops violated Ukrainian territory — all for his own benefit.

As for me, I kind of liked this tweet:

Angry Staffer@AngrierWHStaff

Watching the people who decry “liberal snowflakes” clutching their pearls over Pelosi tearing up President Pussygrabber’s speech is probably the best thing I’ve ever seen.

15.9K

11:16 PM - Feb 4, 2020

It's pretty clear that the pearl clutchers, including The Trumpster himself, are pretty torn up when somebody shows them the lack of respect that they exhibit toward anybody they don't like. So let's keep tearing.

I propose a national Tear Up Donald Trump's Picture Day, during which millions of Americans print out a photograph of Donald Trump, tear it up, and toss it in the nearest trash basket.

Any takers?

Twitter Ads info and privacy

R.I.P. American Democracy — murdered by the almost unanimously corrupt, self-serving, and hypocritical Republican Party.

Prescient art, found on a brick wall in hipster Brooklyn, November, 2017

This is how Democracy dies. Not by foreign conquest, although that could come after Democracy's death. Not by nuclear holocaust, although that could come, too. Not by flood, and drought, and famine, and epidemic, although it is not certain yet how close our negligent Republican government under Trump has brought us to all of that.

Democracy dies when a smug Senate Republican leader, his fat cat party members, and a handful of cowards sell out the very idea of democracy to save their Senate seats for themselves, even though they know that what they are doing is wrong. 

They are about to do just that.

As I write this, the Republican-dominated United States Senate is about to shut down Donald Trump’s impeachment trial by preventing John Bolton and other witnesses from testifying. To do so, they’ve twisted themselves in knots to justify smothering the truth.

The House of Representatives “didn’t try hard enough” to hear witnesses, like John Bolton who has only recently stepped forward, they say. Therefore, we must not hear him. 

The house managers have already “proved their case,” which the Senate will nevertheless reject, on the grounds that the house managers have no case. And therefore we must not hear any evidence that might bolster the case.

There will be no new information, they say, without waiting to hear whatever information Bolton and others can provide.

These are not reasons. These are part of a sham. The White House, almost guaranteed, will classify all or most of Bolton’s book, to make sure the citizens of the United States never learn what happened in the White House, although anyone with half a brain has a general idea.

The idea that is America is finished, murdered by Donald J. Trump, and by Mitch McConnell, and by his band of servile Republican senators, and by the law whores like Alan Dershowitz who fashion their legal opinions to match the needs of the highest bidder.

The United States of America may continue on for a while, until the vultures pick it to pieces little by little — its economy, its trading power, its alliance-based military strength. For America is more than an economic engine, and more than a military arsenal. It is an idea, an idea based on justice, and fairness, and international leadership, and support for the little guy. That idea is all but officially killed as I write this.

And when the idea dies, so does the United States of America.

Mme. Galzogorist unleashes psychic dings and Gypsy curses against Donald Trump. (I wouldn’t flush even once if I were you, Donald.)

Parisian graffiti (circa 2014) of a different Donald with
related-but-different issues.

I just knew this was bound to happen. 

Madame Galzogorist, the fortune teller who occupied a walk-up space near my office in the seediest block of New York’s Garment District, back in the days when I had an office, has put a monster-sized hex on the Trumpster.

I found out about it when I stopped by her business digs, in search of a prediction about who would win the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, and whether that person would beat Donald Trump in the November elections. 

“Forget it, just forget it, wipe it out of your mind,” Mme. Galzogorist nearly shouted when I posed my questions to her. “I have no answer for you. I have trashed my crystal ball. Ditto the tarot cards and the tea leaves. I’ve had it trying to predict that creep. From now on, when it comes to politics, I deal only in curses.”

“Same as most of America,” I told her.

Hexes, dings and hernias

“No no no, not that kind of curse,” Mme. Galzogorist said. “I’m talking about deep hexes. I’m talking about humongous dings. I’m talking about conjuring doom and gloom onto The Trumpster’s head. I’m talking about about the kind of witchcraft that brings on vomiting and hernias and incurable migranes.”

That sounded slightly scary, so I asked Mme. Galzogirst what specifically she had done.

“Many horrors, many afflictions straight from the bowels of hell!” Mme. Galzgorist said.

“Yes, but for example?” I asked.

“I have cursed Trump’s toilet, so that it will lack the capacity to flush away the crap he deposits into it daily. I have cursed it to overflow ceaselessly, flooding his bathroom, creating a fetid pool of toilet backup around his bedroom slipper and his ankles, and getting soaked up by the cuffs of his pajama every time he sloshes into or out of his bathroom.”

“That’s pretty gross,” I said. “But he can just call the White House maintenance staff to patch things up….”

Stephen Miller 

isn't safe, either

“No! I have also put a hex on anybody whoever cleans up after Donald. That includes not only maids and plumbers, but also everyone from advisors to special assistants. For example, all the hair that once grew out of Stephen Miller’s head? That will now grow out of his nostrils and his ears in thick clumps. It will be difficult to cut. It will be almost impossible to keep up with.”

“I think Miller could fix that with a pair of scissors,” I said. 

“It will soon grow really fast, Mme. Galzorist said. “He can keep chopping away at it, but if Miller ever appears on TV, it will have to be with a pair of scissors up his nose.”

“That sounds terrible,” I said.

“You don’t know the half of it. I have also cursed Trump’s taste buds. It takes a while for that curse to kick in, but when it does, hamburgers will taste like spinach to him. And hamburger buns will taste like kale.”

“You’re so heartless!” I said.

“In fact, everything will taste like spinach or kale to him.”

“You’re impossibly cruel,” I said.

Confidentiality agreements?

You ain't seen nothing yet!

“I’ve also cursed his teeny little weeny,” Mme. Galzogist volunteered. I have filled it with spiritual jello. His woodie days are over. From now on, it’s eternally soft and trembly. Wait until you see the kind of non-disclosure agreements his lawyers are going to be writing the next time he tries to get involved with a woman. They’ll be rolling on the conference room floor. Not that they'll be able to disclose the source of their mirth."

“What else have you cursed?” I asked. 

“His comb over. May it fall out and need to be replaced by a wig, and may the wig blow off very publicly in a gust of hot air. Also, headaches. To punish him for writing off those poor GIs in Iraq who experienced severe concussion brain injuries which Trump dismissed as  ‘headaches,” I’m going to give him the Mother of All Headaches. I’ve got an incantation for that.”

“You know,” I said, “if all these things actually happen, Trump may suspect you of witchcraft.”

“Good,” said Mme. Galzogorist. “Then let him start a witch hunt.”

Megan Shmegan, Harry Shmarry. The world is teetering on the edge of catastrophe, and the press keeps harping on the royal(ish) couple.

King Louis XIV is what royalty used to look like when
 it really mattered.Thankfully, the world has progressed
beyond that. Except when it comes to Megan and Harry.

Does anybody in the American press really care about the state of anything other than royal unions in England?

We have, probably at best, ten or eleven years before climate change becomes irreversible and earth goes down the chute and becomes something like Mars. (Yo! Yes, I’m talking to you, you astronomers on the Planet Nictubombolius, or whatever you call it. Those things that look like canals in your telescopes, indicating there might once have been life on earth? You’re right. Those are canals, specifically the Suez, the Panama and the Canal St. Martin in Paris. You also might want to check out the Gowanus, if you can find Brooklyn on your sky chart.)

To continue. Eighty-seven percent of the world’s oceans are dying. Half the world’s coral reefs are already dead. Australia’s on fire. The Amazon basin’s on fire. California is no longer on fire because there’s almost nothing left to burn. But Donald Trump is torching democracy to the ground. And what do you fill up our media space with?

Megan and Harry. 

First of all, common decency (to them) dictates that they ought to be left alone. Slavery is against the law even in Great Britain, or what’s left of it, last time I checked. If Megan and Harry don’t want to live like royals (whatever that means) and endlessly open shopping centers and host charity balls, or whatever else it is royals do these days, let them be.

But, but, they want to hold on to the royal trademark and their royal house? 

Y’know what? I don’t give a flying Brexit. That might be a small legitimate concern for Brits, but it’s as relevant to anything that currently matters in the USA as a raft full of rubber duckies drifting down the Thames.

So why is NPR giving it the time of day? Or the New York Times? Or any of our nation's network news media?

Yes yes, I know the answer, too. It raises ratings. But this is a time when the press ought to do as they say they want others to do. If you’re going to babble on and on about Harry and Megan at all, perhaps you really ought to go after it from the point of view of racism in the British press, some of whom deserve the same treatment meted out to Hitler's lieutenants. 

Can we please all learn to ask like news reporters instead of Dr. Goebbel's Propagandasteffel? A little more substance, people. A little less bubbleheaded gossip.

Yeah, that’ll be the day

Discombobulated

This is not right. But what is?

Sorry. Due to unexpected interruptions in my thinking, this blog has been dormant for the past week and may remain so for a bit longer. However...

Check back often. I'm not done railing yet.

Trump, Ivanka, Chelsea, witch hunt, cheese, strawberries, "Queeg balls" — and clear evidence that life imitates Bogart

It’s old and rather tiresome news that just when you think Donald Trump’s administration can’t get any crazier, it becomes crazier.

Recently, news emerged that the interminably long Trumpian opera buffa, now going into perhaps its forty-thousandth act, pulled yet another cuckoo clock out of its hat, and it’s a wowser. 

Talk about witch hunts!

In 2017, the State Department, then still under the command of Rex Tillerson, instituted an investigation. The investigators delved into who in the USA's  mission to the European Union in Brussels “liked” a tweet that Chelsea Clinton posted on Twitter, according to both The Daily Beast and Salon . 

The tweet actually got half a million “likes,” but the concern was that one or two of the "likes" — or maybe, God forbid, a dozen of them — might have been posted by U.S. Government employees.

All this started in July of 2017, when The Trumpster decided that instead of directly participating in the G-20 meeting of the world’s economic powerhouses in Hamburg, his daughter Ivanka should round out her resumé by attending in his place and perhaps sharing her learned economic expertise with the world's leaders and finance ministers.

For some reason (I’m sure the Trumpster can’t imagine what reason), this attracted a wave of criticism. So The Trumpster took to Twitter to defend his then-most-recent act of nepotism. In one tweet he wrote: “If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!”

Whereupon Chelsea tweeted back, “It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not.”

As previously stated, half a million Twitter followers “liked” that tweet, including some from the U.S. mission to the European Union. 

Fire in the hole!

Those "likes" must have ignited an explosion of paranoia. The Daily Beast tell us:

That kickstarted a weeks-long investigation, prompted by the secretary’s office, into who exactly at the Brussels mission had access to the Twitter account and hit “Like” on Clinton’s tweet, according to two former U.S. officials. (Full disclosure: Clinton sits on the board of IAC, The Daily Beast’s parent company.) At least 10 people were interviewed about whether they, as administrators of the account, had mistakenly or deliberately pressed the “Like” button. All of them denied any wrongdoing, those sources said. One individual familiar with the exchanges said the secretary of state’s top managers in Washington “wanted blood” and called Brussels numerous times demanding the name of the culprit.

Somehow, all this brought to mind The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, a movie derived from a novel by Herman Wouk, in which another seemingly insignificant affront to an authoritarian figure launched an investigation.

So now we have life, or at least the real life Donald Trump, imitating Bogart in search not of a cheese pilferer or a strawberry thief, but of a tweet-liker. You can’t make this stuff up, which I find to be a cause for hope.

Because if life continues to imitate Bogart, we may ended up with Trump at a Bogartian denouement, in which Trump, like Bogart, loses his shit during a public legal proceeding such as, say, a Senate impeachment trial. 

The the only significant difference might be that instead of using a pair of steel ball bearings as if they were worry beads, Trump will fiddle with his cell phone and its Twitter app. Go ahead, watch the scene here, but imagine that Humphrey Bogart is orange:

FAKE NEWS! (Iron Clad Guarantee: all news headlines below honestly fabricated with genuine fabrications, or your money back.)

Fake News! People are talking about nothing else. That's whatI've heard. On Sunday morning, Chuck Todd devoted his entire hour to Fake News: What it is. How it gets faked. Who's faking it. Why they fake it. Plus real commentary on fakery from Very Thoughtful People.

Today's Sunday Times devoted most of its Op-Ed articles to fake news despair. The words "Twitter" and "Cesspit" appeared in the  headline and subheadline of the same op-ed piece. Ross Douthat's own headline was, "The Decade of Disillusionment." Ruchira Sharma told us "Economic Forecasters got the 2010s wrong." Only Nicholas Kristof sang out of key, claiming, "This Has Been The Best Year Ever." But hey, it's Kristof.

All of which led me to great feelings of shame for having tried not to lie, misinterpret, or fudge on this blog. At least not intentionally. I mean, at least most of the time. Clearly, I have to rectify that. So herewith, I give you some genuine FAKE NEWS headlines, ripped from...wherever.

FIRST PHOTOS OF IVANKA’S

MARTIAN CHILDREN!

DNA Tests Reveal 3 Generations

of Martian Blood On Trump Side of
 Family, Scientist Declares

_________

DEVOS PROPOSES ELIMINATING

HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY CLASSES

TO TEACH "BIBLE LITERACY"

But Creation Science Would Still Provide

Firm Background for Students Interested 

In the Life Sciences, Education Secretary Says

_________

TRUMP HEALTHCARE PLAN 

WOULD REPEAL ACA AND REPLACE IT

 WITH DRUG STORE VOUCHERS

They won't cover prescriptions, but Trump insists,

"You're gonna save so much on toothpaste and makeup,

you're not going to believe it. Believe me, you'll save."

_________

TRUMP AND KIM JONG-UN

ADMIT TO GAY RELATIONSHIP!

"What could I do," says Trump, when caught

holding hands with North Korean leader,

"He sent me such a beautiful love letter"

_________

TRUMP HELPS HIMSELF TO

$70 BILLION FROM US TREASURY

It's all for a good cause, he claims. Transferred funds

to his Swiss bank account "only temporary, for safekeeping"

_________

EXCLUSIVE: RUDY GIULIANI 

CAUGHT TELLING THE TRUTH! 

Blames "too many pinot noirs at dinner"

and insists he was "only kidding"

_________

TRUMP PICKS MIAMI MEGACHURCH 

WITH PASTOR WHO SPEAKS IN TONGUES 

FOR EVANGELICAL EVENT

 OH, WAIT!