Watching Republicans Dig Their Own Graves

By Karen

By dismissing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish to wait until after the election to replace her, Trump, Moscow Mitch, and Losing Lindsey pissed on her casket as it sat on the Supreme Court steps.

And their pick, Amy Coney Barrett, had no problem stepping over Justice Ginsburg’s body before was even in the ground.

I only caught a bit of Barrett’s acceptance speech. So young, so cute, all those children, such family values.

But she clerked for Antonin Scalia, has only three years of judicial experience, and Trump likes her. That’s enough for me to conclude she’s an unqualified, reactionary dip-shit (female Kavanaugh, if you will) who would set the country back 150 years.

Her confirmation seems sure, and Trump will gloat over “owning” one-third of SCOTUS. I hope every dickless Republican who enables this rots in hell for eternity.

Now that I got that off my chest, let’s turn to James Comey. Last night he got another 15 minutes of fame being played by Jeff Daniels in the Showtime two-part series, The Comey Rule. Part 2 is tonight…

Last night was Comey agonizing over whether to go public about the investigations into Hillary’s emails — there were two, and neither produced a shred of evidence that her private server ever had negative repercussions on national security — to this day.

Meanwhile, Comey learned Trump’s cronies had gazillion contacts with Russians and opened an investigation into that before the election — but kept it secret.

Jeff Daniels has been making the interview rounds and saying Comey was “between a rock and a hard place” with Hillary. True. But he could have leveled the playing field A LOT by alerting voters to Trump’s Russian ties.

Comey, by treating Trump the mobster like he was a fellow Boy Scout and they both lived by an ironclad code of honor (as did Robert Mueller), Comey fucked the country, but good.

In turn, Comey got himself fucked by being fired on TV. Handing Trump the White House wasn’t enough to fill Trump’s bottomless pit of need.

And NOW The New York Times finally got its mitts on Trump’s tax returns. It’s just as you’d expect.

• Trump claims many, many, many bogus expenses.
• Trump’s businesses are mostly in the red.
• Trump has paid few taxes or none at all for decades.
• While in the White House, he’s made millions from foreign governments and others patronizing his businesses to get favors from the U.S. government.
• He earns millions by forcing taxpayers to pay (at inflated rates) for his hundreds of visits to his own properties.
• He’s only rich on paper; he lives like a leech.
• He’s got huge debts coming due, and he can only hold off creditors by continuing to grift from the White House; otherwise, he’s toast.

Tomorrow, Trump’s debates Joe Biden. On Twitter, Trump’s been demanding Biden take a drug test, which can only mean Trump is pumped to the gills. We just don’t know whether he’ll snort Adderall and bounce off the walls, or if his doctors will sedate him into a semi-coma. We’ve been seeing more of that lately.

Either way, the bar is quite low for Biden. All he has to do is let Trump babble nonsense, respond in complete sentences, and laugh off Trump’s infantile taunts and he’ll look more presidential.

With each passing day that Republicans cling to a sinking Trump, stealing every advantage they can, while they can, they’re creating for themselves an even greater backlash at the polls as public disgust reaches a crescendo.

BONUS: The Washington Post named this monologue by comedian John Mulaney, “There’s a Horse in the Hospital,” one of the 10 best Trump take-downs…

Trump Knows His End is Near

By Karen

Yesterday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was lying in repose on the Supreme Court’s steps when Bill and Hillary Clinton paid their respects by standing beside her coffin in full public view…

Not to be outdone by Hillary, today Trump and Melania ventured outside the White House fortress to skulk in the shadows behind the casket. When the mourners out front saw them, boos soon synced into a lusty chant of “Vote Him Out!”…

Unaccustomed to hearing people who aren’t prescreened (or paid) to sing his praises and hold fake signs at his staged rallies, it took a bit for the chant to register with Trump. As soon as it did, he disappeared back into his bubble, where sycophants dry his orange tears and tell him he’ll be president forever.

I fully blame the media for hyping this bullshit that Trump won’t leave when he loses the election.

Sure, Trump talks tough to his cult, or to reporters in the White House briefing room where he can insult and run before somebody punches him in the face.

But let’s get real. Apart from, “We’ll see what happens,” which Trump says about allowing a peaceful transition of power —  remember, this is his stock answer for EVERYTHING because he’s lost the ability of original thought — his every utterance reeks of sour loser grapes.

Trump knows he’s finished. He’s scared shitless of the MILLIONS of absentee paper ballots that will dominate this election because they’re irrefutable evidence of his loss.

What’s hilarious is that he caused them. If he hadn’t been so stupid, thinking he could get away with denying COVID, we’d be voting as usual.

According to Ballotpedia, only four states use computers exclusively and create NO paper trail: Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina. None of them are worth hacking because three may go to Trump anyway and Delaware’s small potatoes.

States using a combination of paper ballots and computers with no paper trail are: Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. Of that bunch, only Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas are worth Trump losing sleep over.

My absentee ballot was mailed to me on Friday, September 18, and I got it on Monday, September 21. I’ll hand-carry it either to a dropbox that supposed to be at a nearby library, or to the county registrar’s office.

The media should give no air time to Trump’s babbling about a rigged election, serving three or more terms, getting two extra years — just because, delaying the election or discarding mail-in ballots (which would also destroy the votes of Trump’s whole family).

What the media needs to emphasize is that Trump is a gutless bully who fears confrontation above all else. His fantasy is that the uneducated self-appointed militias with assault weapons he’s got prowling the streets will overpower the American armed forces (if it came to that) and give their lives to install him as a dictator. Talk about losers and suckers.

On Inauguration Day, I think Trump will be in Moscow, naively thinking Putin won’t push his now-useless orange ass out the nearest window. Trump may even expect to be lavishly rewarded for doing Putin’s bidding.

But if Trump dares to linger, he’ll sit in the White House alone. Ivanka and Melania won’t hang around for the shooting to start.

Then Biden will dispatch a few burly officers to the Oval Office, who will put a whining, whimpering Trump on a plane to New York, where he’ll immediately be taken into custody to answer for his financial crimes.

I hope his escorts wear body cameras so the world can watch Trump’s downfall.

Chapter 126: COVID Chronicles

By Tony

Day 194

My Photo Shoot Fail & Welcome to My Dream House!

Karen says I’m old enough to take responsibility for my actions, so I’ll tell you how it went with my big photo shoot last week. Not good.

Last Friday, a lady with a really nice camera came over to take my picture for the RAL 2021 Calendar. Unfortunately, nobody at the League told her what months any of the animals picked, so my month is still a mystery.

That morning, I knew something was going down because Karen was tidying up and dusting. When I heard the doorbell, to use Trump’s crude language, I’m embarrassed to confess that I “choked like a dog” and ran upstairs. Karen and the lady found me hiding under the desk, which mortified me so much, I dashed downstairs and burrowed in the back of Karen’s closet.

Meanwhile, Roc sauntered into the living room and sprawled across the floor like a centerfold, hoping he might be able to step in as my understudy and become a star, but no dice.

Karen tried to carry me out to the living room and got her arm accidentally scratched when I leaped down and lammed it back upstairs.

She and the photographer agreed that a photo of me looking terrified wouldn’t be good, so that was that. After the lady left and I calmed down, Karen got quite a few flattering shots of me and sent them to the photographer. We don’t know which one she’ll use, but here are a couple of them…

Then I started showing off and posed standing up. (That’s Roc in the bed we totally shunned all summer, but now it’s suddenly a hot ticket again.)…

Karen has mentioned I have a Chewy.com Dream House in the living room. It’s got two rooms (so far) and I spend a lot of time in it. Karen thinks it’s a dump and that I might have lived under a bridge as a kitten…

Last week during Hurricane Sally, Karen was drying out her Chihuly umbrella when I decided to add it to my house. Dale Chihuly is a glass artist who had a beautiful exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts several years ago, which is where Karen got the umbrella. The inside is a picture of his colorful bowls. I just had to taste it…

Now my house’s best features are my crinkly paper…

And my umbrella lanai…

PS: Max isn’t a photo op guy, either, but Karen caught him on the Man Cave Café sink the other day and he sends his regards…

Chapter 125: COVID Chronicles

By Karen

Day 190

Feeling in a Funk & Tony Gets Ready for His Close-up

Every Thursday, I’ve been wearing a hot-pink T-shirt to honor Adele because she died on a Thursday and her collar was pink and she looked fabulous in it.

This morning when I was putting on the T-shirt, I realized I had completely forgotten that September 12 marked the one-year anniversary of Adele’s death.

It just goes to show how meaningless time has become. Seasons, birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, what do they matter when you’re stuck alone in the house, trying not to get sick or die?

I hate waking up every morning. If the cats didn’t insist I do my thing and take care of them, I wouldn’t.

My biggest thrill this week was making a run to Food Lion to stock up on ice cream and chips. And the heat has let up, at least for now, so we’ve been able to open windows.

On the other hand, walking to the car I noticed that something has chewed away the bottom corner of my chimney, so a new maintenance project to deal with.

Every time I turn on the TV, the West Coast is in flames, with so much smoke it’s fuzzing up the sun and moon in Virginia. Fortunately, it’s high enough not to affect our air quality — yet.

Of course, here comes another hurricane. When we run out of alphabet to name them, they’re going to start using the Greek alphabet.

And as if caging kids weren’t depraved enough, some immigrant women Trump has trapped are having their reproductive organs pulled out without permission. You know this is just disgusting Republican perverts indulging themselves. If they were really going for population control, they’d do mass vasectomies.

With the never-ending senseless shootings, it’ like we’re in Ray Bradbury’s Farhenheit 451. Trump urges police to commit crimes rather than solve them. He’s got a flunky ordering the Post Office to dump mail, not deliver it. And if Trump ever picked up a book, no doubt he’d be having them all burned because they offend him.

(BTW, working on Bob Woodward’s book Rage now. Slow going, nothing really new so far.)

Speaking of Trump, he’s dumped so much verbal sewage on us, we should treat him like that tree falling in the woods. If we don’t listen, he doesn’t make a sound.

Not to forget the pandemic. Trump now admits he wants COVID to do its worst. I think he’s trying to break Hitler’s record. He calls it “herd mentality.” If it works, he’ll kill more than 6 million Americans.

The U.N. just released a special report on Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, detailing his “crimes against humanity.” According to the AP story…

“Under Article 7 of the U.N. treaty that established the International Criminal Court, a crime against humanity is defined as an act committed as part of a ‘widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.’”

If that doesn’t describe Trump’s strategy with COVID, what does?

Nothing would do this country more good than at 12:01 on January 20, 2021, after Biden is sworn in, to see Trump shackled and frog-marched to a plane headed for the Hague where he will go on trial for American genocide.

Meanwhile, I hope the Nobel Committee has a good laugh over Trump’s nomination for the Peace Prize by some right-wing racist wacko politician from (I’m sorry to say) Norway. Trump’s competing against 317 other nominees, so there should be someone more deserving.

To end on a cheerier note, Tony’s photo-shoot for the RAL 2021 calendar is tomorrow. I have no idea how he’ll behave with two masked women chasing him around the house. His mysterious fascination with the bathtub continues…

Disloyal, by Michael Cohen: Book Review

By Karen

Coming one week after Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania & Me, what most impresses me about Michael Cohen’s tell-all, Disloyal: A Memoir, is how prison stripped his varnish. He admits being seduced by his own worst instincts and accepts his share of blame for Trump’s myriad misdeeds.

Cohen’s family, especially daughter Stephanie, (who gave Vanity Fair a damning interview) watched him be abused and exploited for years and begged him to quit, but Cohen’s ambition overrode self-esteem…

“The real truth about why I wanted Trump to be president was because I wanted the power that he would bring to me. I wanted to be able to crush my enemies and rule the world. I know it sounds crazy, but look at what Trump is doing now: running the world into the ground, but still, he literally rules.”

On Trump’s obsession with Obama, Cohen says Trump once hired a “Faux-Bama” he could scream at and pretend to fire. This was so bat-shit crazy, Cohen says…

“I figured that Obama was the only person on the planet whom Trump actually envied — truly, madly, deeply.”

I’ve always considered Cohen a dimwitted stooge, but he has insight. For example, he arranged a meeting to snooker evangelicals into believing Trump is the messiah. As a child, Trump was influenced by attending Norman Vincent Peale’s church…

“The Protestant preacher was the author of The Power of Positive Thinking and an early radio and television star, sermonizing about the materialistic advantages of American conservative religion, making him a hero to the folks meeting with Trump as a pioneer in blending or conflating wealth and Jesus in a way that somehow found the Son of God was all about the bling.”

Cohen thinks Trump actually believing his own BS about himself is how he gets people to buy into it…

“The reason cults exist is because the cult leader has manifested his own crazy way of seeing the world.”

He likens Trump to Jim “Jonestown” Jones. Remember him? That nut who lammed off to Guyana, and when the feds were closing in, made his cult commit mass suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.

When he loses the election, Trump can just usher his cult into airplane hangars, lock the doors behind him and let COVID do its thing.

As with all of Trump’s relationships, theirs was one-sided. Trump’s abuse never let up, but Cohen considered the title “personal attorney” to a so-called billionaire tycoon, and then president of the United States, a fair exchange — until it wasn’t.

Cohen let me down in only two spots. Even after going to prison the first time — and during COVID getting thrown BACK in prison — in shackles — for refusing to cave when Trump tried to keep him from publishing a book, he writes…

“I care for Donald Trump, even to this day, and I had and still have a lot of affection for him.”

WTF?

The other spot was pure dimwit Michael, on Melania…

“To me, Melania was the epitome of class. Her life was dedicated to being a mother to Barron, and she was never shy about letting everyone know that, including DJT.”

Cohen gets into Trump’s relationships with all his kids except Eric and Barron, and provides behind-the-scenes dirt on his role in many of the scandals you know about.

Cohen has an ironic sense of humor and I laughed out loud when he called Trump “a stand-up comic with a grotesque sense of humor,” and as having “rat-like cunning.”

I’m glad I read this one, and hope it’s more kindling to ignite Trump’s hair, which must spontaneously combust when Bob Woodward’s book, Rage, comes out tomorrow.

(Speaking of Trump’s hair, Cohen explains the why and how of the ‘do, and what Trump looks like straight out of the shower)

DOUBLE BONUS: Inspired by Peter Pan with a song that now feels destined for this remake, Randy Rainbow gives us the 2020 election season anthem…

Mary Martin must be smiling somewhere. In fact, many of her original lyrics fit the orange man-baby who won’t grow up…

Chapter 124: COVID Chronicles

By Karen

Day 183

Trump’s On the Ropes & Some Candid Tony

Today marks my half-year in isolation. I gave up all of spring and summer, and now they’re saying fall may be the worst yet. So much sacrifice because our government is so fucked up, we can’t eject a cold-blooded killer from the White House.

I’m reading Michael Cohen’s book, Disloyal, now and will review it next week. This is the second damning Trump book to come out in two weeks, after Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania & Me. If you only have time to read one, make it Cohen’s. That’s all I’ll say for now.

So Watergate superstar Bob Woodward is following up his first Trump book, Fear, with a sequel on September 15, Rage.

Trump was pissed Woodward didn’t consult him on Fear, so he gave Woodward 18 interviews for Rage. Former senator Claire McCaskill holds back nothing about the wisdom of that…

Woodward’s website says he also got his hands on 25 letters Trump and Kim Jong Un have exchanged. Wonder if naked selfies were attached?

So, right after we learn that Trump has repeatedly called anyone who serves in the military a loser and a sucker, Woodward leaks audio of Trump saying he understands how dangerous coronavirus is and how it’s transmitted, yet deliberately downplays it. He even schemes to sabotage the response while approximately 6.6 million get sick and 196,000 die.

I hope we see Trump’s poll numbers fall into the 20s, an indication he’s finally pissing off his most ignorant racist supporters. They’re most likely to be veterans or have kids in the service. In poor red states with lousy educational systems, the military is the only decent career path they may have.

Or perhaps now that COVID is infiltrating Trump country and they’re getting sick or losing family members, maybe it’s dawning on them that Trump thinks they’re suckers and doesn’t give a shit if they die.

What I find surprising is everybody’s agitation over these two latest “revelations.” Trump is the most evil, depraved, corrupt narcissist since Hitler. The vilest insults and lies come out of his mouth and Twitter account every day. This is all totally in character for him.

As damning as this first audio leak is, Bob Woodward’s got a book to sell and may be holding the other shoe to drop.

We’ve heard Trump insult Blacks, Muslims, women, soldiers, other politicians and celebrities. What we HAVEN’T heard is what he says about his base. That seems to be missing from Michael Cohen’s book or someone would have reported on it. Cohen does verify Trump’s utter disdain for evangelicals.

Maybe Woodward has that missing piece. When the toothless, knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who cheer at Trump’s rallies hear Trump in his own voice call them exactly that, then what? Can Fox convince them to ignore their lying ears?

To wrap the week on a cheerier note, here’s Tony this morning…

“Does this pose make me look fat?”

He clearly didn’t appreciate me keeping that first shot, because he went all diva on my iPhone…

Then he adjourned in a huff to “Tony’s Dream House,” his Chewy box with brown paper. The paper’s tatty, so he’ll be thrilled when our next Chewy shipment shows up any minute now…

I always seem to get the best candid shots of him on the blue perch…

Tony’s photo shoot for the RAL Calendar is scheduled here for September 18. I don’t expect a lot of cooperation from Tony on his home turf with a masked stranger chasing him around with a camera, but maybe he’ll surprise us.

And here’s one more. As I’m writing this, Roc’s watching me from the printer…

Melania & Me: A Book Review

By Karen

But first… Tony was disappointed his picks didn’t fare better in the Kentucky Derby, but Tiz the Law came in a close second. Max Player pounded down the stretch, but precious moments he lost earned him fifth place. And Finnick the Fierce was scratched before the race for medical reasons.

If you missed it, here’s the race. Watch Max Player break near the rail. His jockey wears hot pink with an orange cap, so you can’t miss him. Max takes it easy until the final stretch. At 1:45 you can see him get blocked behind another horse…

Tony’s taking it in stride and looks forward to the Preakness on October 3.

I just finished Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania & Me, and I can save you the trouble of reading it unless you’re rabid to get deep into the weeds of how Trump’s D-list inauguration farce came together.

Wolkoff meticulously recounts every minute and name involved in the dodgy mess because she’s establishing her own innocence. But it was TMI for me. In the avalanche of far greater Trump scandals since then, to quote Melania herself, “I really don’t care, do you?”

Wolkoff and Melania first became BFFs when Wolkoff worked at Vogue, planning Fashion Week, the Met Gala and other major fundraisers for Anna Wintour. Wolkoff knows everybody, and her stepfather’s the son of jeweler Harry Winston.

She was the perfect mark for an ambitious immigrant whose résumé was as fake as her real estate tycoon boyfriend. Yet Wolkoff believed Melania’s friendship was genuine.

When Trump was sworn in, Wolkoff stayed in D.C. to establish Melania’s East Wing and fend off an Ivanka takeover — while Melania stayed in New York until mid-2017 to renegotiate her prenup — oh, and let Barron finish school.

In the White House, Wolkoff never had a “real” job. She signed in every day as a visitor. The government access on her cellphone and computer kept getting revoked. She was paid NO SALARY as a volunteer to give Melania budget to hire more staff. Wolkoff was never reimbursed thousands she paid for her hotel stays, other expenses — and eventually, lawyers.

Meanwhile, her husband and three young kids lived in New York without her. Wolkoff explains this as her devotion to making Melania the best first lady ever. I call it shit for brains.

Melania feigned concern about Wolkoff’s difficult working conditions, but never helped make the situation better, claiming to do so would be “breaking the law.”

At one point, Wolkoff physically broke down, spending spent weeks having several back surgeries and enduring constant pain.

I think Wolkoff would be Melania’s slave to this day if not for the investigations into the shady depletion of the inauguration fund. Instead, Wolkoff found herself, as the first lady’s friend, personally accused of taking about $25 million, which gave the real thieves time to run for cover.

Wolkoff says she was paid $480,000 for that work and she has all the receipts accounting for the rest of the money. She’s a witness in three investigations. And she has emails, texts and audio recordings to substantiate her book, if needed.

Melania was fine with Wolkoff taking the fall, perhaps because it’s come out that Trump’s D.C. hotel received a hefty portion of the missing money.

But to the last freaking page of this book, even though she describes Melania as plastic through and through, Wolkoff still seems unable to admit that Melania was never her real friend.

Melania gives zero fucks what anybody thinks or says about her, and she believes she’s answerable to no one on any matter. That’s why we hear so little from her. She can’t be bothered.

Wolkoff reveals herself as an idiot who gets played by a heartless, ruthless, single-minded grifter who teams up with a soulless, evil, corrupt Daddy’s boy to stay in the clothes, pampering and prestige she lives for.

Rather than applauding Wolkoff for giving us the truth about Melania and the inaugural money-grab, I’d rather slap her upside the head (as they say in the South) for her years of enabling such a monster.

Melania comes off as a vain, underhanded, high-maintenance nouveau riche ice queen. She’s a financial drain on the country and gives nothing in return but pouts, scowls, illiterate slogans (Be Best) and obscenely wasteful displays of her terrible taste in decorating.

Wolkoff documents how Melania pulls it off by conning otherwise decent people into concealing her innate selfishness, and I hope she’s ashamed of her complicity. Taxpaying voters deserve much, much better from a first lady.

Chapter 123: COVID Chronicles

By Karen and Tony

Day 176

Happy Birthday, Roc & Tony’s Kentucky Derby Picks

September 1 was Roc’s 5^th birthday and he got a present that thrilled him — the spare Jackson Galaxy stick toy I’ve been hoarding. Through much of his kittenhood, he dragged the original everywhere. This is our third one. It’s such flimsy crap, it’s not even made anymore. Roc seems aware, because he’s being very gentle with it. The others lasted only a few weeks before I had to start duct-taping them together…

On an unrelated tangent, whenever Roc finds all of the 1,457 cat beds in this house unacceptable, he yanks down my towel to make his own bed. Have to admit, it’s pretty cute…

Turning you over now to Tony for the sports report…

Karen says it’s a bad-kitty move to crush a horse’s Triple Crown dream after he wins the first race, so I pick Tiz the Law to win the Kentucky Derby September 5. Tiz won the Belmont Stakes June 20, as well as three other races this year, so he’s on a roll. He’s also the humans’ favorite at 3-5 odds. In a field of 18 horses, Tiz will start from post position 17.

My other two favorites are side by side. In post position 2 is Max Player (odds 30-1) because, well, Max. I also picked him in the Belmont, and he finished THIRD. So, break a leg, Maxxy!

No, wait, horses probably hate that… Run like the wind, Maxxy!

My third pick, at the rail in pp 1 (50-1), is a real underdog who’s never won a race in his life. But his best race, coming in second, was at Churchill Downs, so maybe that track is his lucky charm. Did I mention he’s also missing his right eye?

Because Finnick the Fierce has a name that’s a cat magnet, and he has managed to qualify for the Derby despite all obstacles, I think he deserves a No. 1 feline fan, and it should be me…

Go, Finnicky!

Karen, back over to you on the political beat…

The irony gushes out of Washington from a fire hose. Yesterday, Trump flew to Wilmington to visit the USS North Carolina and commemorate 75 years since World War II’s end. In his spare time, he tries to incite Civil War II.

Upon his arrival, he greeted a modest crowd with his usual gravity-defying posture…

Then he gave a speech exhorting North Carolinians to vote by mail AND in person in case their paper ballot isn’t counted. This caused general confusion and a panic at the State Board of Elections. Voting twice (or inducing someone to do so, as Trump publicly did to the state’s entire population) is a Class I felony punishable by up to a year in prison and permanent loss of voting rights.

In plain sight every day, Trump actively and passively racks up so many felonies, the sun would grow cold and shrivel before he’d ever finish the prison sentence he’s earning. But yet he’s still allowed to roam free.

The North Carolina can only be boarded via a long, gently sloping ramp, and we’ve seen Trump on a ramp. According to locals, this ramp was encased in a tunnel for the first time ever, presumably to hide Trump doing a face-plant or riding in a wheelchair. I feel in my bones that Trump has a wheelchair in the White House.

Reading tweets about the USSNC ramp and seeing photos of it reproduced at politicalflare.com, there’s one where Lev Parnas mentions the wheelchair. After all the time he spent with Trump, he’s probably seen it.

PS: I’ve just started Melania and Me by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who told Rachel Maddow she began recording conversations after Melania let her take the fall over the missing inaugural money. Apparently, the tapes would dispel any notion that Melania deserves sympathy for marrying a Trump.

In the pages I’ve read so far, if Trump, instead of growing up an entitled brat who’s never worked for anything, had Melania’s hungry ambition and single-mindedness, he’d be a monster who’d make the Trump we know look like a choirboy.

Fortunately, (I say that relatively), I think only Trump’s narcissism, blind faith in his own brilliance and infallibility, and attention deficit have shielded him from embracing Melania’s poisonous intensity.

Chapter 122: COVID Chronicles

By Karen

Day 173

Roc’s New Thing for Dryer Balls & Lisbeth Salander is REAL

After I finished laundry Saturday, Roc suddenly fell in love with my Woolite® dryer balls. Maybe they smell like lamb? He played with them most of the morning and refused to share them with Tony…

KITCHEN NEWS: My built-in Kenmore electric range is 37 years old, but I love that its knobs are on the front so I don’t have to reach across hot pans. I once looked into replacing it, but stoves so designed were insanely expensive, and pulling this one out would surely lead to a new counter, sink, cabinets, floor… You know, the domino effect of updating anything in a kitchen.

But sadly, one of the burner coils died. I sweated finding a replacement on such an old stove, and a defunct-Sears Kenmore at that, but RepairClinic.com had OEM parts (actually made by Electrolux), and they fit like a charm. I replaced all four while I could, and so the three old grungy ones wouldn’t be body-shamed by the shiny new guy. Now it feels like a new stove…

I probably could have gotten generic coils on Amazon for less, but when it comes to electrical things that could burn down the house, I don’t cut corners.

TV NEWS: We have our very own Lisbeth Salander in Kansas! She’s the real-life bounty hunter in Love Fraud, which started airing on Showtime last night…

“This four-part docu-series follows the search for one man, Richard Scott Smith, who over the past 20 years used the internet and his dubious charms to prey upon unsuspecting women looking for love — conning them out of their money and dignity. The story unravels in real time as Smith’s victims band together to seek sweet revenge by turning to a bounty hunter when they feel the justice system has failed them.”

Carla Campbell the real-life bounty hunter is a wizened, gray-haired smoker whose backstory is that after her first boyfriend beat her constantly, when she finally broke free, she vowed no man would ever touch her like that again. About Smith, she says…

“If he ever came in and robbed me like these other women, I’d be in prison. I’d have slit his throat and watched him bleed to death and then admitted to doing it because I’m not going to let him do that to somebody else.”

Some of the women he’s destroyed find each other on a blog one of them started to warn others. They coalesce into a posse after the legal system gives Smith a slap on the wrist. Part of Smith’s con is that he married many of the women and became legally entitled to their assets because they didn’t realize the marriages were bigamous.

I’ll confess I’ve gotten mixed up with at least two men whom I know did illegal things to women (because it was reported in the newspaper), including the man I briefly married. But they never got any money from me and I managed to escape in one piece. Watching these woman strike a blow for all of us trusting schmucks is highly satisfying.

The first episode is available free on Showtime’s site. I hope it ends with a scene where Scott gets locked in a room alone with Carla.

BONUS: Anthony Bourdain’s co-author, Laurie Woolever, recently tweeted the cover of their last book together, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide…

Laurie tweeted she’s sneakily drawn in the background. I think she’s the one on the left.

It’s being released April 20, 2021. In a happily-ever-after world, Tony and Ottavia would have celebrated their anniversary on that date.

BONUS: The day after Trump’s nomination, where he mumbled his acceptance like a reanimated zombie reciting recycled clichés sprinkled with WTF bits of historical gibberish, Trump had a rally in Londonderry, New Hampshire, which attracted only about 500 people. Going to the podium, when he reached the top of three steps and had no railing, he almost fell off the platform…

Imagine if it had been a ramp. pic.twitter.com/LReFHASgEj

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) August 28, 2020

Watching Trump deteriorate is like seeing a plane crash in slow-mo. But if you tally all the shuffles, stumbles, jerks, twitches, garbled statements, nonsensical tweets and mangled words he does in public in a mere fraction of his day, his doctors will have a LOT of ‘splainin’ to do when Trump and the ground finally meet and a camera catches it.

Chapter 121: COVID Chronicles

By Karen

Day 169

Melania’s Got a Fidel Fetish & Tony Takes a Big Leap

I haven’t watched more than a few minutes of the Republican… Festival of Fear? Carnival of Corruption? Extravaganza of Exaggeration? Bacchanal of Bullshit?

I dropped by Tuesday just as Melania confidently stomped into the Rose Garden she’s had stripped of all beauty, maintaining its new color-free theme in her out-of-season khaki long-sleeved tribute to the fashion of Fidel Castro…

Some hapless assistant probably got her head bit off later for forgetting to accessorize Melania with the jaunty little cap and a cigar.

You could feel Melania’s joy overflowing as she read from the teleprompter and showed the nation that in three years at the White House, she’s made no effort whatsoever to improve her English…

Her doting husband Donald sat front and center looking so pleased and proud…

Talk about a steaming shit show.

CALENDAR UPDATE: I learned this morning that the Richmond Animal League is having the calendar contest winners select their months in the order they placed, so Tony as 12^th gets whatever month nobody wants. February maybe?

I also learned that the professional photographer who’s coming to the house has had COVID, but she assures us she’s clean now and has immunity for three months.

I think I’m going to need a bigger bottle of bleach.

ANT UPDATE: There hasn’t been one ant on the kitchen counter in nearly a week. Rain soaking the ant killer I sprinkled around the foundation did the trick, for now.

MEDICAL UPDATE: I ventured to the dentist for a cleaning. I had to call them from the parking lot so they could let me in and take my temperature (97.6). Then they did the whole masks, visors, distancing thing. It’s nearly a week later and I’m not sick, so knock on wood.

I felt emboldened to schedule my mammogram due this month. Turns out they’re backlogged and the soonest appointment is in mid-November.

CAT UPDATE: Max is due for a vet checkup, but he doesn’t need shots so we’re skipping it. The vet’s protocol is that I sit in the parking lot while Max goes through whatever on his own. That office staff has never inspired confidence (I could tell stories), so no.

Tony’s not letting his new local celebrikitty status go to his head. Tuesday I was standing at the sunny balcony window checking how my solar-powered watches were charging when Tony decided to get involved. In a first for him — or any cat I’ve lived with — he LEAPED onto my back and hung between my shoulder blades by his right paw.

Thankfully, he let go while I was screaming and trying to figure out how to get him off me. My back on FIRE, I ran downstairs, sure I was leaving a trail of blood. But my T-shirt must have absorbed a lot of claw because my back hardly bled and I’m fine now. And who could stay mad at this face?…

Roc has decided Fuglen the Bird needs to be my constant companion and brings it to me everywhere, even when I’m in the shower. (BTW, Roc left Fuglen on that slipper for two days, and then relocated him to the living room)…

BONUS: Here’s comedian JL Cauvin as Trump (snorting Adderall?) critiquing Melania’s speech…