Thoughts on Jan. 6 Hearings So Far

By Karen

We’ve had four hearings to date. I’ve watched every minute because this is too important, and I don’t trust TV pundits’ recaps’ accuracy.

Photo: wmur.com

I feel as if Trump’s gaslighting is now coming from journalists (I’m looking at you, Maddow and Reid) who keep using words like “shocking” and “bombshell” to describe the hearings. Have they forgotten their reporting since 1/6, or are we watching different hearings?

This cognitive dissonance spreads like a fungus because with the hearings foolishly held during business hours, working people rely on pundits, who regurgitate only what they consider highlights. That is, viewer bait, not necessarily important stuff.

The baseline fact is that Trump & Co. committed sedition by trying to overturn the election through coercion and insurrection. It was as illegal as it appeared. These hearings are just gilding the lily, dumping on us and the Justice Department an additional mountain of actionable evidence that should send Trump & Co. to prison forever.

As for the hearings themselves, I’m so over-saturated with Trump and his crimes, I absorb all information through the filter of, “Is this something I didn’t already know?” The answer is mostly no.

From the first prime-time hearing, my major takeaway was that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers arrived at the Capitol hours early and skipped Trump’s speech so they could begin the rampage while Trump whipped reinforcements into a frenzy.

Bottom line: The insurrection was planned and coordinated with the White House, not spontaneous.

A subsequent hearing revealed that Trump has bilked $250 million from his cult for a nonexistent “Defense Fund.” He probably continues to this day because no one’s stopping him. He’s already stolen millions from his Inaugural Fund, gifts from foreign leaders, boxes of top-secret documents, and overcharged the Secret Service for profit, so why not?

Every hearing reiterates that Trump was told ad nauseam the election wasn’t stolen. They’ve also confirmed that Rudy Giuliani is a washed-up drunk, Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman plotted treason, and they’re all low-hanging, rotten fruit, but Merrick Garland coulda-shoulda-didn’t arrest them all months ago.

A truly sickening unintended consequence has been the glorification of Mike Pence and other Republicans who have testified. The truth is that Pence scoured every possibility to proclaim Trump the winner. But since he and all these witnesses had the sense to see prison looming if they obeyed Trump, they “did the right thing,” a.k.a, their jobs. Period.

Also, as the plot unfolded, with the exception of Arizona’s House Speaker Russell Bowers, who issued a press release no one saw, they all publicly said NOTHING to alert the country to Trump’s coup attempt.

Any other day, they’re still greedy, selfish, polluting, misogynistic, gun-loving, child-hating racists who want only to see white men owning and running the entire country again.

One huge takeaway from Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger: 28,000 ballots had NO vote for president, but did vote for Republicans down-ticket. Had all those voted for Trump, it would have been 173% of the 11,780 Trump demanded Raffensperger “find.”

Bottom line: Georgians didn’t want Trump reelected.

Why hasn’t this been a huge headline, media?

Raffensperger also told questioner Adam Schiff that Georgia found only four instances of votes from dead people. I expected Schiff to ask, “And who were those votes for?”

We’ll never know because Schiff let it drop. I’m going to take a wild guess and say Trump, because most of the few fraudulent votes anyone has found were for Trump.

That’s one small nail in the coffin, but a crucial one in driving home the point that the MAGA cult’s moral bankruptcy matches Trump’s own, and is even more dangerous by sheer numbers.

Yesterday’s hearing featured two black female Georgia vote counters. Trump and Giuliani have repeatedly named and reviled them with false accusations of vote tampering, which has stirred up the MAGA cult to have them living in fear for their lives.

This is a dot the media is doing a poor job of connecting. Trump’s continued freedom to spew lies is still inspiring bottom-feeding, brainwashed, armed scum to commit violence for him. Like the 1/6 insurrectionists, these people need to be tracked down now, arrested and dealt the most severe consequences the law allows, because nothing else is getting through to them.

Which brings me back to Attorney General Merrick Garland. I was incensed to see him almost giddy when asked if he’s watching the hearings…

Yeah, he’s watching, but is he DOING anything? Well, just yesterday, Garland hopped over to Ukraine to promise them he’ll deliver justice to their war criminals.

Bottom line: When the 1/6 hearings end, Garland had better deliver justice to the traitors in his own country who his inaction is enabling to STILL plot a coup, or he and the rest of us are all fucked.

Dems, Enough with Gun Control, Go After Bullets

By Karen

Guns don’t kill — bullets do.

–Cats Working

After yet another senseless slaughter of elementary school children and their teachers, Democrats are outraged and heartbroken. They howl that something needs to be done. Yet by doing NOTHING to punish or expel their seditious Republican colleagues in Congress — many still publicly trying to overthrow the government — Pelosi and Schumer allow a treasonous minority to block all gun control.

While clutching their nonexistent Second Amendment right to personal armories, Republicans love to deflect the blame to mental illness.

This is the only point where I agree with Republicans. You certainly do have to be severely mentally ill to want ALL fetuses born so they can grow up to be blown away at school by your guns.

As a sign where Republicans’ addled heads still are after this latest carnage, an NRA convention begins May 27 in Houston, a mere 278 miles from blood-soaked Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. But no Texans are telling the NRA, “Bad timing. Take your death-loving freak show somewhere else this year.”

Since Democrats will never whine themselves to a win on re-banning assault weapons or reducing the 400 million guns currently out there, they need another angle, like…

AN EXORBITANT FEDERAL TAX ON BULLETS

Make each bullet cost $100. All the sniveling little punks plotting killing sprees under their oblivious parents’ noses might even have to get a job to save enough for ammo. The delay could maybe make them grow out of the idea — or give a parent time to realize they’re harboring a psychopath.

Upon turning 18, the Uvalde killer bought himself the mass murderers’ weapon of choice, an AR-15 and high-capacity magazines. He also had a handgun.

This page from the Bushmaster Operator and Safety Instruction Manual says the gun can fire 45 rounds (i.e., bullets) a minute.

So, Congress could set a deranged killer back $4,500 for each minute of fun pretending a school is a video game.

Tax the hell out of ammunition so it’s far beyond the reach of all the low- to middle-class wannabe mass murderers and MAGA cultists itching for Civil War II. Then they can play with as many empty guns as they wish.

BONUS FROM THE CATS WORKING ARCHIVES: We’ve been gun control advoCATs for years. Our late colleague Cole was passionate on the topic, and here are links to some of his memorable posts.

Cole, 2015

In 2018, after the Washington D.C. Navy Yard mass murder, Cole suggested …

“If we won’t stop people from buying guns, let’s declare every person who tries to buy a gun insane until they can prove beyond a doubt otherwise.” If No Gun Control, Then People Control

Cole in 2013 linked people’s compulsion to own guns and SUVs to the same evil intent…

“The thought process playing out with guns today is a replay of what happened when massive SUVs became available to any moron with a driver’s license. Just like guns, SUVs make their owners feel invulnerable, immortal, and in possession of a bigger penis. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Mini Cooper would be no match for Woody Allen in an SUV.” Riddle: How is a Gun Like an SUV

After the Newtown massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, Cole shot down former Republican Governor Bob McDonnell’s not-so-novel idea to arm all the adults…

“So the teacher keeps the gun locked in his desk. Then a gunman suddenly walks in and starts spraying the room with bullets. Before the teacher can get to his gun, he’s dead.

“And since teachers can’t be in their classrooms 24/7, what’s to keep an enterprising little lock-picker from getting to the gun and wasting the classmates who just bullied him in the lunchroom?” Virginia’s Redneck Response to Newtown

Also after Newtown, Cole offered a smorgasbord of ways to curb gun violence, while expressing his dismay with the state of things…

“Every time we have a Columbine, a Virginia Tech, an Aurora, a Newtown, and people do nothing but light candles, cry, and pray (and re-elect politicians who’d rather have regular massacres than give up their right to carry double-barreled penis extensions), Americans show the world what a bunch of craven, ignorant barbarians we are.” Response to Newtown Incomprehensible — Yet Predictable

Taking a Pass on 2022 Kentucky Derby

By Tony

Here’s a confession for all my peeps: Try as hard as I might, I’m just not feeling excited about Triple Crown season the way my predecessors Adele and Fred did. I’m sorry.

A month before I was born, back in 2019, the Kentucky Derby winner was Maximum Security. But he was disqualified for bumping into another horse in the stretch and they gave the win to Country House instead.

I joined the Cats Working crew that October. Roc and Max drafted me to fill Adele’s considerable paw pads as the 2020 Triple Crown prognosticator. But COVID screwed up the order of my first Triple Crown season and the Derby ended up being the LAST race, run in September, instead of the first one. My pick came in second, but he’d already won the longest and hardest race, the Belmont, so I couldn’t claim to know what I was doing.

Not like amazing Adele did back in 2011 when she picked Animal Kingdom and HE WON!

So, I tried again in 2021. When my top pick came in 16^th, I began to wonder if I’m really cut out for horse racing. The winner of that Derby was Medina Spirit. But then HE was disqualified after they found some banned substance in his system after the race.

Sadly, Medina Spirit unexpectly dropped dead during a workout on December 6, 2021. But he died a winner, never knowing he was disqualified, because the humans took their sweet time and didn’t reach their verdict until February 2022.

As a result, Medina’s trainer, Bob Baffert, has been banned for two years from tracks on both coasts for doping horses. But for today’s Derby, Baffert managed to skirt the ban by transferring two of his horses, Taiba and Messier, to one of his former trainer associates, who was able to enter them.

After two Derby disqualifications in three years, I think The Triple Crown is morphing into more a series of rigged elections than fair races. It doesn’t matter how powerful or fast the horses are. Some human bastard with an agenda will be waiting like a spider at the finish line, hoping for some sign of “fraud” with which to take out the winner.

You can’t get excited or trust what you see watching these races anymore. If they don’t turn out the way some backroom gang of thugs planned, they’ll throw the thing into dispute until they get what they want, the horses be damned.

I feel really bad for thoroughbreds who train hard and run themselves ragged in qualifying races for the Derby. In the end, none of it matters. Their reputations and fates are in the hands of sometimes deceitful, greedy people who will dope or drag any horse’s good name through the mud to win.

Cats Working wishes all the horses a safe trip today, and we’ll be watching. But nobody’s got paws crossed for a winner, because any horse’s “victory” may be just a temporary illusion.

Abortion: Only the Tip of the Real Problem

By Karen

A draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court’s still-pending decision on Roe v. Wade has leaked and reveals the expected. The conservative majority (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, maybe Roberts) will allow states once again to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies, or risk death trying to end them.

Meanwhile, sadistic state Republicans across the country are passing draconian laws to severely restrict or ban abortion altogether.

The nightmare is here, so, will women stop whining and start demanding an eye for an eye? Or, a dick for a uterus?

(NOTE: I use “dick” instead of the proper term to avoid an avalanche of porn spam.)

While Republican men have wet dreams about torturing expectant mothers and then starving, neglecting, abusing and using their toddlers for target practice, women seem to be repeating Democrats’ mistake by playing nice. They express outrage on cable news and hold marches and peaceful protests.

Women, wake up. We need to scream and do something about the root cause of abortion: men’s dicks.

Dicks exist only for sperm delivery. OK, sperm and urine. Dickless men would have to sit down to pee like ladies. No biggie.

If not for dicks doing their sperm thing, abortion would be unneeded, legal or otherwise.

Every abortion now in question started with a dick attached to a man.

[“What about in vitro fertilization?” you cleverly ask. Stay focused. Women who get in vitro (Latin for “without dick”) are desperate. They don’t get abortions unless something goes terribly wrong. Those tragic terminations should have another name and are excluded from my discussion.]

Sicko Republicans paint women as inherently evil baby-killers whose lives must be destroyed — even if they were rape or incest victims. Whereas, the real evil is men’s unfettered dick freedom. Nobody’s suggesting the first fucking remedy for that. Not even male birth control.

Female legislators need to grow a pair and write counter-legislation.

How about bills mandating stiff penalties for men who impregnate women against their will, even if they’re married? If the child is born, the woman can sue to ensure financial support for herself and the child for 18 years, even if there’s a divorce.

Or, how about enabling a woman to sue for $10,000 any man who hits on her for unwanted sex that could result in pregnancy?

Call this one #MeToo on Steroids, or a Bounty on Indiscriminate Dicks. If Texas can put a bounty on uteruses, why not?

Men who try to skip out on the court’s ruling against them for any reason are reported, arrested and given the option of vasectomy or chemical castration (their choice) so they can’t offend again.

This is basically TNR (trap-neuter-release) used on feral cat colonies to reduce their numbers, only applied to human men. If enough men skirt their financial penalties, they get neutered, the birth rate drops and abortion eventually becomes moot.

Seem harsh? Think about this:

Most men think of their dicks as instruments of pride, pleasure (or power) over women, not baby-makers. To exterminate men with this attitude would admittedly be extreme, but we can certainly curb their dicks.

While this female-friendly legislation gets debated, women could exercise options some currently ignore, if the numbers fleeing Texas for abortions are any indication. For starters, keep your legs together. If you feel frisky, you can do the job quicker and better yourself and, unless your man has no hands, so can he.

In extreme cases, remember Lorena Bobbitt. She became famous in 1993 for cracking under sexual abuse (and a forced abortion) and castrating her husband. The world would be a lot safer for all women if more wives trained their husbands to sleep with one eye open, or risk waking up looking like a Ken doll.

Women need to get real and get loud about dicks. In addition to legal penalties, we need to ban Viagra, Cialis and whatever other dick-inflating pills they’ve got, as well as pumps, implants and any other pervy devices they use.

If women can’t have abortions, then men need to take responsibility for their role in pregnancy and be punished to the fullest extent if it’s unwanted.

And may every dick on the Supreme Court (including Amy the c*nt) who doesn’t like this solution be damned.

Some Days, I Just Can’t…

By Karen

Does anyone else feel like they can’t handle one more scandal, disaster or war?

First, we had to endure four years of Trump’s firehose of lies and gaslighting — now five years+ and counting because the DOJ must secretly worship Trump at a shrine they’ve erected in the basement.

Bad as that was, it was overlapped by two years of coronavirus pandemic, which virtually wiped my memory of my existence during 2020 and 2021.

Those two slow-rolling nightmares made my hair thin and my skin break out in a full-body rash I’m still dealing with. (I took up meditation and the skin is much better, but scalp psoriasis persists, thanks for asking.)

Photo: New York Post

Today, you turn on the TV and it’s wall-to-wall coverage of Putin’s unjustified, illegal Ukraine invasion. I can watch only about 10 minutes of CNN before I have to turn off. That’s because I freak out knowing the world is just WATCHING — helpless to stop it — while Putin tries to obliterate a country and murder its entire population.

I abandoned MSNBC completely after Rachel Maddow swanned off to make the movie nobody’s waiting for about a forgotten asshole, Spiro Agnew, just when we need her to keep connecting dots and nailing Republican traitors until they’re brought to justice or voted out (or retire or die).

If I hear one more talking head say Putin “may have” committed war crimes, my own head will explode. We have laws defining war crimes. How many demolished civilian homes and public buildings, and bodies being dumped into mass graves, do we need to see before the gutless media admits and unequivocally states…

PUTIN IS A WAR CRIMINAL WHO MUST BE PUNISHED

Yesterday I heard Secretary of State Antony Blinken say the U.S. has determined that Russian forces “have” committed war crimes and they will be held accountable.

So, we round up and prosecute all the small-potato soldiers? Crush the little guys perpetrating death and destruction on the orders of a homicidal megalomaniac?

Why does this feel familiar? Oh, right. Merrick Garland’s massive “crackdown” on MAGA 1/6 rioters who stormed, vandalized and shit all over the U.S. Capitol.

Our leaders are essentially saying we must NEVER go after power-hungry madmen who launch heinous assaults against humanity to stroke their own egos and make their dicks feel bigger. It might upset them.

I feel like I expend all my energy trying to maintain my sanity while the people who are supposed to uphold justice twiddle. I’ve got no capacity left to cope with earthquakes, floods, mudslides, tornadoes and new COVID outbreaks.

I’ve deliberately kept SCOTUS developments off my radar since Biden confirmed his pick would be a black woman. I knew he’d pick someone vastly more caring and competent than Trump’s cruel, subversive ideologues, Kavanaugh and Barrett. I don’t need to watch the confirmation hearing to know Republicans will act like the hateful, ignorant, misogynistic, racist hypocrites they all are.

As with Putin and Trump, we already have mountains of evidence proving beyond doubt that many Republicans in Congress are corrupt, treasonous scumbags with zero regard for decency or human life. What we don’t see is anyone who should be confronting and punishing them doing it.

That’s what’s depresses me most. The brave Ukrainian people will succeed in repelling Putin from their country because defeat is not an option for them. But victory will come at the steepest imaginable cost.

Meanwhile, the U.S. sticks to its goal of letting all the bad guys win — at least, the ones who are politicians.

Did the U.S. Embolden Putin to Invade Ukraine?

By Karen

When Putin succeeded in planting his greasy orange sock puppet named Trump in the White House to disrupt the United States as much as possible, and we allowed it for four years, we should have known Putin wouldn’t stop there.

At Putin’s bidding, Trump did all he could to destroy the federal government and weaken NATO. He illegally withheld military aid from Ukraine to personally blackmail President Volodymyr Zelensky.

As a bonus, Trump even lucked into a random opportunity to effortlessly kill at least 400,000 Americans with lies about coronavirus.

The failed Ukraine scheme earned Trump his first impeachment, but it resulted in a huge jackpot for Putin. When Republicans refused to kick Trump out of office or even fault his blackmail attempt, Putin realized his puppet show (and influence) had magically expanded to include the entire Republican Party.

Then Special Counsel Robert Mueller, with both hands tied behind his back, investigated Trump and couldn’t expose that Putin’s hand was so far up Trump’s ass, we could see Putin giving us the finger out of Trump mouth. So Trump again remained in office.

When Putin didn’t help Trump stay in office in 2020, Trump on his own tried to overthrow the government. This got him impeached a second time, but Putin’s true-blue Republicans helped Trump survive once more without a scratch. This allowed Trump to regroup at Mar-a-Lago and continue fomenting insurrection, taking with him 15 thoughtfully packed boxes of classified documents to give his benefactor Putin as thanks for 2016-2020 memories.

It appears Putin grew bored once Biden was sworn in. Half of Congress are still Putin’s useful idiots, but their individual influence is negligible, so corrupting our government is no fun for him anymore.

Putin’s undoubtedly been watching the Biden administration let Trump and his allies continue to roam the country, campaigning for treason. Anywhere but in the U.S., a former “leader” promoting a violent coup would be arrested, charged, and imprisoned to await trial.

But here’s what Americans are doing when faced with a diaper-wearing wannabe mobster whose entire life of naked criminality has been so evil and vast that it defies description. We investigate, form committees, seat grand juries, launch sub-investigations and subcommittees, issue reports redacted of all the pertinent facts, and amass mountains of irrefutable evidence of guilt. Then we do NOTHING with the evidence until everyone involved dies of natural causes. Then we leave judgment to “future history books.”

If the U.S. had an ounce of respect for law and justice, Trump’s bloated carcass would be rotting in prison or a home for the criminally insane and Putin would be too afraid to send flowers.

I believe our government’s utter failure to punish Trump’s crimes is what gave Putin complete confidence that he could invade and seize Ukraine.

Every time I watch the news and see the senseless carnage and destruction Putin is inflicting on Ukraine, or hear of another “roadblock” or successful Trump stall tactic to stave off punishment, I can’t help feeling that we put Putin up to it with our continued chickenshit coddling of the monster Putin created to test us — Trump.

For Trump, Follow Up Blame with Consequences

By Karen

I’ve been holding my fire on this Trump-getting-away-with-everything infamy for weeks because it makes me crazy to think about it. But on the anniversary of 1/6/21, we must face the fact that nothing has been done to strengthen democracy so monsters like Trump can never occupy the White House again.

Congress is crawling with traitors (on both sides) actively sabotaging Biden’s agenda and nothing is happening to them. Oh, right, Marjorie Taylor-Greene got kicked off Twitter.

I trace the origin of this mess to when the media and elected representatives willfully refused to communicate honestly about Trump.

Remember when no one on the airwaves would say Trump was lying? Except Lawrence O’Donnell, a true pioneer (this from March 14, 2017; Trump had been in office about two months)…

With hindsight on the torrent of vile, fact-free propaganda that ensued, all the other talking heads’ Victorian reluctance to speak inelegantly of Trump seems quaint.

We then had to suffer four years of gaslighting, with no one daring to call Trump a bat-shit mentally ill career criminal who broke laws willy-nilly right to our faces and dared us to do anything about it.

Oh, right, Trump was impeached TWICE, totally without consequences, except maybe some nasty write-ups in future history books that he’ll be too dead to read.

Today, even after the carnage of 1/6/21, they still use limp blame words when claiming to make big pronouncements — even adding toothless qualifiers — like, may be accountable, possibly responsible and could have culpability.

Blame words have no intent or effect but to invoke shame.

But Trump and his fellow traitors are incapable of shame. They say, “So what? We’re doing it. How are you going to stop us?”

Blame is a dead end. Nothing happens after blame. What every decent person in this country wants to see for Trump and his enablers are CONSEQUENCES.

From the two impeachments, what the 1/6 committee has gathered, and what we all witnessed firsthand during Trump’s regime, the guilt of Trump and everyone around him is irrefutable. The case against him has already been made…and made…and made.

Until somebody pronounces these criminals and traitors guilty, sentences them, and metes out dire consequences (life in prison without parole, at a minimum) to stop and punish behavior they now continue to engage in, we’ve got nothing.

Today, Joe Biden made a powerful speech where, without naming the orange bastard once, Biden laid 1/6/21 squarely in Trump’s lap.

But that’s all it was, blame. Now what?

Which brings me to Attorney General Merrick Garland. His big speech yesterday hinted that DOJ could go after Trump and his cronies, but gave not the slightest indication that he’s even attempting to maybe, possibly, even begin considering blaming Trump or his enablers for anything — let alone charging them.

But he’s all over prosecuting the small-potatoes brainwashed MAGA scum Trump sent rampaging through the Capitol.

I think Garland counts on himself and all the high-level perps dying off before he can get to them. Garland has proven himself so “above politics” and stuffed to the gills with integrity that he’ll let Trump and Republicans coup their way to fascist dictatorship while he slowly, meticulously, dots his I’s and crosses his T’s and keeps his skirts clean.

Garland is treating a nuclear war like it’s a pillow fight.

We need elected officials to end investigation stall tactics, to go with the multitude of hard, damning evidence they already have, and to mete out justice and political annihilation to Trump and Republicans — because they’re on a solid track to destroy democracy and must be stopped NOW.

Until treason and criminality have consequences, we’re all screwed.

Larry David Milks Asia-Jimmy Story for Laughs

By Karen

Watching the latest episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (Episode 11:7, “Irma Kostroski”) my jaw dropped when one of the story lines was the statutory rape accusation against Anthony Bourdain’s last girlfriend, which we learned about in August 2018, after his death in June.

If you’re not into Curb, here’s how it goes: It’s a sitcom starring Larry David playing himself as a curmudgeonly semi-retired TV writer/producer living in California. The show isn’t fully scripted. The actors know what’s supposed to happen, but ad lib much of the dialogue.

This season, Larry has been developing a sitcom based on his early life as a Jew in New York, casting an actor named Asa to play “Young Larry.” Asa is a pretentious jerk with many ridiculous demands for his character’s “authenticity.”

The thinly fictionalized Asia-Jimmy angle first comes up between the prop master Stan and Larry (I’ve cut lines that don’t add context)…

Stan: Larry, I can’t work with that kid [Asa]. He’s driving me nuts.

Larry: You know, like I told you, he’s a fucked up kid. He got sexually abused, I hear.

Stan: Oh, well, about that. I did my research. And it turns out, little Asa there, when he was a 17-year old kid, was “taken advantage of” by the beautiful 37-year-old Adriana Amante, the Italian actress. Fucking smokeshow, stunning.

Larry: That’s the trauma? I read about that.

Stan: Not only that, but he got 400 grand as a payoff. Formerly known as Andy. Were you as lucky at 17 to be taken advantage of by a supermodel?

Larry: Yeah, right. I was traumatized because I couldn’t have any sex at all.

Stan: Same here. I couldn’t fucking pay a woman to touch me.

Next scene, Larry confronts Asa…

Larry: You’re really giving Stan a hard time. You’re acting like kind of an asshole. There could be a justification for it, because I know how traumatized you were from that horrible incident you had when you were 17 and sexually abused by a beautiful, luscious, voluptuous Italian movie star.

Asa: You heard about that, huh?

Larry: Oh, my God, I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have —

Asa: It was so hard.

Larry: How did that work, exactly? Did she get you in a headlock?

Asa: It was a mental headlock.

Larry: All right, cut the shit, OK? You were 17 years old. If a cactus touched your penis, you would have been thrilled at that age, OK?

Asa: Ow, wow, wow. What if you were in high school and you slept with an older, famous actress? How would people treat you?

Larry: They would have named the high school after me.

Later, Larry lunching with the guys at his country club, and here the truth gets altered a bit…

Larry: So, it turns out he [Asa] did this movie when he was 17 and had sex in her trailer. He claimed that he was abused and got a $400,000 settlement. Now he’s playing the victim.

Larry’s friend Richard Lewis: It was the luckiest day of his life.

Larry’s roommate Leon: He’s ungrateful. This little motherfucker got a piece of ass, which is priceless. Then he got $400,000 on top of that shit? And the movie paid him. He got paid three fucking times and he’s still complaining.

Larry: Exactly.

Now it’s local Election Day and Larry encounters Asa outside the polls, where Asa makes a demand…

Larry: Get rid of Stan?

Asa: Yeah. He’s very difficult.

Larry: You know what? You’re driving him crazy.

Asa: I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make art.

Larry: Yeah, well, he’s going to have a nervous breakdown, and it’s going to be real trauma, not like the fake trauma that you went through.

Asa: Oh, that’s where you’re going to go. It was real trauma. I suffered very… Hey, what are you doing, Larry?

Larry approaches a boy in line while Asa looks on…

Larry: Can I ask you a question? How old are you?

Boy: 18.

Larry: If a woman who looks like this (pulls up picture, presumably of the actress, on his phone, but not you-know-who) was interested in you, what would you say?

Boy: Yeah, I’d like that.

Larry: And what if she touched you down there?

Boy: Down there? Fuck, yeah.

Larry: And what if she invited you back to her apartment to have sex with her, and then she gave you $400,000?

Boy: Who wouldn’t take that?

Larry: Yeah, who wouldn’t take that? Thank you.

Boy: Is she here? When’s this happening?

Larry: Don’t be an idiot, no. Of course not.

By making the kid a schmuck and smearing compliments all over the actress with a thick knife, Larry David presumably is trying to avoid any backlash in the real world. But what I’m wondering is, what in hell made Larry think to exploit that still-unresolved situation as comedy fodder? And to go on and on about it? In the process, he essentially applauds the woman for committing statutory rape.

This Cats Working post from August 2018 provides details of what really happened, according to The New York Times, as well as subsequent posts as more information came to light.

And here’s a full recap of that Curb episode.

PS: Cats Working avoids using the woman in question’s full name because we don’t want to come up in her Google searches on herself or contribute to statistics on mentions of her.

Democrats Plunge Virginia Backward

By Karen

Just like their dithering role models in Congress, Virginia Democrats failed to vote in this week’s statewide elections by just enough (~2 points) to make us lose EVERYTHING. In one day, they turned our totally blue state to flaming red by letting Republicans become governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, and regain a majority in the House of Delegates.

Trump is gloating because — despite losing Virginia TWICE — he’s now got the state in his greasy pocket.

Our next governor, Glenn Youngkin, whom Stephen Colbert aptly described as “the love child of Mr. Rogers and Ted Cruz,” vows to “change the direction of Virginia.”

The vacant eyes, the vapid smile of Virginia’s next Republican governor

Youngkin will come to power inheriting a multi-billion-dollar budget surplus, COVID on the wane, again, the Civil War and its iconography no longer a “thing,” and women able to get abortions without undergoing the invasive, unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds pervy Republicans mandated when they last ran the show. This is the direction he wants to change.

Youngkin, a millionaire and former CEO of a hedge fund, has never held an elected office in his life. While pretending he had nothing to do with Trump, he blew Trump’s ignorance and divisiveness through a foghorn that echoed in every dark corner of the state where knuckle-draggers get along jes’ fine with no book larnin’.

He encouraged parents who never read the book to demand banning Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved — because it makes slavery look bad and it’s written by a black woman.

He’s also got parents’ panties in a bunch over critical race theory. They have no idea what it is, it’s NOT taught in Virginia, but they’re slavering to abolish it — because they innately know more than teachers.

I won’t be surprised when they make Gone with the Wind a textbook and mandate it in all high schools as the definitive word on the Civil War.

And Monument Avenue could very well get all its statues of loser Civil War generals back. The pedestals are still there, just waiting.

For Virginia now to “change direction,” Youngkin means to turn it into East Coast Texas. He must be itching to ban as many abortions as possible, allow even more extreme gerrymandering, and procedurally disenfranchise Democratic (ahem, minority) voters under the guise of “election integrity.”

(NOTE: Even though the top three Republican ass clowns won by just a point or two, no Democrats are screaming this election was stolen. We’re not that abysmally stupid.)

And let’s not forget the death penalty, which Virginia abolished earlier this year. Youngkin must certainly want to revive that while he’s rolling back all gun control so Virginia can proudly resume giving every homicidal nut job on the Eastern Seaboard a hassle-free experience expanding their arsenals with unlimited numbers of guns and assault weapons.

Once murders pick up again, Youngkin will want to keep Virginia’s prisons from overcrowding by having the option of speedy executions. Of course, he’ll consider pardoning any felon who declares their victim “needed killing” (i.e., the shooter is white, the victim wasn’t).

That’s justice, Republican-style.

Ever heard our famous slogan, “Virginia is for lovers”? Forget that if you’re LGBTQ. Our leaders don’t want your kind around here. And don’t expect any legal accommodations that might spare you from being personally persecuted and discriminated against in housing, jobs and services.

It’s only a matter of time before Youngkin makes his obligatory trek to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of his lord and master, whose repeated endorsements (which Youngkin pretended to ignore) undoubtedly delivered the voters that no candidate appealing to reason or decency could ever hope to reach.

And now Virginia’s going to pay. Thanks a lot, Democrats. You blew it bigly.

Delta Surges, Masks Disappear. WTF?

By Karen

During the one brief, shining moment COVID was on the decline, I still never went out frivolously or stopped wearing a mask — not even after July 1, when it once again became a Class 6 felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conceal your face in public. (Luckily, I haven’t heard of anybody going down on a mask rap.)

Virginia’s mask prohibition went back into effect when Governor Ralph Northam allowed the pandemic state of emergency to expire on June 30. Now, the Delta variant is rampaging through our red regions. But instead of again requiring masks in indoor settings, Northam’s wussing out and says just to follow CDC guidelines, which seem to change every five fucking minutes.

(I don’t blame the CDC, but keeping up with this shit is exhausting.)

Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon in real life, just mandated masks for everyone in K-12 when schools open in the fall. Some parents are outraged, because they must want their kids sick or dead.

But many adults are NOT following CDC guidelines. As of this moment, the CDC says EVERYONE, vaccinated or not, should mask up indoors in “high” or “substantial” transmission areas. According to this map, that’s most of Virginia.

Many vaccinated people are apparently unaware they can inhale snootfuls of Delta from unvaxxed maskholes who walk among us. Even if the vaxxed themselves don’t get sick, they become walking COVID carriers.

This past week at Food Lion and Sam’s Club, I was gobsmacked to see predominantly barefaced customers, and some employees. The ones in masks mostly seemed to be older ladies like me who don’t want even a dab of COVID.

I blame this on the myriad stupid sources people consider “news.” I’m not just talking about Trumpy media outlets and Facebook.

With the proliferation of cable channels, streaming, social media, and even CNN’s sketchy coverage of most things, there’s no longer any main trusted source where everyone gets the same story. We used to get our news from competently staffed newspapers and career journalists like Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Huntley and Brinkley, and other professionals committed to reporting the facts without putting their own editorial spin on them.

Speaking of news, spare me any more tales of how COVID is ravaging states in the South and Midwest — a.k.a. Trump Country.

Last year, they were all oblivious while hundreds of thousands of their fellow Americans suffered and died. Today, they still refuse the vaccinations that could save their lives because their ignorance has become impenetrable after soaking in so many lies and conspiracy theories from God-knows-where.

So, now it’s their turn to get deathly ill and die, and in the immortal words of Melania’s jacket, “I really don’t care, do you?”

My sympathy goes to the selfless medical providers tasked with trying to save these morons from horrible, 100% preventable, self-inflicted deaths after they thoughtlessly sucked in a deadly virus through their maskless pieholes, mistaking it for “freedom.”

Now that it’s no longer blue states bearing the brunt of fatalities, some Republican leaders are admitting masks and vaccines aren’t so bad after all. It’s finally dawning on them that they’re screwed when they succeed in killing off much of their base in those sparsely populated, vast swaths of nowhere. They forgot to ram through any laws in those states giving livestock the right to vote.