When did the English language decide that the OO sound meant stoopid and/or crazy? Why is it so easy to think of words designating dumb/nuts that feature OO? Rube, yahoo, boob, booboisie, stooge, goon, loon, moonbeam, buffoon, doo-doo, woo-woo, zoo (as in “the zoo at the Capitol building”).
UD wondered about this as she read a wonderful opinion piece from Alabama, where the author, seeking an organizing principle, a leit motif, around which to discuss “our political class in Alabama, … folks too dumb to understand how dumb they are, made that way through self-inflicted repetitive brain injuries,” lights on The Three Stooges (plus Shemp).
Kyle Whitmire works his way down the list of Alabama’s highest-profile idiots, comparing each of them to his Stooge-equivalent:
Mo Brooks “believes sea-level rise is due to rocks falling in the water; he’s called mitigation measures put in place by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey ‘nanny state’ politics and last year, he bragged on the effectiveness of the American healthcare system against the coronavirus… [S]poke to insurrectionists before they stormed the capitol, [and] now faces censure by Congress.”
Rep. Barry Moore: “[T]old Alabamians that, if Trump could get the coronavirus, everybody would wind up getting it, so there was little point to protective measures… [S]upported overturning a lawful election and declared that he was leaving Twitter after the platform had already suspended his account… [S]hared a meme on Facebook defending Kenosha, Wisc., shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, saying he’s ‘fought back.'”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville is “too dangerous to trust around kitchen appliances, much less the power of a United States senator. And he’s prone to slap people he’s mad at and no one assumes he knows what he’s doing.”
[Attorney General] Steve Marshall’s organization “helped organize the pro-Trump march in Washington, but after that march turned into an assault on the capitol, Marshall said he didn’t know anything about the organization’s role in it. Marshall promised to investigate, but when asked whether Trump bore any responsibility, Marshall played dumb. ‘I didn’t see anything about the rally,’ he told the Montgomery Advertiser. ‘I don’t know anything about his remarks.'”
As the massive Trump tide recedes (or, as one observer memorably put it, as “witless ape rides helicopter” out of DC), it leaves in its wake schools of minnows that we hadn’t been able to see before, drowning as we were in the tide.
But now is the time to zoom in – on the fools, the nincompoops, the kooks, the googly-eyed, the stooges – before they try for another insurrection against the republic.
This blog will chronicle their movements.
… to be a real moneymaker for the federal government, now that fines will be imposed on House members unable to resist even for an hour or two the peculiar arousal of up close and personal arsenals. Friends and family have tried all kinds of interventions, but Lauren Boebert’s craving for glocks has now become a financial and reputational emergency, costing her so far $5000 in fines as she goes into a swoon at the Capitol metal detector and becomes a national laughingstock.
That amount will rise with each daily infraction, until her salary falls to something like $20,000 a year, but farcical as this daily public mental breakdown may appear, addiction is no laughing matter. Much as she might like to avoid personal and professional disaster, Boebert has no more control over her screaming fits at the detector, and her efforts to illegally evade it, than Jeffrey Epstein did over his daily need for sex slaves.
Boebert’s the loudest, but she’s far from the only House member melting down every day at the metal detector. Fine-wise, we’re talking real money, which UD proposes Pelosi donate to a fund for the victims of gun violence.
The ONLY one; and he represents people way over THERE… over on the far right… the eastern shore… which is BARELY Maryland… Let’s call it Tidewater West Virginia or something …
Back over here, in MARYLAND, we don’t elect stinky doodoos who do a doodoo in front of the Capitol police days after a violent insurrection because they MUST be allowed to break the rules and carry their guns onto the House floor because what if there’s another insurrection and he can be of assistance to the Proud Boys? Pence is gone, but someone’s gotta pop Pelosi…
Cosmic convergence, too, with one of this blog’s perennials, His Holiness Adrian Vermeule — who shares with Andy Harris an adoration of Hungary’s dictator, Viktor Orban!
Rescind her degree; denounce her; make it clear you will have nothing to do with her. The University of Georgia – long designated on this blog The Worst University in America (not all posts at this link are about the University of Georgia; scroll around a bit) – has drawn attention to its worstness again by having spawned this vile nut. Without at least a statement expressing its embarrassment that it allowed itself to be sullied by her, the school will forever be known as the place that awarded a degree to one of the most squalid minds America has ever thrown up.
“By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.” … [In response,] Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “Nice tweet Sen. Cruz! Quick question: do you also believe the Geneva Convention was about the views of the citizens of Geneva?”
UD‘s had what to say about allowing female ISIS fighters (not all of the posts I just linked to are relevant; scroll around) to return to Europe and America. She certainly agrees that an entire life in a camp for ISIS prisoners in Syria doesn’t sound very nice, but allowing terrorists trained to kill Americans into America doesn’t sound very smart. Allowing people who held and abused slaves, who broadcast propaganda calling for the death of America, who were party to the beheading of people and the blowing up of buildings full of people all over Europe, etc., etc., to live among us is … I’d call it suicidal.
Bring them here and put them on trial? Convicting people who lived in a whirling bloody chaos, doing disgusting, undocumented things, for years and years, will be difficult, ja?
But after all she seems to be sorry for what she’s done and says she’s changed – why not believe her?
You go ahead and set up your own country where the population is willing to take risks like that.
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It can therefore be no surprise that, in the case of one of these women, one US court after another says unh-unh. (Here’s the latest failed appeal. The authors frame it as a sad event.) Hoda Muthana grew up in Alabama, daughter of a Yemeni diplomat, but left when the clarion call of the butchery of the innocent became too loud to ignore. She was a “prominent spokeswoman” for ISIS. Now that ISIS as a territorial thing is no longer an option, she’s ready for Option Two: the USA. She brings with her a son who, one presumes, she’s raising to be as dangerous as she is.
About that son – he had a Tunisian father, which might allow him to move to Tunisia as a citizen. (The father died long ago while in the process of trying to slaughter as many evil idolators as possible.) And it’s possible that Yemen – where Muthana would feel right at home, because Yemen still has slavery – would be willing to take her. Goes without saying that the kid would be far better off in Tunisia, but separating them would be an obvious cruelty.
“[N]othing in the provision authorizing impeachment-for-removal limits impeachment to situations where it accomplishes removal from office. Indeed, such a reading would thwart and potentially nullify a vital aspect of the impeachment power: the power of the Senate to impose disqualification from future office as a penalty for conviction.”
Because of the work of her hands (clearing a path through the woods), UD discovered, this time last year, a deer skull. She washed it a bit and placed it in a large white outdoor plant container. Now and then she glanced at its morbid beauty.
It didn’t mean much to her; it was one of several (less aesthetic) deer skulls she had discovered while working in the woods.
Nuno, her Portuguese landscaper, noticed the skull this morning and said to UD: “What kind of animal is that? Where did you find it? How did you get it?” He seemed rather excited.
Nuno explained that he collected animal skulls. “I put colored beads in their eye sockets and feathers on their heads.”
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Nuno proposed to pay UD for the skull, and she agreed. He gave her cash, and she gave him the skull.
“I earned money for the household by the work of my hands!” UD exulted to Mr UD and La Kid (staying in ‘thesda because UD is creeped out by the armed camp DC has become – she goes back to the city today). UD liked this phrase and repeated it. “It’s Biblical! The work of my hands!”
Of course DJT hasn’t written an inaugural letter, to be read by his successor. This is one of many departures from tradition for which DJT will fail to be remembered.
Already a Chicago Tribune writer has tried his hand at a satirical inaugural letter. UD offers a letter in the form of a poem – a poem in which DJT shows remarkable literary culture.
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LETTER TO MY SUCCESSOR, BY DONALD J. TRUMP
They say you’re giving the place a deep clean.
Good call. I wish I could explain how I
Soiled the great gift of the presidency.
Didn’t want to! I swear I didn’t mean
To leave it like this: a moral pigsty.
But of course I know you don’t believe me.
Consider, though, how human beings lean
Toward self-destruction. Don’t believe me? Try
Kafka. Cioran. Freud. Dostoevsky.
From a review of an odd film I’ve seen:
“The film focuses on psycho-bi-
ological forces that make you your own enemy.
The lust for chaos; the lust to demean …
To demean yourself! You self-glorify,
But in a sick way. But only outwardly.
The hunger for colossal failure in
The drive for success; and for death in any
Vigilant and violent hypochondry.”
Raskolnikov skulks away; the final scene
A shabby nothing as I hiss goodbye.
Some day you’ll find a way to pity me.
*********************************
UPDATE: He did write a letter after all.
Probably a lot like the one I wrote.
The good news: Mike “Martial Law” Lindell, AKA Mr “My Pillow,” will be there; and, because most retailers are now dropping his line, he will bring along to the ceremony thousands of unsold pillows, to create a warm inviting mood.
… “These are heavy misfortunes,” as Elizabeth Bennett says to Lady Catherine de Bourgh; yet we are all pulling for Jill Biden, and hoping she can come out in one piece on the other side.
She plans on lobbying the Supreme Scrabble Court to make “qanon” a legitimate game word. There are very few q and no u words allowed in Scrabble, and even though QAnon is a proper noun, UD‘s hoping the SSC, cognizant of the paucity of q and no u words, will at least agree to take the case.
… the scummy world of big-time Southern football keeps rolling along. For years and years she’s followed the beautiful, profoundly rooted culture of obscenely overpaid coaches cheating their way to championships that get rescinded when some filthy traitor on the staff spills the beans. Then there’s the old-timey defamation lawsuit the fired coach files, in which he demands a billion dollar settlement cuz of all the damage the school has done to his beautiful reputation. There’s the charming buzz that ensues among the faithful: Who among the equally scummy cheater-coaches out there will be the dumped cheater-coach’s replacement? And everybody cheats, so why were we singled out? There’s the sweet perennial controversy about whether tailgate parties which turn the campus into a urinic heap where drunk out of their minds pre-teens reel about should be subject to a few rules, and the equally perennial controversy about the advisability of a university holding courses during the same week important football game are played (answer: scheduled classes are inadvisable). There’s the inexhaustible thrill of watching this or that heavily-recruited player with a notoriously violent past assault people all over town, as well as the larger traditional spectacle of groups of bulked up football heroes making use of monster SUVs, monster rifles, and illicit drugs all at the same time. The fraternities make their own venerable contribution to the Southern football landscape, killing pledges during fan parties through the time-tested method of alcohol and neglect.
The University of Tennessee is the scummy football school du jour; but places like Ole Miss, which combine all aspects of this culture with campus white supremacy riots, are real – uh – historic.
And yet at the same time what could be more totally up to date than white supremacy rioting?