Over 20 years ago -- right around when Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of our state -- we were fond of shocking people by pointing out: "Politics has become indistinguishable from show business." The entertainment industry and our political system had been slowly merging, ever since the ascension of B-movie actor Ronald Reagan to the White House in the 1980s. But we have to say, we never foresaw the day when politics would become completely replaced by entertainment and entertainment alone. And we seem to be fast approaching that point.

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What is one to make of the sudden rise in physical altercations (or threats thereof) in the halls of Congress? Well, you can play it for comedy, that's certainly the first impulse. Or you can adopt a sort of "Tsk, tsk!" tone and go for the moral highroad. Then there is the traditional fallback of the opposition party using it to score political points. But in these uncertain times (to say the least) one might be tempted to fit this into a bigger picture and say it is part and parcel of a dark and very dangerous trend in American politics right now: the normalization and acceptance (by one party) of political violence.

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Boo!

It is time once again, goblins and ghouls, to offer up some frightening political horror stories for both sides of the aisle. As in years past, we have brewed up a witches' cauldron of fearful spine-tingling tales to scare the pants right off you, no matter where you dwell on the political spectrum.

And, as promised, there will be pumpkins! We have carved two jack o'lanterns to fit each chilling tale, although we do admit that the second one was rather hard to think up an actual image for (we went with California, although upon reflection maybe we should have carved a train... or a snarling dog's face...).

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There are plenty of things I could be writing about today, not least among them the horrifying and completely laughable notion of making Donald Trump speaker of the House, but I decided to focus in on the "laughable" part instead. Because I, for one, am immensely pleased that late-night comedy shows are back on the air every night (and, starting this weekend, on Saturday night as well).

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This has been a notable week for Labor. President Joe Biden today visited an autoworkers' Union picket line in Detroit, in what is being described as "the first time ever" for a sitting president (nobody seems to have any definitive word on whether Biden truly is the first or not, but then again nobody has yet come up with another example from American history either). The week started out with the news that the Hollywood writers appear to have come to a deal with the studios to end their strike. And I have to say that while I applauded seeing Biden visit a Union picket line, I really cheered the news from Hollywood, as I have been seriously missing late-night television comics in my life. I look at politics all day, every day, and it is almost necessary (for my sanity) for me to decompress with some good political humor at the end of the day (or, for Saturday Night Live, at the end of the week). But that hasn't been an option for months now. The good news is that late-night will be the first part of the industry to recover, so we could start seeing new shows within days of the agreement being finalized.

What will the comics talk about? Well, they've certainly got plenty of material to work with. A lot of Trump's legal developments happened after the strike began, just for starters. Just within the world of politics, there have been plenty of juicy stories just ripe for ridicule over the summer. But at some point they'll also pick up on the most current events; the most current easy low-hanging targets for political ridicule. Which, in a very roundabout way, leads me to the subject of this article: Senator Robert Menendez needs to resign his seat -- and for his own sake, he should do it before Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers and all the rest of them get back to work. He might spare himself a boatload of ridicule by doing so. Admittedly, that's a rather strange angle to see it all from, but it's what popped into my mind when the scandal broke almost simultaneously with the writers striking a deal.

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Way back in 2015, late-night television's Stephen Colbert had a ritual bit he'd run every time a presidential candidate dropped out of the race. Using the impressive ceiling in his studio, he projected an image of the also-ran candidate à la how the deaths of each "tribute" in The Hunger Games were announced. He called it the "Hungry For Power Games." Of course, earlier this year, late-night television was the first to go dark when the Hollywood writers went on strike, so we can't expect this sort of thing in the current campaign until they are all back at work (and being paid better). Which is a shame, because the Republican presidential field is already beginning to narrow. Today, the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, became the first to officially drop out of the race.

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I begin today by apologizing for getting ahead of the calendar, as the official "Silly Season" hasn't quite kicked off in Washington yet. Congress has yet to scarper off on their annual five- or six-week vacation (with full pay, courtesy of American taxpayers), so we have yet to hit the real dog days of summer in D.C.

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Because it is a slow political news week (and for the salacious nature of it all), the mainstream media is currently digging into every aspect of the "Cocaine Found At White House" story. News articles are being written summarizing all possible past rumors or actual instances of drug use at the White House. My favorite came at the end of a Washington Post article on this theme, under the heading: "Rocker Grace Slick." But I found their rundown of what happened awfully sparse, so as a public service today I am going to run an extended excerpt from Grace Slick's autobiography Somebody To Love, of which (of course) I have my own copy (signed and personalized, even...).

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The flag is back in the news, also in a fairly minor way. The conservative fake-rage machine cranked up into high dudgeon mode this week over a celebration of Pride Month at the White House, which included a display of the current iteration of the "rainbow flag" that has long been a symbol of the struggle for L.G.B.T.Q. rights. They complained about the pride flag being displayed at all, and a subset of them got fake-irate over a "violation of the U.S. Flag Code" (which it actually wasn't, as there was another U.S. flag being flown above, on the roof of the White House).

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Spring, according to my calendar, is supposed to have officially sprung. The weather in California apparently didn't get the memo yet, however, as all day long the power has gone off and on while the rain continues to pound down with winds blowing up to 80 miles per hour. This has been the [...]

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