From the "stop me if you've heard this one" file, we suppose: An old man is running for president who is saying increasingly bizarre things... except that you might not know about it because the mainstream media only goes into a frenzy of breathless reporting when his opponent misspeaks.

We wish that were actually the punchline to a joke, but it really is no joke at all. Just think how the media would have reacted if President Joe Biden had said any of the following in the past week:

You can't have an election in the middle of a political season.

We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.

[Vows to] ...bring crime back to law and order.

That's all straight from Donald Trump's mouth. Haven't heard about it? We're not too surprised.

To top it all off, on his pet social media app (which went public this week), Trump also accused someone named "Joe Buden" of some mental nefariousness. Well... we think. It's hard to tell:

CROOKED JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME

When George W. Bush said something like this ("misunderestimated") we all had a big laugh, and even Bush himself cracked jokes about it later. But nobody should really be laughing now. The moral of this story is: Sure, Joe Biden's old. But then again so is Donald Trump. And only one of them will ever admit he made any kind of error in speaking -- the other clings to his own idiocies even when defending them is just downright ludicrous (remember "Sharpiegate"?). Which one would be more dangerous to have as president? The answer seems pretty obvious.

In other Trumpian news, his grifting has (as one online commenter aptly put it) now reached truly biblical proportions. He's out there hawking $60 Bibles to his army of rubes, because he never passes up a chance to make a quick buck off his own name. Add this to the $400 tacky gold sneakers he recently unveiled. What will be next? Your guess is as good as ours -- maybe Trump-branded sets of the Emperor's New Clothes? We certainly wouldn't put it past him... come to think of it, that'd be even better than the champion all-time grifting product ever (the "pet rock" of the 1970s, of course)... all Trump would have to do would be to send out completely-empty boxes! Pure profit!

Joe Biden, meanwhile, is out there actually campaigning. He appeared at the most lucrative fundraiser of all time this week, alongside Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and plenty of big stars to entertain the crowd). He reportedly pulled in an astounding $25 million from this single event -- which is more money than Trump raised in all of February. We sincerely hope to see both Obama and Clinton at some future rallies for Biden, since they were somewhat of a forgotten Democratic resource the last time around.

Also good news: Biden has been pushing back hard on Trump's attempt to recycle Ronald Reagan's: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" campaign line. The problem for Trump is that, well... no we weren't better off four years ago! Four years ago is when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the entire world hard -- and the United States hardest, due to Donald Trump's attempts to just "wish the whole thing would go away" rather than showing the slightest leadership or even just an ounce of human compassion for his fellow citizens.

Contrary to four years ago -- which was just the start of the "COVID times" -- things are indeed better. Crime has come down from the pandemic peak, the job market went through the greatest and fastest recovery in American history, complete with unemployment levels at historic lows for an absolutely historic span of time, the stock market is setting record highs again and again, and life in general is undeniably better than when we were all lining up to buy toilet paper only to be greeted by empty shelves.

Biden is even making a bid for Nikki Haley's voters, which is a smart thing to do (since Trump doesn't seem interested in courting them at all). In fact, Trump is more interested in purging the Republican Party of anyone who doesn't fully believe in his Big Lie (which would include many Haley voters, one assumes). If a significant slice of Republicans wind up voting for Biden, it could mean the difference in many close states, so this is indeed a smart thing for Biden to attempt.

There was one big political story this week that was rather insular, because it came from the political media itself. Ronna (née Romney) McDaniel, after getting forced out from her stint running the Republican National Committee, followed a well-trod path toward accepting bundles of money to become "an on-air contributor" at NBC News. Ex-pols are hired by the political media all the time, and some of them do well and some of them don't (for various reasons).

McDaniel didn't even last "a half-Scaramucci" (as one article put it, following the quip originally made by journalist Aaron Rupar, to give credit where it is due). After a stormy few days of virtually all the political reporters and commentators on both NBC News and MSNBC (including some memorable comments by Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow) absolutely ripping into the decision by the network bosses, they finally relented. By midweek, McDaniel was un-hired (so to speak).

It's hard to feel sorry for her, though, since while head of the R.N.C. McDaniel not only regularly attacked the political journalism industry at large but also fully supported Donald Trump's Big Lie even to the point of assisting him on a phone call to her home state of Michigan to try to browbeat elections officials into throwing monkey wrenches into the workings of a free and fair election. It's one thing to be a lying hyper-partisan, but actively trying to undermine American democracy was a step too far for all the other journalists who work for NBC. Such an open revolt against the corporate bosses is incredibly rare, but at least this one ended with the correct decision: to jettison McDaniel forthwith.

It's also hard to feel sorry for McDaniel since she will be laughing all the way to the bank. She appeared for an interview on Meet The Press this week for approximately 20 minutes, but apparently had signed a contract which promised her $300,000 a year for two years. So... let's see... $600,000 divided by 1,200 equals NBC paying her $500 per second for being on the air a single time. And she's already hired a powerful media attorney, so NBC could wind up paying even more for that sole interview.

Let's see, what else has been going on?

No Labels was decisively turned down by Chris Christie this week, and they're running out of time and running out of names on their list of possible presidential candidates. They also lost one of their founders this week, which we will address in a moment. Let's hope the entire effort collapses in the next few weeks, which would be a fitting end for it indeed.

GOP moderates in Congress are streaming for the exits, because what sane Republican would want to still be in Congress if Donald Trump takes over again? The MAGA-fication of the party continues apace, as now the R.N.C. (under Trump's own daughter-in-law, who instituted mass firings upon her arrival) is asking for a loyalty oath for new hires -- loyalty not just to Trump but to Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election. The "adults in the room" are quickly vacating the building, in other words.

And finally, let's catch up on Trump's legal woes, shall we? Trump got a sort of split decision on Monday, as a New York appellate court agreed he could only put up $175 million while he appeals the almost-half-billion-dollar judgment against him, but the judge in the porn-star hush-money case swatted down all of Trump's objections and set a trial date of April 15th. That's when the first ex-president in history will go on trial in what will hopefully be only the first criminal trial of such a person ever. Trump got slapped with a new gag order in this case, but quickly exploited the loopholes in the gag order by repeatedly attacking not just the judge in the case but the judge's adult daughter as well.

In the related topic of "Trump's toadies' legal woes," a California judge ruled that John Eastman, an ex-Trump-lawyer, should be permanently disbarred (and thus turn into simply "an ex-lawyer"), for participating in the whole "subverting American democracy" Big Lie project. Down in Arizona, Senate candidate (and complete nutjob) Kari Lake followed in Rudy Giuliani's footsteps and unconditionally surrendered in a defamation case brought against her by a county election official. Just like in Rudy's case, this will now mean that the only thing the court will have to decide is how much Lake will owe for her vicious falsehood that somehow an election had been stolen from her (spoiler alert: it wasn't, she lost, just like Trump).

So we all have that to look forward to! We wrote about this earlier in the week, speculating what the grand total of damages paid in the fallout from Trump's Big Lie will eventually be (which is now approaching $1 billion -- but which we believe will wind up totalling up to multiple billions of dollars, once all the cases dealing with elections equipment manufacturers are done).

Which is all to the good. Baselessly and maliciously destroying the good name of both individuals and corporations should be prohibitively expensive, after all.

We have quite a few nominees this week, so first let's hand out a couple of Honorable Mention awards before getting to the main event.

This week a horrendous crash in Maryland took down a key bridge (ahem... sorry, we couldn't resist...) and the mayor of Baltimore was thus thrust into the national spotlight. Mayor Brandon Scott was instantly accused by rightwing racists of somehow being a "D.E.I. hire."

For those of you unfamiliar with the term (which stands for "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion"), this is merely an update to an older slur against minorities -- calling them "affirmative-action hires" in order to delegitimize them.

Scott, however, wasn't "hired," he was elected -- with a whopping 70 percent of the vote. He countered his critics beautifully, by stating: "...what they mean by 'D.E.I.', in my opinion, is 'Duly Elected Incumbent'."

Nice.

Next up, we have to admit that we are just as much of a sucker for cute cat photos as the next guy or gal, so we were delighted at the news that Jill Biden is going to release a new children's book about how First Cat Willow Biden joined their family (it's an endearing story, to be sure).

However, we did wonder if Dr. Jill is going a wee bit too far in trying to keep everyone happy when we read: "Jill Biden will donate proceeds from sales of the book to charities that support military dogs."

Wait... what? Cat lovers are going to donate to dogs?

Heh. OK, OK, working military dogs certainly deserve all the support they can get and all of that, but even so....

Kidding aside, we certainly wish Dr. Jill well on trying to bridge the cat lovers/dog lovers division out there!

This week we found we could not decide between two finalists for our main award, so we're just going to hand out two Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week statuettes this week.

The first goes to Representative Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who is running to take over the seat of disgraced Senator Bob "Gold Bars" Menendez. Because this week saw two momentous events in the Democratic primary race to replace him (Menendez announced he would not be running for re-election as a Democrat but hasn't ruled out an independent bid).

The first was Kim's major opponent dropping out of the race. Tammy Murphy, wife of Governor Phil Murphy, was supposed to be a shoo-in for the nomination, since she had the powerful weight of the New Jersey Democratic machine solidly behind her. But then Kim showed surprising popularity and he struck back in court, filing a lawsuit against the undemocratic and unfair primary ballot system in New Jersey (which we wrote about earlier this week). The system is so odious that even the state's attorney general declined to defend it in court, calling the ballot "unconstitutional."

Today, a federal judge agreed and drove a stake through the "county line" style ballot for good. This is an incredible achievement which will reform New Jersey politics in a big way -- not just for Kim's primary run, but for every candidate in every future primary race as well (on both sides of the aisle).

That is a very impressive thing to have achieved, before the voting has even begun. With Murphy's exit from the race, Kim is now the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination as well as the general election in November (even if Menendez mounts an independent bid -- his name is now so tarnished that few voters are going to back him).

Our other winner of the MIDOTW is a new member of the Alabama statehouse, Marilyn Lands. Lands ran in a special election in the state, with a message that should become more and more familiar as more and more Democrats see how effective it can be:

A special election for an Alabama state House seat on Tuesday will serve as an early marker of how politically salient the sudden battle over access to in-vitro fertilization will be ahead of this year's high-stakes contests for Congress and the White House.

Look no further than the divergent strategies of Democrat Marilyn Lands and Republican Teddy Powell, a city councilmember, who are facing off for Alabama's 10th state House District, a competitive seat in the northern part of the state. Lands is basing her message on reproductive health after running (and losing) on education, health care and the economy two years ago, while Powell's team cut an ad on IVF but chose not to air it.

. . .

But her campaign is trying something different this time around: bringing abortion-rights messaging to the forefront -- especially after the state Supreme Court ruling there that imperiled IVF and grabbed national headlines, before the legislature passed a law restoring access.

In a recent television ad, Lands highlights an Alabama woman's inability to get an abortion due to the state's ban, and shares her own experience with abortion. One of the headlines flashing on screen refers to the state court's IVF ruling.

Lands kept with this theme in her victory message:

"Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation," Lands said in a statement. "Our legislature must repeal Alabama's no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception."

Her opponent, Madison City Council member Teddy Powell, focused his campaign on economic development and infrastructure.

Lands spoke openly about her own abortion experience, when she had a nonviable pregnancy that ended in abortion two decades ago. Her campaign ran a television ad sharing that story.

"It's shameful that today women have fewer freedoms than I had two decades ago," Lands says in the ad.

Lands won her election -- in a district where Trump edged out a win in 2020 -- by an astounding 25 points.

That is the potency of supporting women's rights. Other Democrats are also out there telling their own abortion stories, which humanizes the debate in a way not seen before now. The 2024 election could easily become known as "the abortion/I.V.F. election," the issue is so powerful. Abortion rights could be directly on the ballot in as many as 12 states this year, including battleground states like Arizona and Montana. And the Supreme Court just heard another abortion case, meaning the subject will be in the news again in June (when they issue their decision), right before campaign season really gets going.

For her astounding win, for the way she fearlessly ran, and for showing other Democrats how effective such a campaign can be, Marilyn Lands is our second Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award-winner this week.

[Congratulate Representative Andy Kim on his House contact page to let him know you appreciate his efforts; but you'll have to wait for state Representative-Elect Marilyn Lands to be sworn in and get her own official statehouse page up and running to do so for her (since as a general rule we do not link to campaign websites, even after the elections are over).]

We know... we know... De mortuis nihil nisi bonum and all of that sort of thing... but...

We'd like to posthumously award our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week (as sort of a negative lifetime-achievement award) to former Senator Joe Lieberman.

We won't speak much ill of the dead, but please remember that for all the kind things said about him this week, Lieberman was the Joe Manchin of his age, who personally killed the public option from being included in Obamacare. Thanks for nothing, Joe.

We sincerely hope that his No Labels plan to spoil Joe Biden's re-election will soon be a thing to be spoken of in the past tense as well.

[We will not be providing contact information, obviously.]

Volume 745 (3/29/24)

Our talking points are somewhat all over the map this week, but then it has been an eventful week. As always, use responsibly!

   Enough already!

Just like night follows day....

"Can all the people pushing all the crazy conspiracy theories about the accident which destroyed Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge please just cut it out? It seems there are some people who see a dastardly evil genius at work behind any tragedy, at the drop of a tinfoil hat. Here's an idea: let's all wait for the investigation to figure out what went wrong before we go full-on paranoid, OK? I mean... please... just stop with the uninformed nonsense."

   Like a mobster

Rachel Maddow, true to form, had some rather pointed things to say about NBC hiring the likes of Ronna McDaniel to appear on their network. So did a whole bunch of other NBC journalists, but Maddow devoted fully half of her show to the subject, and had the most quotable things to say about it of anyone:

I want to associate myself with all my colleagues, both at MSNBC and at NBC News, who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company putting on the payroll someone who hasn't just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government.... You wouldn't hire a 'made man' like a mobster to work at a D.A.'s office, right? You wouldn't hire a pickpocket to work as a T.S.A. screener. So I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable, and I hope they will reverse their decision.

   Republican voter-suppression thwarted

This was a big win for Democrats and for anyone else who cares about making voting easier and more fair for all.

"The Montana supreme court this week overturned several Republican-passed voting laws, stating that they 'violate the fundamental right to vote provided to all citizens by the Montana Constitution.' This is big news, as the head of the Montana Democratic Party pointed out:"

Today's decision is a tremendous victory for democracy, Native voters, and young people across the state of Montana. While Republican politicians continue to attack voting rights and our protected freedoms, their voter suppression efforts failed and were struck down as unconstitutional.

"She's right -- Democrats are the ones out here fighting for free and fair elections without putting needless hurdles in the voting process. Republicans tried to end same-day voter registration and eliminate student I.D. cards as valid voter I.D., as well as a few other schemes they came up with to make voting not just harder but almost impossible for some Montanans. Democrats will never stop fighting Republican efforts to make it harder for everyone to cast their ballots."

   Total sellout

Hammer this one home.

"I see that Robert F. Kennedy Junior has picked as his running mate -- surprise! -- the same woman who paid millions to run his Super Bowl ad. What a total sellout! He wants to award the second-highest office in the land to the highest bidder -- that's just pathetic. And this woman seems like a good fit for him, since she's got some pretty out-there opinions on in-vitro fertilization -- calling it 'one of the biggest lies that's being told about women's health today.' R.F.K. Jr. doesn't seem to have figured out where he stands on abortion rights or I.V.F., and his veep nominee just confirmed this. R.F.K. Jr. is nothing more than a whackadoodle sellout, and it boggles the mind why any sane person would even consider voting for him."

   Where's Trump?

It would be sweetness indeed to turn this one around on him.

"While Joe Biden is out there on the campaign trail explaining what his plans for a second term would mean for all Americans, you know what we haven't seen much of? Donald Trump. Where's Trump? Are they afraid to put him out there because he is now saying so many crazy things all the time? Are they afraid he's going to just completely lose it at a rally -- again? To put it in terms he will recognize: Donald Trump seems to think he can run a campaign from the basement of his Florida golf club. Or maybe that should be 'from inside a courtroom'?"

   The universal appeal of one type of joke

OK, this one's a cheap shot, but studies have indeed shown that mother-in-law jokes are somewhat universal across all human cultures and societies, so why not?

"Remember when Donald Trump used to rail against 'chain migration' -- meaning American immigrants sponsoring their own relatives to come over and become citizens too? Trump always had a scathing hatred for the process, although he never did make good on his promises to end it. But you know what was just publicly revealed? Trump's own mother-in-law was able to enter America through this exact same program. So maybe that's the reason he hated the concept so much? I mean... I'm just saying...."

   Hannity has on-air "Kinsley gaffe"

What else is new, really?

"Sean Hannity signed off his broadcast this week by tossing it to the next Fox News host, but in doing so he committed a 'Kinsley gaffe' -- he accidentally told the truth instead of what he was going to say. To close his broadcast, Hannity said:"

Let not your heart be troubled. Greg Gutfeld [is] standing by to put a smile on your hate.

"Yeah, that about sums up pretty much the entire Fox News network, wouldn't you say? I'm just astonished Hannity actually came out and admitted it for once...."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has now indicated that he will be officially sending the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over to the Senate on April 10th. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by stating that all the senators will be sworn in as jurors the next day, but what will happen after that point is very much up in the air. The Senate could hold a full trial with House impeachment managers presenting what they consider their evidence as they make their case for removing Mayorkas. Or the Senate could just move straight to a vote on the articles of impeachment -- where a two-thirds majority would be necessary to remove Mayorkas from office. Or the Senate could choose to not waste any more of their precious time and just vote to dismiss the trial altogether. This would only require a simple majority to pass, meaning if they all stuck together Democrats could halt the proceedings before they even get underway.

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The pricetag of spreading Donald Trump's "Big Lie" -- that there were various forms of massive fraud committed in the 2020 presidential election -- is about to grow, once again. At this point it is impossible to predict exactly what the next legal cost will be, but it could easily send the total amount the Big Lie perpetrators have paid (or have been ordered to pay) north of one billion dollars. And this could still be just the beginning -- by the time the counting is fully done, this could jump to multiple billions in legal damages assessed against various bad actors.

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In much the same way that odious manure previously spread over the ground can give rise to the sweetest-smelling flowers in the spring, New Jersey politics seem to be going through a period of rebirth or re-emergence into the light of a new spring day (perhaps appropriate for "The Garden State," no?). The sleazy scandal which has (so far) successfully brought down Senator Robert Menendez -- complete with 24-karat gold bars seized by the feds -- has tangentially morphed into an attack on the state's "machine politics," and it could all wind up with major reforms in the way local political leaders currently hand-pick their favorite candidates. This is long overdue and although it comes from an unexpected direction (a major scandal not directly related to the reform itself), it should be welcome news for voters in New Jersey -- and anyone else who supports the concept of fairness in politics.

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There is some big-time drama going on at NBC News right now, as some of its journalists push back hard on the big bosses' decision to hire, as a new political contributor, former head of the Republican National Committee Ronna (Romney) McDaniel. This erupted on this week's Meet The Press and it hasn't abated since. NBC first announced that McDaniel would appear on all their platforms, but has since walked this back a bit after the people at MSNBC pushed back hard.

McDaniel debuted on Meet The Press this Sunday, and to say it didn't go well is an understatement. In the first place, she was booked for an interview before the announcement of her hiring was made public, which set up an extremely awkward situation. The host of the program, Kristen Welker, specifically mentioned this during her interview, and did try (to some extent) to push back on McDaniel's past statements and actions supporting Donald Trump's "Big Lie" about the 2020 presidential election. McDaniel wasn't some bystander in all this, she might more accurately be described as an "unindicted co-conspirator" for joining in at least one phone call -- as the head of the R.N.C. -- where Trump tried to pressure elections officials in Michigan to subvert American democracy. But just as with Trump, even though Welker did try to push back on a few of McDaniel's lies (such as "crime is rising" when in fact it has fallen for two straight years now), there were just too many of them to adequately fact-check in real time.

Immediately after the interview concluded, former host of Meet The Press Chuck Todd excoriated the network he works for in no uncertain terms. This was during the "roundtable" segment of the program -- which is where (if anywhere) McDaniel should have appeared. Not as a guest with a powerful position in American politics, but as a spin doctor for the partisan/journalistic point-counterpoint verbal duelling. It was rather extraordinary to hear Todd bash his own network heads in such a fashion, since things like this don't regularly happen on the air (or even off the air, for that matter).

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For once, big things are actually happening in Congress. No, really!

As we write this, the House has passed the final budget bill for this fiscal year (by a vote of 286-134) and sent it over to the Senate. The Senate may pass it tonight, if senators like Rand Paul can restrain their natural urge to be total [insert favorite plural derogatory expletive here]. If they do throw a monkey wrench into the works, we could have a very short-lived partial government shutdown, but if it gets resolved before the weekend is over then it won't do much damage at all. Either way, the bill's got the votes to pass the Senate, so it's now only a matter of time until President Joe Biden can sign it and the budget that was supposed to be in place on the first of October last year will finally be finished.

The bigger news, though, is that Representative Marjorie "Three-Names" Taylor Greene expressed her displeasure with Speaker Mike Johnson by filing a "motion to vacate the chair," which may result in a no-confidence vote when the House returns after one of its many, many two-week vacations. We say "may" there because the way Greene filed her motion-to-vacate (which waggish headline-writers are already calling the "MTG MTV") doesn't actually force a vote on any schedule. If she had filed it as "privileged," it would have to be acted on within 48 hours, but she decided not to -- which means she can just hold it over Johnson's head as a threat and then move to vote on it whenever she feels like.

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Congress is -- finally -- about to finish the most basic of their constitutional duties: funding the federal government by passing a budget for the current fiscal year. This comes almost six months from when they were supposed to have achieved this feat (the federal fiscal year starts at the beginning of October). And what is happening on Capitol Hill right now should be familiar to anyone who knows how the process has worked in recent years -- a huge bill that wraps multiple individual spending bills together is released at the last possible minute, with no time for any floor debate or even for many people to dig through the enormous length of the bill, and with a deadline in sight tomorrow night at midnight that may or may not be met (although any partial government shutdown will likely be brief and happen over the weekend when its impacts would be minimal, at least). This is all pretty much par for the budgetary course, these days. Six months late is an outlier -- usually the budget is wrapped up (at the latest) by December or January -- but budgets nowadays are never passed on time.

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Because this year's primary season has pretty much been a foregone conclusion on both sides of the aisle, political pundits have been denied their usual "who is up, who is down" frenzy of horserace reporting. Both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have already clinched their respective parties' nominations (and very early on), so there's really not all that much to write about when more states' primary returns come in. However, this hasn't stopped the pundits from pushing a story about how Democrats should be worried because of all the "protest votes" cast on their side. Biden is getting pushback from younger and more progressive voters on his backing of Israel in the Gaza war, as well as Democrats who are just not all that enthused about him running again. But there haven't been a lot of stories exploring the protest votes being cast on the Republican side, which is odd because there were actually more of them this week than on the Democratic side.

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Donald Trump is finally having to face some consequences for his past misdeeds. He has already had to put up two bonds to cover the judgments in the two defamation cases E. Jean Carroll won against him (to the tune of almost $100 million, combined, with interest), and he is now on the hook for the enormous judgment against him in the civil fraud trial he also lost. His lawyers are complaining that he doesn't have the money to pay the penalty (almost a half-billion dollars, with interest) and that he has been unsuccessful in obtaining a bond to cover the amount. If Trump doesn't post a bond or put up the money by early next week, the state of New York could start seizing his properties and liquidating them.

Trump, of course, thinks all of this is monstrously unfair. He is bitterly complaining about it to all his followers on his pet social media platform. And in the end he may well get some of these penalties against him lowered in the appellate courts (which is a fairly common thing, especially for extremely large jury awards). But until then he's still got to put the full amount up -- just like anyone else would have to do if they were in the same position.

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I admit, right up front, that I almost took today off. Seeing as how it is the day after St. Patrick's Day, I felt some temptation to "call in sick" as it were. Or I could have just written a very lazy column comparing Donald Trump's recent incendiary language on the campaign trail to the lyrics of two songs from Pink Floyd's album The Wall (which has quite a bit to say on the subject of the rise of fascism in a democracy): "Waiting For The Worms," and "Run Like Hell." Feel free to click on those links to read the lyrics, if you'd like to see how easy a comparison that would have been.

But instead I am going to write a different very lazy column on a subject that has always peeved me no end: the insanely-generous vacation schedules for members of Congress. Here is the quote that set me off today, from a blurb of an article about the ongoing discussions in Congress to prevent a government shutdown this Friday night:

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