Dropping Death Charges

The good news on Friday was that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was moved out of intensive care following his attempted assassination by a rabid Democrat who had been whipped into a frenzy by hateful hyperbolic anti-Republican rhetoric.

The bad news is that on the very same day, Hillary Clinton sent sociopaths a fresh call to arms by tweeting "Forget death panels. If Republicans pass this (healthcare) bill, they're the death party."

At least when Trump tweets, there's sort of an endearing lunacy at work. But with Hillary, it's nothing but pure spite and malice intended to mislead, divide, distort, and inspire hate - and possibly political hate crimes.

We'd say more, but don't want to waste our breath over the pronouncements of an embittered, washed up political failure. Especially not when we can waste our breath over the pronouncements of someone who's at least still in the game...

Kellyanne Conway did no one any favors when, speaking on a Sunday (fake) news show, she said "It's the Obama administration that was responsible for doing absolutely nothing from August to January with the knowledge that Russia was hacking into our election. They did absolutely nothing. They're responsible for this."

But responsible for this what? This Presidency? This specious yet undying news story? We don't know and, frankly my dear Scarlett, we don't give a damn.

More than anything else, the whole Russian brouhaha strikes us as the semantic equivalent of a natural disaster, because words are being used interchangeably and incorrectly to obscure the truth rather than reveal it. Is "intelligence gathering" the same as "meddling?" Are both the same as "hacking?" And are all these terms synonyms for "collusion?" You'd certainly think so according to the random word choices of the media.

Is a "phishing" email to a Democrat official, or the leaking of embarrassing internal emails, the same as "hacking" an entire election? Neither the media, nor apparently the Trump administration, now see any difference.

Which is why we're largely giving up on the slapdash word-of-the-day practitioners of "journalism" in general and this idiotic story in particular.

And On The Lighter Side...

The most important and incomprehensible story in today's news is the release of the Republicans' plans to kinda sorta replace Obamacare with something which seems just about as complicated and convoluted, but will save billions in tax dollars for the evil rich by declaring "mass graves for the poor" to be a legitimate medical option.

At least, that's how the ever-rabid mainstream media is reporting it. Seriously, the Holocaust got more favorable press coverage. We're guessing the actual plan is significantly less draconian than it's being portrayed and, at least possibly, better than the current system which is crumbling before our eyes (as it was meant to do by the Democrats).

With nothing else to say on the topic just yet, we've decided to look at "the lighter side" of the news - by which we mean the stories which we'd like to take a lighter to, if not an actual flamethrower. Starting with...

Contrary to a number of bone-headed tweets, Donald Trump has now admitted that he has no secret tapes of his conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey.  Despite this, we don't believe Trump was lying. We believe, as we always have, that the guy is at least sporadically nuts.

We also wonder, under the GOP health care plan, what a double thumbectomy would cost - because we know a certain Twitter addict who could really, really use one.

And speaking of Oval Office residents, we found this story interesting...

LA would be renaming a 3 mile stretch of Rodeo Road, which makes us hope passionately that the rodeo clown who infamously wore an Obama mask while dodging bulls will do the ribbon-cutting.

By the way, let us be quick to distance ourselves from the racially insensitive joke told above by our ersatz Nick and Nora Charles. We can only guess that they were under the evil influence of coffee at the time...

According to a scientific study which was, in a glaring bit of oversight, not funded by our tax dollars, researchers determined that psychopaths are more likely to prefer their coffee black.

Which is really only logical; if you dawdle around in Starbucks waiting endlessly for your barista to make a Veni-Vini-Vici-sized half-foam hazelnut creme arabica cappuccino with sprinkles and a dusting ("Only a dusting!") of nutmeg, it gives the cops way too much time to catch up with you.

Which isn't why we prefer our coffee black. We just like something that matches our mood in the morning.

Deep Sea Jiving

As you've already surmised, we're taking a "Bah, humbug!" approach to the day's news. Seriously, the guy in the diving helmet might have the right idea when it comes to blocking out the media crapfest.

And because we have so little to say, we're going to fill some additional space with yet another cartoon drawn by our Dad some decades ago.

Oddly, we like making our brand new "Earwigs" cartoons look old and yellowed, but the original cartoons by our father really are old and yellowed - so we put considerable effort into making them look new again.

It seems enough like a circular system designed by government bureaucrats that we're amazed we're not receiving an NEA grant.

BONUS: A GLASS HALF FULL

And in this case, we're referring to our 4th glass of scotch, which is prompting us to write a little something political today even though we said we wouldn't.

Specifically, we're talking about the tragic case of Otto Warmbier and the costly but valuable lesson that his miserable death might teach the radical "antifa" Leftists and other noisemakers.

Warmbier made the fatal mistake of believing that North Korea was, at some level, like the United States - and a little innocent mischief didn't present much personal risk. He was dead wrong.

Meanwhile, the Leftist loons on college campuses (happily smashing windows and setting things on fire) seem to believe that under Donald Trump, the United States is the true totalitarian regime, stripping people of their rights and freedoms (concepts that aren't even dreamed of in North Korea) and threatening their very existence.

These pampered, self-absorbed dilettantes would do well to spend a little time thinking about their plush and privileged lives in comparison to the hell on Earth that Warmbier surely experienced for the slightest of political infractions.

This is called "perspective," and unless the young Leftists develop some, Warmbier's horrifying death will have been in vain.