Big Leaguered GOP

Biff Storch

Washington – The GOP will kick off the 118th Congress next week and are sure to wind up on their own 20-yard line.

So many questions: Can Kevin McCarthy keep his offensive line together long enough to pass a bill? Can George Santos clear up where the ball lies and the lies ball up? Will Green and Boebert stop tripping each other in the backfield? Will Trump form a third party out of the cheerleaders and overrun the field?

Coach in chief Rupert Murdoch doesn’t have a plan and Giuliani, Bannon, and Jones have all flamed out. Could they try to raise up somebody from the beyond, like the ghost of Rush Limbaugh, as some Christian nationalists have put forward.

There’s no law that says you have to be a member of Congress to be Speaker. None that says you need to be alive either. That has to be disconcerting for McCarthy. Also “putrid smelling,” a McCarthy aid pushed back.

The Republicans have developed a robust roster over the past six years, including several overperforming stars like Gosar, Gaetz, and Jordan, all with impressive vocal ranges, offended demeanors, and lacks of senses of humor, who all want to pile on Hunter Biden’s laptop and see if there’s some revenge in there.

McCarthy might want to up the passing game and get stats to wave around. But if he fails to follow the pack, they won’t let him be their leader.

What a dilemma.

McCarthy pointing to the path

It smells of defeat, which might be worse than the stench of Limbaugh’s dead carcass. Or not. We will probably never find out.

Mushy Russian Roulade

Thornton Wharton

Moscow – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (a.k.a. Pruneface on the Volga) on Thursday rejected President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “peace formula” as a basis for talks to resolve the war in Ukraine.

Pruneface

“It is obvious that Kyiv is not ready for dialogue,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by people who understand Russian. He was also quoted as saying that Russia’s “tender love for its captive provinces had bathed Russian cheeks in flowing tears,” by a person whose ability to understand Russian has not been attested.

Russia regards Zelensky’s demand for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukrainian territories they had to invade because they have actually always been Russian, especially ever since they invaded them, as a nonstarter. A Kremlin spokesperson said the payment of reparations for harms incurred during their arduous and ardor-infused attempt to unshackle Ukraine from uber-Nazis, cannot be seriously considered. “Also we don’t have any money because of the Western sanctions.”

Zelensky nevertheless advanced his ten-step “peace formula” in an address to world leaders at the Group of 20 summit in Bali last November, saying, “It will restore the validity of international law. It will return global stability, without which the whole world is suffering.”

Lavrov reportedly said all of that sounds really nice, but “no plan that does not take into account our devoted love of darling Donetsk and zazzy Zaporizhzhia and those other oblasts which gives us the right to invade them against their will can claim to be peaceful.”

Big Beautiful Blast from Taxes Past

Vidalia Unjon

Washington – The House Ways and Means Committee finally released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax records Friday.

It was back in January 2016 that he announced how his team was working on the anticipated release. His returns were “very big, he said” and “very beautiful” and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time.” The world waited breathlessly for the big, beautiful returns over the next period of time, which turned out to be six years.

Now they have been released and some say it has been worth the wait. There is searing drama, including the heartbreaking loss of $64 million in 2016. Money that Mr. Trump mourned with such grief that he tried to shield it from his loved ones, also his hated ones.

And then there was the tragic loss of $1 million to bail out Don Jr.’s failed business in 2018. It caused Eric to try his own startup. They locked him in his room, but he still managed to blow $51,000.

Eric expounding his business idea

Yet there is hilarity too. For example, in 2017, his first year in the White House, Trump paid $750 in federal income tax. The farce is delicious, from the semi-roundness of the figure to its blatant tininess, conjuring the image of his miniscule hands and (reportedly) genitalia.

Trump quickly reset the dark mood, however: “The Democrats should have never done it. . . . It’s going to lead to horrible things for so many rich people.” But he was happy, to be able to display his masterful business acumen that created “thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”