I always liked, about the United States of America (MY country), that we celebrate our birthday on July 4. NOT the day we (and the French) defeated the British. NOT the day we finally worked out our Constitution, or chose our first President. But the day we DECLARED we were INDEPENDENT. And worked out all the details later. It was like we were the first nation that consisted of an act of WILL, or IMAGINATION. This allows us, this week, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of this act of will, despite the fact that we are presently way further up Shit Creek than at any time since the Civil War – the important thing is, we still have the Paddle! (Look how tightly composer Charles Ives is clutching that paddle in the image above, at least I think it’s the paddle.)

It’s been impossible to post about this Fire Hose of “Interesting Times” while nearly single-handedly trying to get signatures for Anaheim Rent Control this past half-year… but I am back. What’d we miss? Just last week, this is an appropriate one: our smug, punchable Vice President JD Vance (if that is his name) came to our Nixon Library and joked about how “Watergate woulda been a 12-hour news story if it happened now.” Joking, with that gross eye-twinkle and raised brow of his that signals “This IS amusing isn’t it, amiright?”

And sadly JD is right. Dan C kinda missed the point here (although JD did go on to show ignorance/indifference to the facts of Watergate, and Dan has been writing better lately.) Vance’s point is that his crowd’s lawlessness puts old Nixon to shame, they DO commit many Watergates a week, our civic conscience has been raped into numbness, and JD thinks that’s not only fine but cute.

Fittingly it was only the next day that the slimy homunculus Mike Johnson promised a crowd of MAGA “Christians” that if they just kept him and his Party in power he would be their “protection program” and keep them safe from consequences for all their crimes past present and future:

Sometimes the Fire Hose spurts out a horror show, like this past week’s ICE blitzkrieg on our immigrant friends, spurred by the hate and frustration of the monstrous Stephen Miller at failing to overturn the Constitution’s Birthright Citizenship. Just as often it spurts out endless farce, as seen in Pervert Hoover’s misadventures with the Lincoln Reflecting Pool. You know all this maybe –

• As part of his obsessive re-decorating of DC for this week’s festivities, Mango Mussolini resolved to re-paint the pool “American Flag Blue” which was a bad idea to start with and cost us $16 million;
• While it was drained, the Ochre Abomination thought it’d be cool to drive a convoy of armored vehicles across the pool bed because why not? And he apparently put a long crack in the bed doing that;
• Once the pool was painted nice and dark blue and re-filled with water, mucho ALGAE sprouted up in record time, between the hot weather and the darker color making the water even hotter; and of course Orange Shitler blamed this on Antifa Vandals and shadowy Biden Donors;
• Hydrogen peroxide was poured into the unfortunate pool, killing SOME of the algae but also making the new paint peel off, and Tangerine Palpatine declared that to also be the doing of mysterious invisible vandals paid by George Soros;
• Ducks died;
• Some Olympian dude biked along and examined the mess, and got arrested, indicted and threatened with up to TEN YEARS… by THIS drunken Trump-sucking DA-hag, this Jeanine Pirro:

Yup, same drunken Pirro whose “remarkable” record as US Attorney for DC consists of failing to indict Jerome Powell of BS charges, failing to indict six military-veteran Democrat politicians for BS charges, and failing to indict a ham sandwich – or rather, the guy who heroically flung a hero sandwich at an ICE marauder. That Pirro. Sometimes you are allowed to laugh.

But you are ALWAYS required to fight back.

I could go on about MAGA Republicans’ many-pronged attempts to steal the upcoming midterms – to finally gain control of the Paddle so we are stuck up Shit’s Creek forever. And about the new, welcome signs of life in the Democrat Party as we elect Fighting Socialists across the land. But I can’t fit all of that in this Open Thread. (YOU could.)

I just want to remind us that it’s all THE LAST DEATH THROES OF WHITE SUPREMACY. I know, I’ve been saying that here since 2010. And then Trump was elected in 2016, and it seemed like maybe that’d be the last chapter. And it’s still not over. Americans with their flea-sized memories did it again in 2024, for whatever combination of economic foolishness and not wanting to vote for a black woman. But on our 250th birthday let’s put a final end to it. Let the Paddle be also a sharpened stake and plunge it into the heart of Zombie Hate. You’re invited to:

The Rebel Semi-Quincentennial Concert

.(will finish this open thread with a description of the concert… later today! For now, OPEN THREAD AWAY) . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .