Point of Order

The gorgeous Asian airhead* on MSNBC just told me many banks have no plan to take care of their customers in the event of a "U.S. government shutdown. " Never mind that only the dimmest of wits are concerned about an imminent  "shutdown."

More to the point: Maybe my banks have a plan to return my money under unfortunate scenarios. Maybe they don't. If per chance they refuse to honor the contracts between us, I have a plan. I say again,"I."

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*Didn't catch her name, but no matter. Her chief impact is to make me very sad that I lack Milt Caniff's talent. I'd love to draw her in a Dragon Lady cheong sam.

Domestic Matters

Washington, D.C. is downwind of me a thousand miles or so, yet living here is still an existence in hot, wet wind.

(1) Even before 7 a.m. the air conditioner is huffing,  and I'm feeling only trace amounts of guilt at selfishly depleting the world's dwindling supply of  energy resources. I'm afraid the caribou and my posterity will simply need to adapt.

(2) On Dawn patrol this morning the atmosphere was composed of mist rising from the fields everywhere.

(3) Paper matches will not ignite.

(4)  New Dog Libby is no longer interested in following me outside.

Live-blogging Armageddon

Me. Stariing at the podium which awaits the Presence of President Barack  Obama.

He could not possibly mention the 14th Amendment.

Could he?

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UPDATE: Whew. Brief and banal, a rehash of things past. Just what we needed from this fellow. And I mean that without irony; when this president goes beyond the worn-out slogans of the neighborhood organizer, things get dangerous.

(A suggestion: Fire the speech-writing clown who penned that tortured line about a triple-A political system to match our triple-A credit rating. I know, I just said how much we welcome your banality, but, Sir, there are limits. Triggering gag reflexes among the literate does you no good.)

Flash. Obama Flack Finds God.

That is, an Obama flack suddenly finds God to be a handy political tool.

"Presidential adviser David Plouffe told MSNBC on Thursday that the Republican House bill would "have this whole debt ceiling spectacle, three-ring circus ... repeated again a few months from now, over the holidays. You know, the debt ceiling debate would ruin Christmas."


I wonder how Christians are going to react to Obama's application to join their sect of bitter clingers. I don't think any of their churches offer temporary salvation, y'know, like a parallel to those one-night memberships in an old Texas key club offered for the convenience of traveling salesmen looking for a shot of bourbon.


 I suspect that is what he's looking for. Once his blank check is renewed he can cuddle back up to the forces which expel third-graders for slipping up -- for letting a "Merry Christmas!" slip out when the official position of the diverse Obama left is that the only legal greeting is "happy holidays."


"Ruin Christmas" my ass, Plouffe.
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And you think we're crazy? (You really can't make this stuff up.)

A Spanish bank needed a cash dole from the taxpayers of Europe the ECB, but the ever-prudent gnomes of Berlin said nein, not mitout collateral.

So  banker Don Pesos y Muggers y Acquisiones offered up the world's most expensive footballer to back his pipedream du jour.  

"The most expensive footballer in history may now be used to guarantee the solvency of a Spanish bank. “Ronaldo in the bailout fund,” headlines Süddeutsche Zeitung. The daily reports that the Bankia group of savings banks, which financed Real Madrid’s acquisition of the Portuguese player, is now seeking to borrow funds from the European Central Bank."


---


Far as I know our feds still think they own Roger Clemens. He's getting a little long in the tooth but could still have some box-office entertainment value. Let's have Geithner list him as an asset and see what he'll hock for.   

Skizvesting

Handwringers.org, a  leftist unthink tank, is having fun reporting the collapse of the stock markets due to frustration at the Court of His Obamaness. The source of the frustration is, of course, "conservative" refusal to finance yet another mink-lined chamber pot for the Royals.

(1) -- Yes, "The market"  is an elephant in the parlor, a schizoid beast for whom dopamine injections do not work. Greenspan had it right, "irrational exuberance," but he neglected to add its frequent counterpart, "idiotic depression."  The price of a stock, any stock, is an opinion about what the security will sell for in the future. -- tomorrow or midway through the second Chelsea Clinton Administration.  Said opinion is a compound chemical composed primarily of guesswork, greed, and fear  with trace elements of actual information and adequate judgment.


(2) -- The national nervous breakdown as we approach our credit limit has dropped the Dow and its companion indices by 2 per cent or so this week.  Fooey. I once personally moved the markets more than that by floating a rumor that Yassar  Arafat was Dwight Eisenhower's love child. And I didn't even have a sputtering Lawrence O'Donnell  to help me along.

(3) -- The pre-opening numbers this morning show the markets heading up a little. This is vastly significant, perhaps as much so as the latest teevee bid for a Casey Alexander interview.

Regulation FD disclosure: My direct personal exposure to the stock markets represents a full 2.7 (two-decimal-seven)  per cent of my liquidity.  That's an all-time low for my adult life. It may be too little. Then again, it may be too much. It all depends on whether a Siamese kid working for Barclay's in Singapore overexposes the bank to pickle futures.

I would liquidate this tiny remaining holding but for one sticky point. The only convenient alternative is United States dollars. Talk about fear of getting whacked with Jumbo's nose...

Thought for the day

From Roberta. About upping the DeeCee credit limit. Condensed good sense on the current Washington goat rope:

"Why should I "eat my peas" when Feds have been swimming in ice cream?
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Son of a Fitch but I'm Moody this morning

You may never have heard of Foxen, Henhouse, and Scroom. It's a credit rating agency without a PR department. Like its famous competitors  -- Moody's. S&P. Fitch -- its makes its money telling the world about the relative risk of  investments.

Now everyone is horrified that the agencies are about to say U.S. Treasury bonds, bills, and notes are marginally more risky just because President Obama can't borrow a pot to piss in.

I hope it is not insensitive of me to remark that these are the same credit experts who awarded an AAA rating to your crazy brother-in-law's McMansion mortgage  the day before he whipped out his MasterCard and bought one-way tickets (one for the stripper)  to Cancun. (cf. CDOS, CMOs etc.)

So, why in Hell are we so worried at the thought of these guys saying, "Uncle Sam is spending himself into bankruptcy?"

Isn't that the same thing you and I have have saying since -- I dunno -- maybe since before Doris Day got to be a virgin?

Foxen, Henhouse & Scroom operates just like the other agencies. The debt issuer pays their fees, and  of course no company would think of shopping around for a ratings agency which would, in return for its fee,  fudge its opinion.

That's where the agencies differ from you and me. We don't t charge a dime for telling Washington it's operating like a Three Stooges movie policed by the Keystone Kops.

Tee of the day

An old friend calls, gift in hand. Perfect. Thank you.

A failed diplomacy

An adult in the room was attempting to help Washington folks stop kicking the can down the road. He wanted them to achieve the big deal through a balanced approach. He was particularly good at spying out the court which contained the ball.

He did all that and more for weeks, calmly, tolerantly, smiling through the mist of sputum from one hundred thousand frothing partisan lips.

But then the desperate emperor and his knights whined, one time too many, "This should be routine!  For fifty years we have routinely raised the debt limit whenever we wanted bribe another voting block or two."


Our honest broker snapped, lost it, screamed, "That's how we got here in the first place you sorry slabheaded sons of bitches." Then he left, leaving behind an adult-free room.


Poor fellow. He was last seen trudging outbound across Memorial Bridge, bindle over his shoulder. As he approached  white crosses and six-pointed  stars of The Cemetery he was heard to mumble something like, "So sorry guys . Some of us tried to make it worthwhile for you." 

Drive-by post

And what just drove slowly by is a gleaming 1955 or '56 Ford Victoria convertible. Mint green and hunter green.  Wide white walls.  My lust meter pegs and blue suede shoes dance in my head.

The Obama as Master; full flavor edition

There is some discussion of whether the president actually ordered Speaker Boehner and the others onto his carpet. Here is the White House transcript excerpt:

So here’s what we’re going to do.  We have now run out of time.  I told Speaker Boehner, I’ve told Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, I’ve told Harry Reid, and I’ve told Mitch McConnell I want them here at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow. 


We have run out of time. And they are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default. 


You judge it your way, I'll judge it mine, to wit:

A young hustler jumped on the public tit early in life and prospered "organizing" Chicago neighborhoods south of the Blackstone Hotel. He discovered a natural talent for slithering through the snake holes of the Cook County tyranny machine and  added enough luck to find himself hired to administer the executive branch of the government of the United States of America.

Despite his self-proclaimed status as a professor of constitutional law, his imperial summons of Friday, July 22, 2011, reveals ignorance of   --  or more likely a conscious decision to ignore -- the Constitution of the United States, particularly Articles 1, 2, and 3.

In other words, Mr. President, you chose last evening to announce that the legislative branch is subject to your orders and therefore no longer a separate and equal branch; that leaders are at your beck and call; that you have a right to summon them before you  at a time and place of your exclusive choosing, and, like an insecure headmaster at a squalid private school, to order them produce their homework.

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On January 20, 2010, you raised your hand and swore:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."


Just words, eh, Sir?

Excuses Excuses

Real life sometimes shoos a guy's literary muse into a dark corner. It sometimes even shames a fellow into turning off his Apple and taking up tools in the eternal quest to reduce the world's ugliness. Such as:

The hideous nature of the wall is not obvious in this photo, but trust me on this one, Sidney. It was awful -- ancient stained and pocked plaster board, a cruddy material at best and worse when installed by a short-order cook in his spare time.

The ugliness reduced, replaced by the Cowboy Corner and Family Museum.  Honest wood holds western dreams in .30-30 and .22LR.  Framed document is a grant of Kentucky land to the first of my line to appear in the New World -- just in time to do battle with King George in the Virginia Continental Line.  The chair is from Missouri's Salt River country, c. 1900,  built of native hickory sticks and splits by my GG grandfather's hired man.  Other knick-knacks -- especially the hand-tooled holster --  memorialize a little sister who died too young.

And that's most of what I did this week instead of trying to write.  I am soooo pleased with myself.

However, I do, in fact, realize that it's time to get back to life's most noble calling, savaging the asses who govern us. 

Almost sputtering

The President of the United States has this hour ordered the leaders of the Congress of the United States to appear on his carpet at 11 a.m tomorrow.

Mr. President, this is a constitutional republic, and, absent an indictment,  you do not have the goddamn authority to order my dog Libby  to show up in your office.

Unarguable

On MSNBC this morning a talking head said it would be hot in Washington. How hot would it be?

"It will be the hottest morning of the week if you factor in the temperature."
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Hey kids! Let's go get a little farm and be survivalists!

You have less money than you think ... you have to buy a lot of shit to reduce materialism ... if the deer eat your garden, eat the deer because man evolved to be badass.

Or maybe just forget the whole thing? And go back for your MBA?

As funny as anything you'll read today if you like stuff such as; "Hippies, God bless them, become a lot more realistic after raccoons kill their chickens and the pipes freeze."

H/T to friend John of the GMA

A must see, but barf bag recommended

A very good officer by the name of LawDog is gagging at this video.

If you care for a glimpse of what a police state might look like you need to see it.

Heller? What Heller?

Mr. Sykes is the only licensed gun dealer in Washington, D.C., Population 600,000.  That's a good discussion topic all by itself when paired with the fact that I can offhandedly think of  four FFLs within ten miles of where I sit in a hick county of  18,000.

He lost the lease on his southeast Washington shop and can't find another location, meaning, among other things, there's no way to legally transfer a gun in the Capital. Even DeeCee officials concede their gun laws might play a role here.

The city prohibits "gun shops" within 300 feet of a church, school, playground, library or -- get this --residence,  For all practical purpose we can turn to Euclid for a a handle on what this means. A Washington gun shop must set in the center of a clear circle, 600 feet in diameter. That's about 1.6 acres in a city where a cramped basement apartment with iffy plumbing an a drunk sleeping in your doorway can set you back two grand a month. (Trust me on this one, Sidney.  BTDT.)

Enter Mayor Gray who has been getting nervous about lawsuits alleging he and his fellow public titters are trying to negate the Supreme Court's Heller decision. So, he decided , "Hey, guys, let's set Sykes up in Metropolitan Police Headquarters." 

It looks like this deal might actually happen.  It's probably just curmudgeonly to imagine an anti-Stalin activist group set up in the Lubyanka foyer, 1946.

The three-Excedrin candidate

Michele gets headaches. Beyond ordinary compassion for any human suffering, I didn't know I had reason to care. Then I read:

Bachmann could get sympathy from some voters, (Larry) Sabato said, since “millions suffer from migraines.”

(The seer Sabato runs something called the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and we are entitled to assume that his insights are nourished at the public trough.)

Y'know, he could just as well have told the Register that Michele could get sympathy for alleged dimwittery since millions of voters also suffer from cranial vacuity.

Strictly personally and putting compassion aside, it isn't Michele's migraines that worry me. It is my own as I ponder even the slim chance that she might one day be empowered to order a couple of Marine Expeditionary Units to quell a pro-choice uprising in Peoria.

Poor Sean Hoare

The world media tread lightly on the mysterious death of Sean Hoare, the whistle blower who brought down the News of the World and put Rupert in the Commons dock. The eerie hush screams "conspiracy."

I suspect it starts  with Queen Elizabeth who cannot possibly be amused by world's amusement at the sorry state of the media, the police forces, and Her Majesty's entire government in Theme Park England. So the question must be asked: "What did Liz know and when did She know it?" Even if she is eventually found ignorant, it is important to remember that the buck stops at Buckingham.

So far, Scotland Yard is reporting poor Sean's untimely death as merely "unexplained but not suspicious." Quite lame.  This is the same cop shop whose bobbies were known to pocket a few extra pence by selling secrets to Rupert's minions.

Journalist Hoare ratted them out, and who knows what else he might have been ready to spill? A reporter who knew the cops were selling GPS locations of known celebrities is quite likely to have had the inside dope on PUS's and parliamentarians fond of dressing in tiny fragments of  French maids' costumes as they  waited on tables of leather-clad (Dare I use the term?) tarts (!).

The autopsy occurred yesterday, and it will surprise no one when whomever, if anyone, leading the bobbies these days reports that there's nothing to see here, folks; move along.  Further scandal could crush the Empire and, poof, there go the pensions whilst also ending the jolly good sport of flogging wogs from Capetown to Bombay and beyond. Further horror? Think of the collapse of the pound sterling when it is no longer backed by the yuan of a million Chinese persons hooked on English opium.

Whilst my research is ongoing, information from my good friend Travis McGee suggests the method by which Mr. Hoare was murdered, possibly with the connivance of Murdoch himself. The crime was quite possibly  committed with a tiny irradiated pellet which mimics the symptoms of a naturally occurring infectious disease. (cf. The Green Ripper.) 

While I do not yet argue that the dot of death was delivered by a red-haired siren with bad skin, the  possibility cannot be ruled out. As I have proven many times in the past, Travis knew everything.


  

Howzzat again, Sherf?

There's an update on the Rep. Boswell home invasion this morning, including a quote from a lawman:

Decatur County Sheriff Herbert Muir said Sunday night that he doesn’t think Boswell’s house was targeted, either because of his job or for another reason. He said it was probably a random attempted robbery thwarted in part because the robber didn’t realize how many people were in the house.


Come on, Herb. There were three people in the farmhouse -- two of them aged -- and one young man. The thug had a gun, so we presume he was prepared to deal with people.  He wasn't at all thwarted until he he found himself eyeball to muzzle with the owners' shotgun. Then he was thwarted.


Perhaps a litle practice will help you out, Sherf. Say to yourself, over and over: "The robbery and potential murder were thwarted by a citizen's private gun and a young man unafraid to use it." In due course you'll probably be able to utter it in public without hurting your head at all.

The armed congressman

I wonder how much attention the hoplophobe press will pay to this one:  A  Democratic congressman fights off an armed home intruder at his farm, thanks in part to his house shotgun in the hands of his grandson.

Well done, Rep. Boswell. Well-done, Grandson Mitchell.

Just for the record, the Boswell record on gun-control earns him an "A" from the NRA.

Bearish on America

Two days ago a big bow hunters' jamboree in the Colorado Rockies hit a sour note. A black bear swiped eggs at the camp site, then raided a tent and bloodied a boy. (He's fine, T and R.)

Reuters decided its report should include something indirectly related:

Earlier this month, witnesses reported seeing a black bear sow and her two cubs rummaging in an outdoor trash receptacle at a Burger King restaurant in Eagle, Colorado. The spectacle attracted a crowd, and at least two people were seen feeding the bruins hamburgers.

It's hard to have any long-term faith in a nation which produces even two (there were probably more) such cretins in one small town. The connection isn't hard to make: People feed bear. Bear learns people equal food. Very bad.)

Then there is the factor of knowledge transference and projection, just a fancy way of saying you can apply the lessons of one situation to similar ones. The human zipiddydoodahs hovering around the restaurant trash didn't learn the basic lesson, so they won't have a clue when we warn them:

"When you see a bunch of  elected officials hovering around the Burger King garbage, do not feed them. If you do, they'll soon be in your tent, chomping on private parts. Very bad." 

Virtuous Me

The flooding, heat, and humidity accelerate my brainrot, so I'm sometimes an easy mark for internet memes.

One site purports to measure -- in microseconds -- the good and evil of any site.

I am pleased to report that the Travis McGee Reader is only 35 per cent evil. Greater demons include Borepatch at 37 and Guffaw at 39. (H/T to the latter)

I knew studying the complete works of Jimmie Swaggert would reward me in the end.

Dear Guam: WTF?

Guam is again demanding reparations for atrocities committed against its Chamarro people in World War Two.

It wants the United States to cough up something like $14  $125 million to compensate for its suffering,  1942-1944. (Edit to fix error in cost estimate.)

Pardon me, but aren't you petitioning the wrong country,  Governor Calvo?

I know that Washington has more soft-hearted mush brains than Tokyo, but you're the one talking about "moral obligations," so why don't you go speak morally to Akihito? It was his daddy who condoned the torture. It was American daddies and granddaddies who bled on your soil to expel the Japs and restore your freedom; 1747 of them died.

I suppose Congress will eventually cave in. That's another reason why we'll continue to stay broke.

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It isn't as though we Mainlanders are niggardly with any of our territories, but that's a topic for a separate essay.

Roger Clemens

Roger Clemens gets a mistrial.

Roger is a baseball pitcher, but this isn't about baseball. My limpid interest in the professional version of the pastime died years ago when it bloated its roster and schedules to commandeer teevee time that would otherwise have been filled with synchronized swimming. It isn't even about Clemens as such. He may be an admirable man with seven Cy Young awards. He may be a jerk, thug, dope addict, or golfer for all I know or care.

Clemens may or may not have taken steroids when he was winning all those trophies. After he got famous enough, he was accused of it. So what? At the time there was no law forbidding it. If he doped himself he violated a private contract with a private employer.

Enter Henry Waxman, a righteous congressthing  representing the virtuous settlement of Beverly Hills. Hank summoned him to testify under oath before his House Oversight Committee. Roger said he took no steroids. Others said he did. Waxman believed the others and called the federal cops.

The charge was perjury, lying to Congress, which is like charging a guy in a Nevada whore house with eyeballing a boob.

The prosecutors had to win this one to uphold the principle that citizens may not lie. That usurps a congressional privilege. So the desperate federal  lawyers decided to ignore  explicit directions from Judge Reggie Walton, and I think one of the lessons here is that you don't piss off a guy like Reggie by presenting evidence he had explicitly forbidden.

"A first-year law student would know that you can't bolster the credibility of one witness with clearly inadmissible evidence," Walton said, raising his voice in anger at (prosecutor Steven) Durham."


(That should be a career buster for Steve, but he works for Holder so you never know.)

You may want to consider all this in terms of cost -- millions of dollars to hound a meaningless player of a boy's game at a time when we're scaring Hell out of grandma, telling her she may starve in the cold when her social security checks stop coming.

You may want to wonder how much more it will cost if the feds decide it's worth trying to get around his double-jeopardy protection and try him again.

The larger question here is about how petty an alleged transgression must be to avoid becoming a subject of monumental government concern.

Roger, I don't know you, never will, but, by God, I'm glad you beat those overbearing, self-important, bastards in this round.

Reloading note

A nice batch of .30 Carbine cases followed me home recently, and I started processing them last evening.  I didn't feel like dealing with the STP-on-a -pad mess. I dampened a rag with WD40 and wiped the cases. They resized butter-smoothly in what I think is an overly tight die.

I'd heard about the magic oil as case lube for a long time but never tried it. I'm a convert. It's cleaner, faster, and probably cheaper.

Note to self: You don't have a Lee dedicated taper crimp die for this caliber. Order one today.

In lieu of scriivening

Sometimes writing is more fun than real life. Often enough, the opposite is true. For four days yours truly didn't even glance at a computer.

Shortly after the launch below the lower St. Cloud dam near Mile  925 of the upper Mississippi River, the Patriarch  sees his family from a most-favored angle.

The Next Generation pulls away from the older folks in an eventually successful effort to catch up with Gramps (who is solo in a tiny Wenohah Voyager, the liveliness of which is graceful and fascinating. Love with a ballerina.)

Now in the lead, the Next Generation displays the naked ambition and drive which has made the family what it is today.

A lunch break midway between St. Cloud and Clearwater features world-class rock skipping demonstration.

Post of the Day

By Tam, and cogent even beyond her usual standards, explaining again that the Bill of Rights is not a technicality designed to let known criminals go free.

It should be required memorization work in every high school civics class in America, and if that ain't the solid gold truth I'll kiss your arse at high noon on the Supreme Court steps and let you engage Bill O'Reilly to do live commentary with B-roll closeups.

Into the lutefisk jungle

I face the future with fear, not for Camp J which will be under the care of an armed house-sitter whose only failings are a short temper, a surly disposition, and a lamentable territoriality. It's the best I could do for next week's short venture into the jungle of government-free Minnesota.

As always, I prepare for the northern safari with extreme care. Sidearm; check. Another sidearm; check. Body armor; check. Case of survival food; check.  Most importantly,  the precautions include 16-ounce disposable cups in the face of locked-down public pissoirs.

---

My intel always includes poring over the Star-Tribune, Minnesota's second most important newspaper*,  for the latest danger, and I discover my peril if some happenstance should require emergency admittance to a geriatric facility.


Under a headline shouting, "Care for elderly, disabled starting to show strain," it reports that a storm blew the roof from a Belleview nursing home. 

The facility needs state approval to rebuild. But administrator Jim Broich can't get the safety checks required by state law because the engineers who review plans were laid off.


I see. The rain will fall into the old folks'  little bed chambers because it is illegal to rebuild a roof without a public inspector on hand to inspect. After careful reflection, I deem this a splendid law.  The highly experimental state of roof-building technology requires such marvels as rafters, sheathing, and shingles -- all installed with inter-fibrous friction fasteners. No private citizen (such as, say, a journeyman carpenter) can be trusted with the job, and certainly no owner is qualified to say, "yep, it looks like it won't fall down, so I probably won't need to sue your ass off. Here's your check."


---


I'll also need to avoid camping in the state parks. However could I make it without a ranger to guide me to the showers?


Anarchy is such a horror.


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*After the St. Cloud Times, in case you forgot.

Where's my sledge?

I don't know whether Casey Anthony killed her baby or not, but from more than a thousand miles away, I am inclined to give the jury the benefit of whatever doubt exists. (I think I read in Blackstone that I'm supposed to.)

As to the teevee personages, I find them guilty, en masse, of felonious overuse of the terms "stun," stunned" and "stunning" and sentence them to a non-methaphorical stunning.  
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Independence Day, 1776 and 2011

John Adams wants you to have a good time tomorrow. To Abbie he wrote:

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.


See? You have a Founder's permission to go to the range.


Never mind his "second day."  It's just part of history's ambiguity which keeps otherwise unemployable academics off the streets, harmlessly picking nits.
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Cows ain't born in Saran Wrap, y'know

Getting ready to  grill up that cow part for your Independence Day observance? You might be interested in a report from the range on what it takes to get the critter  from the wide open spaces to  your Weber. It's a Hell of a story. Survival of both horse and man was in doubt.

Jiinglebob has it.

Minnesota, Mon Amour

Minnesota is now a government-free zone, but the policy is not zero-tolerance. The cops are working doing cop things and the prison guards  are guarding.

So far the horror seems pretty much limited to horse racing, "camping," and folks who have to pee along the Interstates.

The taxpayer-financed highway crappers are padlocked, so motorists should carry 16-ounce cups. With lids, per preference.

The conservation cops herded all the campers out of the state parks. This confuses me. I have always looked on camping as a supremely government-independent activity. But, then, I have no experience with the wilderness experience built around the travel trailer, flush toilets nestled in the pines,  electrical meters, and cable  teevee plug-ins.

The Star-Tribune, Minnesota's second most important newspaper (after the St.Cloud Times), decided the interruption of horse racing in Shakopee rated gallons of ink. Maybe they're right. What the Hell else is there to do in Shakopee when the Renaissance Faire isn't in session?

Oh, and road construction is suspended, too, shovels locked up,  leaving thousands of  union road workers with nothing to lean on.

The only remaining question as far as I can see is whether Mrs. Governor Dayton is scrubbing her own commodes in the governor's mansion.

All in all, a tragedy.