Things to do on the vernal equinox

1. Welcome the first day of spring after surviving a brutal spring-like winter.
2. Tell the crocuses that all that previous warm weather was a cruel false alarm and that it's probably safe to come up now and fill our gardens and lives with white and purple and yellow joy. But especially yellow. Because I like yellow crocuses the best. No offense, lesser white and purple crocuses.
3. Marvel that humankind has figured out the rotation of the planets and the tilting of the earth's axis and the location of the equator and the EXACT FREAKING SECOND that the sun crossed it today as the earth's axis reached its momentary equilibrium and tilted neither toward or away from the sun.
4. Recalibrate -- if necessary -- your internal compasses by observing the due east and due west locations of today's sunrise and sunset. (Equinox nerds only.)
5. Softball "Fascism Forever" club founder, Constitutional "originalist" and declared Constitutional "faithful servant" Neil Gorsuch through confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court appointment that Constitutionally belongs to someone else.
6. Indulge in the sadly-once-a-year crispity, crunchety, maltedy, chocolatey, fatassy, lightly speckled deliciousness of Brach's Malted Milk White Fiesta Eggs.

Flynnished

I think "literally" is technically still "allegedly" at this point. And since he was telling different lies about it to different people and digging in his heels about quitting just this morning, we still don't know the details, the extent or the lasting damage of his actions.

But Mike Flynn is a retired general who it seems intentionally put himself in a position where he knew he was violating the spirit -- but let's cut the bullshit and just agree it's the letter -- of the law by colluding with a longtime political and international adversary who was at the very least secretly taping his conversations and at the very most blackmailing him over them. And given his sycophantic fascination bordering on prostrate obsession with Putin and Russia, there is NOTHING Trump could say or do at this point to convince me or anyone capable of linear thought that he didn't know about it or wasn't orchestrating it. Flynn may be gone in title, but there's no way his resignation extricates him from the ramifications of his actions, closes the door on his probable blackmail, or snuffs out the unholy alliance he and Trump and fuck knows how many others have clearly started to forge with Putin's Russia. 

But by all means, keep obstinately cheering for all things Trump and believing his orbit of racist oil billionaires even remotely cares about our country's interests and boycotting whatever company hurt Trump's feelings today and whining that protesters blocked Betsy DeVos from entering probably her first public school ever and getting angry when SNL calls Trump out on his shit and you on your proud fucking stupidity because look where all of your missing-the-point head-in-the-sand bullshit has gotten us.

Except I'll give you this: All of your missing-the-point head-in-the-sand bullshit clearly -- and so conspicuously that I want to spit in your face for being stupid enough to be smokescreened by it -- got the entire fucking Republican establishment to collectively and deafeningly shut up about Benghazi and Hillary's emails the millisecond the election was decided. So congratulations for that.

Trumpo

I know Trump didn't typeset this poster. As lazy and disinterested as he's proven himself to be over the last year-plus, I'm certain he didn't even take the time to proofread it ... not that his tweets have demonstrated he possesses even a rudimentary understanding of spelling and punctuation anyway. And, quite frankly, the slightly-feel-good-but-essentially-meaningless lofty-lite language here is wholly inconsistent with the fifth-grade level of syntax he seems barely capable of maintaining in his communications. So I'm sure this copy came from one of his writers, who probably struggled valiantly to bridge the gap between the appalling Trumpspeak nobody wants to hear and the inspiring, thoughtful lyricism we as a nation expect from a president we shouldn't have to hope and pray doesn't sound like he just learned to read yesterday.

So while man-boy continues to unleash a daily deluge of childish distractions, laughable lies, narcissistic humiliations and international horrors, this kindergarten typo arguably didn't escape from his personal dungeon of ineptitudes. So I benevolently grant him a get-out-of-stupidity-free card this time in my monopoly of unhinged political rants.

But I could be wrong.

A missing "o" has already proven to be a tidy, convenient distraction from the current news cycle's man-boy scandal stemming from our national security adviser's "inability to deny" -- as fake-news source CNN so artfully framed it -- "that he spoke about sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador before President Donald Trump took office."

And through those alleged actions, longtime Trump crony Michael Flynn -- he of the abovementioned "inability to deny" -- potentially embarrassed the already national embarrassment Mike Pence, who has gone on record -- and on television -- unequivocally denying these accusations against Flynn.

The underlying -- and overwhelming -- issue here is that our national security adviser -- and do note that "national security" part -- allegedly discussed the possible revision of sanctions and diplomatic presence with the ambassador to a country we have a historically contentious relationship -- and a disconcerting Trumpian future -- with. And then he allegedly lied about it to the already truth-challenged senior members of the man-boy administration.

It's not a country-destroying scandal -- yet -- but it is another glaring and almost daily example of Trump's lack of judgment in choosing high-ranking government officials, his lack of control over their potentially damaging actions and alliances, and the fact that there are actually endless challenges that are "to great" for him to handle.

I'm trying really hard not to call her Betsy DeVoid

Using schools to "advance God's kingdom" missionary Betsy DeVos -- who 20 days ago went unblinkingly on record as advocating putting guns in schools filled with children in order to protect them from grizzly bears -- has an alarming and well-documented history of borderline hostility toward public schools -- going so far as to call them a "dead end" -- and toward teacher salaries, secularism, fundamental education standards and even universal federal protections for students with disabilities.

And despite her manifest lack of experience, knowledge and qualification to oversee and influence and shape our nation's entire public education system for the next four years -- starting with the fact that she's never been educated in a public school -- Betsy DeVos was laughably softballed through perfunctory confirmation hearings last month -- before which she had not even completed an ethics review -- and was today confirmed as our nation's Secretary of Education.

Because we as a nation cannot afford to have our children be more educated than our president.

Read all the gory details here

[Confidential to Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos: "Perfunctory" means "performed hastily and superficially as mere routine duty."]

Fascism Forever Club

Remember how I said I was going to wait and let Neil Gorsuch's SCOTUS hearing help fully inform my opinion of him and his fitness to embody equitable jurisprudence?

That trying-to-be-impartial sentiment has now revealed itself to be an immutable alternative fact.

Neil Gorsuch and the Fascism Forever Club

It's not like he was just being a high-school douchebag looking for adolescent shock value; he was attending an elite prep school where presumably he was an intelligent, informed douchebag expressing sociopolitical conclusions he drew from his presumably elite, high-quality education.

It's not like he started his Fascism Forever Club just to joke around with like-minded douchebags; he founded what was by all accounts a formally recognized student group that was listed in his yearbook biography and he remained president of the club the entire four years he attended the school.

It's not like fascism is a ridiculous sociopolitical fad like the tea party; it's a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry and commerce, and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. And its bloody and brutal doctrines were well-documented in his parents' lifetime during the 1922-43 fascist reign of terror carried out across Italy by Benito Mussolini.

It's not like he took these ideas with him to work in an uninfluential job after graduation; he took them to law school where they undoubtedly informed and biased his entire approach to law, public policy and the Constitution.

It's not like he's just a sociopathic abortion of a human being; he's about to be softballed through Republican-controlled confirmation hearings and ascend effortlessly to the United States Supreme Court.

And at only 49 years of age, he will be a key player in the social and moral devastation of our country for generations to come.

SCOTUS hope

Aside from the expected and tediously toe-the-line hard-right bona fides regarding big-business interests, pro-life absolutists and religious "liberty" whiners that he has amassed in his short 49 years, I don't totally loathe the political extremes of Trump SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch the way I did those of Antonin Scalia. Don't get me wrong; I'm not going to gay-marry Gorsuch -- and, to be fair, my initial research has revealed only cursory instead of virulent LGBT hostility on his part -- but I'm going to give myself some time to hear more of what he has to say before I condemn the Republican softballing of his confirmation hearings and resign myself to the inevitability of his SCOTUS appointment.

I'm concerned about Gorsuch's penchant for concentrating power in the high courts, which are immune from elections, and his textualist approach to the Constitution, which in my estimation cloaks easily biased historical speculation under an impossible-to-substantiate assertion of historical objectivism. But again, these are just more of his predictable hardline bona fides -- and he is on record as having cried over the death of hardline patron saint Scalia -- so none of this is terribly surprising.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I've done slightly more than a little bit of research on Gorsuch since his nomination was announced today and while he's cookie-cutter predictable as a republican SCOTUS nominee, he's still not among the intellectual and moral trainwrecks Trump's barfed up with his appalling federal nominations like Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions and -- holy fucking shit -- Steve Bannon.

So I'll try to be as impartial as possible in wherever our Gorsuch discovery process takes us in the coming days. Which I never thought I'd say about ANY Trump nomination.

Besides, Donald Trump shouldn't be making SCOTUS nominations in the last few months of his presidency anyway.