At last, we have the inside story on the short-term (five days, half a Scaramucci) of former White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia. She was struggling with an embarrassing first performance and misstatements about her lawyer status (she graduated law school, but there’s no record of her ever passing a state bar exam). That’s when her handling of a rumor doomed her brief time in office.

A vicious rumor had been circulating for hours that President Trump had been caught telling the truth. A nervous Zacharia stepped up to the press room lectern to speak to the assembled reporters.

“I want to assure all of you,” she bellowed, “that President Trump consistently delivers a forceful and reliably false account of the world from this podium as well as any other, including his posts on social media.”

Congratulations to Michaela Barnett. She was a superior candidate for Congress. She and all her loyal campaigners were diligent and energized. She secured more than 41% of the vote, carried the city of Knoxville, and came within just a few votes of carrying Knox County. It was the outlying counties that saved Tim Burchett. He did not "cruise to victory" as stated in the KNS. Democrats typically get only 31-32% of the vote in this district (I know from harsh experience).

I implore Michaela to run again, and stay active.

Linguists and psychologists have come up for a term to describe Donald Trump's need for royal accessories like ballrooms, triumphal arches, and adoring crowds--regis envy.

I thought I'd share this image from Wednesday night after being awarded the National Press Club's Angele Gingras Award for satirical column writing.

In her latest campaign television ad, Sen. Marsha Blackburn destroys a large number of fortune cookies, an act of wonton destruction.

Well, I hope everybody had a Happy Watergate Day. It's been 54 years since the break-in, a calendar event we all should recognize. The plumbers' parade was a bit disappointing this year, but Republicans on Capitol Hill and President Trump in Europe kept up the Watergate Day spirit by making many "inoperative statements."

With no more Front Page Follies, I need some outlet for song parodies that come to me. Roger Daltry originally sang these Pete Townshend lyrics, but imagine Cameron Sexton trying to defend the legislature's racist redistricting:

[Verse 1]
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man, to be the sad man
Behind our lies
No one knows what it's like
To be hated, to be fated
To telling only lies

[Chorus]
And my maps, they are as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I will punish those who object
I do Trump’s vengeance; that's never free

Pope Leo XIV, our first deep-dish pope, seems like quite a good fellow. He was born in Chicago as Robert Francis Prevost, lived on the South Side (meaning White Sox fan, so he knows suffering), and spent many years doing missionary work with the poor in Peru. His emphasis on Christ-like themes of peace, helping the poor, loving one's neighbor, and welcoming the stranger, of course, has angered Donald Trump.

Trump seems to fit in well with some of history's lesser popes.

Pope Alexander VI, better known as Rodrigo Borgia, and his scandalous family merited a Showtime series. Trump might appreciate how Borgia fathered several children with many mistresses. Trump's grifting in office echoes how Borgia reportedly bought the papacy by bribing fellow electors.

Pope Stephen VI, 896-897, could not give up a grudge against his predecessor, Pope Formosus. Though Formosus had been dead for months, Stephen VI had him dug up, dressed in papal robes, placed on a throne, and put on trial. Following the pre-ordained conviction, the body was dragged through the streets and dumped in the river. Trump's bizarre and bogus attempts to prosecute his political opponents (often tossed quickly by judges and juries) smell a lot like Stephen VI.

Pope Boniface VII, 1294-1303, was a "my way or the highway" kind of guy, tried to put all the armies of Europe under his command. He earned Dante Aligheri's enmity; the author gave him a permanent spot in the eighth circle of hell. Trump's militarism and comic mockery of the horrors of war seem to fit the Boniface VII model.

Some good discussions. Normally Gloria Johnson attends these events but she had a conflict for the rescheduled time. Don't know about the rest of our legislative delegation--they rarely bother to show. Sens. Briggs and Massey, Rep. McKenzie and Wright (Sam and Dave!) were there.

Here it is

The White House has issued the following statement. President Trump does know the difference between Greenland and Iceland. He is aware that Norway and Denmark are separate countries, and neither controls Nobel Awards. Mauritius and Mauritania are very different places, and our telegram about the Diego Garcia airbase sent to the latter was an honest typo. We understand that Chile is a country, not a restaurant, and Kash Patel's attempt to redeem a Chili's coupon at the Chilean embassy should be viewed as a joke. Vice President Vance knows the difference between Austria and Australia and should not be criticized for his attempt to book a ski chalet in Melbourne.

Many others have worked this song parody, but if there still was a Front Page Follies I'd be working on this:

Super-Callous-Fragile-Ego-Epstein Files-Atrocious
Did you see his hand today, it looks just like necrosis

I sure miss Follies.

A team of doctors has been rushed to Capitol Hill to analyze House Speaker Mike Johnson's curious absence of a spine. They were called after Johnson refused to install a plaque honoring the police officers injured during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"It was just the latest in a series of spineless acts," explained one doctor. "It appears he has no spine, but some cartilage like a shark. Curiously, that cartilage only hardens when it hears Donald Trump's voice."

The speeches by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth before a compelled in-person meeting with all our nation’s admirals and generals properly have been criticized on many grounds: improperly shifting the military mission to internal threats, explicitly declaring our cities as dangers to be met with military tactics, and rambling political diatribes irrelevant to our non-partisan military. One other item, however, deserves mention—the wholesale misuse of merit as the rationale for some of Trump’s most egregious policies.

Currently it is important to speak and write about Congress and its failure to do basic things like pass a budget, repair its nonsensical cuts to health care subsidies, and defend its authority to budget and not allow Donald Trump to trash any allocation he wants.

Yet, at both the federal and state level, instead legislative attention has drifted toward the non-serious. Sometimes it’s hard to separate genuine legislator stupidity from mere pandering to confused and misled, but nevertheless adamant, constituents. Few things demonstrate this better than the efforts, both in the Tennessee legislature and the U.S. Congress (with help from one Tennessee legislator), to tackle the conspiracy bug-a-boo of chemtrails, sometimes called contrails.

President Trump recently renewed his political assault on Canada, ending trade talks via social media post and hissy fit over digital services taxes. Trump’s musings and outbursts about Canada have all the bizarre twists of a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon, likely one involving occasional character and frequent failure, Captain Peachfuzz. Amazingly, I am not the first person to notice these similarities. Thus, I wrote it up my version of the episode. As usual it starts with the booming words of the voice-over announcer.

Let me be the first to wish you a Happy Watergate Day! The plumbers' parade, rumored to be held in Washington, D.C., has been cancelled--that area is still recovering from Trump's vanity event.

The battle of Trump v. Musk is a bit like Godzilla v. Mothra. Cheer for Tokyo, and hope the monsters take it out on each other.

It also can be compared to Alien v. (Sexual) Predator, but who is which?

No one really was surprised when an Iowa U.S. Senate seat came open, but it was a bit unusual for President Donald Trump to dismiss the replacement process. “A trained horse could do the job,” Trump scoffed at an impromptu news conference. Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Republican governor, perhaps misreading Trump’s statement, dutifully appointed a horse to fill the vacancy. She chose Ed the Magnificent, a palomino that won acclaim at the Iowa state fair for clenching a broomstick in its mouth and defeating fairgoers in games of checkers.

It prompted the biggest equine political scandal since the Roman emperor Caligula was reported to have appointed his horse to the Senate. Trump responded to the outrage by bringing out of retirement former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, 87, assigned to mollify the critics.

Amazon has acquired MGM, and also recently bought into the James Bond franchise. That means Amazon owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, now has access to this iconic global cultural phenomenon, leaving me not shaken but stirred. Not only does he control the future of James Bond; he also can re-purpose the existing 007 catalog. I have some modest suggestions.

If you can get past the paywall, check out my guest column in the KNS.

Here