Schrödinger's Biden

“We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” - Eric Trump

"We do a pretty disproportionate amount of business with Russia. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." - Don Jr.

And it looks like we can throw in Don Jr.'s wedding to this list.

Well, it's been quite a week in our little slice of the globe bordered north and south by Lake America and the Gulf of America. As I sit here in Texas/America writing this, hearings are being prepared in our own state capital by some particularly puerile legislators to add a couple of counties in New Mexico/New America to our state. Why? My guess is they caught the renaming bug. How?

From KXAN...

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A Texas House committee is set to examine the legal and practical implications of potentially expanding Texas by adding one or more neighboring counties from New Mexico during a public hearing later this month.

The Texas House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight, chaired by Rep. Cody Vasut, has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 30 at the Texas Capitol to hear invited and public testimony on the issue.

According to the committee notice, lawmakers will study the constitutional, statutory, fiscal and economic implications of adding contiguous New Mexico counties to Texas. 

I know, it's hard to imagine this actually being taken seriously, but it is. Well, it is Texas/America, after all.

We had a couple of wild days in Dallas/America, as Republicans gathered for a midterm political convention, which isn't a thing, by the way. What it was was a big Trump rally, and the Prez was there in all his combed-over glory, and he played his greatest hits.

And that means, of course, everything is the fault of Joe Biden including inflation, oil prices and apparently weather. There was a post by a self-declared conservative meteorologist that for the first time in the era of weather satellites, we have had no Atlantic hurricanes this season. To that the White House actually replied...

"Thanks, President Trump!"

If that's the case, I confess to being impressed. But then again, he can redirect them so why not?

And of course, the President promised everyone a nice, crisp $5000 bill if Republicans hold on to the Congress this fall. But, given his track record on promised checks, if you have your eye on that nice, used Chevy Cavalier, don't call the owner yet because it just isn't going to happen.

It's illegal and would add $1.3 Trillion to the already out of control national debt.

He led the crowd in a rambling oath to vote GOP, an oath they ultimately lost track of as he went into digressions and just shouted USA! Of course, JD Vance said Democrats hate the nation. Meanwhile, the HUD Secretary Scott Turner tried to pat Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna on the butt as she entered the stage to speak.

He is a former NFL football player, so he may have blanked for a moment and thought she was the quarterback who just threw a long touchdown pass.

Many elected Republicans just skipped the whole thing claiming they had to rearrange their sock drawers, it was an obscure Dutch holiday or something, anything.

Later last week came the 9/11 attack remembrance services. All the former Presidents were there with their wives, but since he wouldn't be allowed a speech, President Trump decided to fall asleep at the Pentagon instead...

There was much ado about New York Mayor Mamdani smiling while greeting New York Representative Anastasia Cortez, and MAGA found it very disrespectful...

Which got everyone from the President to Sean Hannity's knickers in a twist, though Sean's are pretty much permanently serpentine. Now, to be fair, the video clip in question lasted 4 seconds and then they resumed a somber expression. And it goes without saying that others would not have acted this way...

The man laughing to Rudy Giuliani's left is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former head of the Cantor-Fitzgerald investment firm, which was wiped out in the terrorist disaster, losing 658 employees in the North Tower.

But that's the difference I guess, you know, if you really love the country.

Back here in the Lone Star State, some guy named Bo French is running for Railroad Commissioner. The Commission is in charge of the oil and gas industry, and his opponent is an actual oilfield engineer.

Now, Bo has a bit of a checkered past when it comes to folks who are blessed with more melanin or worship differently. For instance, when he was Chairman of the Republican Party of Tarrant County, he posted a since-deleted poll on X, asking his nearly 29,000 followers, “Who is a bigger threat to America?” Respondents had two options: “Jews” or “Muslims.” 

Well now, apparently Bo longs for a time when the University of Texas Football team looked like this...

That's because he watched the recent UT victory against Ohio State and the pandemonium it created among the student body. Most of us, even non-UT alumni were sharing in the joy, but here's what Bo saw...

Two presumptions here. He, of course, assumes all the brown people celebrating here were foreigners, and that it is a problem. 10% of the UT student body are foreign students, and they pay a lot of money to be there. But how many in this picture are US citizens, and why do we care about that answer?

Bo's racism was immediately denounced by the current US Senator John Cornyn, recovering from his MAGA-ectomy since losing in a runoff. Now, like so many, Big John only resumed being an independent carbon-based life form since losing, but how about others?

Dustin Burrows: The Texas House speaker, Jared Patterson: Republican state representative, even GOP consultant and subject of my colleague Jim Moore's book "Bush's Brain," Karl Rove and commentator Ben Shapiro called Bo out on it.

But who was too weasley and cowardly to denounce such blatantly racist declarations? Oh, our Governor Greg Abbott, since after all, that kind of prejudice is his brand now and our Attorney General Ken Paxton, who beat Cornyn in said runoff.

Oh, and Ken, who looks more and more like a Picasso painting to me...

...now is being accused in the British press of trying to stop a man filming him on vacation in the UK with his mistress by trying to forcibly slap his phone to the ground. This of course, after having been found lying on his financial disclosure forms for the Senate race.

Now, to explain my title. A famous 1935 thought experiment by physicist Erwin Schrödinger, using his cat, that shows the bizarre nature of quantum superposition scaled up to the everyday world. In short, something can be two things at once.

After spending a couple of years talking about "Sleepy Joe" Biden, which is pretty ironic now, using an autopen to sign everything and unaware of what day it was, the President accuses him of not only being a master thief enriching his errant son Hunter, but now the mastermind behind the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Hey, either he's a dementia patient or he's Ethen Hunt on another Mission Impossible. But like Schrodinger's cat, maybe he's both.

Speaking of, Senator Mitch McConnell has returned from a brief vacation to the afterlife, and was wheeled into a van to return to the Capitol on Tuesday.

One former colleague described his condition as "Rigor Tortoise."

The President has reacted to a judge saying, yet again, it's illegal for him to slap his name on the Kennedy Center by threatening to close it entirely and delay any repairs until his name goes up there with JFK. Yeah, this is now getting morbidly alarming.

And finally, while Biden did indeed pay off a used pickup for Hunter, we learned this week that Donald Trump Jr.'s big splashy Caribbean wedding was paid for by a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, Umar Krenlev.

Given the Trump scion's comments at the beginning of this piece, this is not at all surprising.

Nor is the President's blaming of Ukraine for high diesel prices by bombing Russian refineries. Oh sure, the Russians are bombing Ukrainian apartments, power plants and shopping centers, but Zelensky had better knock it off.

OK, we get no diesel from Russia, and the main problem is the goofy war with Iran, but anyway, Ukraine, right? Besides. Trump is inviting Vlad back into the fold for the next G7 meeting, so all is forgiven.

Putin is getting his money's worth.

Just another week in America, folks. Enjoy.