So, you’ve probably heard that soon to be former US Representative and all-around douchebag Jason Chaffetz of Utah has proposed a housing stipend for members of Congress of $2,500 per month. Because, hey, it’s hard to pay to live in DC and keep a home back home on their meager $174,000 a year salary. Never mind that, not including all their other perks, such as, pretty good health insurance and subsidies, free airport parking, free on-site gym, weakened insider trading restrictions – cha-ching! – 239 days a year off (for comparison purposes, a person with weekends off, 13 paid holidays – there are 10 Federal holidays, and most people don’t even get all of those, but anyway – and four weeks of paid vacation would get 104 + 13 + 20 = 137), $900,000 staff and $250,000 budget for travel and office expenses, great retirement plan, all the K-Street you can eat (and drink)…. Because, you know, Chaffetz (net worth back in 2008, anyway, of $5.6 million) has a point. If a “regular” person were to get elected, it would be tough for him or her to make ends meet. Plus this would, in his estimation, “save money” because he wouldn’t have to fly home for free every weekend (the way us regular people who have to take an out-of-state job do).

So, OK. But I’m sure the honorable mister Chaffetz wouldn’t want to just be doling out welfare, even if it is to mostly deserving white men. Obviously, we need to attach dome strings.

First off, rather than a stipend (which would cost $2,500 per month * 12 months * 535 members of Congress = $16,050,000 per year), I propose that we build or buy a dormitory-style residence for our destitute Congressional reps. For $16 million a year, we should be able to get a decent mortgage or even pay rent. I know of a lovely dormitory at Catholic University whose common bathroom/shower facilities would do wonders to foster the collegial atmosphere that seems to be so missing in today’s House of Representatives. And as a good Christian nation, we of course wouldn’t allow co-ed floors, so, like 9 floors for the boys and 2 floors for the girls ought to do it. I figure two to a room, but I guess we could go for triples and quads (hell, I lived in a quad when I was a freshman).

We’d also have to do means testing, of course. I mean, no reason to give millionaires a free ride (not in America, right?). You could work out the details, but some sort of sliding scale from free to, oh, I dunno – whatever the going rate for a dorm room in DC is. But they get their asses out when the semester ends and if they want to stay over the summer, that’s extra. And they can buy a meal plan, or eat someplace else. No microwaves or toaster ovens in the rooms, but they a can have coffee makers and a small refrigerator.

Also, no alcohol or cigarettes in the dorms, and regular, random drug testing (of course).

And since we’re providing all this, there will no longer be free air travel back and forth to the home (I mean, Chaffetz floated this idea as a money saver, and I take him at his word). And they can all take the metro to work. Maybe give them the student rate – we’ll have to see about that.

But, yeah, in principle, when it comes to subsidizing housing for the needy, I’m good with that.

But then I’m just a dirty liberal.

Happy Dad’s Day to all you dads out there, and those of you who have dads or are married to (or otherwise entangled with) a dad or dads. It’s yet another holiday where I’m pretty much off the hook these days, which is sad in some ways but somewhat liberating in others. We’ve had a hot weekend here, so there was a little bit of pool time (not enough to justify the expense of it all, but, hey, whatever), and it’s still pretty darn hot out there now, but that’s supposed to end with the dreaded severe thunderstorms that will scare the dog (trying to figure out how to time his doggie downers so that I can maybe get some sleep tonight – not that they actually put him down for the count, but they at least seem to prevent him from having a stroke), but hopefully not cause any damage (good thing we don’t live in the Bible Belt, where Jesus seems to like throwing a scare into people every now and again. I guess He just figures we’re too far gone for that). I keep getting these weather alerts on my phone, but you can never trust those things. In addition to the thunderstorms, they’re warning me of flash flooding. Well, the pool needs some water anyway. Other than the terrified dog, the weather doesn’t scare me. Nowhere near the thought of going to work tomorrow, anyway, which fills me with dread. If there’s anybody who wants to move with me to Lake Chapala, let me know. I hear the weather is near perfect year ’round, you can live pretty cheap, and they don’t actually hate Gringos. Plus I think they’ll be able to make their border wall payments directly to American ex-pats, so there’s some supplemental income to be had.

It’s Flag Day, and who doesn’t feel like going out there and waving Old Glory in celebration of our Dear Leader? I know I do. In fact, I find it incredibly unpatriotic that today isn’t a national holiday. In fact, the whole damn week ought to be – at least as long as there’s a Trump (or Trump-in-law) in the White House, which ought to keep up covered for the next, oh, I dunno, 31 years or so – which should pretty much be the end of me (if not of life as we know it). Plus there aren’t any holidays in June – a month (along with August), that is in desperate need of a holiday or two. Somebody needs to ask Uncle Vlad to get on this.

In other patriotic news, our glorious, um, what is he again? Attorney General. Yeah, our Attorney General, the honorable Jefferson Davis Beauregard Sessions III testified (sort of) before the Senate “Intelligence” Committee yesterday and either “nailed it” (if you’re a Trumpite) or obstructed the investigation – if not justice – (if you’re a sane, impartial observer). Which I guess means that either way, he “nailed it.”

When it comes to righteous indignation while lying through your teeth, nothing beats a Foghorn Leghorn wannabe. He should have had a couple of House Slaves (nope, not gonna go where Bill Maher went) fanning him with palm leaves and peeling grapes for him while he tried to overcome the vapors brought on by the mere suggestion that he “participated in any collusion or that [he] was aware of any collusion with the Russian government.”

I dare say, he fairly swooned.

Oh, and that WOMAN that somehow snuck into the proceeding! Somebody let their maid into the hearing and allowed her to pretend to be a senator. How disrespectful she was (and her name is KAMALA? WTF – that don’t sound American. I bet she’s a Mooslam).

At least the aptly named Republican Chairman Dick Burr set her straight. Or, to quote Foghorn Leghorn,

“Oh, that woman, got a mouth like an outboard motor.”

Well, enough of this jocularity. Time to get to work.

So Kathy Griffin held up a bloody, severed Trump head in a photo. I don’t know the context, if there was any, but I guess she was trying to be funny, and this wasn’t seen as funny by, really, anybody. To me, this is not surprise, because (while I confess to not being terribly familiar with her) I’ve rarely found Kathy Griffin to be particularly funny. I could be wrong – maybe she’s a real hoot. But anyway, this wasn’t funny, especially to the sensitive, in-touch with their feminine sides (that’s not a sexist thing to say these days, is it? If so, I apologize) Republicans (as opposed, to, say, kicking the shit out of a reporter, or hanging Obama in effigy, or depicting him as a witch doctor complete with nose bone, or any of those other truly high-sterical Ted Nugent utterances). But it also wasn’t particularly funny to me – if for no other reason than I despise looking at that ugly pig-orangutan hybrid’s puss, whether it’s attached to his shoulders or not. It also wasn’t funny because it gave the jack-booted Konservatives an opportunity to express faux outrage and blather on about how awful “Liberals” are – as if this Kathy Griffin person represents all Liberals and liberal ideas.

I will give some grudging respect to Trump, however. He tweeterated (I guess) that his 11-yr old son was reduced to a quivering pile of jelly because he thought that Griffin had literally beheaded deal old dad. Say what you want, but it has to be tough for Mucho Macho Donno to admit his son is apparently a rather stupid crybaby wimp. Probably spends too much time with his mother (or maybe his nanny). Had somebody done similar related to my dad when I was 11 (and, keep in mind, this was well before the Internet or Photoshop was in invented, and stop-action claymation and puppetry – complete with visible wires – was the epitome of special effects, so something this “real” looking would have had much more of an impact), I’d have probably been pretty pissed and I might have felt a desire to punch somebody in the nose or go all “Billy Jack” on their asses (at least, in my childish little mind), but I can pretty much guarantee you I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to think it was real and it wouldn’t have made me want to cry.

So good for Donald admitting that his boy is a clueless little wimp (like father, like son) that probably plays with dolls (as opposed to the “action figures” I played with as a kid, which are clearly much more manly, though if pressed I’ll admit to taking my sister’s Barbi – and Ken – dolls out for a spin. Mostly, I enjoyed blowing up my little green – and blue – army men. And napalming them – except I used gasoline – and watching them melt. One tip for you aspiring young pyromaniacs out there – don’t fill an empty soda can up with gasoline and then light it to recreate the Olympic flame. That can gets really hot, really fast, and when you drop said can on the driveway and then attempt to extinguish the flames with a garden hose, it only spreads the flames all across the driveway. Which, I have to admit, is a rather impressive sight once you get over the sheer panic. Ah, those were the days).

Of course, this stunt also wasn’t funny because it distracts everyone (everyone being the collective mental giant known as “We the People”) from what’s truly important. As if the world didn’t already think we were all a bunch of rubes, now Trump has (as expected) pulled us out of the Paris accord (that the rest of the world bent over backwards to negotiate to US specifications just to get us on board).

Our (as in, the United States’) rather brief turn as that shining beacon to be both looked up to (to the extent that we ever were – there’s probably as much or more myth to that idea than there is truth) and respected is more or less over. The Visigoth’s have sacked the capital, Christianity has undermined all we’ve stood for (or at least pretended), Romulus has fallen, and Odoacer sits on the throne.

Oh, we’ve still got nukes and enough of an economy that the world will continue to pay a certain amount of lip service to us. We’ll get invited to all the best parties – but they’ll all be laughing at us behind our backs.

At least until this asshole President our ours and his asshole buddies in Congress and the Supreme Court get done raping and pillaging here at home and decide to invade somebody in order to boost their ratings.

That’ll teach Kathy to make Barron cry.