Killing The Messenger Dept: Somehow going still lower, Republicans - aka "you absolute fucking pieces of shit" - just hauled Dr. Anthony Fauci into a Senate hearing to charge the guy who saved three million lives with "sabotaging" a dog heartworm pill, wanting to be a megalomanic "sun god," destroying "Americans' trust in their government" and probs being "responsible for this entire pandemic." In response, Fauci, "the man they cannot forgive for being right," declined to answer any of their "questions."

Wednesday's Stalinist circus shitshow trial from a GOP so desperately bogged down they've resorted to, "Ok, but remember the pandemic?" - and forget the Epstein files - offered dismal proof they're still mindlessly bowdlerizing science and using Fauci - a Cornell-trained, 85-year-old immunologist and infectious disease specialist who spent over 50 years in public service - as its main punching bag. Fauci, who evil bridge troll Steve Bannon once said should be beheaded, served almost 40 years as head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid) under 7 presidents. Reagan hired him, George H. W. Bush cited him when asked to name someone he admired, George W. gave him a Presidential Medal of Freedom and asked him to design a wildly successful AIDS relief PEPFAR that saved 25 million lives, most poor people in Africa.

In the 1980s, HIV/AIDS was one of multiple public health crises largely afflicting marginalized populations, along with Ebola and a first coronavirus, that Fauci confronted with grace and courage. "AIDS arrived attached to a despised population," notes one observer. "Fauci did not look away." He redirected research toward what was then deemed a plague "when it was neither safe nor popular," and when furious, screaming, ill AIDS activists stormed his office, he invited them in, listened to them, decided they were at least partly right and expedited clinical trials so patients could get quicker access to experimental drugs. Fierce AIDS activist Larry Kramer, who once called Fauci "an incompetent murderer," years later called him "the only true and great hero" among government officials of the time.

This week's hearing, called and convened under subpoena by rabid gadfly and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, was billed as an investigation into the origins of COVID, a legit scientific question that to some extent remains unresolved. For years, MAGA has chosen to blame an accidental "lab leak" from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Paul has devoted much of his otherwise less-than-memorable political career to arguing, according to that theory, that Dr. Fauci “could be responsible for this entire pandemic” - because NIH once provided the Institute with a sub-grant. Most virologists and other health experts say it was more likely caused by the occasional "spillover event" of a virus jumping from an infected animal to a human, arguing the “preponderance” of evidence points to that natural origin.

Public health officials have stepped up to protest the government's “vilification and harassment" of American scientists,” and a group of 155 scientists wrote an open letter dismissing bizarre MAGA charges against Fauci - he covered up the origins of his own research, bribed or others to join him, holds patents on vaccines, is working with bad actors to suppress the awful truth - as "baseless...No credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges." Still, Paul's office spent last weekend dumping over 1,100 pages of Fauci’s private “diary” online; after blowback, they took them down, made redactions and reposted them. Inadvertently or no, they left in Fauci's various descriptions of Trump as “rambling,” “crazy,” “bumbling,” “incompetent,” “an idiot” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent.”

In a somber preamble, Fauci noted over the decades he has testified before Congress, willingly and under oath, hundreds of times. But because he "has spent years playing Twister with these sinuous assholes (and) he knows it doesn’t matter what the spinner says," he went on, "Though it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government," following counsel's advice he would invoke the Fifth and "refrain from answering your questions." He also blasted Paul's "unhinged obsession" with him. Then, dozens of times over the infuriating hours, he intoned, "I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.“ Later, an expert noted his carefully neutral body language during the ordeal: "He is refusing to participate in the confrontation beyond what is legally required.”

Paul - the only senator to vote against $8.3 billion in emergency spending during COVID, and the first senator to get it - grew agitated by Fauci's calm stream of refusals. He threatened him with "repercussions" and with a charge of contempt. Heatedly refusing to allow any of Fauci's attorneys to join him - "The attorneys were not recognized," he snarled - at one point he called on security to escort out of the hearing room one lawyer after he attempted to speak with Fauci. "This is the way Anthony Fauci wants to be remembered - for a lawyer not recognizing the rules," he said. "Security, please remove him from the room.” The attorney gently patted Fauci on the shoulder and turned to leave on his own; a guard sheepishly trailed after him. In the audience, Laura Ingraham and other MAGA-ites applauded, because they have no shame and never will.

Rand and other Republicans tried to claim Fauci had no right to take the Fifth because Biden issued him a preemptive pardon that eliminated that privilege, an ongoing debate in some legal circles. What is not debated though Repubs tried to argue otherwise: Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not a confession of guilt, but a foundational right against self-incrimination as long as there exists a valid threat of prosecution. Most pointedly, the Fifth does not represent guilt but "the ordinary caution" of any citizen who is dragged before a hostile panel by a vindictive chairman vowing for years to put him behind bars, and who "understands this hearing was "never a search for information but a search for a crime - of having stood in public and told a frightened country the truth, while a president lied to it."

Public health experts now say roughly 40% of America's million-plus COVID deaths, representing hundreds of thousands of lives, could have been prevented under more effective federal policies. But because they were caused by an idiotic malignant narcissist tragically unable to admit he's ever fucked up - or to allow anyone around him to admit it - the lies keep spewing. Last year the White House published a paper on the lab-leak theory as a rationale to defund the NIH, justify cutting over a billion dollars in state and local health funding, and gut cancer and Alzheimers research; now, citing that lame lie and dreaded diversity, they're trying to put the entire $1 trillion federal grant apparatus under the control of political appointees. This week, in honor of Paul's hearing, Trump wrote Dr. Fauci’s ideas were "CRAZY."

On Wednesday, MAGA dutifully jumped in. Cowardly slimebag Josh Hawley, who fist-pumped then ran away from the mob who smeared shit on the Capitol walls, said Fauci had no right to invoke the Fifth, "This is about contempt for this body and the American people," and, yuge pot/kettle, the good doctor was a lying megalomaniac who "wanted to be the sun god." Bernie Moreno demanded Fauci apologize for his crimes and sneered, "Who the fuck did you think you were?" Roger Marshall, an alleged doctor, said vaccine lies "made Americans not trust their government," though unvaxxed MAGA died at twice the rate of Dems. Ron Johnson called a vaccine that saved millions of lives "an experimental gene therapy, and accused Fauci of lying in his own diary, eliciting the day's only smile from him.

Later, a frustrated Paul told reporters he would hold Fauci in contempt, though it's not up to him. Besides, notes Tom Wellborn, the spectacle wasn't really about answers to questions; it was about a mob of willfully ignorant quacks and losers finding an imaginary villain. "Fauci was the man on the screen," he writes. "He absorbed the rage that had nowhere else to go." Above all, Fauci was hated, not for lying, but for "telling the truth to people who did not want to hear it." He "stood between the American public and a president who wanted the problem to vanish before an election," who suggested insane things - Ivermectin, disinfectant, lights - as Fauci carefully contradicted him, "trying to keep his job long enough to keep being useful."

Fauci wasn't a saint, Wellborn writes, and he wasn't right about everything. But he was "right about the things that mattered most" - it was airborne, masks and distance helped. He "told the truth as the science understood it at the time, and when the science changed, as science does, he changed the guidance, and his enemies have spent years calling those updates lies." Meanwhile, "he saved lives, and they were on the other side." Most vital: To remember "that in the summer of 2026, a man who had given his entire adult life to keeping other people alive was hauled before a hostile Senate by a colleague nursing a personal vendetta... and which of the two men in that room had spent his life saving strangers, and which spent his trying to jail the person who did."

"As some day it may happen/that a victim must be found" - Gilbert and Sullivan's I've Got A Little List

More madness from the surreal saga of a nuclear-armed Iran oscillating between "obliterated" and "threatening our families" so we have to obliterate it though we just agreed to help nuclear-arm the brutes behind 9/11 so go figure. Meanwhile, the Pentagon pursues a gazillion bucks and testosterone-ripped troops even as a flailing president insists the last dead troops all said "very strongly" to keep fighting right before he odiously covered up their deaths so others would. Head-spinning, soul-killing.

To date, "Emperor Commodus of Covfefe's" illegal, disatrous, dim-witted Iran "excursion," a mangling of "incursion" and global clusterfuck with no clear mission, strategy, end goal or clue, has killed over 3,500 Iranians, many of them women and children, wounded over 26,500, and razed much of that country's infrastructure, including fresh water sources. At least 18 U.S. troops have been killed, with up to 500 wounded. A quarter of the world’s oil is held hostage across two vital straits, at least 70% of Americans oppose the war, recession-level prices here loom, and rage, especially among Muslim nations, is palpable, perhaps nudged along by a brilliant Iranian social-media campaign - "ONE VENGEANCE FOR ALL" - that tied America's latest atrocity to those of the past, from Native Americans, "stolen blacks" and Vietnamese villagers to Abu Ghraib, Gaza and Epstein Island.

In the bleak wake of eight missed deadlines, 28 empty claims of a "deal," several failed ceasefires and ongoing blather of a mythical "victory" on the horizon, the war is now widely seen as militarily, politically and morally "unwinnable," and even U.S. money, always there for calamitous wars, is running low. Thus did greasy dunk-tank clown and strung-tight "warfighter" zealot Pete Hegseth appear before Congress last week to plead for a profane $67 billion more in emergency funds - part of a $1.15 trillion defense bill, a 44%, $454 billion increase - added to the $37.5 billion he's already squandered in the name of a vague "generational investment," maybe to get the Strait of Hormuz closed again? Par for the inept course, only Pete, fired from two non-profits for mishandling their finances and adroit at blaming others for bad decisions, seems surprised the money's run out.

Maybe that's 'cause at the start of the Iran misadventure he was so busy posting braggadocious war porn, "some of the most loser shit ever," of tacky bellicose video games cut in with real carnage from Iran - war=Call of Duty - and delivering bombastic briefings to crow about annihilating the enemy "without mercy" in the name of "real warriors." Those briefings have now been quietly "replaced by a vacuum." Frantic to control a grim political narrative, he's held no briefings since May, emptied the Pentagon's press corps of everyone but right-wing hacks, restricted access in ways large and small, banned "unflattering" images of himself - oh vanity thy name is lame snowflake - and otherwise treated America's vital free press as an enemy to be subdued, defeated or at least hoodwinked in order to obscure his own lies, failures, abuses and all-round buffoonery.

By all accounts, Hogsbreath has been serving more as showboating fitness influencer than sober head of a functional military. He now presides over a largely broken Pentagon where morale is dismal, finances are strained, readiness is collapsing and care for troops, veterans and their families is at historic lows. Within the ranks, he's derided as an out-of-his-depth, D-list pretender and "fake-ass manly man" who looks like a Ken doll "stored too close to the furnace," relishes lecturing generals, and "dresses like he's on The Love Boat" - hair gel, makeup, showy pocket hanky resembling military honors - while somehow disastrously managing to kill 170 Iranian schoolgirls on the first day of a misbegotten war he still insists is "a historic, overwhelming victory." From Jeff Tiedrich: "He's what would happen if arrogance and an elevated blood-alcohol level became a real boy."

In a "beyond Strangelovian" move, that blustering boy recently responded to the multiple crises of his Dept. of Deep Masculine Insecurity with a bonkers video from def not his makeup studio, titled "The High-T Department of War," announcing a new program to ensure troops have enough testosterone to stay "on the leading edge of lethality." He's evidently unaware any guy who declares he's "high-T" is probs not - "Real gangsta *ss people don't flex nuts"; also, that behind most war crimes is too much testosterone and a failed moral compass, today's military doesn't do much hand-to-hand combat, studies show testosterone doesn't help focus, fatigue, memory or well-being, and "High-T For Better Killing" is maybe not a great slogan. Still, the guy fixated on "the highest male standard" is calling for mandatory annual screening of those over 30; under 30, it's voluntary.

The general response to this very cool plan has been...mixed. Many noted the discrepancy between his strident insistence on freedom from governments making our medical decisions - hence ending a decades-old flu vaccine mandate (until an outbreak led to its quiet reversal) and gender-affirming health care, which is why a judge may overturn it - and his railing against beards, fat troops, high-ranking women and people of color. Women decried flaky policy decisions inspired by "the far corners of the manosphere" or the ravings of RFK Jr.; some suggested he replace salutes with chest bumps and "Sir" with "Bro"; others wondered who'll be screening Pete "for being a dick." Above all, especially after last week's hearing, a broad consensus has emerged that no amount of testosterone pumped into his body will render him even remotely qualified for his job.

Confronted with lawmakers questioning yet more money for a debacle, Pete blustered, stuttered, sneered, fear-mongered about radical Islamists "coming for our families" with nuclear weapons "to hold us at issue (sic)." He thundered Jack Reed - West Point, Harvard, veteran, professor - should respect "the historic nature of what (Trump's) undertaking"; Reed snapped, "He should be praised for starting a war without authority?" He shrieked at Jon Ossoff for calmly listing the multiple times he's lied "Iran’s military had been, quote, destroyed." When Gary Peters cited those lies and the 30 times he's declared what's clearly "a complete failure" an "overwhelming victory," Pete screeched the word failure "smears the sacrifice of the troops" (sic) and "shame on you." He didn't use it about the troops, Peters retorted, but their leaders: "You, sir, are the failure. You don't have a strategy."

Finally Hegseth, the model avatar for a regime that never accepts responsibility for anything, laid the blame for a Pentagon famed for funding atrocities abroad with little to no accountability seeking $1.5 trillion more in blood money on...Biden and his “gross negligence.” Gross, indeed: “You cannot inherit a war you started.” Dems balked at an obscene price tag that dwarfs even the Iran debacle, noting it includes $800 million for the National Guard to keep pointlessly patrolling D.C, over $1bn to patrol the southern border which is DHS’ job, $900 million to illegally bomb more boats in the Caribbean etc. Also quietly stuck in there was the vile Save America Act (more sic) to further restrict voting, and the random horror of a move to establish a joint US-Israel tech initiative so we can further integrate our military with Israel's universally admired genocidal regime. Still, it passed, barely.

Defense bills tend to win broad bipartisan support, but the House barely squeezed through a $1.15 trillion version of this insane one with the help of six craven Dems, including Maine's fucking Jared Golden. In better news, they also passed a second, largely symbolic but heartening resolution to end the war, with four Repubs joining them. In the Senate, the measure was blocked, 47-49, by fucking John Fetterman. Also last week, the US made a deal to help the Saudis - of hacksaws and 9/11 - set up a civilian nuclear program, despite MAGA terror of Nukes For Muslims! (see war in Iran, whose painstaking deal Trump tore up). Despite longtime fears of a nuclear race in the Middle East, Trump said they have to join the "very respected" Abraham Accords with Israel and sign a hollow "safeguards agreement" with a pinky promise of "no enrichment of material!" So no worries.

Still, some were worried, also enraged. The folks at I Fucking Love Australia were already some pissed at Admiral USS Bigly and his 271 Republicans, "you spineless, belly-crawling, yellow-bellied fucking grubs" and "geography-proof fucking muppets who can't count past their own indictments," not one of whom will stand up to a doddering "windbag at the arse end of his miserable sex-offending, pedo-loving, decomposing life" as a fifth of the world's oil remains bottled up behind Hormuz, just like "HIS OWN JOINT CHIEFS WARNED HIM," using small words and a hand puppet. With Australia down to 29 days of vital diesel in reserve, they fume, "You lot couldn't poll your collective vertebrae and build a fucking prawn...Do your job." And that was before last week's Houthi attack by "a militia in sandals" on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea for breaching their naval blockade.

The bold move by a ragtag militia from the Middle East's poorest country, armed with "cheap hardware from a rusty shed - drones, hand-me-down missiles and a Telegram account" - prompted the sages at IFLA to offer a cogent, useful backstory on just what's going down in a volatile, "centuries-deep cauldron of grievance" into which "waddles Napoleon Blownapart, fresh from a Bibi slideshow in the Situation Room, convinced he can win a regional war with vibes and a Sharpie." They began by citing the Saudis' "one genuinely clever move of the war": When Hormuz shut down, they were ramming up to 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, far more than usual, through the critical Asia/Europe escape hatch of Bab Al Mandeb's east-west pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Then, "The Houthis just bricked it the fuck up - they welded the back door of the global oil market shut."

Pundits call Yemen's Houthis Iran "proxies,” but "they've got their own grievances, which tell you where this war is headed." IFLA "follows the thread all the way back, since apparently nobody in the White House owns a ball of string." To Houthis and hundreds of millions more, "This is now a defensive war against an attack on Muslim nations," and "you cannot drone-strike a conviction." See Vietnam, Afghanistan, ISIS etc. Not inside that tent: Saudi Arabia, who "picked the wrong side of (their) religion," watched Gaza flattened and only checked their wealth fund balance; now the Houthis "declared them fair game, and no one is holding (a) vigil for them." Righteous bottom line: "Why is the region on fire? Israel. Occupation, annexation, settlements, the slow-motion theft (that) manufactures resistance. Hamas and Hezbollah didn’t fall out of the sky. Dispossession built them, brick by bloody brick."

Brilliant strategist Trump "surveyed that flawless 0-4 record of American wars of choice, a historical record so grim you could read it by Braille, and thought, you know what this list needs? Iran, plus a bonus round against mountain fighters in Yemen who've never once lost." He thought the Houthis no longer wanted to fight; now, he's "disappointed" and "cranked up the rhetoric with his 76th ultimatum." Meanwhile, on "planet fucken consequences," oil prices spiked to over $100 a barrel amidst market chaos, and "the dumbest cunt that ever fumbled the world’s most dangerous military operation opened the gates of Hell with his own two tiny clay-colored hands." Or more accurately the Gate of Tears, Bab el-Mandeb in English. "The old sailors named it for the ships it drowned," notes IFLA. "Turns out it was just waiting all these centuries for a presidency worthy of the title."

Still, he blunders on. The same day he again boasted his war has *only* killed 18 U.S. troops - there's a chart! - vs. "hundreds of thousands" - actually 58,220, none him - in Vietnam, he went to Dover for the dignified transfer of four Americans just killed in an Iran attack at a Jordan airbase. He told reporters he was en route to "honor great heroes, actually." Then, in a "next-level ghastly" move, he put his own vile words in their young dead mouths to claim, "All of them said, very strongly, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon." Appalled responses: "Did they have tears in their eyes? Did they ask why we need to destroy their nuclear program when we've already done it five times? Vastly more plausible: They said 'What the fuck are we doing here?' or 'What the fuck is wrong with you?' and, Can any journalist ask him to name two of the fallen soldiers? Or hell, name two of his kids?"

We can name them: Sgt. Michael Swinton 30, of North Carolina, father to two kids 4 and 6, First Lt. Tyler Feehan, 25, of Hawaii, weeks away from earning his MBA, Sgt Angel Rampersad, 28, of New York, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas. Hours after the ceremony - where the guy who never bothered to know their names gazed blankly, blue suit gaudy among black suits and bowed heads - he went to a MAGA rally at a Georgia high school where he sweated and babbled: "We had transgender for everybody, ravaging through our cities," "We don't need the Hormuz Street in our skirmish...They're not ready to make a deal. They'll be ready soon," "We'll pass the great healthcare plan. It's called Our Great Healthcare Plan," "The communists want to blow up Mt. Rushmore" (boos), "I fought Ossoff before (boos) and we won...He reminds me of Pinky Herman."

The newly dead, wholly unreal suckers and losers to a narcissist incarnate, were clearly far from what passes for the remains of his mind. That obliviousness reflects what former Sec. of Defense and CIA director Leon Panetta charged is a "deliberate effort to withhold information from the American people, a shameful approach to sharing the responsibility we all have (in) a war." Speaking of a New York Times report the Pentagon suppressed news of dozens of military injuries - which the regime called “baseless and malicious” but anyway they're not "strictly required" to publicize them - Panetta said officials are in essence "challenging the press to find what’s really happening, and they will." "They can dodge, bob and weave," he said of a long, base tradition in American politics, "but my experience is that no matter how much you try to hide it, in the end, the truth comes out.”

The truth, says James Talarico: "We are closing schools and hospitals in this country so we can bomb schools and hospitals in other countries" - and working hard to hide it. The latest proof, again from the Times in a rare, welcome burst of journalism: The Pentagon's Casualty Analysis website just lowered the number of troop deaths from 18 to 14, with the four names just brought home scrubbed from the list. Garbled rationales ranged from deaths after Trump's April ceasefire mean no war/no deaths to "site errors due to a temporary data disruption (with) anomalies being resolved." Days later, they're still missing. Michael Swinton's widow Jamiah, asked if she had any details on the disappeared names, said nobody has reached out: "I kind of don’t have words for that.” We don't either. "They died serving our country," wrote Bill Kristol. "They should be honored, not erased." In sorrowful fact, we say they died for little besides a sick con man's lies. For that we are truly sorry. Remember who to blame.

Update: Jesus these inept hacks and clowns can't even keep track of how many gullible young people's lives they've fucked up in the name of their imperialist misadventures. Now, after their data was "quietly updated," it's 18 killed and 624 wounded. Do better, or for the love of God and gullible young people's lives just fucking stop.

The "anomalies": Feehan, Gonzales, Swinton, RampersadPhotos from U.S. Army

In "almost Shakespearean grotesquery," our cringe Buffoon-In-Chief just thrust himself into the World Cup final only to be unceremoniously booed, snubbed and cropped out of team photos. Then he again assailed Canada for smoke from their wildfires, though ours are much worse and they've often helped us with them. Still, our ever-gracious northern neighbor launched a new initiative to dutifully sweep the Rockies, vacuum the forests, hand-rake pine needles. Its acronym: F.U.C.K.O.F.F.

The headlines for Trump's Sunday gatecrash of another major sports event that really, really didn't want him there tells the vainglorious and mortifying tale: "Most Universally Hated President In History Mercilessly Booed," "Crowd Boos, Player Snub and Failed Photobomb: Trump's Big World Cup Day Out," and "Confused Old Fuckwit Imagines He's Won the World Cup." The Guardian also wins a Snark of the Year Award for the caption to its photo of FIFA's Infantino deep in conversation with a clueless Trump, both men standing under a blizzard of confetti, after he literally had to drag him off-stage: "Gianni Infantino carefully explains to Donald Trump he is not part of the Spanish team."

Some of the over 82,000 fans at New Jersey's Met-Life Stadium, where Spain trounced a listless, chaotic, often-thuggish Argentina 1-0, had earlier made their feelings clear when video briefly showed Trump ensconced in his glass-encased VIP digs and scattered boos rang out. By the time he finally lumbered and waddled stoop-shouldered onto the field at the end, it sounded like all 82,000-plus had reconsidered and joined in to jeer. Trailing behind him, looking like hostages trying to keep a safe distance to not catch any cooties, were Mexico's and Canada's leaders, the tournament's purported, far-less-despised hosts. Implausibly given....everything, but thanks to Infantino's long gross obsequiousness, Trump got to hand out awards.

And he did, though not without some drama: Several players hesitated, recoiled or refused to shake his hand. Then it was time to hand out the (seductively gold) World Cup. Little needy Donnie, a malignant narcissistic lump, swooped in to awkwardly “help” Infantino carry it like a five-year-old hungry for the feckin' ice-cream cone his dad is holding, “a lonely, grasping figure refusing to release a trophy he didn’t win.” Once they handed it to Spain’s captain Rodri, Trump, “malice wrapped in vanity,” painfully lingered in the limelight - camera! also person, woman, man TV - as Infantino struggled to yank him away for the iconic team hoist photo: "OK, grandpa, time to get back to your chocolate pudding." In the end, a patient Rodri gently nudged him out of the shot, but cringingly not off the stage, where he stood dazed and wobbling, our national farce and tragedy.

Steve Schmidt noted the clumsy resulting image's era-defining power, its display of the "breathtaking psychological fragility" of a "President Norma Desmond...incapable of understanding that the greatest office in the world confers responsibility, not ownership." "The character has been devoured by the caricature," he wrote of "self-parody made flesh," the small man so consumed by the need for adulation that, "Every trophy is his trophy. Every triumph is his triumph. Every stage is his stage." Later, in photos released both by FIFA and the Spanish team, Trump had mercifully, miraculously disappeared from both shots, because this is why God and Al Gore invented photoshop.

The awkward bit of theater with Spain came, lest we forget, in the wake of Trump's weeks of vilifying the nation and their prime minister Pedro Sánchez - first, for their refusal to allow the U.S. military to use Spanish bases to help illegally bomb Iran, then for the alleged failure of "bad" and "hopeless" Spanish people to pay enough for NATO defense spending. Despite Trump's ugly threats to "cut off all trade" with a longtime ally unforgivably following the law, it all suddenly vanished before the cameras, where Trump congratulated "a great team," even though they speak Spanish, and claimed there was "no tension" with the country’s leadership. Actually, he smirked, "I have no tension with anybody."

Tell it to Canada, which Trump has been moronically berating for "Willful Negligence," aka inexplicably allowing smoke from over 800 wildfires raging across some of Canada's 347 million acres to drift over our pristine shores. A few days earlier, joined by equally stupid MAGA lackeys, he raged the U.S. "is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air" at an "incalculable" (a big word he probs didn't write) cost, and "maybe they should pay us some damages" or billions more in tariffs, and he'd call Carney "to find out what they are going to do about it." "We are holding Canada responsible," he thundered, "for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein."

Like his long-ago claim during California wildfires that Finland's president told him they rake their forests and have no such problems - Finland when asked: "WTF" - this is an idiot's fever dream. Facts owe: This year, America has seen over 40,000 fires burn roughly 3.9 million acres, 157% its ten-year average. There are now over 70 uncontained U.S. fires being fought by nearly 18,000 people, with much of the Northwest - Colorado, Oregon, Washington - at National Preparedness Level 5, the highest, and up to 58 new fires a day. Air quality alerts affecting a million Americans are due to those fires, to blazes across 70,000-plus acres in Minnesota, and to 3,600 fires across 1.8 million acres, below the five-year average, in Canada.

In the face of politely unnamed U.S. pols mindlessly "chirping away," notes Ontario Premier Doug Ford, he has already asked for firefighters or "anything they can send" to help fight nearly 200 fires, some of which have crossed into Canada from Minnesota, that have forced entire First Nations to evacuate and many residents to sleep in their cars. Rather than complain maybe send help, he adds, "because we have done the same thing for our American friends," again and again. Even as Canadian officials issue air quality warnings from U.S. fires drifting north, a 56-year-old Canadian helicopter pilot from B.C. just died in a crash battling a fire in Colorado, the fourth firefighter death there this summer.

Meanwhile, a mindless, science-denying MAGA has ended support for dozens of climate initiatives, dismantled our largest climate research center and pushed for more fossil fuel carnage. On Sunday, with much of his country visibly on fire, Trump attacked the National Academy of Sciences - chartered by Abe Lincoln mid-Civil War "because even a nation shooting at itself understood it needed scientists" - because it's "run by Radical Left Dumocrats” who published costly, "fraudulent," “totally discredited” climate change manuals, which he ordered "Suspension and Debarment" officials to review. Also - cue dumbest timeline ever - Repubs jumped in to decry DEI-loving advocates who (gasp) may have tried to stop blessed oil and gas projects.

Still, Canada is a tolerant, peace-loving nation that tries to accommodate all comers, even a malevolent asshole who's never gotten any closer to a "forest" than Central Park, if even there. It also values its natural resources, including a 270-million-acre boreal forest, much of it roadless, whose vast ecosystem serves as a global carbon sink to purify air and water, regulate climate and offer a safe breeding ground to billions of birds. And if some random asshole neighbor to the north chides its inadequate forest management, Canada seeks to rise to the occasion - to, as it were, Be Better. Thus was born a bold new initiative from its Department of Forest Tidiness, which is now "pleased to confirm the message has been received loud and clear."

Canada's Forest Undergrowth Clearing & Kindling Operation for Foreign Friends, aka F.U.C.K.O.F.F., renders every able-bodied person ages 16 to 65 responsible for removing leaves, twigs, moss, bark, sticks, branches, pine needles, deadfall and shrubs deemed "insufficiently tidy by Congressional observers." After receiving government-issued rakes, gloves and safety vests, they must arrange all debris "into neat bilingual piles," to be painstakingly inspected by forestry officials. Further actions may include sweeping the Rocky Mountains, power-washing the Canadian Shield, vacuuming deserts, raking California, installing smoke-detectors across the Yukon and mandating that all fires contain and respect clearly marked provincial borders.

In Ontario, workers will be assigned 6.7 acres (40 NHL hockey rinks) of dense untracked country and a 26-hour work week; elsewhere, shifts surge to a hefty 18.3 acres (110 rinks) and 70 hours a week. Morning commutes start with a three-day canoe trip and 15-km hike through swamp; on-site, workers will hand-groom 300 billion trees, hand-rake an infinity of pine needles, make local beavers submit environmental impact reports and dodge grizzlies as needed. Finally, it notes, "Canada thanks Congress for sharing their extensive knowledge of forestry, wildfire behavior, climate science, geography and upkeep of a country containing 9% of the world's forests, and looks forward to receiving further practical advice from Washington."

Online, many Americans, after reportedly snorting their coffee through their noses, thanked Canada "for being great neighbors and allies," and apologized for - hands held hopelessly wide - "all this." "We are so, so sorry," said one. Another: "We're so incredibly sorry." Canadians joined in: "I'm in Alberta - I'll send water," "In B.C., have to get my mountaineering gear first. Sorry. eh?" and a generous offer to add a new organization, Canadian Undergrowth, Nature, and Tree Services: "I believe that with your cooperation, F.U.C.K.O.F.F plus C.U.N.T.S could really show Americans we take their health and well-being seriously." Organizers estimate their work will be completed "somewhere between Thursday afternoon and the collapse of human civilization," which should be any day now.