Body of Love, 56th Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Yesterday, Mumps lied to the camera about European aide to Ukraine with French President Macron sitting right next to him. After Macron corrected him, Mumps just repeated the lie. Meanwhile, in the UN, in a stunning reversal of over 50 years of alliances and principals, the United States joined North Kora, Belarus, and Russia in refusing to vote in favor of a non-binding agreement to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mumps had previously claimed that Ukraine somehow started the war with the invading Russian army, calling Zelensky an unelected “dictator” who took money from the U.S. to go to war with Russia, and demanded half of Ukraine's mineral wealth in exchange for providing military support. 

Mumps spread a lie that U.S.AID had shipped $100M of condoms to Hamas. Mumps suggested the U.S. should take over the Gaza strip and "own it," displacing all of the native Palestinians to create some sort of Middle East Malibu in an act of ethnic cleansing. Mumps hinted at taking over Greenland and Panama using military force and suggested Canada should become the 51st state. Mump imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China and then lifted the tariffs on our North American neighbors after they repeated pledges that they had already made. Mumps withdrew the U.S. from both the Paris climate-change treaty and the World Health Organization.

Despite being the most unpopular president at this point in his term since polling began, Mumps posted a picture to social media of himself wearing a crown on his head and the words, "Long live the king." Mumps has spent roughly a third of his time in office playing golf on his own for-profit courses at considerable expense of taxpayer money for travel, logistics, and security. He personally profits from the money spent on each of the trips, and it's been estimated that his trips to the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500 cost taxpayers $25M. 

After firing the workers in charge of U.S. nuclear-weapon safety, Mumps realized that those workers were actually kind of important but didn't know how to call them back. The very same thing happened after Mumps fired Agriculture workers who were combatting the avian flu. Mumps proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and then threw a hissy fit when the AP didn't adopt his new names. Mumps blamed the L.A. wildfire crisis on some imaginary "giant faucet" in northern California and then ordered 2.2 billion gallons of water dumped from the state's reservoirs onto Central Valley farmland that didn't need it and where it won't benefit firefighters at all (but will cause problems this summer when droughts begin). 

Mumps replaced a four-star general as Secretary of Defense with an inexperienced, alcoholic, black-out drunk Fox & Friends weekend host. Mumps named a vaccine denier to head HHS, a Russian asset now directs National Intelligence, a conspiracy theorist is the new FBI chief, and a far-right podcaster is now the FBI's Deputy Director. Mumps fired the African-American four-star general chairing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling him a D.E.I hire, and replaced him with a white, three-star general. The first female commander of the U.S. Navy was fired as well for the same spurious reason. After a tragic air accident, Mumps blamed the incident on "DEI," even as he admitted he had no evidence but just "common sense." 

Mumps pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the convicted January 6 rioters, including the most violent felons who pled guilty to attacking and, in some cases, killing police officers.  Mumps tried to end the constitutional birthright citizenship of those born on American soil. Finally, there's Mumps' "greatest hit," the continued Big Lie that the free and fair 2020 election was somehow "rigged" against him, despite the absence of a shred of evidence and multiple lost court cases. 

Meanwhile, the price for a dozen eggs in Georgia is still around $6.00.

I was without internet most of today - it went down shortly after 11:00 am and wasn't restored until nearly 5:00 pm. No web, no Spotify, no NTS radio, no Netflix, and even my video games wouldn't start.  First world problems, I know, but the most frustrating thing is I'll never know why it went down or why it took so long to come back.