Mayor gets (dry) iced
The New York City Housing Authority announced last week that the city is spending $32 million on, in part, rat extermination efforts.
When Mayor Bill de Blasio and housing authority workers tried to kill an example rodent, perhaps to highlight the city's spending, it didn't go well.
"Once you put that dry ice in there," the Democratic mayor said confidently to news media gathered at an event at a housing project in Brooklyn, "rats are not going to live through it. If they get exposed to it, they are not coming back."
The event, apparently, was to highlight the city's humane - nonpoisonous - way to do the exterminating. The dry ice, de Blasio said, would seal off the burrows where the rats travel and suffocate them to death.
Except, whoops, the rat escaped, evaded the "whack-a-mole" attempts of the mayor and housing authority workers with stomps and shovels, and dashed into a Humboldt Street playground.
Attempting to extricate himself from the embarrassment, de Blasio noted lamely that "we found the right place" and said he'd give the workers who failed to exterminate rat No. 1 "an A for effort."
Too soon
We're not quite sure why the politics of personal destruction is such a well-used Democratic tool, but a writer for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert jumped in with both feet last week with a cruel joke about the late first lady Barbara Bush.
"RIP Barbara Bush, the only woman who was 92 for 30 years," Jen Spyra tweeted.
Now, certainly, the late first lady often joked about her appearance, but hate is hate.
Tweeters, as usual, were able to make mincemeat of the Colbert writer.
"Wow," said Bradley Schultz, "I thought leftists didn't body shame???"
"Way to be progressive," wrote Luke Kicklighter. "Wonder why Trump won, because of people like you."
"So it's okay to make fun of a woman's appearance?" asked Pete Athens. "Or is that only towards recently deceased or just women you don't agree with in general? It's hard to keep up with the ever-changing rules."
And, poignantly, Laurence Watkins may have had the topper.
"Now make a joke about how Michelle Obama looks, & decide how you'd react if you heard it."
Deep blue has red sunburn
For what's become a deep blue state, Californians have opinions that sound a lot like Middle America, according to a recent poll by the University of California Berkeley's Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.
And with a name like the group taking the poll, the questions undoubtedly were asked in advocacy fashion. Nonetheless, 59 percent of Golden State respondents want to "increase deportations" of illegal immigrants. Even in the deep blue San Francisco Bay area, the number is 60 percent.
Further, 49 percent support President Trump's ban on refugees from certain terrorist aligned countries (while only 51 percent oppose), only 54 percent have a positive view of Muslims, 88 percent believe speaking English is important, 54 percent say "the government should play a minor role or no role at all" in fixing "income equality, and 73 percent believe it is "either somewhat or very important to blend into the larger society."
And in a question that should play right into the hands of the economically strapped, corporation-hating, tax-loving state residents, 58 percent of respondents said "raising taxes on corporations would either hurt the California economy or make no difference."
So while we don't expect the state to turn as politically red as it once was, it may be dawning on residents that the liberal utopia they have voted themselves into isn't quite what it was cracked up to be.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Hollywood
Stand-up comedian Joe Rogan probably didn't make any friends in the entertainment industry with his recent comments, but he told the truth.
"No one is more anti-gun than Hollywood," he told Colion Noir on the lawyer and gun rights activist's YouTube channel. "When you hear about any sort of crime or gun violence, the left-wing people in Hollywood are the most vocal, the most virtue-signaling, the quickest to jump on their pedestal. Meanwhile, what percent of their (expletive) movies involves gun violence? And if you look at the Academy Awards, did you see the security at the Academy Awards? All these left-leaning liberal actors being protected by people with flak jackets on. Carrying guns with fingers outside the triggers. It's crazy."
That may be, but the industry is also a perfect symbol for left-wing politics in the U.S. today.