June 13, 2018: Ovechkin made a better deal than Trump

Friends, The Jourmudgeon apologizes for his long hiatus from annoying you. The Jourmudgeons were remodeling their kitchen. To make amends for his absence, The Jourmudgeon offers his Friends this simple, surefire, two-step guide to a new kitchen: 1) Plan carefully. Start by making an appointment with a Realtor to look at other houses. This will give you ideas for what might work for you in your new kitchen. 2) When you see a kitchen you like, buy that house. The Jourmudgeon guarantees that will be far less painful, time-consuming and expensive than trying to remodel your own kitchen. But if, for some reason that would have to involve drugs, you insist on going through with a remodel, The Jourmudgeon offers his super-fast, three-step shortcut to kitchen remodeling: 1) Take all of your money out of your savings, your retirement fund and your children’s college fund, and then borrow some more. A lot more. Get all the money in cash. 2) Stand in the median of the nearest interstate highway with the money in a pillowcase. 3) Throw the money, in large handfuls, at passing motorists, and watch it blow away. If this seems like a shocking squandering of your assets and your children’s future, The Jourmudgeon assures you that it is just as responsible and effective as giving the money to someone to remodel your kitchen, and far less time-consuming. You are welcome. Unfortunately, now that The Jourmudgeons are done, The Jourmudgeon has no more excuses to ignore the news:

1. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un met in Singapore in what was billed by Fake News as a summit between the leaders of the United States and North Korea. But no one was fooled, because not even Donald Trump would take a meeting that would give legitimacy to one of the world’s most brutal dictators, and get nothing in return. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/opinion/trump-north-korea-diplomacy-reagan.html?emc=edit_th_180613&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=271745000613 Sure enough, it was revealed that Trump and Kim had really convened for the inaugural World Mr. Bad Haircut Pageant, staged by Vladimir Putin and underwritten by his Russian oligarch buddies. “If Donald Trumps make Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, I makes even better contest, because I have bigger Faberge eggs,” Putin explained. But he denied reports that he had squeezed Kim’s buttocks during a photo op and barged into the contestants’ dressing room when they were in their underwear.
2. Trump arrived in Singapore a day after stomping around a resort town in Canada, insulting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and leaders of the United States’ closest allies, apparently mistaking them for immigrants. Aides explained later that Trump had made an honest mistake, thinking he was still in the United States because “everybody but these guys was speaking English.” But another aide later issued a clarification: The president had been willing to upend seventy years of post-World War II political and economic stability, the aide said, “to show those Canadians that they weren’t going to get away with burning down the White House in 1812.”
3. In the wake of another spate of deadly school shootings, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told a Congressional panel that a commission on school safety would not focus on the role guns play in school violence. “So we’ll look at gun violence in schools, but not look at guns? An interesting concept,” responded Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
4. The Supreme Court ruled on narrow grounds that a Colorado baker with a religious objection to same-sex marriage did not have to custom-make a wedding cake for a gay couple. The court based its ruling on nasty things a Colorado civil rights panel had said to the baker when he claimed he was exercising his. Observers hailed the court’s narrow ruling for heading off endless “eat your cake and have it, too,” “icing on the cake,” and “that’s the way the cookie – or in this case, cake, heh-heh – crumbles” quips from TV news anchors. But others called the decision – The Jourmudgeon apologizes – half-baked. During oral arguments the ghost of Thurgood Marshall weighed in at one point: “Anyway, why are we wasting time on this shit?” it said.
5. Comedian Roseanne Barr lost her resurrected sitcom on ABC after comparing former Obama administration aide Valerie Jarrett, who is African American, to an ape. Comedian Samantha Bee kept her show on TBS after calling Ivanka Trump, who is a woman, a cunt. Oh, my goodness. The Jourmudgeon apologizes yet again. According to numerous news reports, Bee really called Ivanka Trump a “c—t,” which presumably explains why she didn’t get fired.
6. The Washington Capitals won hockey’s Stanley Cup by making an all-too-familiar pact with the devil: Their captain, Alex Overchicken – excuse The Jourmudgeon, that should be Ovechkin – agreed to trade his front teeth for a championship. The Caps showed up at a Washington Nationals game the next day so Ovechkin could throw out the first pitch – it took two tries – and drink beer with his teammates, who kept brandishing the actual Stanley Cup overhead, coming perilously close to dropping it on adoring fans two decks below. By the way, The Jourmudgeon was tempted to write “cheap beer,” but have you ever been to a Nats game, Friends?