NATIONAL TAKE BACK LUNCH DAY UPDATES

Enough Working At The Desk - Get Out of the (Downtown or Home) Office!

-If it involved Twice-Indicted Ex-President (TIEP) Trump, you knew at some point some of his legal woes would veer into Theatre of the Absurd - and the Washington Post found a doozy this week. It seems as Jack Smith zeroed in on a multiplicity of charges connected to the classified documents scandal Trump is stacked-banker-boxes-in-the-can-deep into, Trump spent at least $2 million in A-list defense attorneys who were ready to negotiate a deal to return the documents and avoid prosecution for obstruction and possession (as has happened with VP Pence and likely with President Biden) ... only to have Trump reject that approach and instead embrace the theory that the Presidential Records Act means if someone is the President all the records are his in perpetuity.

-And who was the legal mastermind who came up with that theory? A guy named Tom Fitton, who is the President of the ultra-right-wing newsletter Judicial Watch, who won Trump's heart by calling the Mueller investigation a "coup," and whose legal background consists of ... (checks bio) ... a B.A. in English from George Washington University, where Fitton quite possibly learned about the Theatre of the Absurd depending on his class list ...

-Thus, Trump continues to lose lawyers, continues to have difficulty finding lawyers to represent him, and continues via social media to tout the discredited-by-anyone-with-actual-legal-experience theories of Fitton (whom, according to Rolling Stone, is still advising Trump to the consternation of whatever attorneys are still working with the TIEP).

-Trump's allies, meanwhile, continue to attempt to divert attention from the scandals with whatever they have around them, leading with the whataboutBidenisms that have been pushed by Rudy Giuliani and James Comer (HunteR!, KY) about "17!!!!" recordings that "prove" the doddering-yet-devious Biden and his son have pocketed kajillions of simoleans from the Ukrainian company Burisma ... except that, in a Fox interview in which Comer took a shot at viewers of the now-number-one cable news network MSNBC as "low I.Q.", he also admitted that, well, um, er, uh, nobody knows where all those recordings are or if they even exist.

-And Rudy, speaking while sitting in a parked car to Newsmax, said that he could absolutely completely totally prove the recordings existed ... if if wasn't for the fact that the woman who reportedly made the recordings hadn't died three or so years ago - but trust Rudy, those recording are real!!!!

-Ah, well, at least the GOP can lean back on their tried-and-true homophobia and transphobia to try to divert attention from their leader. If you haven't heard, the latest GOP culture war outrage happened after the White House proudly hung an LGBTQI flag at the White House, placing it in between two Stars and Stripes flag as a show of support - and THAT, of course, has made the ultra-right culture warrior FAH-REEK OUT at anyone treating LGBTQI people as anything but pawns to be used to gather power (as well as worry about things some in that community may think about themselves) (ALLEGEDLY).

-The biggest such freak-out came from the reliably weird-yet-hateable-because-it-is-his-fetish (ALLEGEDLY) Ted Cruz (R-Cancun), who on Wednesday took his performative persecution of the LGBTQI community to more absurdist lows by somehow claiming that the flag was proof that the Biden administration was supporting child sacrifices that occurred while the people doing the sacrificing played "satanic music" ... like ... Pat Benatar. Yes, apparently Teddy believes “Hell is for Children” was a joyous anthem of depravity rather than what most of us thought it was - an anti-child-abuse anthem. Dopey us. (No comment yet from the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.)

-And by the way, remember the Bud Light meltdowns from the right? Well, congratulations, MAGAts - despite continually buying cases to shoot at and deride, you have all succeeded in dethroning Bud Light as the most popular beer in America! Of course, in the Department of Unintended Consequences Department, we are not sure if these same folks would be happy to find out that the new Top Beer in the U.S.A. is the Mexican-brewed Modelo, distributed worldwide by Anheuser-Busch, the very same brewer of Bud Light! Ah, well, if you want to drink Bud Light, you still can - especially if you go to Friends in Low Places, the soon-to-open bar and honky tonk in Nashville owned by Country Music Hall of Famer Garth Brooks, who has said he will "serve every brand of beer" there, adding "Our thing is this: if you are (coming) into this house, love one another."

-I don't drink Bud Light, but I'll drink to that!

-On this date in 1884, the first roller coaster opened at Coney Island. On this date in 1903, Ford Motor Company was founded. On this date in 1904, Leopold Bloom's seemingly ordinary day was captured in James Joyce's novel ULYSSES. On this date in 1933, the Federal Department Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was created to cap Franklin Roosevelt's "first 100 days" of his first term, during which much of the New Deal legislation to fight the Great Depression was passed. On this date in 1976, South African police fired on students protesting apartheid in the Soweto neighborhood, triggering mass protests and worldwide condemnation. And on this date in 2015, Donald Trump rode down an escalator in his building in New York to begin his Presidential campaign (sigh).

-Happy Birthday to Adam Smith, Geronimo, Mohammad Mosaddegh, Stan Laurel, Nelson Doubleday, Katharine Graham, Vilmos Zsigmond, August Busch III, Erich Segal, Joyce Carol Oates, Lamont Dozier, Eddie Levert, Ron LeFlore, Roberto Duran, Laurie Metcalf, Tree Rollins, The Ultimate Warrior, Femi Kuti, Jurgen Klopp, MC Ren, Cobi Jones, Tupac Shakur, John Cho, and Kerry Wood.

-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Chick Webb, George Reeves, Brian Piccolo, James Honeyman-Scott, Miguel Pinero, Mel Allen, Screaming Lord Sutch, Hans Haas, Tony Gwynn, Helmut Kohl, John G. Avildsen, Stephen Furst, and Frank Bonner.

-Feed the Worms: Professional golfer and Saudi cash-launderer Phil Mickleson was born on this date.

-Wernher von Braun died on this date. You decide if he Rests in Power or Feeds the Worms.