Of course, knowing the Canadian justice system, the homicidal maniac will be released in a few years and will go on inflicting his wonderfulness on the world.

Turns out the Armenian fellow who mowed down a crowd in Toronto, killing 10 people and wounding many more did so in protest over being sexually frustrated. And yes, Armenians are widely known for having this problem. I don’t find this motive unbelievable.

“I want music, Mommy,” Klara says.

“OK, what do you want me to turn on, Wheels on the Bus or Itsy Bitsy Spider?”

Klara gives me a contemptuous look.

“No, Mommy’s,” she says. “I want Daddy Yankee.”

Do you, folks, remember this hilarious guy they had on CNN a bunch of years ago? Lou Dobbs, or whatever? He had this crazy obsession with “scary, evil Mexicans.” Whatever the subject, he’d always manage to turn it to the subject of Mexicans. My sister and I used to joke that his wife must have cheated on him with a platoon of Mexican gardeners for him to be so hung up on them.

The way the author of The Tortilla Curtain writes reminds me of Lou Dobbs’s rants. The protagonist saw a coyote and that reminded him of Mexicans. He tripped on a stone and realized it must have been left on the path by hordes of Mexicans. He spilled his coffee and thought of Mexicans. The sun came up and the sky turned the color of Mexicans.

The writing is beyond heavy-handed because every single thing is a metaphor for, reminder of or hint at – yes, you guessed it – Mexicans. The novel’s author is the Lou Dobbs of literature. I wonder how much he donated to Trump’s campaign.

This is what passes for news these days:

He never even spent the night in Russia during that trip, Trump told the former FBI director, according to Comey’s memos about the conversations.

Yet the broad timeline of Trump’s stay, stretching from Friday, Nov. 8, 2013, through the following Sunday morning, has been widely reported. And it’s substantiated by social media posts that show he slept in Moscow the night before the Miss Universe contest.

These so-called journalists should die of shame.

Here is a fresh example of this sad little fantasy:

If Republicans retain control then I believe what will happen over time is that someone who shares Trump’s dictatorial and authoritarian tendencies but doesn’t have his baggage — someone who is a competent manager and just as charismatic — will eventually arise and you can kiss your individual liberties goodbye. That will take time but it’s the trend we are heading towards.

Ooh, individual liberties are in danger, how scary. When the unpleasant reality is that there is nobody there to care about you and your freedom to work for free and have no protections in the job market.

One of the greatest victories of neoliberalism is its appropriation of the word “freedom”. It’s now possible to sell people any abuse or exploitation under the guise of freedom of choice. And these silly fantasies about “freedom” suddenly going away are meant to keep people at peace with the reality where freedom means loss of security, loneliness and terror of failing.

It’s funny how much people talk about the threat of authoritarianism when the actual danger is the exact opposite. It’s like they are trying to inhabit the imaginary world where there is still something stronger than global capital and can stand in its way.