Sirius the dog star is still high in the sky. It's so bright, in fact, that on cloudy days you supposedly can even see it with the naked eye. At times it can even outshine the sun itself.
But in American End-Times, nobody but nobody outshines Reality Star Donald Trump. Not even reality starlet Omarosa Manigault Newman, despite her daily drip-drip-drip of goodies to a hungry press corps. So what better time for him to call another woman a dog, and what better time for the media to bay like hounds at the latest manufactured outrage when they're not salivating for the latest treat? The Dog Days of Summer have taken on a whole new meaning thanks to Donald Trump. He has made this typically slow news time of year sizzle like a virtual burning planet.
"Dog Days are approaching; you must, therefore, make both hay and haste while the Sun shines, for when old Sirius takes command of the weather, he is such an unsteady, crazy dog, there is no dependence upon him."
So said the Old Farmers Almanac way back in 1817. As usual, the folk prognosticators got it totally wrong, given that Crazy Dog Trump is as reliable a juicy news story as a piece of raw steak.
The media are drawn to the bait as magnetically as Trump's twittery jittery thumbs are drawn to his i-phone every morning, coinciding with the dawn rising of Sirius. When the woman in question - the ubiquitous Omarosa - also happens to be Black, the dog insult becomes even worse, especially when it's juxtaposed with the White House's passive-aggressive admission that a tape likely exists of Trump using the N Word.
Fetch the smelling salts.
In other barely-reported, and thus less shock-intensive news, Roman Catholic priests were found to have abused over a thousand children in the past several decades in just one state, Pennsylvania.
At least 30 people died in a bridge collapse in Genoa, Italy after its crumbling state had been an obvious scandal for months, if not years. Heads will not roll, although right wing officials are boldly calling for "resignations." You see, it was all the fault of the E.U. and not the fault of elected right wing officials.
A bus full of Yemeni children was blown to smithereens by an American bomb. The murders of brown-skinned children are deemed by the corporate media to be less offensive and newsworthy than the latest president uttering racist slurs on tape. (both Nixon and LBJ were caught on tape uttering racist slurs, but not until they were safely dead.)
A complicit bipartisan Congress just gifted the "insane" racist president almost a trillion more dollars with which to bomb more busloads of children. And that money will need to be replenished in another year. It's no wonder that lawmakers gave him the nearly blank check months before the bill actually came due. It's no wonder that they gave this allegedly crazy dog even more money for more bombs and planes and troops than he even asked them for.
But don't feel depressed or angry! Because the "most diverse group of candidates" in US history has just won a handful of primary elections. And that means that the American establishment is still reliably and liberally focused on identity politics rather than on class politics and anti-war politics.
The choice of the second Muslim woman to run for a seat in Congress on a progressive Democratic platform has, judging from all the self-celebratory liberal press coverage, served the dual purpose of absolving the Democratic Party of its own guilt in the killings of millions of Muslims throughout the world by American bombs and guns and the recent nondebatable funding of the US Imperium's continuing death and destruction.
It's the neoliberal way. Elevate a precious few members of historically marginalized and oppressed racial, gender, religious and ethnic groups to positions of prestige, and call it a victory rather than the whitewashing that it truly is.
