The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down at the Cupcake Hut, the South End’s only bakery, the talk over the Hobart bread mixer consists mostly of yeasty gossip and glutinous outrage over fears of being asked to bake a gay wedding cake. Rita Mae, the current owner and born-again Christian, was slapping dough down on the kneading table the way a sado-masochist masseuse would pound a hated client.

“No way,” she was fuming for any and all of us pastry lovers standing in front of the display case filled with bismarks and jelly rolls, danishes and apple fritters, muffins and doughnuts, worrying we’d never get our orders until Rita Mae was finished slapping that loaf silly. “I won’t do it. My beliefs come before the law and my law is Higher than theirs and that’s the real truth,” she grunted with a ferocious fist to the lump on the table.

But she wiped the flour off her hands on her apron and slid behind the pastry case to take our orders. Ronnie took a few doughnuts for his landscaping crew and I ordered a fritter and a cup of coffee. To go. I sure didn’t want to sit at one of the little round formica tables while Rita Mae was in one of her Full Rants.

“What’s next?” she shouted and at first I thought she meant what else did I want. “That’ll about do it, Rita,” I shrugged, wishing I was already out that front door.

“Boy oh boy, that’s the truth,” she retorted, ringing up my coffee and fritter. “Next thing’ll be wedding cakes for polygamists. Who knows where this is going? Sodom and Gomorrah right here and I’m supposed to cater the orgies??”

I could feel my sweet tooth going rotten, decaying faster than civilization. “I don’t know, Rita, maybe it’s not really that big an issue. I mean, you don’t get all that much call for wedding cakes, do you? Much less same sex ones.”

Rita Mae shot me the evil eye and I shut up. Ronnie, always the provocateur, turned at the doorway, his bag of pastries held high. “Love thy neighbor, Rita Mae!” Rita Mae grabbed a day old muffin from the tray beside the register and just missed Ronnie as he slammed the door on his way out. The muffin exploded against the back of the sign that said WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. That was probably going to be my last fritter, I decided. I can read the writing on the wall about as well as Rita Mae can read her Good Book. “You have a nice day,” she frowned as she gave me change and somehow I knew I wouldn’t.

Take two of the most egotistical a-holes in the galaxy, offer them more power than anyone else on this planet, then give them time. Before very long these two mental midgets will go from sniping to snarling and eventually to the ultimate smackdown. X vs Truth Social, Musk vs. Trump, mano y mano, and you, the public, get a ringside seat. This is what America voted for. This, rightchere, ladies and gentlemen, is entertainment!!

Musk threw a quarter trillion dollars to buy our boy Trump an election. Money, in case you’ve been spending too much time parsing the correct pronoun for your kids and colleagues, talks. In fact, it screams. It hollers. It yells across the canyons and from sea to shining sea. Freedom of speech, so saith the Supreme Court. The rich are free to run the country without limitations. You get one vote, the billionaires get one vote. Fair is fair. Until you factor in … well, the money. Nothing really new here, just plenty more of it from a very small % of us buying every election from city council to PTA president to Prez of the Yewnited States. Suck it up, buttercup, the game’s been rigged.

But money can flow in both directions and the E-boy is threatening anyone who votes for Il Douche’s big beautiful bill with being primaried. Ouch! The guy wants his quarter trillion back. He says he won’t pick up the astronauts at the Space Station. Trump will cancel billions in subsidies. Musk says Trump is in the Epstein files and the truth will out! The President counters with the accusation that Elon’s mother has a dog face! Musk writes that Donny should be impeached!

Obviously the Marquis of Queensberry Rules no longer apply. This is the Prom Queen/ Prom King girlfriend hair pulling mud wresting match of the century, a no holds barred, hitting below the belt encouraged, spitting, hitting, eyeball scratching extravaganza. And we all get a ringside seat. May both egos lose. But hopefully not until many many rounds of knockdown entertainment. Welcome to the Manosphere.

Give the MAGA intelligentsia some credit. They have uncovered the conspiracy of the century. Joe Biden is dead and was replaced by a robotic clone. Hard to believe? you ask. Check out the post in the President’s Truth Social. The man who ran the country for four years was actually a cyborg.

All I can say is whoever created that clone could have done a better job, probably some voucher school science class project lacking adequate AI, not some lab funded by Project 2025. After all, funding for science is being axed in hopes the tech sector will pick up the slack. Musk was busy with DOGE and rockets that keep exploding. Building a Biden was probably not high on the To-Do list, not with Tesla stocks plummeting.

You gotta give the clone creators a little credit, though. Nice ruse to have the cyborg come down with prostate cancer. Some kind of self-destruct mechanism maybe. And give them a lot of credit for constructing a clone that even his wife doesn’t suspect is a replicant. That is no little feat. Try that yourself if you don’t think so. I can’t even keep my lawnmower running much less teach it to talk, even badly.

Sure, there will be those skeptics who will want to see the death certificate. Probably as likely as the Obama birth certificate. But for the True Believers, the Q-Anon faithful and the Newsmax loyalists, proof is for the weak minded. The President’s tweet is plenty of proof, all anyone should need. And if you need more proof, consider this: the artificial Joe Biden hasn’t denied the report. I think that speaks volumes. Even if he doesn’t.

I guess if you were the first felon elected to the highest office in the land and then given pardon privileges, you might, if you were a person without morals or guilt, decide to pardon all those fellow felons who were unjustly convicted of crimes by the government you swore to uphold and defend. Or maybe not.

You might even understand a pardon for those who contributed massive amounts of donations, sort of a Get Out of Jail Free card for the MAGA loyalists. I mean, money talks and felons walk, maybe a new motto on our legal tender, drop the In God We Trust. But c’mon, pardons for the rioters on January 6th? It was basically an admission that these were his loyal troops, his vanguard of a violent overthrow in order to keep him in office. And the senators and reps who ran for their lives down hallways or crouched in fear with gas masks when these so-called innocent tourists breached the Capitol, did they raise their voices in protest or just lay down and go along with the ruse? If they’d had the chance when those good citizens were touring the building, probably could have signed autographs while some were calling for the hanging of Pence and Pelosi.

Loyalty to the chief, tribute paid — all you need for crimes to be forgiven. Meanwhile anyone who criticized gets the weaponized Justice Department. The same senators and representatives who cowered in the Capitol and refused to impeach the perpetrator, now investigate at length, endlessly, the purported crimes of Hunter Biden for using the influence of his father’s office. Forget about the transparent and willful use of that same office to garner billions on $trump coins, Trump Towers around the globe, jetliner gifts and on and on, obvious emoluments banned by the Constitution, not a peep from the peanut gallery, whether from fear or agreement, who knows?

The inmates in the asylum are being set free. Insanity is being redefined and you tell me if this is what democracy looks like. Most of us can’t tell anymore.

What we used to call flip-flopping, we now call the art of the deal. I know, it seems cruel to pepper the Prez with questions about Trump Always Chickens Out, nasty questions he points out, when all he’s doing is ‘negotiating’. The stock market roller coaster follows every reversal judiciously, one day up when the tariff threat is lifted, next day down when the tariff is back on, all head-spinning stuff but probably exciting for you day-traders. Small businesses, not so much. Anyone who has their retirement funds tied to the Market, kind of a scary ride these days.

Consistency, Emerson told is, is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I’m not sure Ralph Waldo would assume inconsistency is the paragon or parakeet of big minds. Sometimes it looks more like just a confused state of mind, possibly the result of wee morning tweeting and social media overdose. Nevertheless, rest assured these aren’t daily reversals, they’re negotiating tactics, not TACOs. Course, if it looks like a chicken, squawks like a chicken and poops chicken shit endlessly, it might really be a chicken.

Half the news that floods through my newspapers and internet feeds is a reversal of yesterday’s reportage. TACO is angry with Putin one day, going to be dire consequences, next day there’s rumors of a breakthrough and possible peace meeting, followed of course by the news that Putin has scaled up the assaults, and you know tomorrow’s flip-flop. Deja-vu all over again. And again. And again.