It's gotta be nice to be a taxpayer in Salt Lake City right now, 'cause they're about to embark on building someone else's dream and it's only going to cost 'em $900 million. Ryan Smith, the owner of the Jazz and a new NHL hockey franchise, is going to love it—and so will you, like it or not.
Alright, so what does this Oz look like? Well, it's going to be big and cool and we'll find out later about the details. But first, the City Council must go off down The Yellow Brick Road to see the Wizard and create a 100-acre Oz District where the Delta Center, Salt Palace Convention Center, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Abravanel Hall now sit. Bonus: no-height-limit zoning that includes magic beans and giant beanstalks.
What grows there will be big and cool but you'll just have to trust 'em, like when they were solving homelessness with three new homeless “resource centers.” Yes, that was a rush-rush job, too. But this time it might work out, because Ryan Smith is a billionaire and he's been anointed the Pope of the City of Salt. What the Pope wants, the Pope gets. Sure, many studies show that publicly funded stadium projects provide little to no economic benefit for taxpayers, but this one will be different—remember, the new zoning includes giant beanstalks.
Make America Gag Again—Stormy Testifies
Warning: Parents, do not let your children read this. It could warp their minds permanently.
Stormy Daniels, the porn star at the center of Donald Trump's “hush money” trial, took the witness stand in a New York City courtroom and what we learned was ... well, not pretty. Here are the takeaways:
10. Donald Trump likes paisley Hugh Hefner silk jammies.
9. Trump and his wife, Melania, sleep in different, sound-proofed bedrooms.
8. He prefers “paper-scissors-hammer” as part of a foreplay game of grab-ass.
7. The “Orange Turd,” as Stormy called him, abhors condoms.
6. But he delights in getting spanked, she testified.
5. Trump wears Barocco Greca boxer briefs with a trap door.
4. The former president insists on the “missionary position.”
3. After the assignation, Trump called her “Honey Bunch” and “Snooky Wookems.”
2. Stormy testified she would have needed a stopwatch to time the event.
1. As she stumbled out of his hotel room, Trump said, “I'll be in touch—no pun intended. Haha.”
Why Are People So Mean to Clarence Thomas?
Washington, D.C. is such a nasty place, lamented Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “There’s certainly been a lot of negativity in our lives, my wife and I, over the last few years, but we choose not to focus on it.”
Hey Wilson, do you think all this “negativity” has anything to do with the $260,000 motorhome and lavish vacations Thomas got from a billionaire? Or maybe it was the role his lovely wife, Ginni, played in the plan to overturn the 2020 election? Nah, couldn't be.
People have always been mean to Clarence, according to his biography. Bummer, man. So why should he recuse himself in cases where he has an apparent conflict, like Trump's claim that as president he had absolute immunity? How else could you launch a failed coup and then run for president again?
It's curious that the court, overseen by Chief Justice John Roberts, is in the public-opinion dumper. It couldn't be its ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to an abortion. It couldn't be the finding that money is speech and corporations are people. And it couldn't possibly be the conservative justices “originalism” philosophy that means it's 1788 all over again—except for the AR-15s, of course.
Postscript—That'll just about do it for another beautiful week here at Smart Bomb where we keep track of voter fraud so you don't have to. Well Wilson, you know all those “illegal aliens,” aka undocumented workers, vote all the time. They put down their mops and brooms, find someone who can speak English and then take Uber to vote, even though they can't read English. That's why Republicans in Congress are working on legislation to make that illegal even though it already is against the law.
Oops, hold the phone: In 2017, then-president Donald Trump put together the Voter Integrity Commission to sniff out fraudulent voting across the country. They searched and searched and searched—but just like a bad Easter egg hunt, they didn't find a damn thing. Then quietly, the commission went the way of Donald's yacht, the “Miss Stormy.”
Just ask Donald if there's fraudulent voting. That's why, he says, he lost the last election and if he loses the next one, it will be déjà vu all over again. It's a new twist on the old “win/win” situation: if you win, you win and if you lose, you still win. You'd never guess, Wilson, but that's the motto of the entire Trump Organization.
Well shucks Wilson, poor old Clarence Thomas is bummed out. People are mean to him just because he's a know-it-all prima donna right-wing originalist. It's just not fair, so how about you and the guys in the band roll out some road music so he and Ginni can have a soundtrack as they get out of Dodge:
Running my rig around ninety-five,
Rockin' and rollin' in overdrive
My heart's beating like a jackhammer,
It's the midnight ride for the gear jammer
Nine long days through twenty-three states,
I gotta see my baby soon you know I just can't wait
The police catch me I'll end up in the slammer,
'Cause the law don't want no gear jammer
Running my rig in a mighty high gear,
I don't care where I go just long as it ain't here
Something gets in my way you know I'm gonna ram it,
Nobody fools around with this gear jammer
Running my rig about ninety-five,
I'm a-rockin' and a-rollin' in overdrive
My heart's beating like a jackhammer,
Don't you get in the way of this gear jammer
“Gear Jammer”—George Thurgood and The Destroyers
