I was thinking earlier today about that glorious run we had in the late ’80s, when one money-grubbing televangelist after another was going down in flames. Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart were the biggies, but they were big enough to deflate the entire grift, and that was enough. Jeff Borden and I toured Heritage USA when he was living in North Carolina, and I believe it was after Bakker’s fall, when Jerry Falwell was running it. It was…sad, but served to cement so many of my feelings about both evangelical culture and the American South, which is not my kinda place, except for visits here and there.

There was another great time, during the Clinton impeachment, when Larry Flynt, pornographer and patriot, was taking down the GOP morals squad. Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, all those hypocrites. They didn’t all stay down, but it was great to see them take fire.

We need another run like that. I feel like it must be coming, but seeing yet another of the good guys, Tatiana Schlossberg, go out early? It feels terrible. Why her and not her terrible uncle? He’s the idiot who guzzles raw milk, and she didn’t even get to see her daughter turn two.

Mixed bag at midweek, so let’s go.

Those of you who live in Michigan know we had something called a “bomb cyclone” Sunday and Monday. The U.P. had a full-on blizzard, but downstate it was a little bit of snow, a 40-degree temperature drop from one day to the next and fierce winds that made that 22-degree final temperature feel like knives on the skin. I considered talking Alan into driving south to observe the seiche effect on Lake Erie, but that wind? :::shudder:::

A seiche (French for “wave”) is what happens when a fast-moving weather system pushes lake water so hard that it effectively drains part of the basin. Western Lake Erie was high and dry, while Buffalo saw their water rise by several feet. There was one earlier this year, and the pictures were amazing, but this one was better. Here’s one from a Toledo meteorologist’s Facebook page, credited to Austin Lada. Anyone lose a snowmobile through the ice a few years back?

Those are zebra mussels covering it, by the way. Invasive species, but the war was lost long ago.

The next time this happens, we’re going, dammit.

Some excellent journalism to point you to, also. First, the Chicago Tribune’s long read about “Operation Midway Blitz,” better known by its popular name, ICE Assholes Invade Chicago Because It’s a Blue City. It’s very well-written, with excellent photos, too. I believe that’s a gift link; at least, I hope so.

I still have a few gift links to share before the month ends, so here’s a social-media talker: Robert Draper’s NYT profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m not fooled by her apparent conversion, but there’s some spilled tea here:

For Greene, the decades that (Jeffrey) Epstein spent eluding justice for exploiting and sexually assaulting countless girls and young women while amassing a fortune, and the seeming efforts by the government to cover up the injustice, “represents everything wrong with Washington,” she told me. This September, Greene spoke with several of Epstein’s victims for the first time in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting. She knew that the women had paid their own way to come to Washington. She saw some of them trembling and crying as they spoke. Their accounts struck her as entirely believable. Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had. In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man.

After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

Hmm. OK.

Finally, you’ve heard the expression “I did not have (astounding news event) on my bingo card,” I’m sure. Well, with the help of bingo-card generators, you too can have one. Here’s mind, from bingobaker.com:

Let’s see how I do. The next time we speak, it’ll be 2026. Remember: All we have is ourselves. Make it count.