The Bullington Diatribe Chronicles will run occasionally for the amusement of some, the facepalming of many others, and the inconvenience of all. The following is satire….obviously.

Oregon made the headlines last week by becoming the first state in the union to impose statewide rent control, enacting another bucket list item on the progressive agenda. Governor Kate Brown said the measure was a necessary demonstration of the power of politicians to ignore the economic consensus and further the leftist agenda to destroy sound microeconomic doctrine and theory. With the new rent control measures, the incentives for apartment builders now shift to high-end apartment construction, so we can hazard a guess or two at what the future of Oregon’s housing development may look like. Rents will now start at the low, low cost of $2500/month for a bathroom with the option to add a toilet and sink for an extra $600. If you want the toilet to flush and the sink to run, a $174 surcharge will be added, and doors will come at a modest price of $200 (locks of course will incur added expenses as will knobs that actually turn). Admittedly, some will find these options prohibitively expensive, but they can take comfort in the fact that everyone else is just as miserable as they are. Wealthier residents will be able to find single bedrooms for $5000/month, and some high-rises will have the option of a balcony from which people can look over the smoldering dumpster fires of Portland and Salem and ponder the deeper questions of life such as, “I wonder if anyone in Idaho is hiring?”

Also last week, Democrats made a valiant effort at having a spine in what started as a resolution to condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar’s overtly anti-Semitic statements, but the attempt failed when members realized such an action would have meant actually standing for something decent. Initially, a House resolution was proposed to directly condemn Rep. Omar’s comments but was watered down to a general condemnation of anti-Semitism before being further watered down to a blanket statement against hate….unless your comments are anti-Semitic….before finally Democrats just gave up and decided to go to lunch. Problems arose when Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposed going to a local burger chain as several representatives spoke out against what they saw as an obvious surrender to corporate America and accused Pelosi’s affinity for burger “chains” as being an obvious dog whistle to white supremacists. Speaker Pelosi offered an extended apology for her obvious Freudian slip as Rep. Alexandria Blibbity-Mouth…or whatever her name is…gave an impassioned speech to an audience of like-minded ignoramuses about the impending doom of “Big Burger” brought on by climate change. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer then asked Rep. Rashida Talib to choose a lunch locale, but Talib loudly objected to the patriarchal overtones of Hoyer’s request before turning beat-red and dropping a bucket’s worth of profanity on C-SPAN. Sen. Bernie Sanders was invited to go to lunch but was too busy giving a prolonged speech about the benefits of bread lines to an actual loaf of bread in the Senate cafeteria. Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar is still a blazing anti-Semite, and the Democrats can’t get anything done, so I guess life in Congress is carrying on as normal.

Finally, the nation was shocked, I say again, SHOCKED to discover not one, but two mind-boggling stories. In the first case, allegations came to light that rich, famous parents have been bribing elite college institutions, sometimes with millions of dollars, to change SAT scores, cajole administrators, or whatever they need to do in order to get their children into elite academia. One family of actual cave-dwellers, when asked for their thoughts, responded, “Gee, I can’t believe someone with a tremendous amount of wealth, influence, and an incentive to use that power to benefit their own children would stoop to bribing those colleges. Who wouda thunk it?” The scandal was shortly followed by earth-shattering reports that eggshells were white and the sun doesn’t actually descend into the underworld at nighttime.

In the second case, a grand mask was pulled away revealing Tucker Carlson to be a human being, fallen and mistaken in his past like literally every other human being who’s ever existed. Media Matters researcher, Tommy the Vindictive Coral Reef, said to a gathering of salivating journalists, “For the first time in history, we’ve uncovered evidence that someone made a grievous mistake in their past, and I’m pleased to announce that we will now shame and destroy that person forever with no offer of parole or forgiveness because that’s what Jesus would do.” When told that he was a Biblically illiterate stooge, Tommy responded, “That’s simultaneously racist, homophobic, bigoted, Islamophobic, patriarchal, xenophobic, and pan-regressive. Oh, and you smell like an old gym sock too.” In another world, things like this would have been expected to be a part of reality, and we all could have realized that humans change with time. A man is not the same as he was ten years ago, and it really does us no good to dredge the past up again unless it’s being consistently replayed in the present. Rather, it seems to me that grace and forgiveness could have an integral role to play here or simply the realization that humans do a banquet’s worth of dumb things and allowances should be made in society for that, realizing that ultimately any person’s true status in life is a matter between him and God.

But, whatever. It’s much easier to just flay the other guy.