Bender: Post-turkey tryptophan tangents

I'll admit I'm not in peak form today. I've got the tryptophan shakes. Legalize it now, you heartless monsters! For the love of God, get this turkey off my back! “Oh, just a taste,” they said. “It's safer than that demon rum,” they said. “Or cranberries.” The next thing you know you're snorting giblets.

Anyway, we're covering several topics today because I lack focus to concentrate on just one; evidence, I fear, of our species' plummeting IQ scores as documented in recent studies. The test was foolproof.

“What's your IQ,” they asked.

“How do you spell that,” was the most common response.

In First Amendment-related news. Donald Trump, who (people are saying) attempted a coup, is suing CNN for comparing him to Adolf Hitler just because Hitler did the same thing. Accurate comparisons may be uncalled for — un-American even — but, hey, we report, you storm the jury.

Naturally, gas-lighters will trivialize traitorous behavior, framing it as a liberal obsession over Trump: “He's living rent-free in their heads!” Rent free, huh? No surprise there. The man stiffs everyone. By the way, last week, Trump hosted a racist Holocaust-denier at Mar-a-Lago.

After an independent investigation, Attorney General Drew Wrigley's confirmed that Wayne Stenehjem's emails are, indeed, irretrievable. The end.

I guess we'll just avoid the deleted elephant in the room — accountability for the willful destruction of public records by Liz Brocker, a Stenehjem sidekick. Your records. But, I guess what's done is done. It's over.

What!? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? When they conspired to replace electors in swing states? Hell, no! I demand a séance, at least! Wayne, knock three times on the ceiling if you're just hiding in the attic. Twice on the pipes, if Jason Dockter stashed any cash up there.

So far, former Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney hasn't been called out of the Quick Draw Retirement Home with his tank to defend the state from pipeline protesters. Of course, this time it's farmers, not tribes, opposed to a pipeline that would transport deadly CO2 — ethanol waste — just 4 feet below the surface, to a hole north of Bismarck.

This is Doug Burgum's idea of economic development. That, and an unregulated crypto-industry that uses more energy than Argentina while producing “virtual currency” stored in the same place we keep Wayne Stenehjem's emails.

The $4.5 billion Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline, funded by subsidies, won't be assessed property taxes on the pipeline for 10 years. And it connects to just one North Dakota ethanol plant. One. But this will be great for North Dakota. Trust us. And if Burgum has to use more tax dollars to tidy up like they did with “orphaned oil wells,” well, that's the price of economic development.

“What's in that fracking fluid, anyway?”

“I dunno, but they say it's nutritious.”

Should the pipeline pass near my home — full disclosure; it could — I plan to put an medic-alert bracelet on my neighbor's cow in case it leaks. If Bessie's fallen and can't get up, Burgum will have 5 minutes to chopper me out.

We should change our license plates. North Dakota: The Landfill State.

Give me your billionaires, their sewage, your huddled masses gasping for breath ...