Eric Levitz lists 19 things that are — shall we say? — odd about Trump firing Comey. Stranger and stranger.

Folks I know and respect keep telling me, "This time, Trump's gone too far." They're sure the latest lie or action is going to bite him in the ass and bring down the whole house o' cards…and then it doesn't. But if you keep predicting something like that with someone like him, you'll eventually be right. I think the guy's going to crash and burn. I just don't know if it'll be the firing of James Comey or the next thing or the one after. But something will. Here come the links…

• Frank Rich thinks no matter what kind of stooge gets installed to derail any investigations of Trump and his administration, it won't work. And Rich makes a pretty good case for why it won't work.
• There are a lot of outraged editorials today about how we need a special prosecutor and it shouldn't be, say, Ivanka. Here's John Cassidy with one.
• Here's an article that compares what's going on to Nixon's infamous Saturday Night Massacre. And here's another. And still another.
• Jesse Berney on the "creepy feeling" that while Comey deserved to be fired, there's reason to fear how Trump is eliminating anyone who could hold him accountable for actions or misdeeds.
• Matthew Yglesias on the Trump/GOP strategy to defend the American Health Care Act. It seems to be to just lie about what's in it and what it will do…and then if someone points out the lie, you dismiss them as biased and/or to say, "Well, that's their opinion. I'm entitled to my opinion and that cutting $880 billion from Medicaid couldn't possibly result in reduced care and higher fees."

The timing of Comey's firing was such that most of the late night shows couldn't do very much with it. We'll see what they have for us tonight. Could be brutal.

Here are two very funny men: John Cleese and Peter Cook…

Now-Unemployed FBI Director James Comey was speaking to an office full of FBI personnel today when he heard that he'd been fired by President Trump. I thought Trump only fired people in a boardroom and told them to their faces.

Everyone's speculating why. Was it because Comey was incompetent? That doesn't seem to be much of a disqualifier in this administration. Was it because his investigations were getting closer to linking Trump to wrongdoing? That's what a lot of folks are saying; that Trump wanted a puppet in there who would clear him and maybe use the FBI against his political enemies. If he now appoints Chris Christie or Rudy Giuliani to the post, that will seem to confirm that theory. Right now, I don't know and neither do all the folks out on the 'net trying to guess what's up.

A lot of them are recalling the infamous Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate. Here, Ed Kilgore discusses that concept. And here's a nice primer on Watergate for those who are either too young to remember or did too many drugs back then to even be aware of it.

A lot of folks who hate the American Health Care Act have written or spread the word that under it, rape would be considered a pre-existing condition. There are many shameful, harmful things about the bill and that would certainly be another if it were true. But it's been debunked in a number of places including Politifact and the Washington Post.

I have found those two fact-checking sites to be pretty good — and come to think of it, I should mention Factcheck.Org and I sometimes come across others that don't do it full-time but do it responsibly when they do it. Once in a while, I think they confuse an honest mistake with a deliberate lie, or call someone a fibber for what seems to be like just bad phrasing…but for the most part, I think they do the job. If you don't like them, I hope you have some dispassionate source that you'll trust when it tells you something you maybe don't want to hear. Seems like there are more and more people out there these days who don't.

You can divide Americans into two groups a great many different ways but one that occurs to me more and more has to do with how they react when some news story or statistic that supports their worldview turns out to be erroneous. Some people say, "Okay, I guess I was wrong about that." But some just seem to want every possible "fact" that confirms their beliefs and they don't want to turn loose of any of them. At WonderCon, a woman told me that nothing will ever convince her that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, end of discussion.

Years ago, I might have tried challenging her set-in-concrete belief. In this case, it truly was the end of the discussion. She didn't want to hear it so I didn't see any point in saying it.

Please don't tell me that every single bad thing out there about Donald Trump is true. Or every single bad thing about Obama. Or about Bill or Hillary or George W. or Bernie or whoever and it isn't just people. It can be every single alleged "fact" about Climate Change or Gun Control or Health Care or cole slaw or —

Wait. Every single bad thing you've ever heard about cole slaw is true, including those reports that I made up about how many people each year die from just the sight of the stuff. But that's the only topic where that's the case. I slip once in a while but for the most part, I've given up trying to even talk with certain people who are relentless this way. The other day, I declined an invite to a party where two of them will be present.

One will just go on and on about how we need to build a cell like the one they put Hannibal Lecter in and throw Hillary Clinton inside and toss the key. Okay, fine, I like Hillary and he doesn't and I think that the fact that even her worst enemies in power won't charge her with a crime is significant. He thinks — he knows — it's because she has blackmail evidence on all her enemies. She somehow didn't use it to stop them from attacking her during the presidential campaign but it's all that's keeping her out of the slammer.

Anyway, you'd figure being around that guy would irritate me and make it hard to have a rational discussion and it does. But the other guy is the same way about the Bush family who I happen to think did harmful, dishonest things…and I don't want to be around him, either.

I think I've just had enough of people who make bad arguments along with the possibly good ones; who work backwards from "I hate this person" to believing every possible rumor or bit of Internet gossip; who even believe stories on parody websites that admit they're spreading "fake news." I'm not even going to waste my time talking to a Trump supporter who insists Donald won the popular vote or that he deserves credit for job growth that took place before the inauguration.

To me, they're all like I am about cole slaw. The only difference is that I'm kidding and they actually believe that crap.

Once upon a time, the name "National Lampoon" denoted work by a group of young, brilliant writers and cartoonists. Now, it's something that appears on projects of dubious quality and even more dubious connection to its roots. What brought it to this condition? Here's Benjamin Wallace with a real long article about what it's been like lately in NatLampLand. Nothing in the magazine or its branded movies was ever as absurd.

I'm in no great hurry to see the new Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! with Bette Midler. Next trip to New York, if it's still running and I can get tix without selling my car, I probably will but I'm not a huge fan of the musical itself and I'll probably see it wishing she was just doing her concert show instead.

Hey, you know what Al Jolson used to do when he was in a book musical? Sometimes, he'd just stop the show — literally — and break character. He'd walk down to the footlights and ask the audience, "Say, how's about if instead of doing the rest of this play, we send the actors home and I'll just sing to you?" The audience would always cheer its approval and that's what would happen. They wouldn't finish the play. He'd sing "Swanee" and "California, Here I Come" and all his other hits, sometimes for hours. The orchestra always had that sheet music handy because they never knew when he was going to do that. Wonder how everyone would react if Bette tried that some night.

Anyway, her Dolly cast album is coming out shortly and previews of it are all over the 'net. At the moment, for what I assume is a limited time, you can hear the entire thing here. On various forums, debates are occurring between theater buffs who love it and those who feel that its makers have made a big orchestra sound like a small orchestra and lost a certain brassiness that the Jerry Herman tunes seem to require. I'm not taking sides on this one. Decide for yourself.

Too busy today to even post about how terrible Donald Trump and/or the Republican Health Care plan is. Perhaps you can find someone else on the 'net who feels that way. I will be back later or maybe tomorrow.

I suddenly seem to be on a "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" kick here.  This is that number from a recent British production, as performed at the 2016 Olivier Awards, which were handed out in London's Royal Opera House. The only performer I recognize is Richard Kind, who's playing Nathan Detroit. I did a little detective work on Google and it would seem that the gent playing Nicely Nicely Johnson is Gavin Spokes. If it isn't, my apologies to him and to whoever it is. I don't care for the little add-on section to make the song jazzier but it's performed well…

As I've mentioned here a few times, there are a lot of phony sketches being sold these days in the original art market. I see dozens of them at any given time on eBay, often from sellers who have sold many fakes but still seem to have 100% positive comments about their many past sales. As noted, the greatest volume seem to be forgeries of Charles Schulz and Jack Kirby…and I probably should have mentioned Robert Crumb and Bill Watterson.

The fakers usually stick to deceased artists or to guys like Crumb and Watterson who maintain low profiles and don't seem likely to rise up and denounce the impersonations. A few impostors do get bold though and cobble up bogus sketches by folks who are around and visible. Neal Adams, I'm told, has gone after the sellers of Neal Adams sketches that he didn't do. Good for him.

How can you tell phony drawings from real ones? There's no easy way but here are some things to keep in mind…

• Forgers almost never forge published covers or pages. They forge the kind of sketch that a cartoonist might do of one of his characters as a gift to some fan. If someone did go to the trouble to forge, say, a whole, published page from a Kirby issue of Fantastic Four, that would be a lot of work, what with all the drawing and lettering, and they'd have to fake the company's rubber stamps and editorial notes and such. And also you could put that piece of art against the printed book and see the differences. This kind of thing is done but not very often.
• When artists do the kind of "fan" sketch we're talking about, they almost always sign them to someone. They write in the name of the recipient. A forger doesn't do that because he knows you'll be less likely to pay top dollar for a sketch signed "To my good friend Gustavo" if by some chance, your name is not Gustavo. So if you see an alleged Schulz drawing of Snoopy and it isn't signed to anyone, be very suspicious.
• Also, Schulz seems to have signed most of his fan-type sketches with his full, cursive signature of "Charles M. Schulz," not with the easier-to-forge "Schulz" with which he signed the newspaper strips. And I'd be really suspicious of the Schulz sketches signed — and this occurs more often than you'd imagine — "Schultz."
• That the drawing seems to be on old, aged drawing paper is not an indicator of authenticity. Old blank paper is not that hard to come by. Recently when I cleaned out my friend Carolyn's apartment, I found over 500 sheets of old blank drawing paper of a brand no longer made on which Walt Kelly never got around to drawing Pogo strips.
• Forgers usually trace existing sketches. Last time I looked, there was a fake Captain America drawing up for eBay auction that was just a tracing of a real drawing Kirby did…and a bit of Google searching would show you the original one. If you compared the two, the forgery becomes pretty obvious. And what if the facsimile is real close? Well, that should not make you think the one you can purchase is authentic and that Jack obviously did the same exact sketch twice. He didn't do that.
• A forger will sometimes copy a published drawing — say, a Captain America pose that Kirby drew for the cover of some published comic. Then the claim will be that this was a preliminary sketch that Jack did for the comic, thereby accounting for the similarity. Kirby almost never did preliminary sketches and he certainly never did one in ink.
• Most eBay sellers who sell fake drawings seem to have a lot of them and they all appear to be the work of the same forger. They have one or two fake Kirbys, a fake Dr. Seuss, a fake Walt Disney, a fake Schulz or three, a phony Watterson, a bogus Joe Kubert, etc. If someone has a lot of sketches by dead guys and none of them are signed "to" anyone, there's about a 90% chance all of them are frauds.
• And lastly, use your head. If a never-published original Superman drawing by Joe Shuster has a minimum opening bid of twenty dollars, the ink is probably still wet on it.

Please don't write to me to ask if a particular sketch is real. I long ago made a policy of not doing that because it makes some people real mad to hear that they paid good money for a Wally Wood sketch done four years after Wally died. And though once in a while I make an exception for a "Jack Kirby" drawing that looks like Jack must have held the pencil in his teeth when he did it, I don't authenticate artwork unless I can hold it in my hands and inspect it in person…and I often don't do it at all.

But be suspicious. Be really suspicious.

Clive Rowe played Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the 1996 revival of Guys and Dolls at London's National Theatre. Nicely-Nicely is kind of a thankless role until near the end when you get to stop the whole danged show with "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat"…

On his show last Monday night, Stephen Colbert did a joke about Donald Trump that went like this: "The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's cock holster." This upset some people and we quickly began seeing news items headlined, "FCC to Investigate Stephen Colbert Over Controversial Donald Trump Joke" or something similar.

Almost all the reports used the word "investigate" and that's probably the wrong word. I don't think the FCC ever uses the word "investigate" because, first of all, there's really nothing to investigate. What Colbert said is not in dispute. You can see the video of him saying it on YouTube, on the CBS website and hundreds of other places. What hitherto unknown fact or facts might an "investigation" unearth? What is unknown about what he said?

The verb the FCC uses is usually "review," as in "We shall review the matter." That means they might do nothing but might discuss whether it violates their ill-defined, often-puzzling definitions of obscenity…and if so, if there's a reason (probably a political one) to make an issue of it.

"Review" is a neutral word, whereas "investigate" suggests a crime may have been committed and someone could be heading for the slammer. Tomorrow, if you contact the FCC and complain that Jimmy Fallon giggles too much on his program, you will probably get no response at all from them but if you do, they will tell you, "We shall review the matter." Then they may or may not spend upwards of two seconds on it. That would depend on whether (a) they'd received a true avalanche of complaints about Jimmy Fallon giggling or (b) pressures were applied.

If they did their worst, they would not ban Colbert from television or bust CBS down to a public access channel. They would levy a fine which CBS would pay out of the increased profits from Colbert saying things like that about Donald Trump. I'm not sure how much the fine would be — maybe a few hundred thousand bucks. In the last few years, as I understand it, the FCC has raised the dollar amounts that they fine when they fine…but has fined only on very rare, arbitrary occasions.

There are always people who get outraged and hysterical about something they see or hear on TV or radio and they sometimes pick some pretty looney things to complain about. There probably has been at least one person who's demanded they do something about Fallon's giggling. But one of the secrets in whatever department at each network deals with such things is how unpredictable and variable complaints are.

Every Standards and Practices Person I ever dealt with in television has had stories about how they reviewed some show before broadcast and worried that they'd be deluged with complaints about the dick joke in the third act. Then not one person complained about the dick joke in the third act but several were furious about some innocuous mention of spatulas in the second act. I of course dash off a scathing letter every time anyone mentions cole slaw without reminding people of its close connection with the Antichrist.

That's one of the reasons the broadcast networks have cut way, way back on the kinds of employees we used to call Censors. Nowadays, most of the concern is about airing something that prompts a lawsuit for slander or otherwise creates legal problems. And of course, we know why being "dirty" is no longer a big concern.

With HBO and other cable channels, we're all getting used to hearing the "f" word and seeing nudity on our TV screens. Very few people are going to get that upset about seeing something on Channel 144 that routinely appears on Channel 206. If you get Basic Cable, which you have to because your kids don't want to miss Dora the Explorer, you probably get some channel where they show the occasional breast or don't bleep "bullshit." There are those who complain — often to the FCC about channels that are not under their jurisdiction. But the complaints even when properly directly are essentially toothless. No one is going to make Game of Thrones cover up the naked people. Jeff Sessions can try but it won't happen.

Which is not to say we won't see some petulant attempts to control public speech by the current administration. We should have a contest: Name something that would have enraged the kind of people who voted for Trump more than if Barack Obama's people had said that that president was considering changes in the First Amendment. Trump can make himself look even pettier than usual but he can't control speech in a world that has an Internet. He can't prevent people from calling him a terrible human being, a bad president or even a cock holster. (I'm not sure if "cock holster" is one word or two. Never heard the term before.)

As for the folks who complained that Colbert's joke was homophobic or anti-gay, I don't think that's going anywhere. Gay leaders do not seem to be too up in arms. Jim Parsons, who may well be the most popular TV star who is openly gay, was on with Colbert the next night and he was fine with it. It was, after all, from Stephen Colbert who has a pretty solid track record with that community. If Sean Hannity had said it about someone he didn't like…well, I think there would have been a few more complaints but not many.

Mainly, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being something that could cause people to die or have their lives destroyed, this is barely a 1.5. Personally — and I'll bet I'm not alone in this — these days, I'd like to save my concern for things that are a 6 or above…you know, like cancer patients not being able to get insurance or military action with North Korea. Trump may yet prove to be like Nigel Tufnel, the musician in This is Spinal Tap who has the power to make it go to 11.

In which case, we won't have time to even think about anything below an 8.

I have trouble not watching televised car chases…and there are a lot of them in Southern California. One thing that's often on my mind as I watch vehicles careen about at high speeds is that there must be an invention that could stop fleeing drivers. Well, maybe there is…

I had a brief telephone debate last night with a Trump-supporting friend. He is ecstatic…and not about what the G.O.P. health plan would change if it becomes law. He thinks it may not pass and even if it does, Republicans will undo a lot of the damage it will wreak because they won't want the political fallout. He agrees with me that the Democrats could score major electoral victories with commercials that said…

This is [Name of Deceased Person]. S/he died [date of death] from [cause of death]. S/he would probably be alive today but [Name of Republican congressperson] voted to take away her/his health insurance so that Donald Trump and the people who own WalMart could pay less in taxes.

He doesn't think Republicans will let that happen. He thinks Obamacare will survive under another name and might even be improved. What he's happy about is that what happened yesterday was a "win" for his side. That's really all he's happy about but it's enough. When he used to say, "I want my country back," that's what he meant. Regardless of the merits of what Obama or the Democrats did, he felt it was the wrong people in charge.

He'd be happier if the "right people" now in charge did not include Donald Trump because he doesn't think Trump knows how to get things done and doesn't really care about the non-financial matters of the so-called Culture War. He also thinks Trump has tons of ugly baggage that will drag down his popularity: More sexual revelations like the Access Hollywood tape and more ties to Putin, plus all that video of past speeches where he made promises he's not going to keep or said things that were demonstrable lies.

"It's already getting to be real tough to defend this guy," my friend says. No kidding. Here are some links…

• Read the first part at least of this column by Andrew Sullivan, who at least at one time was prominent as a Gay Conservative. He's still gay but the conservative part has grown arguable. For Sullivan, Obamacare has worked pretty well. That's true of a lot of people in this country and we haven't heard nearly enough about that. Now is the time for Democrats to speak up about it.
• Is the state of New York about to force Donald Trump to release his tax forms? That would be interesting, wouldn't it? I assume he'd stand in defiance of the law if they did.
• There are lots of editorials out denouncing what House Republicans did yesterday. This one in The New Yorker by John Cassidy says what most of them do.
• And in the meantime, Trump also signed an executive order (And who knows? He may even have read it!) that ostensibly promotes "religious freedom," which has lately become a call to allow discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender, sexual orientation…or pretty much anything you might say runs counter to your personal belief system. But Alissa Wilkinson and many others say it's smoke n' mirrors that won't do much of anything.

I'm gonna be busy the rest of the day so this and a video link may be all you get here 'til tomorrow. I will write about topics unrelated to Trump and health care once I manage to get them off my mind. It would be so nice to be able to do that.

• I wonder how many GOP Congressfolks voted for their new healthcare plan counting on the Senate to NOT pass it.