Josh Hawley is a Girlie Man 

"[Republican Sen.] Josh Hawley is a bitch. And he ran like a bitch," said Michael Fanone, a D.C. Metro police officer who was beaten and nearly killed on Jan. 6, 2001. The Missouri lawmaker, known for his cheap tricks, gave a fist pump to the mob gathering outside the Capitol that day. But recently, the Jan. 6 committee played surveillance video of a frightened Hawley running out of the Capitol away from the same mob.

Laughter erupted in the hearing room. "That pisses me off," Fanone told Politico. "That guy's a clown." Some congressmen are performance artists but in reality they have no character, he added. "They have no honor. They have no integrity."

Get this: Hawley will soon come out with a book called, "Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs." The Kansas City Star, however, observed that people watching the hearing "didn't see much virile bravado as he ran from the mob." It continued, "Josh Hawley is a laughingstock" and the "video will follow him the rest of his life."

The paper also noted that shame is not a motivating factor for the likes of Hawley, who was belligerent in response to the criticism. "I do not regret it and I am not backing down (from the liberal news media.) I'm not gonna apologize, I'm not gonna cower, I'm not gonna run from you." He then pounded his chest and gave a Tarzan yodel and yelled, ungawa, simba, simba, mangani!

The Masked Prophet
OK, this is like that idiotic TV program "The Masked Singer," where an unidentified guest wears a costume and sings a song and then we try to guess who it is. In our version of the game—a Smart Bomb original—we'll enumerate some current-day epiphanies given to the LDS church and then you guess who is the "The Masked LDS Prophet."
—It should be OK to play sports on Sunday
—Reduce tithing from 10 % to 5%.
—Stop requiring Mormon missionaries to dress like FBI agents.
—Do not idolize church leaders.
—Ban monotone sermons at General Conference.
—Make the Word of Wisdom (no smoking, no drinking, etc.) optional.
—Disallow use of middle initials in church leaders' names.
—Make it clear that eternity is a long, long time.
And the Masked Prophet is ... drum roll... Salt Lake Tribune sports columnist Gordon Monson. We are not making this up. You can find his epiphanies in the Jan. 2, 2022 Tribune. And as Monson would say, life is like golf—but no mulligans, unless no one's looking.

You're Having My Baby
Utah's four Republican House members recently voted against a bill that would protect the right to contraception. We kid you not.

Reps. Blake Moore, Chris Stewart, John Curtis and Burgess Owens voted with their Republican caucus against the Right to Contraception Act in an effort to turn back the clock to the days of old when knights were bold. Curtis further explained that the bill wasn't needed because most married people don't have sex anyway, and high school and college students should practice abstinence.

Nonetheless, the legislation passed 228 to 195 on party lines and now goes to the Senate. Curtis also suggested the bill was unnecessary because the Supreme Court would never mess with contraception rights—he really said that—kinda like they didn't mess with the constitutional right to abortion.

There's more: Rep. Blake Moore contented, along with the tin-foil hat crowd, that the Democrat-sponsored bill was a ploy to give women access to abortion "under the guise of a contraception pill." Those sneaky Democrats, what will they think of next, jumping off tables to induce labor?

The Christian Right marches on. Of course, none of them use contraceptives and their wives never duck out for abortions ... right? And God didn't make those little green apples and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

Postscript—That's a wrap for another blistering hot week here at Smart Bomb, where we keep track of the shrinking Great Salt Lake so Utah leaders don't have to. Sen. Mitt Romney has proposed a bill that would fund the Army Corps of Engineers to the tune of $10 million to figure out why the lake is going dry. Yep, you're right Wilson, every 6th-grader knows the answer to that—we're taking too much water out of it's main tributary, the Bear River.

The lake has already shrunk by two-thirds. But we can't stop the farmers from raising all that thirsty alfalfa they send to China and we can't stop northern Utah municipalities from issuing new building permits even though there isn't enough water to go around ... so maybe the Army Corps knows a special rain dance, or something.

Where's Bill Starbuck, the protagonist in the 1956 film The Rain Maker, when you need him. In the movie, a flimflam man played by Burt Lancaster gets paid to make it rain and sure enough, it rains. No Wilson, no similarity to Spencer Cox, at all. But the guv is praying for rain and that has to count for something.

On the other hand, we do have plenty of flimflamers in Utah who could cash in. Some of our legislators—or maybe former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes—could give it a shot, after stealing the Inland Port land from Salt Lake City, making it rain should be a piece of cake.

Well Wilson, it sure looks like poor Josh Hawley has run up against the enemy and the enemy is his stunted ego. Looks like those tutorials from Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan weren't that helpful after all. Maybe Missouri's wunderkind could use a theme song to show folks that he's not just another empty suit. We know you and the band have something up your sleeve, Wilson, so let it rip:

I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man, I'm an ape man
I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an ape man
I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man, I'm an ape man
I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man
I look out my window, but I can't see the sky
'Cos the air pollution is fogging up my eyes
I want to get out of this city alive
And make like an ape man

Come and love me, be my ape man girl
And we will be so happy in my ape man world
I'll be your Tarzan, you'll be my Jane
I'll keep you warm and you'll keep me sane
And we'll sit in the trees and eat bananas all day
Just like an ape man
"Ape Man"—The Kinks