"My Own Boy": An American Father on Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian Toddler Who Drowned

When this here blog first started, there was a second writer, Rude Two (clever, right?). Rude Two quickly realized that bloggery is a bitter mistress and (probably wisely) bailed. But here he is, reappearing from the ether, with his view as the father of a toddler boy upon seeing the photos of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian child whose drowned body made its way to the shore of Turkey. He wrote this on Facebook:

"I'm not going to post pictures of the Syrian boy who washed up on the beach because I can't look at them without seeing my own boy. I've seen them, somewhat by accident, and all I can see is my own boy, lying there on the sand, wearing a little red shirt and blue shorts, as though he fell asleep on the edge of the waves.

"Somehow with that image in my head, I've got to compose myself and get back to work because it is customary the world over for human beings to give all of ourselves to our jobs, many of which don't make a difference at all but we do them anyway. The best of us gets pissed away in the paper chase while our kids grow up and our marriages struggle and our talents and hearts and passions sit dormant and stuff like this happens around the world and we just keep on going and our attempts to help are never enough. Every morning it's countless shootings and busted child porn rings and meth lab explosions and rapists, and turning to national news, more saber rattling and fallen celebrities and corporations lying and what the idiot candidate actually said out loud to the idiot crowd who cheered when he said it, and the beat just goes on.

"I don't have any advice or a pithy statement or a dumb image or a link to some web page because right now, I just see that little Syrian boy lying there, at peace by the sea, and I have the certainty that that Syrian boy is in a better place now, and the promise to my own boy to protect him, and the nagging knowledge that I can't protect him forever, but just for now."

Rude Two ended up taking the post down because, as is everyone's way, people went berserker at the phrase "better place," which was meant to be ironic. He explains:

"In the same thread, I've got former colleagues arguing with me as well as a couple Republican (or just less liberal) friends, at least one of which is arguing with my mother-in-law, which is surreal even if I agree with her. Ah, social media! The thread turned into finger pointing and laying blame and fixating on 12 words I threw in about how the kid is in a better place, and how that's just a lie we tell ourselves.

"What strikes me is all of them -- even the atheists -- thought 'better place' meant afterlife, but really what I meant, in a moment where I'd pretty much resigned to despair and kept typing, is that the kid is better off *even if nothing awaits us but a fucking void* -- because sometimes life on this world is a fate worse than death. The kid is better off dead if he doesn't have to put up with this bullshit anymore. The kid is better off at peace regardless of what happens after we die. He's better off because the adults were never going to make it better for him here.

"Also we don't deserve something as great as him. It's our punishment to see those pictures. Just like Sandy Hook was a punishment for everyone. And I'm not saying it's the Judeo-Christian God dropping these punishments a la Old Testament fury, but whatever -- karma, fate, some other religion, some other thing we don't yet know or believe. The universe rights itself. Things fall apart. I've been thinking about Achebe a little.

"I see all the squabbling as a microcosm of the problem. We can't agree on religion (or at least agree to be civil in disagreement) and we can't agree on who's to blame for this -- whether it's the U.S. invasion of Iraq or some vague 'we're all to blame' that lays this at all of our feet while simultaneously laying it at no one's. Neither of those things is a solution. It's just a rhetorical cycle we go through -- a series of lies we tell ourselves until we find the one we want or the mix of ones we want, sort of like a salad bar of bullshit spread out so we can make our own piles and everybody gets it their way."

We must acknowledge our implicit complicity if we look at the images and do nothing. We must admit that we have no problem with it happening. We must accept that we will allow it to happen and that that is just who we all are.

Travelin', Boss

The Rude Pundit is on the wild roads of Uhmerka this fair Labor Day weekend. He's got something teed off to post, but it's gonna be a bit later. 

Despite using "teed off," he is not golfing, by the way, because fuck that. 

Mike Huckabee: "Lawbreaker Kim Davis Is Totally Tits"

Actual Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (campaign slogan: "Ahma eat awl theez heer gritz 'cuz Jeezus tole me to") supports jailed lawbreaker Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who violated a court order to issue marriage licenses to couples, same sex or otherwise. She is being held in contempt, but Huckabee is also demonstrating contempt for education by telling the hick fucknuts who make up his supporters wrong info about how the nation works.

Says Huckabee in a statement today, "Kim is asking the perfect question:  'Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?' That simple question is giving many in Congress a civics lesson that they never got in grade school." You may think, "Um, the law that says you do what courts tell you to do, especially when the Supreme Court said to do it," but you would be happy to have the Devil balls deep in your face, sinning liberal.

He continues, "The Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law.  They only made a ruling on a law.  Congress makes the laws.  Because Congress has made no law allowing for same sex marriage, Kim does not have the Constitutional authority to issue a marriage license to homosexual couples." If you were a fucking dumbass, you'd think that Huckabee's right, goshdarnit. And he is, except for being so wrong. 

Let's explain this so that anyone can explain it to their fuckwit relatives. The law says that two adult people are allowed to get married. If a state carves out an exception to the law, like that two people of the same sex aren't allowed, that is discrimination. The Supreme Court, who, under the Constitution, is in fact made up of unelected judges, said that the law on marriage has to cover everyone equally. That's not making a law. That is making a ruling on the law, which is what Mike Huckabee says they're supposed to do.

But, of course, of course, this is really about the God shit. You can read it all yourself. Huckabee needs to have some reason to exist in this presidential race. Fuck it. This may as well be his Schiavo moment.

Fuck Tha Pope (When It Comes to Abortion Forgiveness)

Yesterday, when Pope Francis, whose papacy seems to be based on the principle of "Let's not change doctrine, but let's just not be dicks about it," issued a letter declaring that for one year and one year only, all priests can forgive the "sin" of abortion and cleanse the baby-killing whores so they can get to Heaven (which is not where aborted babies go, according to Catholicism, but, hey, limbo babies are still adorable).

That's not actually much of a paraphrase. Here's what Francis wrote: "I have decided, notwithstanding anything to the contrary, to concede to all priests for the Jubilee Year the discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it." This comes after Francis has psychoanalyzed women who have had abortions and proclaimed, "I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal. I have met so many women who bear in their heart the scar of this agonizing and painful decision. What has happened is profoundly unjust; yet only understanding the truth of it can enable one not to lose hope. The forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented, especially when that person approaches the Sacrament of Confession with a sincere heart in order to obtain reconciliation with the Father."

You got that? You want to be part of our club, you gotta be sad and sorry about your abortion, ladies. Oh, by the way, we're still gonna condemn the shit out of you because that's what we do, but you get this Holy Year (are other years unholy?) to come clean, tell your priest who has been telling you that you can be excommunicated for abortion that you have had one, and all will be well and you can eat the Christ crackers with a free conscience. 

The Rude Pundit's first thought was in a mighty tweet of mightiness, where he said that women should tell Francis to shove his mercy up his ecumenical ass. Then people starting tweeting back, which is what people do, that he didn't understand, that he must not be Catholic, that if he was Catholic, he'd get what a huge, huge deal this is. And then the Rude Pundit felt pity, which made him drink whiskey, which made him angry, so he started looking up nun and priest porn, and then Pope porn, and then Craigslist ads that referenced the same, and that was the beginning of a downward spiral that ended with strangers sporting Jesus butt plugs and crucifixes shoved into the most sacred of places. You don't need to know more, but the Lord was referenced on several occasions.

Of course, it's virtually impossible for anyone not Catholic to understand. But we can all understand that if you feel you are worth more because a religious leader says your sins are forgiven, that's fucked up. Read the whole letter from Francis. There's some hoodoo shit in there. Apparently, you should be striving for a Jubilee Indulgence in this Jubilee Year. Says El Papa, "To experience and obtain the Indulgence, the faithful are called to make a brief pilgrimage to the Holy Door, open in every Cathedral or in the churches designated by the Diocesan Bishop, and in the four Papal Basilicas in Rome, as a sign of the deep desire for true conversion." That's cult-worthy. (And, let's face it, all religions are cults with better marketing.)

But, hey, the Pope doesn't hate the gays. He says Christians should get off their asses and do something about the poor. He thinks that wealth is bullshit. He wants nations and corporations and individuals to act on climate change.  If there is one upside to this offer of redemption, it's that maybe, perhaps, some women who have had abortions and who want to take part in a Christian faith won't end up in one of the totally fucked-up evangelical faiths. Those assholes will forgive anything as long as you take a plunge in their icky pool and pledge some cash. 

Most women, though, have got to be thinking, "I don't feel like shit for having an abortion. So fuck that guy."

If You Support the County Clerk in Kentucky, You Support Shariah Law

The Rude Pundit is trying to get his head around the thinking of County Clerk Kim Davis of Rowan County, Kentucky. See, he can't imagine a situation where he's asked to do something lawful for his job, for the people who, you know, pay him, and he doesn't do it. Now, between the asking and the doing, there might be a hell of a rigmarole. For instance, recently at this here professorin' gig, some top-down changes to curriculum were instituted. After a protracted battle, where the Rude Pundit spoke out publicly against things, where he joined protests and signed mighty petitions of many signatures, his side lost.

It didn't even occur to him to declare, "I will not teach because this curriculum violates my deeply-held pedagogical beliefs." No, his options would be to either quit or do his job and live to fight another day. And since, at the end of the current day, no children were being bombed or rivers being polluted, he went to work like usual. Because that's what you do. Because that's the choice you face. If you have a job, you do the job. If you don't want to do the job, leave the job.

But what he can't even begin to comprehend is the conviction that if he does a job that violates his beliefs, an invisible sky wizard will angrily condemn him to an eternity of fire and demon rape. To take that further, it's not in his realm of thinking to understand that one might think that it's one's job to keep the angry sky wizard, fire, and raping demons away from others. 

That's exactly where we are with on-her-fourth-marriage Kim Davis and the other county clerks in Kentucky who are refusing to issue any marriage licenses because they don't want to allow same sex couples to marry. The twisted reasoning in not issuing licenses to opposite sex couples is so the clerks don't appear to be prejudiced against gay couples. Ahh, they're subtle, these Christian soldiers.

Davis wasn't so subtle with the all-male and all-female couples who showed up today to get their perfectly legal marriage licenses. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court said, "Shut the fuck up and do your goddamned job" to Davis. Then a federal court said, "What Kagan said, and start now." Davis remained totally, almost admirably, but definitely dumbly defiant.

When one unlucky groom asked under whose authority she was acting out, Davis proclaimed, "Under God's authority." The next question should have been "Does God sign your motherfucking paycheck?" followed by "No? Then get a job where he does."

Instead, Davis faced down the angry group and announced, "I'm willing to face my consequences and you all will face your consequences when it comes time for judgment." That's adorable, Davis pretending as if she wasn't judging them already. She'll get more time to make her holy case when she appears Thursday before a U.S. district judge for a possible contempt citation and fine (no one's asking her to be put in jail. Let's not make this nutzoid evangelical more of a martyr to the Jesus fellaters bobbing on the bearded knob for her cause).

If you don't get it, let's make it clear: This is an attempt to enact fundamentalist Christianity as law. It is an attempt to make religious doctrine take the place of secular legal decisions. It is, in theory and operation, no different than the Shariah law that cowardly conservatives fear will overtake the nation, with Muslim Obama as chief mullah or some such shit. You can say you prefer your flavor, but it's still motherfuckin' ice cream. (Note: The Rude Pundit really wants some ice cream.)

Oh, we'll have the usual parade of suspects, of craven politicians leaping to Davis's defense, of talk radio dogs woofing away to their anus-sniffing audience. You know, though, the Rude Pundit may not understand the desire to avoid the stink eye of God, but he knows where inspiration for such fuckery comes from.

The Republican Party is made up of fundamentalists of one type or another now. If your only stance on any issue is "My way or not at all," if you're going to threaten to shut down the working of the government because you don't like Planned Parenthood or you need answers on Benghazi or you need to represent for your state's dead president, then why wouldn't someone think it's fine to stop the gears of local government to please their angry gods.

Taking Donald Trump Seriously (Or Not)

Okay, fine, so we're supposed to pretend to take Donald Trump seriously and continue to indulge this fantasy so narcissistic that Kanye West has called him to take that shit down a notch. Well, then, let's do it. Let's say that Trump actually has proposals worthy of consideration beyond "Are you fucking kidding?" If you go to his website and click on "issues," there is still only one: immigration reform. That's it.

And if you read it, you'll see that Trump fully believes (or doesn't - it's hard to tell what shit he actually believes and what shit is just expediency for the moment) that "solving" the problem of undocumented workers will solve pretty much every other problem in the country, from terrorism to poverty. It's so fuckin' miraculous that no one ever thought before to scapegoat one group and order their purging. It cures all that ails a nation, no?

Beyond actual, seriously-stated proposals like that we should economically sanction and diplomatically isolate Mexico until that nation pays for a 2000 mile border wall, what's most fascinating are the links to articles that make up the "research" that's gone into the plan. No less than half a dozen times, Trump cites the conservative news port-a-potty, Breitbart, which means either he's paying good money in exchange for blow jobs and clicks or he just doesn't give a shit what his sources are.

'Cause, see, for example, Trump offers the kind of proposal makes stupid people smile stupidly because they think it's common sense: "Use the monies saved on expensive refugee programs to help place American children without parents in safer homes and communities, and to improve community safety in high crime neighborhoods in the United States." And he links to two Breitbart articles. For "high crime neighborhoods," he sends us not to crime statistics or even a report of criminality. No, we get to click over to an article that is a summary of a caller to Laura Ingraham's radio ear bleeder. No shit, it's a woman claming to be black and living in Baltimore who says she wants asylum from crime in her neighborhood, which may well be true, except if you're passing it off as news, you motherfucking confirm that it is a real person with a real opinion and not some fucknut who wants to hear their bullshit on the radio. But for a presidential candidate to use that as a demonstration of the effects of high crime rates is laughably absurd, if we still had the capacity to find all this absurd anymore.

On it goes. Another link is to a Breitbart article that is, shit you not, a reprint of an abstract of a study, along with the first paragraph of the introduction. In other words, the article's "writer" didn't even bother to read the fucking study about how immigrant workers affect native workers in the United States. One other frightening thing comes out of looking at Trump's "research." Most of these articles are about the effects of documented and undocumented workers. In other words, it's not just an attack on "illegals." It's an attack on immigrants coming here and taking our jobs or some such fucked-up lie.

This isn't an indictment of Breitbart. If you go to the circus, expect to see heaps of elephant dung. But it is an indictment of Trump, who doesn't give a fuck who his "experts" are. You been on TV saying shit Trump likes? You're hired. Who the fuck cares if you're associated with white supremacists. And it's an indictment of the knuckle-dragging yahoos and racist opportunists who see in Trump their idiot god who says what they really want said.

Sure, sure, we can pretend that these are serious proposals. But if we do, we have to seriously contend with the hatred from which they spring and the hatred that they provoke. We have to seriously understand that a large contingent of the Republican Party is no longer hiding its racist anger. Instead, it's out in the open. We thought that would make it less frightening, if we could see its face and hear its awful words.

It doesn't.

Not a Katrina Anniversary Post

"I don't wanna write about that. I'm tired of thinking about it," said one of the Rude Pundit's New Orleans friends when he asked the woman to post on this here blog about the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the storm that caused the levees in New Orleans to break, allowing cataclysmic, murderous floods to ravage that place and many others. "Why does it matter that it's been ten years? Every day is another anniversary." Her family had lost three or four houses between all the members. She lived a damn nightmare.

He reached out to another buddy, an old friend, a writer and photographer, who responded, "I'm just keeping my head low and not following it at all. It makes me crazy." He meant that it depressed the hell out of him, and it was hard to blame him. He had been chased out of his home by the storm and came back to help rebuild the town.

The Rude Pundit tried several times this week to write something, but he found that he couldn't articulate what he was feeling. New Orleans isn't back to its old self. That doesn't exist anymore. What does exist is, to a large extent, "New Orleans," a pretty authentic imitation of the place, but just off enough that, if you knew it before, you know it's far, far different. The town is still one of his favorite places in the whole country, the whole world, so maybe when you love something so truly, so tragically, it becomes hard to catalog the good and bad ways it has healed after a near-death experience.

He's going to try again to come up with something worth saying, something about remembering how a Republican administration let the city drown and rot, about how it ripped the bandage of race relations off and we're dealing with the bleeding to this day, about how it demonstrated that neglect of infrastructure is a crime, about how the culture is still amazing but missing so many elements that made it whole, about how the school "miracle" is, to a large extent, smoke and mirrors, about how poverty has become far worse while property values skyrocket. Maybe he'll be able to articulate something. Or maybe he'll just pass on this one.

Or perhaps he'll wait until he returns to New Orleans in December, as he generally does, as he did December 2005, when the Rude Pundit and the Rude Brother took a drive through the circles of Hell, from the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain through St. Bernard Parish and into the Lower Ninth Ward, to see the destruction first hand.

You can read those posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. There are many, many photos, interviews, and on-the-ground reporting, including a view of the barge that ended up beached in the middle of the Lower Ninth.

Back then, he wrote, "The resurrection of New Orleans seems as if it's calculated to create a Disneyfied version of itself, where only the parts that matter to outsiders are developed, those that can be made into simulacra of the real thing." For a great deal of the city, that is true. And for many, certainly for outsiders, that is good enough. It might be time to let the old city go and grapple with what comes next.

Bobby Jindal to Obama: Don't Politicize the Katrina Anniversary Unless It's Politics We Like

Sometimes, it's the easiest thing in the world to figure out just how dumb a person is. For instance, here are two sentences from a letter from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the world saddest animated giraffe, to President Barack Obama regarding Obama's visit to New Orleans today to mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Jindal didn't want Obama to mention climate change:

"While you and others may be of the opinion that we can legislate away hurricanes with higher taxes, business regulations and EPA power grabs, that is not a view shared by many Louisianians.

"I would ask you to respect this important time of remembrance by not inserting the divisive political agenda of liberal environmental activism."

Can you wrap your head around that without it exploding? After attacking the President politically, Jindal asks Obama not to bring up something "political." You got that? Put aside for a moment that bringing up something that pretty much every scientist accepts as fact isn't exactly "political," how the hell do you take two completely contradictory sides without getting whiplash? It's like Jindal sucker punched Obama and then said, "I ask you not to throw punches because that'd be mean." That's not just dumb. It's pathologically, insistently stupid.

Jindal continues, "Furthermore, the people of Louisiana have already agreed upon a pragmatic and bipartisan approach to preventing and mitigating the damage of future weather systems." Yeah, sure (although the usefulness of that plan has far less support than the reality of climate change), but who exactly is financing all the plans? It sure as shit ain't broke-ass Louisiana. Oh, right, it's funded by the billions of dollars that came from the federal government.

In other words, who the fuck cares what Bobby Jindal wants said?

Towards the end of his letter, which is about as a effective as a flea fart in a hurricane, Jindal smirks, "Partisan politics from Washington, D.C. are unwelcome in Louisiana at the best of times. This week it would be met with nothing but derision."

Huh. Before his speech today, Obama had given an interview to WWL-TV where he said, "We can build great levees. We can restore wetlands. But ultimately, what we also have to do is make sure that we don't continue to see ocean levels rise, oceans getting warmer, storms getting stronger." And yet all the people at his speech didn't react with derision, unless hugs and tears are now an indication of contempt.

That's because the people of New Orleans know better than Bobby Jindal what the deal is. They know that without any real action on climate change, the city is fucked beyond fucked, and all the mitigation and restoration plans will mean jackshit. Yeah, that mighty plan Jindal touted was based on "low-balled" estimates of the effects of climate change when the what's really predicted to happen is that shit's gonna get drowned by, perhaps, 2062. Says one scientist, what we do about carbon emissions in the next 30 years "will determine whether New Orleans is inhabitable during the 22nd Century."

But let's not taint the whole memorial with politics. It'd be unseemly.

Not Giving a Shit About the Clinton Email "Scandal"

There's a sentence from a Los Angeles Times column titled, "Why Clinton's email problem won't go away" that's so ironic and so galling that it ought to be put on a poster in every media outlet. Here it is: "It's difficult to avoid the suspicion that Clinton, after the scandals that rocked her husband's presidency during the 1990s, simply did not want to leave behind a paper trail (or e-trail)."

Context is everything, dear children, and the writer, John Schindler (a dick pic-sending right wing assmunch), is leaving out a huge part of the story. See, all those "scandals," Travelgate and Filegate and Whitewater, were utter bullshit. They were worthless wastes of time and money by Republicans (and cowardly Democrats), and their only purpose was to isolate, degrade, and destroy the presidency of Bill Clinton, that hick punk who thought he could just saunter in and lead the nation. If they also took down his bitch wife who thought she was smart enough to solve the health care crisis, all the better. If not them, then any collateral damage of their friends and associates was just dandy.

The only thing that approached an actual, real "scandal" was Clinton lying under oath about getting blowjobs and cigar-banging an intern in the Oval Office. That came out of the Whitewater investigation and it had jackshit to do with the presumably shady land deal in Arkansas. The entire impeachment saga was because of a tangential question and, ultimately, it was the same giant trash pile that every other fake "scandal" was.

While most of the public didn't give a single fuck about the Clinton scandals, the Republican base and the party's donors loved it. They gobbled it down like it was jizz from Jesus's own dick. And conservatives across the country pretended that the United States was being victimized by the immoral bimbo fucker and his castrating spouse. God, how they made bank on it all, how evangelicals lied openly about the sinful, adulterous, murdering, raping, drug-using Clintons. It was a goddamned carnival of molesting clowns and shiv-wielding carnies. And press outlets just jumped on the rickety scandal roller coaster because the GOP had bitch-slapped them into believing the "liberal media" canard. "We'll show you how we're not liberals," they announced. "Please, tell us more about missing Rose Law Firm documents and we'll act as if the fate of the entire motherfucking republic depends on it."

We have been a pathetic fucking country for a very long time.

Which gets us to the scandal du jour, the inevitable digging up of something, anything, to sew onto Hillary Clinton's clothes. The scarlet "B" for Benghazi wasn't holding. But, oh, happy fortune, the bullshit investigation yielded the info on the private email server, and the Clinton Industrial Complex went back into high gear. Let's get the "E" out there.

When the Rude Pundit first heard of the private email server issue, his initial thought was "Oh, c'mon" because he knew what was coming. But the one part that's been left out of the story of why Clinton used the home server (which was not fucking against the law) for her State Department emails when she was Secretary of State is the complicity of the Republican Party and the media in making Clinton so paranoid that she felt she had to do so.

Of course, she was going to do anything to keep her communications out of the public eye. Of course, she was going to make life complicated for any congressional investigations. Why the fuck wouldn't she? What the hell did she get the first time around? A discussion about her husband's dick on the floor of the House of Representatives. An accusation that she had a friend murdered. Why wouldn't she just say, "Go fuck yourselves"? In fact, she should have said that at the beginning of this. She should have said, "Well, no shit I used my own server."

Frankly, Hillary Clinton's pretty goddamn fearless to be putting herself through what was going to be an inevitable slog through the GOP fake scandal swamp.

Note: None of this excuses Clinton if she committed any real crimes (and not just violating the "spirit" of the law, which everyone does every day in many, many ways without being dragged through piles of dog shit for it). But, so far, sorry, she hasn't. Offering unsatisfactory explanations for one's actions is not illegal.

Oh, Shut the Fuck Up, Roger Ailes

Throbbing anthropomorphic hemorrhoid Roger Ailes, Fox "news" chair, stepped up like a sweaty ogre in Galahad's tight armor to defend his woman, sneermistress Megyn Kelly, from the snotty tweets of the walking wart, Donald Trump. "Apologize!" the hemorrhoid demanded of the wart. "Stop saying mean things about our good and noble and true journalette." The girlfolk need a champion. They can't be expected to risk mussing their hair, Ailes believes.

"Suck it," replied the wart. "Suck my bald balls and lick my tasty taint." We shall have to see which pustule will win this war. Either way, we end up sticky and vomiting.

You know, though, for running a network that spends a decent percentage of spring covering the "horrors" of Spring Break in Florida as an excuse to show abs and tits, Ailes is mighty uppity about the respectability of his "news" hosts.

Fox "news" can dish it out - attempting to undermine, attack, and smear every so-called "liberal" media figure. But it can't take it.

Mostly, Roger Ailes should just shut the fuck up. He should shut the fuck up because the odious Megyn Kelly can probably handle Trump herself. Frankly, Ailes's defense of her is far more sexist than anything Trump has said. And he should shut the fuck up because everyone knows that his outrage is merely fodder for more ratings. What's better than Trump snarling at Fox? Fox snarling back. Everyone gets the coverage then.

Kelly is the Fox woman of the moment. When he's done with her, Ailes can sit, pantsless, behind his desk and buzz his secretary to order, "Bring me another blonde. This one's gone slack."

What Country Are GOP Candidates Talking About?

Listening to the Republicans running for president, you'd think that we live in a blight-ridden hellscape filled with Mexican rapists taking our jobs by shooting us all to death while breeding anchor babies, crazy Muslims trying to behead Christians on street corners while atheist liberals applaud their devotion to their culture, and tyrannical Hillary Clinton flouting email rules while personally murdering Americans in Benghazi with Planned Parenthood fetus parts, not to mention the Iranian nukes ready to rain down on us at any second (or ten years from now, whichever comes first), China dragging us into the sea of financial ruin while loaning us more money, families falling to pieces because Mom says she's always been a man and the kids are on Obamacare, and the military ready to take away everyone's guns before forcing us all to give up our coal and gas-burning ways to please the so-called "scientists" who think they're so smart. And it's all because that asshole Barack Obama is too weak, like that fucking pussy Jimmy Carter, because he refuses to bomb the shit out of any countries that fuck with us.

There's Jeb Bush, who is haunted by Islamic extremism (and Donald Trump), telling us, "The reality is that radical Islam has been spreading like a pandemic – across the Middle East, throughout Africa and to parts of Asia, even in the nations of the West, finding recruits in Europe and the United States...Who can seriously argue that America and our friends are safer today than in 2009, when the President and Secretary Clinton – the storied ‘team of rivals’ – took office? So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers." (He didn't mention his brother at all in this speech, by the way. And George Bush is pretty much the reason we have ISIS in the first place.)

There's Ted Cruz screeching in that cartoon parrot voice of his at a "Rally for Religious Liberty" in Des Moines, "There is a war on faith in America today, in our lifetime. Did we ever imagine that in the land of the free and home of the brave, we would be witnessing our government persecute its citizens for their faith?...You have endured the pain, endured the attacks, endured the hatred, that precisely put you where you are here today...You want to know what this election is about? We’re one justice away from the Supreme Court saying every image of God shall be torn down.”

There's Ben Carson, talking about the use of missiles to blow up shit along the border with Mexico: "[I]t's possible that a drone could be used to destroy the caves that are utilized to hide people. Those need to be gotten rid of...Those caves are very evident. And I hope you have some of the sheriffs in. They can show you the pictures. They can show you what is going on there. We are not getting support from the federal government to deal with these people. They're being outgunned. You know, 56 percent of that border is not under our control."

Fuckin' caves? We gotta worry about caves filled with Mexicans now? (He probably meant "tunnel," but then you're getting caught up in "words" having "meaning," as Carson might complain.)

This could go on. Hell, any speech by any candidate, Trump or Christie, Huckabee or Jimmy Ballsucker or whoever the fuck else is running. They all paint a picture of a nation that is teetering, just barely hanging on, before falling into an abyss.

Shit's gonna kill us. Shit's gonna get to us somehow and kill us. That much is sure. But chances are that you will die a thousand times from weather caused by climate change or unsafe food or environmental poisons or guns you own yourself than you will be affected in any way by ISIS or Mexican rapists. But the GOP won't talk about that. They won't talk about the real denial of rights, like the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement or the militarization of the police or sentencing laws or detention of immigrants, including the dreaded Mexicans (most of whom are not, in fact, interested in raping Donald Trump), people who suffer far more than a baker who won't bake a gay cake.

The Republicans will talk endlessly about this fake America. Because if they talk about the real one, they'll have to confront the real problems, not the made-up shit that pinches the anger and rage nerve in their Neanderthal voters.

Shaun King and the Need to Discredit Black Lives Matter

Anyone who comes from south Louisiana knew the truth immediately (if they were being honest): Of course, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King is bi-racial. Of course, he could claim that he's black. The Rude Pundit grew up around Creoles of color in his city on the bayous. Every day, at school, at the mall, in restaurants, in bars, he saw people who looked like King: light-skinned (frankly, the white Cajun shrimpers had darker skin from baking in the sun), but with hair that looked, for lack of a better word, "black." Hell, one of his close friends had the same short buzzcut and pencil mustache that King sports. When the right had a blogasm over allegations that King was lying about his race, about his life story, the Rude Pundit is sure that many, many people in Louisiana thought, like him, "The fuck? Dude's black."

It's always pathetic when a parade of assholes attacks someone online, whether for being a woman who says women should be treated equally or for shooting a lion. It's doubly so when those assholes base their attack on lies, propagated by the pestilent fucknuts who run Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and the Blaze. Snopes has as good a summary of the whole circle jerk of fake allegations and unsourced rumors against King. It's a sad litany of nonsense.

King's eloquent response to his critics that reveals his parentage ought to put it to rest. It won't, though. Angry mobs are not noted for its ability to be reasoned with. Breitbart is already out with a story claiming that King actually confirms their allegations. That's not worth a head-slap. It's worth beating your head against a wall until you're unconscious from the assault of stupidity.

Obviously, this isn't about King. It's a way to discredit King's personal cause, police brutality against African Americans, and to destroy Black Lives Matter, which is having a real impact on the civil rights conversation in our endless presidential campaign season. It's the conservative way: make people associate an organization with something awful, even if that awful thing is completely false, and you can more easily wreck something you don't like, especially when that awful thing goes into the mainstream press. See what happened to ACORN? See what's happening to Planned Parenthood? Now Black Lives Matter is in the right-wing shit-flinging path.

Because, see, as Republicans are forced to respond to Black Lives Matter, the organization is validated as a real force, and that means its issues will have to be discussed. And once its issues are discussed, then solutions will have to be proposed (whether or not those solutions occur).

But the other reason Black Lives Matter needs to be squelched and silenced by the right is much simpler, much more mathematical. See, without Barack Obama running, Republicans must figure that the black vote would go down, which gives the GOP a better shot nationally. If Black Lives Matter keeps its momentum, that could easily carry into the general election next year and bring out black voters, which spells pretty quick doom for Republicans.

Yeah, the right could instead attempt to address the very real issues of violence, poverty, and lack of opportunity for African Americans. But it's just easier to try to silence them.

Donald Trump Is a Dumb, Lying Piece of Shit, So He'll Probably Be President

Someone had better find out which of his mistresses Donald Trump forced to get an abortion, and they'd better find that out soon, because right now, Trump is no longer the GOP's Frankenstein monster. He's its Godzilla. Let Mexico cower under his green balls as the border burns.

Because, see, it doesn't matter if Donald Trump is a fucking idiot. In fact, in his CNN interview with Chris "The Less Evolved" Cuomo yesterday, Trump may as well have answered a question on how he gets his foreign policy information with "I sit on the toilet and, when I'm done having the greatest shit ever, really, it was something, you wish you could shit that way, I watch my gold-plated TV and learn everything I need to know."

Actually, take the bathroom out of the equation (even though you know it's part of it), and that's pretty much what he said:  "I watch your show. And I watch other shows. And you have the best channels, the best everything...In all fairness, you know, what do I know? I'm a man that made a great fortune. I'm going to make our country rich and I'm going to make our great, but you know what, you do not get me the right generals and I'll see four, five generals. I'll see all sorts of people...I'll even stoop down the colonel stuff. You go all over the place. But you have a lot of different people and so are other shows and they're really good people. And I watched that and read the Times. And I read the Wall Street Journal. I know we have a lot of other news page. And I read magazines specially Time magazine this week because I'm on the cover. OK. So I specially will look at it. But I read magazines and I read other things. Yeah, sure I need a team but, you know, by the time you get to a problem, you know, we're talking a long ways away, it's going to be changed. You can have a whole different set of -- I mean different countries will be run by different people in all fairness."

You might think, "Surely, he's not going to double down on that, right?" You are not an idiot. Donald Trump is a fucking idiot who doesn't ever need to give a damn who tells him he's a fucking idiot. So Donald Trump can say, and mean, "I watched all of the shows, you get the best people, you know, because even the generals want to be on television, right or they're retired generals in many cases but I see a lot of good things by watching your show and other shows. And it's really nothing that we left that or scoff that...and you know what I do is when I watched without naming names but when I watched your different shows and you show a particular you're very in to this but when I watched the different shows, there were certain people that I really think are terrific that I can do better by watching and seeing and reading in the times. And then I know who I maybe want to speak to more so because you're not going to meet with 400 different people. So I do learn a lot by watching and I do learn a lot by reading the various newspapers and magazines and everything else and I really find it to be a fascinating subject."

Donald Trump is George W. Bush with no fucks to give. And people are lappin' up his brain pissings like it's fine champagne because we've degraded leadership to relatability. People relate to Donald Trump because he talks dumb like they do, and we think talking dumb is talking straight. It's not. It's just dumb. They problem is that dumb people are too fucking dumb to know that. Can't talk in real sentences? That's relatable. Doesn't need to talk to experts who aren't on TV? Fuck, yeah, that's relatable. Much better than that prissy Negro, Barack Obama. Christ, Trump is the candidate from Breitbart.

Trump is also a fuckin' liar. Here's what he told Cuomo about an award he received: "I was given the biggest award by the marines the other day. It's just about one of the biggest civilian awards by the marines the other day. I was with all of the marines. I was with the head of the Joint, the new head of the Joint Chief of Staffs. He's a very impressive guy at the Waldorf, Missouri the other nigh. I was given, you know, one of their most distinguished awards which is a great honor for me."

Turns out that Trump was given a bullshit award because he donates a shit-ton of money to a charity called "the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation." It gives college scholarships to the children of Marines and federal law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. It's not even associated with the Marine Corps. It's a civilian organization. Of course it was a civilian award. Trump's either inflating the honor to give him some military street cred or he didn't even know what it was.

Fuck it, though. Who doesn't mix up the awards they've gotten for the $100,000 checks they write? Just like regular people.

Tweets of the Damned: Conservative Slap Fight Gets Awesome, Mentions Coulter and "Anal"

Follow this story. It ends with anal:

So this guy, Rick Wilson, GOP consultant, commentator, what the fuck ever, went on CNN to say that the 25% of Republicans who support Donald Trump are knuckle-dragging troglodytes who shit in ditches and call it gold. Or words to that effect. 

Conservative spooge sock John Nolte writes about it on Breitbart (motto: "Andrew Breitbart may have been a coke-snorting monster, but he sure was a coke-snorting monster"), and, predictably, the Breitbart minions - the trolls and goblins and lepers and syphilitics  who make up their Comments section - go on the attack and, predictably, take it too far, not only referring to Wilson as a "jewfag," but threatening to rape his daughter. 

Wilson, understandably upset at the threat that women on the internet deal with every day (except it's towards his daughter and not him because, ew, rape a dude? That's so gay), lashed out at the aforementioned spooge sock. They even got John Podhoretz and Ann Coulter involved because, at this point, this has become an amazing clusterfuck of wretchedness, like a ball of spiders floating in open sewage. You don't want to help them because fuck that. Let them all drown in shit. By the end of the day Monday, Wilson had backed off attacking Nolte because, hey, no one wants anyone raped. 

"But, wait," you may say, "you promised us anal." The Rude Pundit did, so bend over while he delivers with the following Twitter exchange:

Ann Coulter jumps in to mock the threat of rape and Wilson counters with his, c'mon, hilarious comeback, calling Coulter a hooker. (For the record, anal always costs more.)  There are so many dicks and cunts involved in this story that it's pretty much a blood orgy for the soul of the conservative movement.

Wilson later deleted the tweet because everyone knows that Coulter's anus is lined with teeth-like calluses. 

While the dissension on the left has to do with how Black Lives Matter confronts Democratic candidates, the dissension on the right is a sad showdown between the Barking Mad and the Merely Insane. Lock 'em in a room. Whatever happens then, everyone else wins.

Your Obligatory Presidential Campaign Fellatio Photo: Jeb Bush Edition

Because no presidential campaign season is complete without at least one photo of a candidate deep-throating tube-shaped "food" in a corn condom, here is Jeb Bush going down on a deep-fried Snickers at the Iowa State Fair:

The amount of time candidates spend in the fields of the shit kickers in Iowa is inversely proportionate to how much of a fuck we should give about Iowa's caucus. But that won't stop anyone from pandering by engorging pig balls on a stick or rectally-inserted beer-battered pickles or whatever the fuck Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton have to pretend to enjoy.

From another angle, it looks like JEB! is gagging on the down home treat:

An adviser is telling him, "You swallow that shit, bitch. Lap up every drop." That's how democracy happens in this degrading century.

Mike Huckabee Loves Fetuses, Not Women

In some ways, it's a sad waste of time to write about Mike Huckabee, currently running for the GOP nomination for president. He doesn't have a snowball's chance in global warming of winning. His whole campaign reeks of self-promotion to keep Huckabee, Inc. in business for another few years. You can boil down his entire reason for running to a slogan: "Mike Huckabee: Because Who Doesn't Want a Cruel Prick Who Sounds Like a Backwoods Ass Rapist for President?"

Speaking of rape, Huckabee is one of several Republican yahoos running who don't think there should be any exemptions for rape victims when it comes to abortion. Huckabee was asked point blank on CNN about whether or not a 10-year-old rape victim who got pregnant should be able to get an abortion. You gotta give Huckabee credit: When you're a motherfucker, you're a motherfucker all the way:

"I think what we have to do, Dana [Bash], is remember that creating one problem that is horrible -- horrible -- I mean, let nobody be misled. A 10 year-old girl being raped is horrible. But does it solve a problem by taking the life of an innocent child? And that's really the issue."

Putting aside that, while the now-11 year-old girl in Paraguay gave birth by cesarean section, apparently without immediate complications (except for that whole being raped by her stepfather, going through with the pregnancy, and giving birth at 11, for fuck's sake), it was likely that the pre-teen would have extensive issues. Why did her health not matter? Why did her ability to have a life after being raped not matter? Huckabee made a judgment: the fetus was more important than the child who carried it.

Then Huckabee went to the scoundrel's argument about abortion. Hey, you might be aborting a Superman/Mother Theresa hybrid who will cure cancer and save a busload of children from falling off a bridge. "I know people. I worked for a man for several years, James Robison, who was the result of a rape. His mother went to three doctors in Houston, Texas, in 1943, begged doctors to abort the baby. None of them would do it," Huckabee explained. "They all refused. Today, his organization feeds, cares for, and brings living capacity for water to hundreds of thousands of people across the world. That would never have happened, Dana."

The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll say it again: That's goddamned nonsense. There's also a chance that rape kid could grow up to be Ted Bundy. The possibility that a potentially aborted fetus will grow up to be the world's savior is a fantasy at best, a deliberate, manipulative, bullshit lie at worst. But Huckabee was a TV preacher once, and lying comes easy to a man who looked into poor people's eyes and told them to give him money because he can help them live on a cloud for eternity after they die.

But Huckabee wasn't done. "[L]et's not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life. And I always think we sometimes miss the fact that, when an abortion happens, there are two victims. One is the child. The other is that birth mother, who often will go through extraordinary guilt years later, when she begins to think through the -- what happened with the baby, with her." Except the woman is not a victim. She's a patient who made a choice and is almost guaranteed to live her life satisfied, even happy with that choice. Again and again, Huckabee discounts the agency of women in favor of making them baby-shitting machines.

Finally, Huckabee says the most easily disproved thing: "I just come down on the side that life is precious, every life has worth and value. I don't think we discount the intrinsic worth of any human being. And I don't know where else to go with it, but just to be consistent and say, if life matters and then that's a person, then every life matters." No, every person is not precious. Every life doesn't matter. Everyone doesn't get a trophy for being born, let alone just being conceived. See Ted Bundy remark above for proof.

What we're witnessing is a snake oil salesman talkin' down to the rubes and yokels off the back of his pick-up truck, a charlatan who wants you to know that life is precious as long as men are controlling the lives of women.

Brief Beach Not Blogging

On a plane, seated next to a 20 year-old with a "Reagan/Bush '84" shirt. The Rude Pundit asked if it was ironic.

"No," he said. "We need a president like Reagan."

"You mean decayed?" 

We will probably not speak for the rest of the flight. 

Brief Beach Blogging: Tweets Of the Damned (Debbie Schlussel Edition)

(The Rude Pundit is on the last night of his beach time, eating steamed shrimp and washing it down with Pacifico, a fine choice to help fall into the torpidity of the evenings. But he's got time for a quickie with you.)

The Rude Pundit isn't 100% sure what a Debbie Schlussel is or what she does, so let's just say she's another goddamned conservative word-puker who hates Obama, jizzes for Israel, and doesn't give a shit who has spent his life trying to make the lives of the poor around the world just a little bit better.

Yeah, Jimmy Carter has advanced cancer. At 90, it likely means he's not long for this world. On principle, the Rude Pundit doesn't have a problem with mocking the dying or the dead. He's certainly done his share.  And while it seems a bit weird to call Carter a "cancer" for building houses for people, as well as eliminating diseases that have devastated third-world nations, if that's what floats your rickety boat on your river of shit, fine.

But at least be interesting about it. Or clever. Or nuanced. Or anything other than just thuddingly, dully, dumbly insulting for the sake of insult and an idiotic hashtag.

Brief Beach Blogging: Even Gun Nuts Think the Oath Keepers Should Stay the Hell Away from Ferguson

(The Rude Pundit is nearing the end of his beach adventures, like diving near a sea cave to look at beasties today, but is still managing to jam in a bloggy bit or two.)

You may have seen the photos from the protests underway in Ferguson, Missouri, for the first anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown. You might have seen the four white guys who are distinctly not cops but look like dudes who name themselves things like "Shotgun Jake" and "Phil the Patriot." They are members of the Oath Keepers, a bunch of bizarro fucknuts who like to walk around with their guns hanging out to remind everyone they love America more than anyone, especially you, you fuckin' commie Negroes.

The quartet of gun ghouls claims they are there to protect "reporters" from Infowars, a bunch of bizarro fucknuts led by Alex Jones who never met a conspiracy theory they wouldn't deep throat. Which would still be creepy and unnecessarily confrontational, but is even more so because Infowars told Reuters, "Yeah, no, fuck these guys. Not with us."

Faster than you can say, "Um, what would happen if a bunch of open-carrying black men said they were there to defend a BET reporter?" gun nuts jumped in to add their voices to the "Whoa, whoa, there, Shooty" opposition to the Oath Keepers' presence in Ferguson.  At the sexy-named, ultra-pro-gun site Bearing Arms, Bob Owens writes, "They interjected themselves into a community where they were neither wanted nor requested, and raised tensions instead of assuaging them."

He quotes another gun-lovin' blog, Gun Free Zone (ha, it's facetious, get it?), "Go away.  I don’t care if you really were a Ranger or if you only played one online, you are fanning the flames and making the rest of us look bad.  And before you call me a hypocrite, the Koreans on the rooftops during the LA Riots were defending their business, not patrolling the streets looking like a Blackwater contractor guarding a VIP in the Green Zone.  Go home and get out of the spotlight.  I don’t want to lose my AR because you didn’t know when to leave yours locked in the safe."

Damn. Sometimes gun-fellatin' paranoia can work in your favor. Who'd've thought?

Brief Beach Blogging: That Time Megyn Kelly Made It Her Mission to Take Down Sandra Fluke

(The Rude Pundit is on a beach vacation, squeezing in a bit of blogging in-between burning his shoulders, swimming near a giant ray, and dolphin watching.)

You remember Sandra Fluke? It wasn't that long ago, 2012, when she spoke before a Democratic congressional committee on the bullshit of conscience clauses and the nonsense of businesses and colleges trying not to cover birth control in their prescription drug health plans. She was viciously attacked on the right as a "slut" who just wanted to fuck like crazy, despite the fact that what she was saying was that poor women need to have contraception covered, sometimes for things that don't even involve fucking.

You know who was right down in the trenches of the war on Sandra Fluke? Fuckin' Megyn Kelly, that's who. The conservative "feminist" we're supposed to defend now because Donald Trump said some bitchy things about her couldn't get enough of attacking Fluke. Indeed, you could make a case that it was Kelly's targeting of Fluke that pleasured Roger Ailes and got her the primetime slot she's in now.

For instance, on The O'Reilly Factor, March 8, 2012, Kelly said, "Ms. Fluke would have the world believe that she is somehow a victim because she is at Georgetown Law School and is not getting her contraception paid for by the law school."

Kelly couldn't get enough of trying to lash out at Fluke, indulging slut-shamers and snarking the shit out of Fluke, proudly declaring that her daytime show was the first to go after the Georgetown graduate. Even recently, Kelly joined in a hategasm with Ann Coulter over President Obama calling Sandra Fluke when she was being attacked but not the family of a murdered woman.  

So, you know, you're gonna have to count the Rude Pundit out of the whole "we should support Megyn Kelly" thing. It's not like she'd lift a goddamn finger for a woman on the left under fire from asshole misogynists. Hell, she'd likely just pile on.