Hey, everyone, there's been another school shooting, this time at Santa Fe High School, right near I-45, southeast of Houston, on the way to Galveston. You can get there by taking the same exit you used to take to get to the Mall of the Mainland, which is now a space for a church, a gym, and other assorted stuff.
And so it's time to do the school-shooting roundelay, the slow dance that is a closed circle of people where everyone moves a bit but the circle never goes anywhere.
We're still in the "we're shocked and appalled" step now, while we still learn how many are dead and injured. The count is up to 10 fatalities now. And we're still learning about the weapons involved. One officer at the scene said the assailant went into Santa Fe High with "an AR-15-style rifle, a pistol, a shotgun, and pipe bombs," leaving "a bloody mess in the school."
The horror will inevitably combine with the "thoughts and prayers" step, which will be followed by the "shooter is a socialist Bernie-lover" turn until it becomes the "oh, wait, nope, he's another right-wing asshole" twist, which will be followed by the "anger and outrage against guns" step, accompanied by the "we need new gun laws" kick, which is followed quickly by the "angry backlash against the anger and outrage" twirl with a "too soon to talk about it" flourish, accompanied by the "2nd Amendment is more important than lives" head nod, the "law-abiding gun owners" saunter, and the "you don't know what an assault rifle is, libtard" bow, which is followed by the "we need action" foot stomp and the "mental illness" waist thrust, which is followed by the "don't worry, gun nuts, we're not touching your precious murder tools" final step. Eventually, the dance will be complete, everyone will end up where they began, and most, but not all, will leave to go to their regular lives, while others will stay behind and wonder why no one will let them change from a roundelay to a two-step, where at least you can end up in a new place on the dance floor.
There is nothing left to say. We've said it all before. The vast, vast majority of the nation knows what needs to be done, but we are hostages of the National Rifle Association and their army of paranoid morons who can't comprehend why we're all not as batshit paranoid as they are.
One student from Santa Fe High was interviewed by a local news reporter. When the girl was asked if she thought a shooting would never happen at her school, she answered, sadly, wisely, with the kind of resignation no young teen should ever have to muster, "No. It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always felt it would eventually happen here, too." We (and when I say, "We," I mean, "We," as in you, me, everyone) have failed to protect our kids. We have failed as a country.
By the way, the district's member of Congress, Republican Randy Weber, has an "A" from the NRA for his pro-gun votes.
All the way on the other side of Texas, in El Paso, an elementary school was briefly closed because yesterday, after school was over, a box of ammunition fell from a military helicopter. It went through the roof of Parkland Elementary and caused a partial power outage. Which means that the flight path of helicopters carrying live ammo from Fort Bliss is over a school. In West Texas, where there is so much space that you could travel for hours without seeing a person. That's how much our kids mean to us. Not even enough to go around them with our official death machines.
We'll dance again. And again. Until the roundelay becomes a danse macabre, accompanying more and more of us to our end.
(Update: It appears shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis did not have had the AR-15 style rifle. Obviously, more will come out as we go along. It's all part of this dance.)
Friday, May 18, 2018
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
What Did That Dumb Orange Motherfucker Say Now? (California-Bashing Edition)
So today we learned that our goddamn president, Donald Trump, the personification of a toxic hippo shit, had previously lied on his financial disclosure statements about payments to Michael Cohen and had likely known about the meeting between obvious serial killer Jared Kushner, desperate-for-Daddy's-approval Donald Trump, Jr., and some assorted Russians and other skeevy fucks. It's not that we didn't really already know this, that Trump obviously was paying back Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money and that no-shit, of course he knew what Russia was offering. But it's always good to have, you know, proof, or at least some kind of damn evidence that can lead to proof.
We also already knew that Trump is a racist shitheel who never misses an opportunity to be a prick to immigrants or his political opponents. And he got that opportunity in spades today with a roundtable, the sole purpose of which was to talk shit about Democrats and California, a state with a booming economy and high taxes on the wealthy that puts a lie to everything Republicans believe. The theme was that the Golden State is a "sanctuary state," just letting wild gangs of immigrants rape and pillage as they rampage across the land, leaving behind a scorched hellscape littered with bodies. You know, the apocalyptic torture porn that gets the right all hard, wet, and ready to fuck.
Trump was a blithering cockhole from the start, lying with such hyperbolic abandon that it was like someone asked him how much he's worth: "California’s law provides safe harbor to some of the most vicious and violent offenders on Earth, like MS-13 gang members putting innocent men, women, and children at the mercy of these sadistic criminals. But we’re moving them out of this country by the thousands. MS-13, we’re grabbing them by the thousands and we’re getting them out." No, we're not. About 1200 MS-13 members have been arrested since Trump started shitting in the White House. Not all of them were deported. So thousands? Fuck no.
Never one to shy from exploiting the gory details of a story in order to turn every meeting into pure propaganda, Trump regaled the group of officials from California and DC by saying, "We all remember the tragic case of Marilyn Pharis who was murdered by an illegal immigrant who had been arrested six times prior to breaking into Marilyn’s home, raping her and savagely beating her to death with a hammer." It's a horrible act, and if you don't remember it, that's because it happened in 2015. Because of delays, the trial just got going last month. And it's a little more complicated because the crime was committed by two men, one of whom is a U.S. citizen, which fucks up the narrative a bit.
As ever, Trump got stuck on a talking point and repeated it to death, as when he was referring to something recently-lambasted Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen had said. "I know what you’re going through right now with families is very tough," Trump offered, obviously referring to the DHS decision to take undocumented kids away from undocumented parents when they are caught at the border and holding them at military bases (no, really). "But those are the bad laws that the Democrats gave us. We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law. It’s a horrible thing. We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law and they don’t want to do anything about it. They’ll leave it like that because they don’t want to make any changes. And now you’re breaking up families because of the Democrats. It’s terrible." I think we refer to things like that as "The Idiot's Tautology."
Obviously, given the chance, Trump went full white supremacist when he declared, "[W]e’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals."
Which ones are "animals," huh, motherfucker? Are they the parents from Mexico who had three kids in the United States and were deported after living here for 30 years? Or the now-deported father from California who has been here for 23 years and was raising a son who has autism? Or another father from Michigan deported from his wife and teenage kids after 30 years here? Or the Ohio mother of 4 small kids, deported after 20 years here? The real fucking animals are the ICE agents and the White House that has set them loose.
(And, by the way, this destruction of families went on plenty during the Obama years. But at least Obama didn't try to make everyone hate immigrants.)
The event included, as any Trump roundtable does, a chance for members of the administration to get on their knees and pinch the president's tiny dick in their fingers to hold it steady for some vigorous sucking. This time, it was Tom Homan, the Deputy Director of ICE, who could lapped, "I’ve worked for six Presidents, and I respect them all. But no President has done more than you for border security and for law enforcement. I think every law enforcement officer at this table would agree with me."
Not to be outdone, snail slime-coated Stephen Miller snatched Trump's dick away from Homan and showed him how to fellate like a Hoover set on deep pile. When Trump asked him if he would like to say something, Miller took out the Chapstick, lubed up his lips, and went to town: "Just what an honor it is to be able to work for a President who has the backs of our law enforcement officers. Everything you’re doing every day is saving so many lives all across this country, and it’s just an endless honor to be a part of it, and even in any a small way. So thank you, sir."
As ever, a "roundtable" is just another circle jerk for Trump.
We also already knew that Trump is a racist shitheel who never misses an opportunity to be a prick to immigrants or his political opponents. And he got that opportunity in spades today with a roundtable, the sole purpose of which was to talk shit about Democrats and California, a state with a booming economy and high taxes on the wealthy that puts a lie to everything Republicans believe. The theme was that the Golden State is a "sanctuary state," just letting wild gangs of immigrants rape and pillage as they rampage across the land, leaving behind a scorched hellscape littered with bodies. You know, the apocalyptic torture porn that gets the right all hard, wet, and ready to fuck.
Trump was a blithering cockhole from the start, lying with such hyperbolic abandon that it was like someone asked him how much he's worth: "California’s law provides safe harbor to some of the most vicious and violent offenders on Earth, like MS-13 gang members putting innocent men, women, and children at the mercy of these sadistic criminals. But we’re moving them out of this country by the thousands. MS-13, we’re grabbing them by the thousands and we’re getting them out." No, we're not. About 1200 MS-13 members have been arrested since Trump started shitting in the White House. Not all of them were deported. So thousands? Fuck no.
Never one to shy from exploiting the gory details of a story in order to turn every meeting into pure propaganda, Trump regaled the group of officials from California and DC by saying, "We all remember the tragic case of Marilyn Pharis who was murdered by an illegal immigrant who had been arrested six times prior to breaking into Marilyn’s home, raping her and savagely beating her to death with a hammer." It's a horrible act, and if you don't remember it, that's because it happened in 2015. Because of delays, the trial just got going last month. And it's a little more complicated because the crime was committed by two men, one of whom is a U.S. citizen, which fucks up the narrative a bit.
As ever, Trump got stuck on a talking point and repeated it to death, as when he was referring to something recently-lambasted Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen had said. "I know what you’re going through right now with families is very tough," Trump offered, obviously referring to the DHS decision to take undocumented kids away from undocumented parents when they are caught at the border and holding them at military bases (no, really). "But those are the bad laws that the Democrats gave us. We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law. It’s a horrible thing. We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law and they don’t want to do anything about it. They’ll leave it like that because they don’t want to make any changes. And now you’re breaking up families because of the Democrats. It’s terrible." I think we refer to things like that as "The Idiot's Tautology."
Obviously, given the chance, Trump went full white supremacist when he declared, "[W]e’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals."
Which ones are "animals," huh, motherfucker? Are they the parents from Mexico who had three kids in the United States and were deported after living here for 30 years? Or the now-deported father from California who has been here for 23 years and was raising a son who has autism? Or another father from Michigan deported from his wife and teenage kids after 30 years here? Or the Ohio mother of 4 small kids, deported after 20 years here? The real fucking animals are the ICE agents and the White House that has set them loose.
(And, by the way, this destruction of families went on plenty during the Obama years. But at least Obama didn't try to make everyone hate immigrants.)
The event included, as any Trump roundtable does, a chance for members of the administration to get on their knees and pinch the president's tiny dick in their fingers to hold it steady for some vigorous sucking. This time, it was Tom Homan, the Deputy Director of ICE, who could lapped, "I’ve worked for six Presidents, and I respect them all. But no President has done more than you for border security and for law enforcement. I think every law enforcement officer at this table would agree with me."
Not to be outdone, snail slime-coated Stephen Miller snatched Trump's dick away from Homan and showed him how to fellate like a Hoover set on deep pile. When Trump asked him if he would like to say something, Miller took out the Chapstick, lubed up his lips, and went to town: "Just what an honor it is to be able to work for a President who has the backs of our law enforcement officers. Everything you’re doing every day is saving so many lives all across this country, and it’s just an endless honor to be a part of it, and even in any a small way. So thank you, sir."
As ever, a "roundtable" is just another circle jerk for Trump.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Trump's Racism Towards Immigrants Hurts Everyone (Even His Voters)
One of the most insidious, outright evil things I've seen from this insidious, evil bunch of shit-smelling grotesques in the Trump administration is that they are considering a change to immigration policy that would allow that a "lawful immigrant holding a visa could be passed over for getting permanent residency — getting a green card — if they use Medicaid, a subsidized Obamacare plan, food stamps, tax credits or a list of other non-cash government benefits." Even if a lawful immigrant's U.S. citizen child is on CHIP, it could lead to that child's parents not getting a green card.
This all has to do with whether or not an immigrant is "self-sufficient" or is a "public charge," that is, needing help from the government to get by. It used to be that only if someone was receiving cash income from the government could it count against you when going for a green card. Now, it's anything that you get from the government. From the proposed rule change: "[C]ertain aliens are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP coverage or for exchange subsidies under the ACA and are permitted to purchase unsubsidized coverage through the exchange. While having health insurance is generally a positive factor in the totality of the circumstances, having subsidized insurance will generally be considered a heavily weighed negative factor." You got that? You might be eligible for health insurance for your toddler, but if you use it, you might get booted from the country for using a program that you are legally able to use.
Our fucked up attitude towards health care is merging with our fucked up attitude towards immigrants. In almost every other nation on earth, health insurance isn't even a factor in such decisions. It would be savage cruelty to give people a reason to avoid getting themselves health care. Here, you may end up having your visa not renewed because you dared to get your cancer treated.
And, remember, we're talking legal immigrants here. We're not talking about the undocumented. We're not talking about MS-13 or whatever bugaboo that our dumbass president is trying to make us shit ourselves over. We are talking people who followed all the laws and the rules, and we're saying, "Yeah, sorry. Go fuck yourselves." They're also including housing assistance and, swear to fuck, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program in the list of shit that be used against you.
Right now, the proposed rule change hasn't yet been published for public comment. But imagine the fucked up thinking that has to go into this. This is just blatant racism and xenophobia because we're saying to immigrants who come through the extensive process to get into the country that we don't give a fuck about them once they're here and will use any excuse to get rid of them. And the short-sightedness of the rule change is plainly ignorant. How is it better to have sick people who are afraid to go to the doctor walking around? How is it better that a family starves rather than goes on food stamps? If you're answer is, "Well, we don't want people like that here," then fuck you, too.
The Trump administration's immigration policies don't just have the potential to get us sick. We're getting a bunch of stories about businesses that rely on seasonal workers from foreign countries being unable to get enough employees who'll work for the shit wages they pay. That's because Trump has severely limited the number of H-2B visas that would allow "guest workers" to come here to work, say, for someone's landscaping business or crab processing company. Putting aside the exploitative nature of these jobs, it's darkly hilarious that, in almost all these cases, the business owners are Trump voters who say shit like "Trump can fix it with his pen" or "I know my president cares." No, he fucking doesn't. All he cares about is undoing Barack Obama's presidency and making this a whiter country. It's all such obvious white supremacist thinking.
Still, as much as they hate what Trump has done to their businesses, and as the effects of many of his policies will be felt as the ripples of shit like tariffs and the breaking of the Iran deal spread, these poor, deluded motherfuckers still support Trump. They'd rather believe he is some miraculous business tycoon instead of admitting that they got conned by a cheap grifter in a baggy-ass suit. They'd rather punch themselves in their own faces than say they were wrong. And they'll probably come up with a reason to blame Democrats or Obama or Hillary Clinton for the fact that they're spitting out blood and teeth.
This all has to do with whether or not an immigrant is "self-sufficient" or is a "public charge," that is, needing help from the government to get by. It used to be that only if someone was receiving cash income from the government could it count against you when going for a green card. Now, it's anything that you get from the government. From the proposed rule change: "[C]ertain aliens are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP coverage or for exchange subsidies under the ACA and are permitted to purchase unsubsidized coverage through the exchange. While having health insurance is generally a positive factor in the totality of the circumstances, having subsidized insurance will generally be considered a heavily weighed negative factor." You got that? You might be eligible for health insurance for your toddler, but if you use it, you might get booted from the country for using a program that you are legally able to use.
Our fucked up attitude towards health care is merging with our fucked up attitude towards immigrants. In almost every other nation on earth, health insurance isn't even a factor in such decisions. It would be savage cruelty to give people a reason to avoid getting themselves health care. Here, you may end up having your visa not renewed because you dared to get your cancer treated.
And, remember, we're talking legal immigrants here. We're not talking about the undocumented. We're not talking about MS-13 or whatever bugaboo that our dumbass president is trying to make us shit ourselves over. We are talking people who followed all the laws and the rules, and we're saying, "Yeah, sorry. Go fuck yourselves." They're also including housing assistance and, swear to fuck, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program in the list of shit that be used against you.
Right now, the proposed rule change hasn't yet been published for public comment. But imagine the fucked up thinking that has to go into this. This is just blatant racism and xenophobia because we're saying to immigrants who come through the extensive process to get into the country that we don't give a fuck about them once they're here and will use any excuse to get rid of them. And the short-sightedness of the rule change is plainly ignorant. How is it better to have sick people who are afraid to go to the doctor walking around? How is it better that a family starves rather than goes on food stamps? If you're answer is, "Well, we don't want people like that here," then fuck you, too.
The Trump administration's immigration policies don't just have the potential to get us sick. We're getting a bunch of stories about businesses that rely on seasonal workers from foreign countries being unable to get enough employees who'll work for the shit wages they pay. That's because Trump has severely limited the number of H-2B visas that would allow "guest workers" to come here to work, say, for someone's landscaping business or crab processing company. Putting aside the exploitative nature of these jobs, it's darkly hilarious that, in almost all these cases, the business owners are Trump voters who say shit like "Trump can fix it with his pen" or "I know my president cares." No, he fucking doesn't. All he cares about is undoing Barack Obama's presidency and making this a whiter country. It's all such obvious white supremacist thinking.
Still, as much as they hate what Trump has done to their businesses, and as the effects of many of his policies will be felt as the ripples of shit like tariffs and the breaking of the Iran deal spread, these poor, deluded motherfuckers still support Trump. They'd rather believe he is some miraculous business tycoon instead of admitting that they got conned by a cheap grifter in a baggy-ass suit. They'd rather punch themselves in their own faces than say they were wrong. And they'll probably come up with a reason to blame Democrats or Obama or Hillary Clinton for the fact that they're spitting out blood and teeth.
Wednesday, May 09, 2018
Torture Isn't an Impediment to a Career in Washington
Please, motherfuckers. Fucking, fucking please stop acting like anything other than confirmation is going to happen with Gina Haspel.
When Barack Obama nominated John Brennan to be the director of the CIA, the vote to confirm him in March 2013 was 63-34-3. Brennan had been the third-ranked CIA official during the time of the torture used on supposed al-Qaeda detainees in the few years after 9/11, many of them completely innocent (although it doesn't matter if they were innocent or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). He claimed he didn't like it, but he didn't actively oppose it.
Most of those voting against him were Republicans because they thought he might go soft after the Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on "enhanced interrogation," as we quaintly called torture. But voting for him were Democrats who are currently on the Senate Intelligence Committee - Ron Wyden, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner, and Joe Manchin - as well as independent Angus King. After the release of the report, Brennan refused to condemn the torture (except for waterboarding) and essentially said we got "useful" intel because of torture, something vigorously denied by many others.
In May 2006, the Senate voted 78-15-7 to confirm Michael Hayden as the director of the CIA, with most Democrats voting for him, including Feinstein and Warner (Wyden was a "nay" on this one). Hayden had been the Deputy Director of National Intelligence and, it turned out, had lied to the Senators during his confirmation hearing about the extent of the torture program, but his knowledge of and involvement in it wasn't an impediment to his getting the job and it wasn't an impediment for the Democrats who voted for him.
There has been no reckoning in this country for the systematic and officially-approved program of torture, including direct torture by the CIA, as well as the rendition of detainees to countries where they would be tortured. When the Senate Intelligence Committee's much-redacted report came out in 2014, it was met with outrage on the right that we'd dare question the brave souls in our intelligence community who were beating trussed up pregnant women in hopes that it would squeeze some tiny bit of info out of them. Torture, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib did more to create terrorism than they ever did to stop it. Listen to the incredible podcast from the New York Times, Caliphate, to hear how we were and are essentially punching ourselves in the face with the stupidity of our violence.
A real reckoning would involve an acceptance across most of the political spectrum that we were wrong. It would involve apologies and compensation. It would have involved prosecutions if Barack Obama hadn't been so misguided as to think moving on would get him some cooperation from Republicans. Instead, not only did he not prosecute, but he fucking nominated John Brennan to be CIA director.
And, of course, we have wannabe-tough politicians proclaiming how much they love torture, how we ought to torture more, how it wasn't a mistake and giant fucking wound on the decrepit soul of our fading nation.
Of course, Gina Haspel is going to be confirmed as CIA director, even though she was in charge of a CIA black site in Thailand where prisoners were tortured, even though she ordered the destruction of videos of torture in a cover-up that she laughably described as having been done because of the "security risk" of revealing the officers who were on them.
Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris admirably tried to get Haspel to answer a question about whether she thought the torture was "immoral," which Haspel evaded. But we long ago decided that we didn't care about the morality or legality of it. We long ago decided that those who participated in and all those who allowed torture to become part of arsenal in our foolish "War on Terror" might even be rewarded for their heinous actions.
So fuck it. Why not Haspel? This is who we are because we've done nothing other than wave a finger and say, "Promise us you won't torture." Which I always thought was the promise in the first place.
When Barack Obama nominated John Brennan to be the director of the CIA, the vote to confirm him in March 2013 was 63-34-3. Brennan had been the third-ranked CIA official during the time of the torture used on supposed al-Qaeda detainees in the few years after 9/11, many of them completely innocent (although it doesn't matter if they were innocent or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). He claimed he didn't like it, but he didn't actively oppose it.
Most of those voting against him were Republicans because they thought he might go soft after the Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on "enhanced interrogation," as we quaintly called torture. But voting for him were Democrats who are currently on the Senate Intelligence Committee - Ron Wyden, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner, and Joe Manchin - as well as independent Angus King. After the release of the report, Brennan refused to condemn the torture (except for waterboarding) and essentially said we got "useful" intel because of torture, something vigorously denied by many others.
In May 2006, the Senate voted 78-15-7 to confirm Michael Hayden as the director of the CIA, with most Democrats voting for him, including Feinstein and Warner (Wyden was a "nay" on this one). Hayden had been the Deputy Director of National Intelligence and, it turned out, had lied to the Senators during his confirmation hearing about the extent of the torture program, but his knowledge of and involvement in it wasn't an impediment to his getting the job and it wasn't an impediment for the Democrats who voted for him.
There has been no reckoning in this country for the systematic and officially-approved program of torture, including direct torture by the CIA, as well as the rendition of detainees to countries where they would be tortured. When the Senate Intelligence Committee's much-redacted report came out in 2014, it was met with outrage on the right that we'd dare question the brave souls in our intelligence community who were beating trussed up pregnant women in hopes that it would squeeze some tiny bit of info out of them. Torture, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib did more to create terrorism than they ever did to stop it. Listen to the incredible podcast from the New York Times, Caliphate, to hear how we were and are essentially punching ourselves in the face with the stupidity of our violence.
A real reckoning would involve an acceptance across most of the political spectrum that we were wrong. It would involve apologies and compensation. It would have involved prosecutions if Barack Obama hadn't been so misguided as to think moving on would get him some cooperation from Republicans. Instead, not only did he not prosecute, but he fucking nominated John Brennan to be CIA director.
And, of course, we have wannabe-tough politicians proclaiming how much they love torture, how we ought to torture more, how it wasn't a mistake and giant fucking wound on the decrepit soul of our fading nation.
Of course, Gina Haspel is going to be confirmed as CIA director, even though she was in charge of a CIA black site in Thailand where prisoners were tortured, even though she ordered the destruction of videos of torture in a cover-up that she laughably described as having been done because of the "security risk" of revealing the officers who were on them.
Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris admirably tried to get Haspel to answer a question about whether she thought the torture was "immoral," which Haspel evaded. But we long ago decided that we didn't care about the morality or legality of it. We long ago decided that those who participated in and all those who allowed torture to become part of arsenal in our foolish "War on Terror" might even be rewarded for their heinous actions.
So fuck it. Why not Haspel? This is who we are because we've done nothing other than wave a finger and say, "Promise us you won't torture." Which I always thought was the promise in the first place.
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
Note to the World: You Can't Trust the United States Anymore
Republicans (and some Democrats) have had an irrational hysteria about Iran since 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah, who himself had been handpicked by the CIA to overthrow the elected government leaders. And one of the most irrational bits of fuckery has been the promise that Iran was magically always just around the corner from building a nuclear weapon. As far back as 1984, we were told that the scary Moose-limbs were a year or two or five from having a nuke. And they never fuckin' built it. So either they kept failing or we were just told that shit so we could keep up our hate-boners from back in the days of the Iranian hostage crisis, nearly 40 years ago now.
During the 2015 negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal that Donald Trump just broke like it was a contract with an interior decorator at one of his shitty casinos, Republicans, especially, were completely hysterical. There was the letter, now prescient, where 47 Republican senators warned Iran, "You can go along with this deal, but we're untrustworthy motherfuckers and we will fuck all the mothers we can." Tom Cotton of Arkansas told his Senate colleagues that "President Obama harbors such deep-seated and irrational antipathy for Prime Minister Netanyahu that he is now willing to upend this decades-long alliance" with the Iran deal. God, I'm so sick of the United States being Israel's bitch.
And then there's that sucker of donkey cock, Jeff Flake. You may have seen that he recently said that Trump should not leave the Iran deal because everyone is living up to it and it makes the United States seem like a bunch of irrational fucks if we leave. Well, back in 2015, given the chance to support it and make it have bipartisan backing, Flake fucked off back to the safety of his craven party and opposed it.
Look, Donald Trump, a pile of piss-soaked rags heaped in a man-shaped sack, doesn't understand jackshit about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the real name of the Iran deal). You could tell that by how carefully he slurred the statement he made announcing that the U.S. was going to violate the agreement ("Withdraw"? Motherfucker, I can't "withdraw" from my car payments. I can break the contract, with all the consequences that come with it). If you asked him to tell you one fuckin' thing in there, he'd stammer like a sixth grader caught jacking off in the bathroom before saying how Iran is evil and accusing you of supporting evil.
All that matters is that the Negro President had successfully negotiated the deal, and fuck him. Who gives a shit if it's working? Who gives a shit if there are no better options? Who gives a shit if every one of our main allies is telling us to stay in the deal? The ethos of the Trump administration is "Fuck that nigger" and, if Hillary Clinton was in any way involved, "Fuck that bitch, too." (Although it was completed when John Kerry was Secretary of State, Clinton was involved in getting the momentum going on it.) Trump had savage ideologues, horny for a war, like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo telling him it was cool to dick over everyone else in the deal.
So the Trump administration and Republicans have taught the world a valuable lesson: You can't trust the United States any further than the next election (unless it's a treaty ratified by the Senate, but that's a nuance that will get lost). The country with the biggest military and biggest economy in the world is now an irrational actor, with the whims of a vengeful madman setting the agenda from day to day, without a care about any goddamn thing other than what makes him look tough and what sticks it that Negro President who thought he was so smart.
By the way, President Obama did put out a statement saying, in essence, Trump is full of shit. And Iran told the United States to go fuck itself and will stay in the deal with the European Union, if it can work that out.
This is what it's like to be a pariah. And it may lead to conflicts with our European allies. It may lead to Iran eventually saying, "Fuck it," and building a nuke before negotiating again (like North Korea did). It may even lead to war in the Middle East should Israel or Iran get nervous. But, man, Trump really stuck it to us libtards, didn't he?
During the 2015 negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal that Donald Trump just broke like it was a contract with an interior decorator at one of his shitty casinos, Republicans, especially, were completely hysterical. There was the letter, now prescient, where 47 Republican senators warned Iran, "You can go along with this deal, but we're untrustworthy motherfuckers and we will fuck all the mothers we can." Tom Cotton of Arkansas told his Senate colleagues that "President Obama harbors such deep-seated and irrational antipathy for Prime Minister Netanyahu that he is now willing to upend this decades-long alliance" with the Iran deal. God, I'm so sick of the United States being Israel's bitch.
And then there's that sucker of donkey cock, Jeff Flake. You may have seen that he recently said that Trump should not leave the Iran deal because everyone is living up to it and it makes the United States seem like a bunch of irrational fucks if we leave. Well, back in 2015, given the chance to support it and make it have bipartisan backing, Flake fucked off back to the safety of his craven party and opposed it.
Look, Donald Trump, a pile of piss-soaked rags heaped in a man-shaped sack, doesn't understand jackshit about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the real name of the Iran deal). You could tell that by how carefully he slurred the statement he made announcing that the U.S. was going to violate the agreement ("Withdraw"? Motherfucker, I can't "withdraw" from my car payments. I can break the contract, with all the consequences that come with it). If you asked him to tell you one fuckin' thing in there, he'd stammer like a sixth grader caught jacking off in the bathroom before saying how Iran is evil and accusing you of supporting evil.
All that matters is that the Negro President had successfully negotiated the deal, and fuck him. Who gives a shit if it's working? Who gives a shit if there are no better options? Who gives a shit if every one of our main allies is telling us to stay in the deal? The ethos of the Trump administration is "Fuck that nigger" and, if Hillary Clinton was in any way involved, "Fuck that bitch, too." (Although it was completed when John Kerry was Secretary of State, Clinton was involved in getting the momentum going on it.) Trump had savage ideologues, horny for a war, like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo telling him it was cool to dick over everyone else in the deal.
So the Trump administration and Republicans have taught the world a valuable lesson: You can't trust the United States any further than the next election (unless it's a treaty ratified by the Senate, but that's a nuance that will get lost). The country with the biggest military and biggest economy in the world is now an irrational actor, with the whims of a vengeful madman setting the agenda from day to day, without a care about any goddamn thing other than what makes him look tough and what sticks it that Negro President who thought he was so smart.
By the way, President Obama did put out a statement saying, in essence, Trump is full of shit. And Iran told the United States to go fuck itself and will stay in the deal with the European Union, if it can work that out.
This is what it's like to be a pariah. And it may lead to conflicts with our European allies. It may lead to Iran eventually saying, "Fuck it," and building a nuke before negotiating again (like North Korea did). It may even lead to war in the Middle East should Israel or Iran get nervous. But, man, Trump really stuck it to us libtards, didn't he?
Friday, May 04, 2018
Note to Legit Pundits: It's Adorable That You Think the GOP Cares About Trump's Lies
When nightmare ghoul Rudy Giuliani went on Sean Hannity's Festival of Self-Fellatio and said, more or less, "Yeah, Trump paid back Michael Cohen for hush money so Stormy Daniels wouldn't talk about fucking Trump," which was followed up by Trump saying, "Sure, I paid Cohen to shut Daniels up so she wouldn't say I fucked her, but I totally didn't fuck her," the commentariat of American media has been rending its garments over the fact that Trump lied earlier when he said he didn't know anything about the payment (and, c'mon, he totally fucked porn star Stormy Daniels).
And we're not even talking about MSNBC here. We're talking Rupert Murdoch-owned Trump ball washers here. A Wall Street Journal editorial says, "Mr. Trump should worry that Americans will stop believing anything he says." Over on Fox "news," guinea pig-faced Neil Cavuto did an entire commentary on Trump's lies. Well, he didn't call them "lies," saying, "I'm not saying you're a liar, I'm just having a devil of a time figuring out which news is fake." Still, he did say, "I guess you’ve been too busy draining the swamp to stop and smell the stink you’re creating. That’s your doing. That’s your stink. Mr. President, that’s your swamp."
Admirably (no, really), Cavuto didn't just say it was about Daniels. He also brought up how Trump keeps asserting there was massive voter fraud in 2016 when there just wasn't. And he said, "Or that millions of illegals voted in the last election, but they didn't." On that last one, it's just absolutely necessary to point out that one of the people also hyping the false story that undocumented immigrants were going to vote in 2016 was...fuckin' Neil Cavuto.
In the Washington Post, Dan Balz wonders how the voting public will react to Trump's lies: "Does it bother anyone that the president has been shown to be a liar?" He continues, "People will answer them differently, depending on their views about Trump. Some will condemn the behavior. Some will condone it. Many, no doubt, will try to look away, even if that has become more and more difficult. The questions won’t go away. They are part of the fabric of this presidency." And, as an example of presidents lying, he gives the legitimately tired example of Bill Clinton saying he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. Except Clinton was punished mightily for that statement, a line that had absolutely zero effect on anything to do with the lives of the people of the nation, unlike, say, Trump lying about the effects of the tax cuts or immigration or any of the thousands of other things he lies about.
In fact, if you really wanna go to the recent nadir of presidents lying, you'd have to make that George W. Bush lying to the American public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At the bare minimum, Bush lied by not saying that there was doubt of the WMDs' existence even within his administration. More likely, he and Cheney and the rest just outright lied to Congress and to all of us about it. The results of that lie were thousands of American deaths and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqi deaths.
Bush's punishment? Nothing. The GOP simply refused to go along with any real investigation, let alone prosecution (even in the form of impeachment) for very real war crimes. Shit, Democrats let him off the hook, too, especially President Obama. And now Bush gets to be treated like some kind of honorable, beloved former leader because Americans have the attention span of an Addy-snorting teen looking at her Instagram feed.
So it's just downright laughable to see and read all this huffing and puffing about Trump's lies, as if he hadn't spent his whole miserable fucking life lying, as if his idiot hordes don't love him for his lies. We are long past the question of whether anything will make his core voters turn against him. They won't. He could go Thanos on them and say that if half of them are killed, there would be more jobs and fewer immigrants, and they'd fuckin' race each other to throw themselves off a cliff for him. Trump owns their souls like a good devil would.
Even worse is the expectation that the Republican Party might stand strong against a lying president. It's so pathetic a notion that it's not even worth talking about.
It's not that all these Republicans and other assorted conservative nutzoids are fine with him lying. It's not even that they believe him over reality (although that's certainly true). It's that they don't care. As long as they are getting what they want, be it tax cuts or racist policies or just stickin' it to the libtards, the rest is just a whole bunch of noise.
We on the left hear Trump's words as lies over Stormy Daniels. His supporters just hear their hero, and his words fuckin' glow, man, they fuckin' shine. He could stand up there and announce, "I shit gold," and they'd make his turds their currency.
And we're not even talking about MSNBC here. We're talking Rupert Murdoch-owned Trump ball washers here. A Wall Street Journal editorial says, "Mr. Trump should worry that Americans will stop believing anything he says." Over on Fox "news," guinea pig-faced Neil Cavuto did an entire commentary on Trump's lies. Well, he didn't call them "lies," saying, "I'm not saying you're a liar, I'm just having a devil of a time figuring out which news is fake." Still, he did say, "I guess you’ve been too busy draining the swamp to stop and smell the stink you’re creating. That’s your doing. That’s your stink. Mr. President, that’s your swamp."
Admirably (no, really), Cavuto didn't just say it was about Daniels. He also brought up how Trump keeps asserting there was massive voter fraud in 2016 when there just wasn't. And he said, "Or that millions of illegals voted in the last election, but they didn't." On that last one, it's just absolutely necessary to point out that one of the people also hyping the false story that undocumented immigrants were going to vote in 2016 was...fuckin' Neil Cavuto.
In the Washington Post, Dan Balz wonders how the voting public will react to Trump's lies: "Does it bother anyone that the president has been shown to be a liar?" He continues, "People will answer them differently, depending on their views about Trump. Some will condemn the behavior. Some will condone it. Many, no doubt, will try to look away, even if that has become more and more difficult. The questions won’t go away. They are part of the fabric of this presidency." And, as an example of presidents lying, he gives the legitimately tired example of Bill Clinton saying he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. Except Clinton was punished mightily for that statement, a line that had absolutely zero effect on anything to do with the lives of the people of the nation, unlike, say, Trump lying about the effects of the tax cuts or immigration or any of the thousands of other things he lies about.
In fact, if you really wanna go to the recent nadir of presidents lying, you'd have to make that George W. Bush lying to the American public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At the bare minimum, Bush lied by not saying that there was doubt of the WMDs' existence even within his administration. More likely, he and Cheney and the rest just outright lied to Congress and to all of us about it. The results of that lie were thousands of American deaths and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqi deaths.
Bush's punishment? Nothing. The GOP simply refused to go along with any real investigation, let alone prosecution (even in the form of impeachment) for very real war crimes. Shit, Democrats let him off the hook, too, especially President Obama. And now Bush gets to be treated like some kind of honorable, beloved former leader because Americans have the attention span of an Addy-snorting teen looking at her Instagram feed.
So it's just downright laughable to see and read all this huffing and puffing about Trump's lies, as if he hadn't spent his whole miserable fucking life lying, as if his idiot hordes don't love him for his lies. We are long past the question of whether anything will make his core voters turn against him. They won't. He could go Thanos on them and say that if half of them are killed, there would be more jobs and fewer immigrants, and they'd fuckin' race each other to throw themselves off a cliff for him. Trump owns their souls like a good devil would.
Even worse is the expectation that the Republican Party might stand strong against a lying president. It's so pathetic a notion that it's not even worth talking about.
It's not that all these Republicans and other assorted conservative nutzoids are fine with him lying. It's not even that they believe him over reality (although that's certainly true). It's that they don't care. As long as they are getting what they want, be it tax cuts or racist policies or just stickin' it to the libtards, the rest is just a whole bunch of noise.
We on the left hear Trump's words as lies over Stormy Daniels. His supporters just hear their hero, and his words fuckin' glow, man, they fuckin' shine. He could stand up there and announce, "I shit gold," and they'd make his turds their currency.
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
Fuck Your "Redistribution of Sex"
So now that New York Times resident other-conservative-no-not-David-Brooks-that-other-one-whatshisname Ross Douthat has more or less admitted that he can't get laid and has brought the whole godforsaken discussion of "involuntary celibacy" and "redistribution of sex" into the mainstream (along with fuck robots), well, shit, I guess it's time to pants the nerds. In his latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "post-masturbation dribbles"), Douthat discusses the intersection between incels, high-minded bullshit artists conning people with dumbass ideas like "redistribution of sex," and, yes, fuck robots. He's just theorizing, mind you, in the same way that eugenicists and Charles Murray theorize about race.
Douthat says that by talking about the more sensational parts of the "debate" (as if there was a debate on this before a bunch of horny losers got sick of jacking off to the same hentai), we "can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates." And then, honest to fucking god and the god of fucking, he blames the sexual revolution for some people not getting more ass: "the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration."
No, motherfucker, the sexual revolution allowed women to have agency over their bodies. It meant that date rape wasn't just something that happened to bad girls. It meant that women could choose their partners more freely the same way that men chose theirs. The new "winners" were an entire sex. And if they liked hunky guys, well, that's evolution, man, like it or not. By the way, let's be honest here: it wasn’t exactly a pussy paradise for unlikeable and unattractive assholes (or the obese or introverted) before the sexual revolution, either.
Everything else Douthat writes (and, indeed, everything that incels and "No, I'm totally not an incel" writers talk about) follows from that basic misunderstanding about a world that transformed so women could have a chance to be equals on the sexual (and political and economic) playing field. When he says, "[T]he sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline," what he's really talking about is that there are a fuckload of men who simply refuse to accept that they are not only losing power to non-whites. They're losing it to women. Fuckin' deal with that shit.
And then there's this purely ignorant overview of contemporary sexuality: "the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states." Two things: In the real world, that first part is patently untrue. That is the porn mentality. In a recent survey of American adults, most of the respondents are fine with regular ol' sexy time. The illusion of porn, especially if you watch too much porn (c'mon, Rossy, baby, you can tell your pal the Rude Pundit), makes people believe they should be having more exotic sex, but they don't. And virginity and celibacy? There is a whole movement of asexual people who are becoming as accepted as fluid gender identities among millennials and teens.
Yet, with this swamp of bullshit stinking up the joint, Douthat ventures to say that "I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels." And that legalizing and legitimizing sex work will also do the trick, as it were, as will the fuck robots.
While Douthat has read people like the frightening Robin Hanson, I'm gonna bet he has never spent time on the incel message boards. You won't find a group of sympathetic but socially-inept lost souls. No, you'll find savage misogynists who blame women for not fucking them, who mock overweight women for desiring hot men, who think women who stay in abusive relationships get off on it, and who "joke" about killing and maiming and enslaving women. They believe, like Douthat, that the sexual revolution left them behind and they're pissed that they don't get to control women. And while some are genuinely pitiable fools who fell in with this group of MRAs and alt-righters and wayward Gamergaters, enough aren't that it's a scary fucking movement that has already led to violence.
You think a sex worker, who can tell them to fuck off if they want and walk out, or a fuck robot will make them happy? No one who brings up the phrase "redistribution of sex" wants anything other than someone who must bend to their will. The control must be real, not pretend. To say that sex can be redistributed means that some means of distribution must be established, which means a kind of sexual slavery.
Which is really what many women endured before the sexual revolution called "bullshit" on the whole hierarchy of gender. Only the worst losers among us can think it would be better to go back to that time.
Oh, and if the incel movement was legit, you'd have a whole lot of women involved. Funny how that works.
(Note: This is totally different from prostitutes working with disabled adults or, really, anyone legitimately seeking a sex worker for an experience.)
(Note 2: It shouldn't need to be said, but sex workers are deserving of the same dignity as every worker.)
(Note 3: A good many people on the incel boards are obviously just in it for the lulz of getting people raging at women. That doesn't make them less skeevy.)
Douthat says that by talking about the more sensational parts of the "debate" (as if there was a debate on this before a bunch of horny losers got sick of jacking off to the same hentai), we "can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates." And then, honest to fucking god and the god of fucking, he blames the sexual revolution for some people not getting more ass: "the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration."
No, motherfucker, the sexual revolution allowed women to have agency over their bodies. It meant that date rape wasn't just something that happened to bad girls. It meant that women could choose their partners more freely the same way that men chose theirs. The new "winners" were an entire sex. And if they liked hunky guys, well, that's evolution, man, like it or not. By the way, let's be honest here: it wasn’t exactly a pussy paradise for unlikeable and unattractive assholes (or the obese or introverted) before the sexual revolution, either.
Everything else Douthat writes (and, indeed, everything that incels and "No, I'm totally not an incel" writers talk about) follows from that basic misunderstanding about a world that transformed so women could have a chance to be equals on the sexual (and political and economic) playing field. When he says, "[T]he sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline," what he's really talking about is that there are a fuckload of men who simply refuse to accept that they are not only losing power to non-whites. They're losing it to women. Fuckin' deal with that shit.
And then there's this purely ignorant overview of contemporary sexuality: "the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states." Two things: In the real world, that first part is patently untrue. That is the porn mentality. In a recent survey of American adults, most of the respondents are fine with regular ol' sexy time. The illusion of porn, especially if you watch too much porn (c'mon, Rossy, baby, you can tell your pal the Rude Pundit), makes people believe they should be having more exotic sex, but they don't. And virginity and celibacy? There is a whole movement of asexual people who are becoming as accepted as fluid gender identities among millennials and teens.
Yet, with this swamp of bullshit stinking up the joint, Douthat ventures to say that "I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels." And that legalizing and legitimizing sex work will also do the trick, as it were, as will the fuck robots.
While Douthat has read people like the frightening Robin Hanson, I'm gonna bet he has never spent time on the incel message boards. You won't find a group of sympathetic but socially-inept lost souls. No, you'll find savage misogynists who blame women for not fucking them, who mock overweight women for desiring hot men, who think women who stay in abusive relationships get off on it, and who "joke" about killing and maiming and enslaving women. They believe, like Douthat, that the sexual revolution left them behind and they're pissed that they don't get to control women. And while some are genuinely pitiable fools who fell in with this group of MRAs and alt-righters and wayward Gamergaters, enough aren't that it's a scary fucking movement that has already led to violence.
You think a sex worker, who can tell them to fuck off if they want and walk out, or a fuck robot will make them happy? No one who brings up the phrase "redistribution of sex" wants anything other than someone who must bend to their will. The control must be real, not pretend. To say that sex can be redistributed means that some means of distribution must be established, which means a kind of sexual slavery.
Which is really what many women endured before the sexual revolution called "bullshit" on the whole hierarchy of gender. Only the worst losers among us can think it would be better to go back to that time.
Oh, and if the incel movement was legit, you'd have a whole lot of women involved. Funny how that works.
(Note: This is totally different from prostitutes working with disabled adults or, really, anyone legitimately seeking a sex worker for an experience.)
(Note 2: It shouldn't need to be said, but sex workers are deserving of the same dignity as every worker.)
(Note 3: A good many people on the incel boards are obviously just in it for the lulz of getting people raging at women. That doesn't make them less skeevy.)
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
How We Live Now: Trump Has Been Normalized
While everyone was distracted by the faux outrage over the White House Correspondents' Circle Jerk, President Donald Trump was in Michigan, giving one of the most ragingly unhinged speeches of his entire unhinged rage oeuvre. It was so bugnuts, barking crazy that, so far, it hasn't showed up on the White House website, and every other incoherent yawp that his mouth shits out has made it onto there.
The "speech" (if by "speech," you mean, "a long, dark ride into the gaping mouth of madness with a jabbering, methed-out orangutan driving") was a series of lines that, said by any president prior to 2017, would have triggered paroxysms of garment-rending among politicians and the media over how demented and/or criminal said president is.
Just a sample:
About Senator Jon Tester going to the press with his concerns about Ronny Jackson: "I know things about Tester that I could say, too. And if I said 'em, he'd never be elected again." The President of the United States says he has information on a political rival that could destroy him. That seems...troubling.
Regarding James Comey and a character from Saturday Night Live in the 1980s: "Do you remember Jon Lovitz? Do you remember the liar? Well, Comey's worse. Comey's a liar and a leaker, you know. But, you know, I did you a great favor when I fired this guy." Put aside Trump's constant slander of Comey. Pop culture stopped for this man 30 years ago.
Regarding seasonal workers: "We need people to be able to come into our country. Do your jobs, help you on the farms. and then they go out. They get a leave. Guest workers. We're gonna take care of that. Guest workers. Don't we agree? We have to have them." So we can exploit immigrants for their labor and then discard them.
Regarding undocumented immigrants at the border: "If a person puts their foot over the line, we have to take them into our country." You should probably ask the Mexicans who are immediately returned to their country and not taken into the United States. Trump's got a fundamental misunderstanding of immigration laws that he uses to whip up the crowds into a xenophobic orgy of whoops and shouts of "Build the wall!"
There is so much more, including the truly bizarre tangent on the cost of building embassies in Jerusalem and London where these ostensibly working class white people are cheering for Trump getting the price of construction down.
Even a couple of months ago, this would have been more alarming. And, yeah, we can muster shock now and then, but, c'mon, when Trump can say, as he did, that the Paralympics are "a little tough to watch too much," and it just barely registers beyond the Twittersphere, then we have become inured to Trump. Seriously, ask yourself when the last time something with Trump genuinely surprised you. Maybe it was a brief "The fuck? Really?" but that was likely quickly followed by a rueful "Of course, he did." We are now completely used to his insanity, his incompetence, his ignorance, and his contempt for anyone not white or rich.
This normalization of his behavior and his words has also led us to the point where the genuine corruption of this administration just starts to seem like business as usual. For instance, the fact that the Republican Party and the federal government pour millions of thousands of dollars into holding events at Trump properties.
Or this: Trump is holding up the $16 billion modernization of the Veterans' Administration's software because a Mar-a-lago member and doctor for the head of Marvel Entertainment doesn't like it. A current VA official said he thinks it will eventually go ahead, but "We just had to make the Mar-a-Lago guys comfortable with the deal." (Of course, there is another layer of corruption here: the whole deal was a no-bid contract for a company that Jared Kushner advocated for.)
That's a relatively minor story, but in another administration, especially if it had been a Democratic president, it would have blown things up. Jesus, between the Stormy Daniels case, the money laundering allegations, the fuckery with Michael Cohen, and so very much more, it's like we're all at the sweet spot when the Adderall speeds you up so much that it just slows everything down and feels a little more, well, normal.
Trump gets to normalize his ridiculous buffoonery because no one is holding him to account. Right now, all our eggs are in the Mueller basket (well, maybe a couple are in the Southern District of New York basket). But Robert Mueller's investigation depends on a Congress that is willing to act and on a public that is willing to support action. And I honestly think that Mueller could have ironclad evidence, recordings even, that prove that Trump absolutely conspired with Russia on the election, and almost all of Trump's idiot horde would say it was fake news. You could show them a video of Trump clapping while hookers pissed on a bed and Vladimir Putin massaged his prostate and told him, "We've hacked the machines and you're going to win," and they'd still say, "MAGA, libtard snowflake."
By making his behavior normal, that which deviates from it is now abnormal. This is how we live now, with a constant stream of outrage that has grown into white noise.
At that Michigan rally, in every pause, audience members were yelling, "Thank you" and "I love you" to Trump. What are they thanking him for? He hasn't done anything but make their lives worse. They are thanking him for being mean to immigrants and making it safe for them to be openly racist.
And that might be the most frightening normalization of them all.
The "speech" (if by "speech," you mean, "a long, dark ride into the gaping mouth of madness with a jabbering, methed-out orangutan driving") was a series of lines that, said by any president prior to 2017, would have triggered paroxysms of garment-rending among politicians and the media over how demented and/or criminal said president is.
Just a sample:
About Senator Jon Tester going to the press with his concerns about Ronny Jackson: "I know things about Tester that I could say, too. And if I said 'em, he'd never be elected again." The President of the United States says he has information on a political rival that could destroy him. That seems...troubling.
Regarding James Comey and a character from Saturday Night Live in the 1980s: "Do you remember Jon Lovitz? Do you remember the liar? Well, Comey's worse. Comey's a liar and a leaker, you know. But, you know, I did you a great favor when I fired this guy." Put aside Trump's constant slander of Comey. Pop culture stopped for this man 30 years ago.
Regarding seasonal workers: "We need people to be able to come into our country. Do your jobs, help you on the farms. and then they go out. They get a leave. Guest workers. We're gonna take care of that. Guest workers. Don't we agree? We have to have them." So we can exploit immigrants for their labor and then discard them.
Regarding undocumented immigrants at the border: "If a person puts their foot over the line, we have to take them into our country." You should probably ask the Mexicans who are immediately returned to their country and not taken into the United States. Trump's got a fundamental misunderstanding of immigration laws that he uses to whip up the crowds into a xenophobic orgy of whoops and shouts of "Build the wall!"
There is so much more, including the truly bizarre tangent on the cost of building embassies in Jerusalem and London where these ostensibly working class white people are cheering for Trump getting the price of construction down.
Even a couple of months ago, this would have been more alarming. And, yeah, we can muster shock now and then, but, c'mon, when Trump can say, as he did, that the Paralympics are "a little tough to watch too much," and it just barely registers beyond the Twittersphere, then we have become inured to Trump. Seriously, ask yourself when the last time something with Trump genuinely surprised you. Maybe it was a brief "The fuck? Really?" but that was likely quickly followed by a rueful "Of course, he did." We are now completely used to his insanity, his incompetence, his ignorance, and his contempt for anyone not white or rich.
This normalization of his behavior and his words has also led us to the point where the genuine corruption of this administration just starts to seem like business as usual. For instance, the fact that the Republican Party and the federal government pour millions of thousands of dollars into holding events at Trump properties.
Or this: Trump is holding up the $16 billion modernization of the Veterans' Administration's software because a Mar-a-lago member and doctor for the head of Marvel Entertainment doesn't like it. A current VA official said he thinks it will eventually go ahead, but "We just had to make the Mar-a-Lago guys comfortable with the deal." (Of course, there is another layer of corruption here: the whole deal was a no-bid contract for a company that Jared Kushner advocated for.)
That's a relatively minor story, but in another administration, especially if it had been a Democratic president, it would have blown things up. Jesus, between the Stormy Daniels case, the money laundering allegations, the fuckery with Michael Cohen, and so very much more, it's like we're all at the sweet spot when the Adderall speeds you up so much that it just slows everything down and feels a little more, well, normal.
Trump gets to normalize his ridiculous buffoonery because no one is holding him to account. Right now, all our eggs are in the Mueller basket (well, maybe a couple are in the Southern District of New York basket). But Robert Mueller's investigation depends on a Congress that is willing to act and on a public that is willing to support action. And I honestly think that Mueller could have ironclad evidence, recordings even, that prove that Trump absolutely conspired with Russia on the election, and almost all of Trump's idiot horde would say it was fake news. You could show them a video of Trump clapping while hookers pissed on a bed and Vladimir Putin massaged his prostate and told him, "We've hacked the machines and you're going to win," and they'd still say, "MAGA, libtard snowflake."
By making his behavior normal, that which deviates from it is now abnormal. This is how we live now, with a constant stream of outrage that has grown into white noise.
At that Michigan rally, in every pause, audience members were yelling, "Thank you" and "I love you" to Trump. What are they thanking him for? He hasn't done anything but make their lives worse. They are thanking him for being mean to immigrants and making it safe for them to be openly racist.
And that might be the most frightening normalization of them all.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Arizona Teachers Will Kick Your Ass, GOP
That right there is the latest march of thousands of teachers in a Republican-run state. As many figured would happen after West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, the teachers in Arizona have told the GOP-led legislature and Republican governor that their pay sucks, their schools suck, and it's gotta fuckin' change. Teachers are leaving Arizona in droves to go to surrounding states where they at least attempt to pay teachers like they're the people who educate our fucking children. At the start of this year, of 8600 vacant teaching jobs, 62% were either unfilled or filled by unqualified substitutes.
Like in every other state led by the savage servants of the rich, Arizona Republicans have passed years of tax cuts, mostly for corporations and the wealthy. And, fuckin' yeah, it's the Republicans. They've controlled the Arizona state government in totality since 2009. They've controlled the legislature for years. And these dumb shitkickers really thought that cutting taxes would bring in companies and jobs, and guess the fuck what? Like in every other state that's tried it, it didn't fuckin' work.
Meanwhile, to make up for the hundreds of millions in lost tax revenue, guess the fuck what they cut? Yeah, education (among other things that help, you know, people). The budget for repair and construction on schools? Fuck that. That's been cut $2 billion since 2009 when, as mentioned just up there, the GOP took over the entire government. Schools had to increase class sizes, cut staff and programs, and a total of $4.5 billion has been cut from schools since 2009. Oh, and teacher salaries have been stagnant. So, yeah, they're on a fuckin' strike.
50,000 people showed up in Phoenix today to march on the state capitol in over 90 degree heat. In fact, the march had to be cut short because people were dropping from heat exhaustion. 75% of Arizona's schools are closed today, and that's 820,000 students, a bunch of whom joined their teachers on the march.
Now, the governor is proposing a 20% pay raise over three years, but the legislature is unsure how to fund it. But the teachers don't just want the pay raise. At the rally after the march, teachers talked about schools with no computers, rusted out desks, and class sizes that have ballooned to 50 students. They talked about how teachers have to live with their parents because they don't make enough to afford to live on their own.
And even some Republicans are calling for a hike in some taxes to raise Arizona from being 48th in teacher pay and 43rd in per student spending in the nation. A conservative columnist for the Arizona Republic newspaper has proposed a 1-cent sales tax hike (which is obviously something that disproportionately affects the poor and middle class, but at least it's something) and legislation locks in how education is funded. It does go well beyond the pay raise but still doesn't restore all the funding lost.
Tomorrow, the teachers will continue their rally, but legislators have left for the weekend. They claim to be working on something. We'll see if these Republicans can overcome their asshole tendencies to do something to actually help the teachers and the kids of their state.
This teacher uprising is a full-fledged movement, one driven by women, who make up the vast majority of public school teachers. It is a way to say that economic sexism, which devalues jobs that are traditionally done by women, needs to fucking end.
(Note: Over in Colorado, a smaller but still important teacher strike is occurring, too.)
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Can We Choose to Know Who Runs Our Government Agencies?
Pop quiz, motherfuckers.
1. Who is Lisa Jackson?
a. Michael Jackson's daughter
b. EPA administrator for President Obama
c. Audrey Hepburn's character in Two for the Road
2. Who is Hildy Johnson?
a. Boris Johnson's wife
b. Secretary of Labor for President Obama
c. Rosalind Russell's character in His Girl Friday
3. Who is Shaun Donovan?
a. The full name of folk singer Donovan
b. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama
c. Jack Lemmon's character in Airport '77
4. Who is Gary Locke?
a. John Locke's lesser-known brother
b. Secretary of Commerce for President Obama
c. Alec Guinness's character in Our Man in Havana
5. Who is Tom Donilon?
a. Secretary of Transportation for President Obama
b. Secretary of Energy for President Obama
c. Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Obama
The answer for numbers 1, 3, and 4 is b. Number 2 is c because what's life without a twist now and again (Hilda Solis was Labor Secretary, though). And, fuck you, number 5 is a trick because Donilon was Obama's National Security Advisor.
I'm gonna bet you knew maybe one of those. If you knew more than one, then fuckin' awesome for you. You have decided to be extra-aware of who is making decisions that affect your life. But most people everywhere wouldn't know a single one of those 4 real people and 1 fictional character. And isn't that the bliss we want? Don't we just want our government officials to shut the fuck up, stop doing stupid shit, hunker down, and do their fuckin' jobs? It used to be like that. Not that fuckin' long ago.
I might not agree with what Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross, Mick Mulvaney, or any of the querulous worms of Trump administration do as they heap piles of shit on their offices and leave wreckage wherever they go. I may want them to fail miserably and be sent to the hinterlands in disgrace or burn their careers on the pyre of the Trump administration's blustering cruelty. I want to fight their policies. For instance, I want to demonstrate how changes in EPA rules are going to dick the air and water for multiple generations and not talk about a soundproof booth. I want these braying asses, creepy motherfuckers, and skeevy grifters to just fucking get out of the public eye, especially for shit that has nothing to with policy (and they suck when they're doing policy, too).
During the Obama administration, we didn't worry about Gary Locke because he wasn't doing shit like going on TV to talk about the effect of tariffs on the price of aluminum cans like a barely animated corpse. The only reason we ever heard about Lisa Jackson at EPA was when Republicans attack dogs went after her and decided to make having a private email account is the worst thing anyone could do, far worse than, say, hiring a massive security force and spending on paranoid office shit, like fuckin' Scott Pruitt has.
This is not a call for ignorance. It's a call for peace. It's a call for the Republicans to step up (man, I just rolled my eyes so hard, I saw another dimension) and get the executive branch to cut the shit out. You learn shit like Ben Carson buying an extravagant fucking dining room table, then you call for his firing.
And the members of the administration just seemed to be engaged in a "hold my beer" contest in who can be the biggest corrupt asshole. You think Pruitt seems nuts? Check out Ryan Zinke. Think Steve Mnuchin's a greedy piece of garbage? Mulvaney's got him beat. You just know that Trump loves this chaos. He loves that it keeps his name on TV even more. He probably beats off to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell getting pissed off.
The fabric of a society cannot hold if the claws of scandal keep tearing at it. Eventually, it's gonna give way. The question is whether or not anyone is gonna be able to stitch it back together.
1. Who is Lisa Jackson?
a. Michael Jackson's daughter
b. EPA administrator for President Obama
c. Audrey Hepburn's character in Two for the Road
2. Who is Hildy Johnson?
a. Boris Johnson's wife
b. Secretary of Labor for President Obama
c. Rosalind Russell's character in His Girl Friday
3. Who is Shaun Donovan?
a. The full name of folk singer Donovan
b. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama
c. Jack Lemmon's character in Airport '77
4. Who is Gary Locke?
a. John Locke's lesser-known brother
b. Secretary of Commerce for President Obama
c. Alec Guinness's character in Our Man in Havana
5. Who is Tom Donilon?
a. Secretary of Transportation for President Obama
b. Secretary of Energy for President Obama
c. Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Obama
The answer for numbers 1, 3, and 4 is b. Number 2 is c because what's life without a twist now and again (Hilda Solis was Labor Secretary, though). And, fuck you, number 5 is a trick because Donilon was Obama's National Security Advisor.
I'm gonna bet you knew maybe one of those. If you knew more than one, then fuckin' awesome for you. You have decided to be extra-aware of who is making decisions that affect your life. But most people everywhere wouldn't know a single one of those 4 real people and 1 fictional character. And isn't that the bliss we want? Don't we just want our government officials to shut the fuck up, stop doing stupid shit, hunker down, and do their fuckin' jobs? It used to be like that. Not that fuckin' long ago.
I might not agree with what Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross, Mick Mulvaney, or any of the querulous worms of Trump administration do as they heap piles of shit on their offices and leave wreckage wherever they go. I may want them to fail miserably and be sent to the hinterlands in disgrace or burn their careers on the pyre of the Trump administration's blustering cruelty. I want to fight their policies. For instance, I want to demonstrate how changes in EPA rules are going to dick the air and water for multiple generations and not talk about a soundproof booth. I want these braying asses, creepy motherfuckers, and skeevy grifters to just fucking get out of the public eye, especially for shit that has nothing to with policy (and they suck when they're doing policy, too).
During the Obama administration, we didn't worry about Gary Locke because he wasn't doing shit like going on TV to talk about the effect of tariffs on the price of aluminum cans like a barely animated corpse. The only reason we ever heard about Lisa Jackson at EPA was when Republicans attack dogs went after her and decided to make having a private email account is the worst thing anyone could do, far worse than, say, hiring a massive security force and spending on paranoid office shit, like fuckin' Scott Pruitt has.
This is not a call for ignorance. It's a call for peace. It's a call for the Republicans to step up (man, I just rolled my eyes so hard, I saw another dimension) and get the executive branch to cut the shit out. You learn shit like Ben Carson buying an extravagant fucking dining room table, then you call for his firing.
And the members of the administration just seemed to be engaged in a "hold my beer" contest in who can be the biggest corrupt asshole. You think Pruitt seems nuts? Check out Ryan Zinke. Think Steve Mnuchin's a greedy piece of garbage? Mulvaney's got him beat. You just know that Trump loves this chaos. He loves that it keeps his name on TV even more. He probably beats off to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell getting pissed off.
The fabric of a society cannot hold if the claws of scandal keep tearing at it. Eventually, it's gonna give way. The question is whether or not anyone is gonna be able to stitch it back together.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Confederate Memorial Day Is for Losers
Look, there ought to be no reason to talk about "Confederate Memorial Day" because such a day shouldn't exist. And it fucking well ought not be recognized in any official way by any government of the nation that beat the Confederacy to a gray pulp. Except that the state offices in both Mississippi and Alabama were closed yesterday in "honor" of the dishonorable scumfucks who tried to rip the country in two so they could keep humans enslaved (with some localities closing their offices on other dates). And there were "celebrations" around the South.
For instance, over in Biloxi, on Sunday, an event was held at Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis Home and "Presidential" Library, which strangely has not been burned to ground and the ashes haven't been turned into a giant toilet that black people can piss in. After listening to the plinking tones and odd singing of the Southern Strings Dulcimer Club, you could have heard a speech by H.K. Edgerton, known as "that black guy who supports the Confederacy" and who charges $20,000 an appearance and who totally isn't scamming the racists. (Fun fact: You can go on a ghost hunt once a month at Beauvoir. That's how you know the whole place is legit.)
In Montgomery, the state capital of Alabama, members of a group of Civil War reenactors will be decked out in Confederate soldier drag as a "tribute" to their ancestors. They'll be doing this on the grounds of the capitol building, so it's not unlike a bunch of people dressed as Nazis celebrating the anniversary of Kristallnacht under the Brandenburg Gate. In many other places, people just decorate the graves of dead racists...sorry, Confederate soldiers...no, wait, fucking traitors. That's better.
As usual, idiots come out to spew idiotic bullshit about how we need to "honor" their fallen ancestors for fighting for something they believed in. Like this piece from the "chaplain" of a Sons of Confederate Veterans group, where he uses a 1969 John Wayne movie to back up his point of view and says, "This is our land, our homes and our way of life. We didn't come up there to tell you how to run things, so don't come telling us." And I just wanna say to the author, Barry Cook, "Motherfucker, that's called 'living in a nation.' You don't get to do shit just because it's your 'way of life,' you fuckin' dumbass." Cook admonishes us, "[T]hese intellectual types don't usually get it. (They still haven't figured out how Trump won)." To which one can only respond what people like this tell us on the left about Trump: "You lost. Get over it. You've had over 150 years. Fuckin' babies."
Again, this shouldn't even be worth discussing. But every year, we see stories about some backwards ass fucks doing backwards ass shit to glorify inglorious assholes. And it's got a different context this year because of the surge of racist movements in this country in the era of Trumpism. In western Georgia, just last week, shit-for-brains neo-Nazis marched for shit-for-brains reasons and held a puny rally. With just 3 dozen attendees, they were dwarfed both by the number of counter-protesters and the number of police.
But then these pathetic pukes went into a field and burned a big ol' swastika. You can see photos of them drunk, hepped up on hate, and yowling like rabid dogs who can't lick their balls hard enough. And it'll make you think, "Whoa, whoa, this is 2018. I thought we got over this." Nope.
This is who we are at this moment, as we get confirmed what everyone who observed the 2016 election and its aftermath knows: that Trump voters weren't motivated by "economic anxiety" or such bullshit. They were white people motivated by fear that they will lose their status as the top of heap.
Or, you know, to shorten that, racism. It is the original sin of American society, and, if we don't do anything to hold it in check and change it, it will be our damnation.
For instance, over in Biloxi, on Sunday, an event was held at Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis Home and "Presidential" Library, which strangely has not been burned to ground and the ashes haven't been turned into a giant toilet that black people can piss in. After listening to the plinking tones and odd singing of the Southern Strings Dulcimer Club, you could have heard a speech by H.K. Edgerton, known as "that black guy who supports the Confederacy" and who charges $20,000 an appearance and who totally isn't scamming the racists. (Fun fact: You can go on a ghost hunt once a month at Beauvoir. That's how you know the whole place is legit.)
In Montgomery, the state capital of Alabama, members of a group of Civil War reenactors will be decked out in Confederate soldier drag as a "tribute" to their ancestors. They'll be doing this on the grounds of the capitol building, so it's not unlike a bunch of people dressed as Nazis celebrating the anniversary of Kristallnacht under the Brandenburg Gate. In many other places, people just decorate the graves of dead racists...sorry, Confederate soldiers...no, wait, fucking traitors. That's better.
As usual, idiots come out to spew idiotic bullshit about how we need to "honor" their fallen ancestors for fighting for something they believed in. Like this piece from the "chaplain" of a Sons of Confederate Veterans group, where he uses a 1969 John Wayne movie to back up his point of view and says, "This is our land, our homes and our way of life. We didn't come up there to tell you how to run things, so don't come telling us." And I just wanna say to the author, Barry Cook, "Motherfucker, that's called 'living in a nation.' You don't get to do shit just because it's your 'way of life,' you fuckin' dumbass." Cook admonishes us, "[T]hese intellectual types don't usually get it. (They still haven't figured out how Trump won)." To which one can only respond what people like this tell us on the left about Trump: "You lost. Get over it. You've had over 150 years. Fuckin' babies."
Again, this shouldn't even be worth discussing. But every year, we see stories about some backwards ass fucks doing backwards ass shit to glorify inglorious assholes. And it's got a different context this year because of the surge of racist movements in this country in the era of Trumpism. In western Georgia, just last week, shit-for-brains neo-Nazis marched for shit-for-brains reasons and held a puny rally. With just 3 dozen attendees, they were dwarfed both by the number of counter-protesters and the number of police.
But then these pathetic pukes went into a field and burned a big ol' swastika. You can see photos of them drunk, hepped up on hate, and yowling like rabid dogs who can't lick their balls hard enough. And it'll make you think, "Whoa, whoa, this is 2018. I thought we got over this." Nope.
This is who we are at this moment, as we get confirmed what everyone who observed the 2016 election and its aftermath knows: that Trump voters weren't motivated by "economic anxiety" or such bullshit. They were white people motivated by fear that they will lose their status as the top of heap.
Or, you know, to shorten that, racism. It is the original sin of American society, and, if we don't do anything to hold it in check and change it, it will be our damnation.
Friday, April 20, 2018
The Comey Memos: Man, Trump's a Sad Worm
The memos of former FBI director James Comey were leaked to the press literally minutes after they were given to a congressional committee led by craven twat mite Devin Nunes. While there are some interesting things we can tease out of the details, most of the big revelations have been out there for a bit.
Still, what we get is the image of Donald Trump, our goddamn president, that confirms all the worst shit about him: that he's a self-aggrandizing buffoon, a sad worm of a man, a lump of failure, and a fucking moron. Each meeting with Comey was about Trump trying and failing to assert some alpha dog status over a man who he thought was on his side. Trump wants Comey to be grateful to him. He wants Comey to plead for his job. He wants to own Comey. And when Comey doesn't allow himself to be owned, it fuckin' drives Trump nuts.
Trump begs for Comey's approval in a way that's so pathetic that, if Trump were a dog, you'd take him to the vet to have him put down so you wouldn't have to look at how pathetic he's become. Trump talks about Bill O'Reilly interviewing him and that "O'Reilly's question about whether he respected Putin had been a hard one...He said he does respect the leader of a major country and though that was the best answer. He then said, 'You think my answer was good, right?'" Who needs that kind of validation? Someone who is used to having people around him constantly assuring him that his answers are awesome and he's awesome and every word dingleberry that shits out of his mouth is awesome.
At other points, Comey quotes Trump trying to sound tough, telling Comey, "I have been very loyal to you, very loyal, we had that thing, you know?" Comey comments about Trump's low-rent Mamet plea, "I did not reply or ask him what he meant by 'that thing.'" Although, c'mon, it's obvious that Trump thinks Comey pledged loyalty to him probably because Jared or Reince told that Comey did.
And Trump would need someone to remind him because he repeats himself again and again, which ought to be way more disconcerting than anyone is saying. He brings up Andrew McCabe at least 3 times and how he was "rough" on McCabe and his wife during the campaign. Each time, Comey says that McCabe is "a pro." Trump brings up Russia and hookers and the golden showers show a few times, so concerned for how he appeared. Let's put it this way: If you have to say, "Can you imagine me? Hookers?" or that you're "the kind of guy who didn't need to 'go there,'" then you are exactly the kind of guy who goes there and bangs hookers.
In one really weird moment, Trump says that he talks to world leaders on this "beautiful phone," and Comey describes him "touching the gray phone on his desk." It's a fuckin' phone, man. They all pretty much look the same. And in another, he relates how upset he was that Michael Flynn didn't tell him soon enough about a congratulatory phone call from Vladimir Putin after election, freaking out about it.
Nothing is really surprising anymore. It's not like we didn't know that Trump is such a sad, deranged sack of a human that if his dad hadn't been super-rich, he'd be wandering around Jamaica, Queens, in his robe, yelling at women to suck his old dick and grabbing himself constantly.
Except he's president of the United States. Shit and shit again.
Still, what we get is the image of Donald Trump, our goddamn president, that confirms all the worst shit about him: that he's a self-aggrandizing buffoon, a sad worm of a man, a lump of failure, and a fucking moron. Each meeting with Comey was about Trump trying and failing to assert some alpha dog status over a man who he thought was on his side. Trump wants Comey to be grateful to him. He wants Comey to plead for his job. He wants to own Comey. And when Comey doesn't allow himself to be owned, it fuckin' drives Trump nuts.
Trump begs for Comey's approval in a way that's so pathetic that, if Trump were a dog, you'd take him to the vet to have him put down so you wouldn't have to look at how pathetic he's become. Trump talks about Bill O'Reilly interviewing him and that "O'Reilly's question about whether he respected Putin had been a hard one...He said he does respect the leader of a major country and though that was the best answer. He then said, 'You think my answer was good, right?'" Who needs that kind of validation? Someone who is used to having people around him constantly assuring him that his answers are awesome and he's awesome and every word dingleberry that shits out of his mouth is awesome.
At other points, Comey quotes Trump trying to sound tough, telling Comey, "I have been very loyal to you, very loyal, we had that thing, you know?" Comey comments about Trump's low-rent Mamet plea, "I did not reply or ask him what he meant by 'that thing.'" Although, c'mon, it's obvious that Trump thinks Comey pledged loyalty to him probably because Jared or Reince told that Comey did.
And Trump would need someone to remind him because he repeats himself again and again, which ought to be way more disconcerting than anyone is saying. He brings up Andrew McCabe at least 3 times and how he was "rough" on McCabe and his wife during the campaign. Each time, Comey says that McCabe is "a pro." Trump brings up Russia and hookers and the golden showers show a few times, so concerned for how he appeared. Let's put it this way: If you have to say, "Can you imagine me? Hookers?" or that you're "the kind of guy who didn't need to 'go there,'" then you are exactly the kind of guy who goes there and bangs hookers.
In one really weird moment, Trump says that he talks to world leaders on this "beautiful phone," and Comey describes him "touching the gray phone on his desk." It's a fuckin' phone, man. They all pretty much look the same. And in another, he relates how upset he was that Michael Flynn didn't tell him soon enough about a congratulatory phone call from Vladimir Putin after election, freaking out about it.
Nothing is really surprising anymore. It's not like we didn't know that Trump is such a sad, deranged sack of a human that if his dad hadn't been super-rich, he'd be wandering around Jamaica, Queens, in his robe, yelling at women to suck his old dick and grabbing himself constantly.
Except he's president of the United States. Shit and shit again.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
What Did That Dumb Orange Motherfucker Say Now? (Rising Sun Edition)
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Tuesday, April 17, 2018
When It Comes to Hillary Clinton, Oh, Just Fuck Right Off, James Comey
If I've said it before, I've said it a million got-damn times. If you didn't support Hillary Clinton because you believed in any of the made-up "scandals" from her career, from Vince Foster's "murder" to Emails of Doom to pizza pedophilia, you were the bitch of Fox "news" and the entire conservative machine that had created a narrative about Clinton that you bought into. I am not Breitbart's bitch, so I could put that aside and just consider her based on her positions and policies. (I'm not talking to anyone who didn't vote for Clinton because you disagreed with her or because you couldn't get over whatever the fuck you think happened with Bernie, which is its own kind of conspiracy theory, and, no, I don't give a shit about whatever you wanna say about that. It's very nice you believe that.)
And whatever you wanna say about why Hillary Clinton lost - bad candidate, didn't campaign in this or that state, grrr-Wall Street, grrr-war - one thing that cannot be denied is that much of the nation (although, you know, not a majority) did become the bitches of that conservative machine that runs a thrusting piston pounding the asses of the electorate with a dildo marked "Hillary=evil" or "Hillary=corrupt" and "any association with Hillary means you are evil and corrupt, too." Republicans counted on enough people gladly bending over to receive this fucking .
What we've learned now is that the former director of the FBI, James Comey, was also grabbing his ankles. In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition today, part of his "James Comey is gonna make a fuck-ton of cash" tour, Comey was questioned about why he made a statement about the conclusions of the FBI's investigation into Clinton's email server in July 2016. He admits, as he implies in his book, Higher Royalties...I mean, Loyalty, that, at least in part, he was influenced by the noise of cable news over things like Bill Clinton's visit to then Attorney General Loretta Lynch's plane on the tarmac in June 2016.
Comey says to the idea of resisting that noise, "[A] reasonable person might have done that. I think that would have been a mistake, because again it wasn't just what had happened that last week of June, it was a collection of things that led me to conclude that the general public would have serious doubts about the integrity of the Obama administration's decision to close an investigation of Hillary Clinton without transparency, given those things that had happened." And he goes on to say that he thinks that had he not spoken in July or released the letter to Congress about the "new" emails (which turned out to be nothing) discovered on Huma Abedin's computer, "I think the institutions would have been in worse shape had we done the normal thing" and not commented.
Comey told ABC's George Stephanopoulos's hair that he assumed, like everyone pretty much did, that Clinton was going to win and that, in some way, he was doing the right thing in releasing that letter because "If you conceal the fact that you have restarted the Hillary Clinton email investigation, not in some silly way but in a very, very important way that may lead to a different conclusion, what will happen to the institutions of justice when that comes out? Especially, given the world we're operating in, when Hillary Clinton's elected president? She'll be an illegitimate president, but these organizations will never recover from that."
Let's put aside the hypocrisy of Comey saying he needed to release something about these new emails, even though nothing at all had been found in them of any interest, while saying that he didn't say anything about the Trump investigation because it hadn't found anything definite yet. Let's put aside for a moment the idea of balance, that if he was gonna say a fuckin' word about any investigations of Clinton, he had an obligation to balance that with information about Trump so the American people had the full picture. Put that aside.
Instead, let's tell James Comey to just fuck right off on this. Because he might be this great and mighty public servant and FBI director, but Comey doesn't know jackshit about the very machine that's behind him, fucking him in the ass. If Clinton had won, it wouldn't have mattered if Jesus himself walked into Congress and said, "She didn't do shit." Republicans would have gone nuclear because that's the only way to justify all the Clinton hatred they based their entire election strategy on. Fox "news" would have been 24/7 on emails and every other stupid thing they could fan into a bullshit controversy. Shit, it's practically that now and Clinton ain't even president. It's all they know.
Comey thinks his gestures prevented an erosion of faith in institutions and in a potential President Clinton? You goddamned fool, these motherfuckers had over a half-dozen investigations of Benghazi because when one said, "Nope, it's all good. Sad, but good," they immediately had another going. And as for institutions, Republicans don't give a sad turtle shit about institutions. Do you think the assholes who had just prevented President Obama from making a Supreme Court choice out of pure spite and political fuckery would think twice about wrecking any agency that got in their way?
You big, dumb dickhead, the only thing that was standing between your precious institutions and their dismantling or complete politicization was the fact that a Democrat was president. Clinton would have prevented most of the shit that's happening now to the Justice Department. But you fucked it, Jim Comey.
You fucked it, and your specious fucking book tour won't unfuck it. At least own that shit. Stop saying you wouldn't have done anything differently. That just makes you another idiot who won't learn from the past.
But, then again, we should always remember: You are a Republican.
(Note: Goddamnit, I want to stop talking about the 2016 election. But we keep getting dragged back into it, like it's a cave we climb out of and then the trolls drag us back in, kicking and screaming.)
And whatever you wanna say about why Hillary Clinton lost - bad candidate, didn't campaign in this or that state, grrr-Wall Street, grrr-war - one thing that cannot be denied is that much of the nation (although, you know, not a majority) did become the bitches of that conservative machine that runs a thrusting piston pounding the asses of the electorate with a dildo marked "Hillary=evil" or "Hillary=corrupt" and "any association with Hillary means you are evil and corrupt, too." Republicans counted on enough people gladly bending over to receive this fucking .
What we've learned now is that the former director of the FBI, James Comey, was also grabbing his ankles. In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition today, part of his "James Comey is gonna make a fuck-ton of cash" tour, Comey was questioned about why he made a statement about the conclusions of the FBI's investigation into Clinton's email server in July 2016. He admits, as he implies in his book, Higher Royalties...I mean, Loyalty, that, at least in part, he was influenced by the noise of cable news over things like Bill Clinton's visit to then Attorney General Loretta Lynch's plane on the tarmac in June 2016.
Comey says to the idea of resisting that noise, "[A] reasonable person might have done that. I think that would have been a mistake, because again it wasn't just what had happened that last week of June, it was a collection of things that led me to conclude that the general public would have serious doubts about the integrity of the Obama administration's decision to close an investigation of Hillary Clinton without transparency, given those things that had happened." And he goes on to say that he thinks that had he not spoken in July or released the letter to Congress about the "new" emails (which turned out to be nothing) discovered on Huma Abedin's computer, "I think the institutions would have been in worse shape had we done the normal thing" and not commented.
Comey told ABC's George Stephanopoulos's hair that he assumed, like everyone pretty much did, that Clinton was going to win and that, in some way, he was doing the right thing in releasing that letter because "If you conceal the fact that you have restarted the Hillary Clinton email investigation, not in some silly way but in a very, very important way that may lead to a different conclusion, what will happen to the institutions of justice when that comes out? Especially, given the world we're operating in, when Hillary Clinton's elected president? She'll be an illegitimate president, but these organizations will never recover from that."
Let's put aside the hypocrisy of Comey saying he needed to release something about these new emails, even though nothing at all had been found in them of any interest, while saying that he didn't say anything about the Trump investigation because it hadn't found anything definite yet. Let's put aside for a moment the idea of balance, that if he was gonna say a fuckin' word about any investigations of Clinton, he had an obligation to balance that with information about Trump so the American people had the full picture. Put that aside.
Instead, let's tell James Comey to just fuck right off on this. Because he might be this great and mighty public servant and FBI director, but Comey doesn't know jackshit about the very machine that's behind him, fucking him in the ass. If Clinton had won, it wouldn't have mattered if Jesus himself walked into Congress and said, "She didn't do shit." Republicans would have gone nuclear because that's the only way to justify all the Clinton hatred they based their entire election strategy on. Fox "news" would have been 24/7 on emails and every other stupid thing they could fan into a bullshit controversy. Shit, it's practically that now and Clinton ain't even president. It's all they know.
Comey thinks his gestures prevented an erosion of faith in institutions and in a potential President Clinton? You goddamned fool, these motherfuckers had over a half-dozen investigations of Benghazi because when one said, "Nope, it's all good. Sad, but good," they immediately had another going. And as for institutions, Republicans don't give a sad turtle shit about institutions. Do you think the assholes who had just prevented President Obama from making a Supreme Court choice out of pure spite and political fuckery would think twice about wrecking any agency that got in their way?
You big, dumb dickhead, the only thing that was standing between your precious institutions and their dismantling or complete politicization was the fact that a Democrat was president. Clinton would have prevented most of the shit that's happening now to the Justice Department. But you fucked it, Jim Comey.
You fucked it, and your specious fucking book tour won't unfuck it. At least own that shit. Stop saying you wouldn't have done anything differently. That just makes you another idiot who won't learn from the past.
But, then again, we should always remember: You are a Republican.
(Note: Goddamnit, I want to stop talking about the 2016 election. But we keep getting dragged back into it, like it's a cave we climb out of and then the trolls drag us back in, kicking and screaming.)
Sunday, April 15, 2018
AGD Podcast: Interview With Benari Poulten, Former Producer on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore
Up now on the iTunes is a new episode of Another Goddamn Podcast, perfectly timed for a military strike on Syria. I talk some shit about soldiers in my family and then interview a real-life Army reservist who happens to be a funny, funny writer and comic, Benari Poulten.
Benari was a senior producer on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and has been in the reserves for the last 18 years. He's seen it all, from Gitmo to Iraq to Afghanistan, and we talk about it. Check it out. Subscribe, rate, review. (Looks like this is gonna be a monthly thing for now, but I'd like to get it to every 2 weeks.)
And thanks to everyone who is subscribed over at Patreon at $5 and up. You got this early, and you got an extra five minutes of the interview where Benari talked about his family's Democratic activism and the time his grandmother flirted with Ted Kennedy. Your donations have made this podcast possible.
Thanks also to Ted Kane for the opening music and the Errol Flynns for the closing tune.
Benari was a senior producer on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and has been in the reserves for the last 18 years. He's seen it all, from Gitmo to Iraq to Afghanistan, and we talk about it. Check it out. Subscribe, rate, review. (Looks like this is gonna be a monthly thing for now, but I'd like to get it to every 2 weeks.)
And thanks to everyone who is subscribed over at Patreon at $5 and up. You got this early, and you got an extra five minutes of the interview where Benari talked about his family's Democratic activism and the time his grandmother flirted with Ted Kennedy. Your donations have made this podcast possible.
Thanks also to Ted Kane for the opening music and the Errol Flynns for the closing tune.
Friday, April 13, 2018
End This Enraging Week with Hope: Kentucky Teachers Will Kick Your Ass, GOP
When we last left the Kentucky legislature, it had passed some pretty fucked up changes to the retirement system for teachers so quickly that no one had time to read the bill they were in. Teachers, many using their spring break, had a day of protest at the capitol in Frankfort at the beginning of the month.
Since then, Gov. Matt "Why Can't I Murder More Kentuckians By Taking Away Their Health Care?" Bevin has vetoed a budget, supported by teachers, that protected a great deal of spending on education (while getting rid of some). And he signed into law a slightly revised version of the fucked up retirement plan so that there is no longer a guaranteed income benefit (in case you didn't know, the teachers don't get Social Security) and there is an increase in health care costs, among other things. Bevin said that the teachers' union was to blame for the dissatisfaction and activism. Which, well, yeah, fucko.
So guess what happened today?
Yeah, this time teachers left the classroom for a day of action, with schools closing all over the state. And they are putting the legislature on notice that this is some shit they will not eat and they are coming for the seats. This year, all 100 House seats are up for grabs, as are half the Senate seats. "Forty-three current or retired educators are running as Democrats for the legislature," said a party spokesperson. And several Republican teachers are primarying the GOP legislators in their districts.
The message is clear: You have fucked with the wrong people.
Oh, and the pension "reform" also affects cops and firefighters.
So the Democratic Attorney General, Andy Beshear, has filed a lawsuit challenging the bill. He is joined by unions representing teachers and the police, saying that the changes to the retirement program comprise a kind of breach of contract. We shall see if this eminently logical argument makes a difference.
But next time some reporter from the New York Times or CNN heads to Trump country, women there can say, "This is what the white working class is doing now. Trying to change this bullshit."
Since then, Gov. Matt "Why Can't I Murder More Kentuckians By Taking Away Their Health Care?" Bevin has vetoed a budget, supported by teachers, that protected a great deal of spending on education (while getting rid of some). And he signed into law a slightly revised version of the fucked up retirement plan so that there is no longer a guaranteed income benefit (in case you didn't know, the teachers don't get Social Security) and there is an increase in health care costs, among other things. Bevin said that the teachers' union was to blame for the dissatisfaction and activism. Which, well, yeah, fucko.
So guess what happened today?
Yeah, this time teachers left the classroom for a day of action, with schools closing all over the state. And they are putting the legislature on notice that this is some shit they will not eat and they are coming for the seats. This year, all 100 House seats are up for grabs, as are half the Senate seats. "Forty-three current or retired educators are running as Democrats for the legislature," said a party spokesperson. And several Republican teachers are primarying the GOP legislators in their districts.
The message is clear: You have fucked with the wrong people.
Oh, and the pension "reform" also affects cops and firefighters.
So the Democratic Attorney General, Andy Beshear, has filed a lawsuit challenging the bill. He is joined by unions representing teachers and the police, saying that the changes to the retirement program comprise a kind of breach of contract. We shall see if this eminently logical argument makes a difference.
But next time some reporter from the New York Times or CNN heads to Trump country, women there can say, "This is what the white working class is doing now. Trying to change this bullshit."
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Erickson's Congressman: A Paradox of Our Times
I'm calling for a new phrase to enter the lexicon of political snark: "Erickson's Congressman." It's based the recent blog post by conservative wannabe-firebrand Erick "Erick" Erickson where he described wandering around a DC Safeway with an unnamed GOP member of Congress who fairly ejaculated a stream of invective and profanity about how much he despises President Donald Trump and how much Trump has wrecked the Republican Party. "If we're going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherfucker," the congressman said, according to Erickson, and much, much more.
Now all over the media, people are trying to figure out who it is. Others wonder if the conversation happened at all. In other words, this congressman is in a state between existence and non-existence until he (assuming Erickson is being truthful about the sex) is revealed, either by Erickson, who has sworn he will not say, or the guy himself.
We've heard from these sources before, all these anonymous legislators and aides who tell reporters or others their true feelings about Trump, how they hate him to their core, beyond the niceties they are forced to spew, beyond their actual defense or support of him when they go on CNN or Fox. But, unless they are retiring or so senior they don't care, they remain anonymous, and thus they are objects of faith, living in the nether zone between hero and scoundrel. Oh, how we on the left love hearing that Trump can't hold a thought in his head or is in one of his idiot rages. Oh, how we love thinking about one of these anonymous voices finally saying, "Yeah, it's me. Congressman X" and bringing down this affliction of a government.
Hell, I have very few real contacts in the actual political world, to people with power or within proximity of power. But even I've heard from them that "every single Republican" (and, yes, that is a quote) knows that Trump is a dangerous dolt. Yet not a single one will go on the record.
And that's where the idea of Erickson's Congressman comes in: we don't know if he exists, but we desperately want him to exist, yet he can't exist - he doesn't exist- without giving up his anonymity. Until then, he both exists and doesn't exist, a wish and a curse at the same time. He is an absurdity, a figment of our fevered, hungry desires imaginations who might very well be real.
One thing is for sure, though. Erickson's Congressman is always a coward who cares more about his own hide than the country and the Constitution he's sworn to uphold. And Erickson, hell, all the Ericksons who remain silent about who is telling them their truth will be as complicit as their sources should this all blow up. When this all blows up.
And if it doesn't, well, Erickson's Congressman will just go on, back to being the savage conservative he always was, free of his duality, free of the conscience he pretends to have.
Now all over the media, people are trying to figure out who it is. Others wonder if the conversation happened at all. In other words, this congressman is in a state between existence and non-existence until he (assuming Erickson is being truthful about the sex) is revealed, either by Erickson, who has sworn he will not say, or the guy himself.
We've heard from these sources before, all these anonymous legislators and aides who tell reporters or others their true feelings about Trump, how they hate him to their core, beyond the niceties they are forced to spew, beyond their actual defense or support of him when they go on CNN or Fox. But, unless they are retiring or so senior they don't care, they remain anonymous, and thus they are objects of faith, living in the nether zone between hero and scoundrel. Oh, how we on the left love hearing that Trump can't hold a thought in his head or is in one of his idiot rages. Oh, how we love thinking about one of these anonymous voices finally saying, "Yeah, it's me. Congressman X" and bringing down this affliction of a government.
Hell, I have very few real contacts in the actual political world, to people with power or within proximity of power. But even I've heard from them that "every single Republican" (and, yes, that is a quote) knows that Trump is a dangerous dolt. Yet not a single one will go on the record.
And that's where the idea of Erickson's Congressman comes in: we don't know if he exists, but we desperately want him to exist, yet he can't exist - he doesn't exist- without giving up his anonymity. Until then, he both exists and doesn't exist, a wish and a curse at the same time. He is an absurdity, a figment of our fevered, hungry desires imaginations who might very well be real.
One thing is for sure, though. Erickson's Congressman is always a coward who cares more about his own hide than the country and the Constitution he's sworn to uphold. And Erickson, hell, all the Ericksons who remain silent about who is telling them their truth will be as complicit as their sources should this all blow up. When this all blows up.
And if it doesn't, well, Erickson's Congressman will just go on, back to being the savage conservative he always was, free of his duality, free of the conscience he pretends to have.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Finding Pleasure in the World Starting to Collapse on Trump
President Donald Trump, an angry, rotten tangerine on top of a sack of dead hogs, spoke out yesterday about FBI raid of the home, office, and hotel room (whuh?) of his lawyer, Michael Cohen. You might know Cohen as "That motherfucker? Fuck him." Cohen is like Roy Cohn except less charming in the same way that a rabid bear is less charming than a cobra.
Speaking before he surrounded himself with military leaders to pretend to be their commander, Trump went off on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and anyone who wasn't a citizen of Trump World before the filthy swamp of Washington, DC tainted their virgin white garments. "So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys," Trump started, ignoring the fact that "they" is actually "we," as in employees of the Justice Department and thus the federal government. "I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now — and actually, much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started," he continued. You want to tell him about the Benghazi investigations? Or that for years he accused President Obama of being born in another country? Bitch, shit's just getting good. We're not even at the climax yet.
The raid was bullshit, Trump said. "[I]t’s a disgrace. It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for." The idea that a search warrant, signed off on by a judge and handled by a Trump-appointed US Attorney, is an "attack on our country" means that Trump couldn't give a happy monkey fuck about our country except in how much l'etat c'est Trump.
He was on a ranting tear. He attacked the investigators, calling them all "Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for President Obama." He wondered why no Hillary: "[T]hey’re not looking at the Hillary Clinton — the horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed. They’re not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side."
Think about that for a second. He wants to know why they're not investigating someone who isn't in government anymore, who was thoroughly investigated, and about whom an investigation is still percolating even though there isn't a goddamn thing to investigate except how stolen emails got to the Trump campaign. But, mostly, think about how disgustingly self-pitying that is. "Why aren't you looking into this thing the man on the TV told me is bad when he told me I am good?" Trump is saying. "Why you no believe man in TV? I like man in TV. And other man in TV. And pretty lady in TV."
Then the mental breakdown of the cornered rat started to occur as his brain just started to dump shit in random bursts of words. Seriously, this is the president of the goddamn United States, and he's like a skeevy john trying to explain to cops that they shouldn't arrest him when there are murderers out there: "[T]hey don’t even bother looking. And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious. Lies, under oath, all over the place. Emails that are knocked out, that are acid-washed and deleted. Nobody has ever seen — 33,000 emails are deleted after getting a subpoena for Congress, and nobody bothers looking at that."
Goddamn, you want this to be more satisfying, doncha? Shouldn't we be rejoicing a bit, texting our friends gifs of people saying, "Nice" or "Oh, hell, yeah." Except for every little bit of celebration, we think, "But what if, after all this, the dickhole gets away with it?" For every delicious bit of schadenfreude, we wonder how long it'll take to clean up the shitpile he'll leave behind. Yeah, it's stomach-churning and hard to find pleasurable.
And yet...
"The F.B.I. agents who raided the office of President Trump’s personal lawyer on Monday were looking for records about payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump, and information related to the publisher of The National Enquirer’s role in silencing one of the women." That's right. According to the New York Times, the raid was about Trump's wandering dick and everything his pathetic thug-wannabe lawyer tried to do to shut women up about his dick.
So while Trump was ranting about "They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia. The reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion," the Southern District of New York, led by a Rudy Giuliani crony, had the FBI tear up Cohen's shit because of suspicion that Trump and Cohen were lying about something to do with Trump's adulterous dick. Russia may have little to do with this particular raid.
So Donald Trump may end up being crushed by walls made of pussy. Michael Cohen may be wrecked by women he and his boss tried to wreck. Ah, there it is. There's that satisfaction I was looking for.
Speaking before he surrounded himself with military leaders to pretend to be their commander, Trump went off on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and anyone who wasn't a citizen of Trump World before the filthy swamp of Washington, DC tainted their virgin white garments. "So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys," Trump started, ignoring the fact that "they" is actually "we," as in employees of the Justice Department and thus the federal government. "I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now — and actually, much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started," he continued. You want to tell him about the Benghazi investigations? Or that for years he accused President Obama of being born in another country? Bitch, shit's just getting good. We're not even at the climax yet.
The raid was bullshit, Trump said. "[I]t’s a disgrace. It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for." The idea that a search warrant, signed off on by a judge and handled by a Trump-appointed US Attorney, is an "attack on our country" means that Trump couldn't give a happy monkey fuck about our country except in how much l'etat c'est Trump.
He was on a ranting tear. He attacked the investigators, calling them all "Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for President Obama." He wondered why no Hillary: "[T]hey’re not looking at the Hillary Clinton — the horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed. They’re not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side."
Think about that for a second. He wants to know why they're not investigating someone who isn't in government anymore, who was thoroughly investigated, and about whom an investigation is still percolating even though there isn't a goddamn thing to investigate except how stolen emails got to the Trump campaign. But, mostly, think about how disgustingly self-pitying that is. "Why aren't you looking into this thing the man on the TV told me is bad when he told me I am good?" Trump is saying. "Why you no believe man in TV? I like man in TV. And other man in TV. And pretty lady in TV."
Then the mental breakdown of the cornered rat started to occur as his brain just started to dump shit in random bursts of words. Seriously, this is the president of the goddamn United States, and he's like a skeevy john trying to explain to cops that they shouldn't arrest him when there are murderers out there: "[T]hey don’t even bother looking. And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious. Lies, under oath, all over the place. Emails that are knocked out, that are acid-washed and deleted. Nobody has ever seen — 33,000 emails are deleted after getting a subpoena for Congress, and nobody bothers looking at that."
Goddamn, you want this to be more satisfying, doncha? Shouldn't we be rejoicing a bit, texting our friends gifs of people saying, "Nice" or "Oh, hell, yeah." Except for every little bit of celebration, we think, "But what if, after all this, the dickhole gets away with it?" For every delicious bit of schadenfreude, we wonder how long it'll take to clean up the shitpile he'll leave behind. Yeah, it's stomach-churning and hard to find pleasurable.
And yet...
"The F.B.I. agents who raided the office of President Trump’s personal lawyer on Monday were looking for records about payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump, and information related to the publisher of The National Enquirer’s role in silencing one of the women." That's right. According to the New York Times, the raid was about Trump's wandering dick and everything his pathetic thug-wannabe lawyer tried to do to shut women up about his dick.
So while Trump was ranting about "They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia. The reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion," the Southern District of New York, led by a Rudy Giuliani crony, had the FBI tear up Cohen's shit because of suspicion that Trump and Cohen were lying about something to do with Trump's adulterous dick. Russia may have little to do with this particular raid.
So Donald Trump may end up being crushed by walls made of pussy. Michael Cohen may be wrecked by women he and his boss tried to wreck. Ah, there it is. There's that satisfaction I was looking for.
Thursday, April 05, 2018
Trump's Got Border Madness and He Wants You to Get It, Too
Let's start with a statement about a number. This is from something put out from the White House, titled for idiots, "What You Need to Know About the President’s Authorization for the National Guard to Deploy to the Southern Border." The document gives a number. Two of them, really: "More than a thousand people a day and more than 300,000 a year violate our sovereignty by illegally crossing the border."
As many people on the Twitter and elsewhere have pointed out, there is a huge fuckin' difference between 1000 a day, which equals 365,000, and 300,000 a year, which is closer to an actual, reported number, 303,000 (or 800 a day). Now, here is where things get a little tricky, and by "tricky," I mean, "factual." Because, see, we don't really know how many people cross the border illegally. We can estimate, sure. What we do know is how many people the Border Patrol has apprehended at the southern border, and that's the number Trump is referring to.
Now, in that screaming, hysterical document and the screaming, hysterical order, as well as Trump's screaming, hysterical tweets, as well as the screaming, hysterical rhetoric coming from other screaming, hysterical Republicans (who are, in truth really screaming and hysterical over the possible 2018 blue wave sweeping them into the political ocean), we're told, "The situation at the border has now reached a point of crisis" because of drugs, gang members, and children (no, really, this administration has a boner for fucking over kids, especially unaccompanied minors).
The problem is, of course, of course, of fucking course, that the situation hasn't reached a point of crisis. By no stretch of whatever warped, savage imagination Trump might have is it a crisis. In fact, it's so far from a crisis, that it's goddamned laughable. You know how I know that? Because of the motherfucking numbers. From the motherfucking Border Patrol. In the year 2000, they apprehended 1,640,000 people at the border, which, by my amazing ability to do math, works out to roughly a metric fuck-ton more than 303,000. Or over 5 times as many as were apprehended last year.
And, despite the firehose of shit Trump is spraying on President Obama over the border, that number, which had been cut in two by the Bush administration, went from 705,000 in 2008 to 408,000 in 2016. The number was in the 325-425k range for the last few years of the Obama presidency. The reason it went up and down has to do with the economy in the United States, the economy and the living conditions of the countries the migrants were coming from (especially Mexico), and, yes, the strength of border security. Bush amped it up and Obama continue the amping. There are fewer apprehensions because there are fewer people trying to cross the border. It's that fucking simple. It's not a crisis. It's a relatively reasonable expectation, easily managed, not a reason to go bugfuck on the troops.
Any other reading of these numbers is merely there to het up the blood of the yahoos ahead of the midterms, to go back to the same racist well that Republicans (and, sometimes, yes, Democrats) go to time and time and time again. Brown people will always be scary to those hogs who wallow in mud puddles of white ignorance.
What about drugs? Drugs get in here by planes and ships and trucks that cross the border legally with illegal shit in them. Your National Guard members wandering around the streets of Laredo ain't gonna do shit about that.
What about violence? Yeah, drug cartel and gang violence sucks. But the only thing that even makes it on the same planet as a crisis is the proliferation of guns, which is something that the United States is doing to itself and to Mexico. You wanna do something about that? And maybe about poverty? And maybe about drug legalization?
What about caravans? Get the fuck outta here with that. Those were refugees from the fucking violence that Trump talks about. If Fox "news" and Breitbart keep screaming in your face, you get filled to your fuckin' tits with this bullshit.
Trump's gonna use this issue, though. He's gonna get in front of his idiot hordes who will hoot and holler as he dances a jig about his worthless wall, the same fuckin' hoodoo he conjures when he's whipping up the rubes, a fading rock star performing his one hit.
As many people on the Twitter and elsewhere have pointed out, there is a huge fuckin' difference between 1000 a day, which equals 365,000, and 300,000 a year, which is closer to an actual, reported number, 303,000 (or 800 a day). Now, here is where things get a little tricky, and by "tricky," I mean, "factual." Because, see, we don't really know how many people cross the border illegally. We can estimate, sure. What we do know is how many people the Border Patrol has apprehended at the southern border, and that's the number Trump is referring to.
Now, in that screaming, hysterical document and the screaming, hysterical order, as well as Trump's screaming, hysterical tweets, as well as the screaming, hysterical rhetoric coming from other screaming, hysterical Republicans (who are, in truth really screaming and hysterical over the possible 2018 blue wave sweeping them into the political ocean), we're told, "The situation at the border has now reached a point of crisis" because of drugs, gang members, and children (no, really, this administration has a boner for fucking over kids, especially unaccompanied minors).
The problem is, of course, of course, of fucking course, that the situation hasn't reached a point of crisis. By no stretch of whatever warped, savage imagination Trump might have is it a crisis. In fact, it's so far from a crisis, that it's goddamned laughable. You know how I know that? Because of the motherfucking numbers. From the motherfucking Border Patrol. In the year 2000, they apprehended 1,640,000 people at the border, which, by my amazing ability to do math, works out to roughly a metric fuck-ton more than 303,000. Or over 5 times as many as were apprehended last year.
And, despite the firehose of shit Trump is spraying on President Obama over the border, that number, which had been cut in two by the Bush administration, went from 705,000 in 2008 to 408,000 in 2016. The number was in the 325-425k range for the last few years of the Obama presidency. The reason it went up and down has to do with the economy in the United States, the economy and the living conditions of the countries the migrants were coming from (especially Mexico), and, yes, the strength of border security. Bush amped it up and Obama continue the amping. There are fewer apprehensions because there are fewer people trying to cross the border. It's that fucking simple. It's not a crisis. It's a relatively reasonable expectation, easily managed, not a reason to go bugfuck on the troops.
Any other reading of these numbers is merely there to het up the blood of the yahoos ahead of the midterms, to go back to the same racist well that Republicans (and, sometimes, yes, Democrats) go to time and time and time again. Brown people will always be scary to those hogs who wallow in mud puddles of white ignorance.
What about drugs? Drugs get in here by planes and ships and trucks that cross the border legally with illegal shit in them. Your National Guard members wandering around the streets of Laredo ain't gonna do shit about that.
What about violence? Yeah, drug cartel and gang violence sucks. But the only thing that even makes it on the same planet as a crisis is the proliferation of guns, which is something that the United States is doing to itself and to Mexico. You wanna do something about that? And maybe about poverty? And maybe about drug legalization?
What about caravans? Get the fuck outta here with that. Those were refugees from the fucking violence that Trump talks about. If Fox "news" and Breitbart keep screaming in your face, you get filled to your fuckin' tits with this bullshit.
Trump's gonna use this issue, though. He's gonna get in front of his idiot hordes who will hoot and holler as he dances a jig about his worthless wall, the same fuckin' hoodoo he conjures when he's whipping up the rubes, a fading rock star performing his one hit.
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
Moments from a Day or Two After the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.
1. Duke Ellington and his orchestra were already scheduled to play his Second Sacred Concert at Carnegie Hall on April 4, 1968. Ellington was participating in a concert of religious music to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the black institution, Tougaloo College, whose choir sang during the program. Before the concert began, it was announced to the audience that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been gunned down in Memphis. The New York Times said that the gasp from the people there "almost filled the hall."
A Lutheran minister there, John Gensel, led a prayer for King and "all future civil rights movements." The only change in the program was that a solo singer, Robert Edwin, changed his song to "Oh, Who Will Answer," a hymn that contains the lyrics, "Man is sunk in dark despair/Oh, listen to the pleading cry/Oh, who will answer, 'Here am I'?"
The title of the evening was "Good News for the Modern Man."
2. All over the country, for two days, April 5 and 6, 1968, longshoremen and others at ports from Texas to Maine shut down work in honor of King. This included passenger ships and boats carrying supplies to soldiers in Vietnam. Unions for the workers had been integrated for years, with up to 50% of their membership non-white, and the presidents for the National Maritime Union and the International Longshoremen's Association issued statements calling for the shut down. The head of the ILA, Thomas Gleason, said of King, "He was a man of peace and dignity, completely dedicated to God and the brotherhood of man. It is fitting and proper, then, that we devote this time to pray that the principles that guided this great, great man continue to guide others in the movement for brotherhood to which he devoted his energies."
The work stoppage began in Elizabeth, New Jersey, at 8 a.m. on April 5. By noon, "the 90 piers of the port of New York City were sepulchral," said the Times.
3. In New Delhi, India, the parliament heard a tribute to King from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, followed by a moment of silence. In Tel-Aviv, Israel, Prime Minister Abba Eba went on the radio to speak in honor of King. Newspapers in that country emphasized that King's murderer was white. In Beirut, Lebanon, the newspapers announced the killing with headlines like "Negro Revolt Breaks Out in America." In Rome, Italy, hundreds of students demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy to protest the assassination.
In Austin, Texas, thousands of students marched on the state capitol, demanding racial equality, after a memorial service for King. In Madison, Wisconsin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin led 20,000 in a silent march. In Kansas City, Missouri, a black clerk noticed that flags on the county courthouse and city hall were not at half-mast. Within 5 minutes of his complaining, they were lowered.
4. Out of respect for King, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Louis Armstrong said they would not perform at the upcoming Oscar ceremony. Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll said they would not present awards, as they had been scheduled to do. Soon after their announcements, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to postpone the entire ceremony for several days.
A Lutheran minister there, John Gensel, led a prayer for King and "all future civil rights movements." The only change in the program was that a solo singer, Robert Edwin, changed his song to "Oh, Who Will Answer," a hymn that contains the lyrics, "Man is sunk in dark despair/Oh, listen to the pleading cry/Oh, who will answer, 'Here am I'?"
The title of the evening was "Good News for the Modern Man."
2. All over the country, for two days, April 5 and 6, 1968, longshoremen and others at ports from Texas to Maine shut down work in honor of King. This included passenger ships and boats carrying supplies to soldiers in Vietnam. Unions for the workers had been integrated for years, with up to 50% of their membership non-white, and the presidents for the National Maritime Union and the International Longshoremen's Association issued statements calling for the shut down. The head of the ILA, Thomas Gleason, said of King, "He was a man of peace and dignity, completely dedicated to God and the brotherhood of man. It is fitting and proper, then, that we devote this time to pray that the principles that guided this great, great man continue to guide others in the movement for brotherhood to which he devoted his energies."
The work stoppage began in Elizabeth, New Jersey, at 8 a.m. on April 5. By noon, "the 90 piers of the port of New York City were sepulchral," said the Times.
3. In New Delhi, India, the parliament heard a tribute to King from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, followed by a moment of silence. In Tel-Aviv, Israel, Prime Minister Abba Eba went on the radio to speak in honor of King. Newspapers in that country emphasized that King's murderer was white. In Beirut, Lebanon, the newspapers announced the killing with headlines like "Negro Revolt Breaks Out in America." In Rome, Italy, hundreds of students demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy to protest the assassination.
In Austin, Texas, thousands of students marched on the state capitol, demanding racial equality, after a memorial service for King. In Madison, Wisconsin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin led 20,000 in a silent march. In Kansas City, Missouri, a black clerk noticed that flags on the county courthouse and city hall were not at half-mast. Within 5 minutes of his complaining, they were lowered.
4. Out of respect for King, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Louis Armstrong said they would not perform at the upcoming Oscar ceremony. Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll said they would not present awards, as they had been scheduled to do. Soon after their announcements, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to postpone the entire ceremony for several days.
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