For the Millionth Time, Kanye West is a Piece of Shit

Maybe at one time in the very distant past, it was a goof, but it hasn't been for years. He's an awful person. If you give him any of your money for anything, you're part of the problem. I don't know what else to tell you. It's not just that he's mentally ill; he's an empty, desiccated soul. He sits on hundreds of millions of dollars and does nothing with it but buy show ponies for his kids who are too young to ride them.

Remember what I said about idiots and assholes. Kanye is one of the few people who can give Trump a run for his (other peoples') money in that regard. But seriously, the first step in this national intervention is to defund this toxic asshole.

A Serious Man

This disjointed, rambling "interview" with 'murka's most notorious celeb mental patient -- well, he's not a "patient" in the sense of actually receiving treatment, but he's clearly ill and needs help -- reminds me of a "prediction" I made in October 2018, when Yeezus H. Christ first put the dunce cap on his peanut-headed self:

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if a year or two passed and he and that hobbit he's married to publicly change their minds about their elderly oompa-loompa friend.

Okay, it wasn't that difficult of a prediction, more like "water is wet" or "Kim Kardashian has one or more venereal diseases," but there it is all the same.

Here's another observation, prediction, call it what you will: even if West got the help he needs, whether that therapy or medication or some combination, he would still be an insufferable, narcissistic asshole, dumber than a bag of dicks, able only to externalize his many deep-seated daddy issues. Much like his ludicrous orange friend.

And frankly, West's sales pitch for being chief executive is not worse -- or even all that different -- from Trump's, the same sort of tedious, self-serving free-form prattle. He makes Sarah Palin sound like Marilyn Vos Savant.

This is a good example of why there has always been a sideline of attacking idiotic "cultural" figures in this blog over the years -- not as some misguided chacun à son goût trash talk, but to point out that frequently the doofuses that we elevate in our collective mindless escapism have more of an effect than just the shitty music they produce, or the shitty reality teevee shows they squeeze out of their stanky butt-cheeks and onto our unsuspecting airwaves.

Some of them end up lodging themselves in just enough crania, like the attention-sucking ticks they are, to affect how people make more important decisions. That's why you saw the Duck Dynasty assholes endorsing the orange slob in 2016 (and probably this year). You and I might not give two shits about anything they say or do, but plenty of people did and do. (To be fair, none of those people were going to vote for Hillary Clinton in the first place, nor will they vote for Joe Biden.)

That's not to say that Kanye West's "campaign," if he even bothers to actually file paperwork, is anything worth noting or being concerned about. Anyone who would seriously vote for him wasn't going to vote for Biden either. But as I've said for at least a few election cycles now, elections are no longer a referendum on the incumbent, or any of that conventional wisdom crap -- they're a referendum on us, on ourselves, on each other, on what kind of society we really are, versus what we pretend to be or what we think we want to be.

So is popular culture, in some respects. Garbage in, garbage out.

In the meantime, anyone who's giving West any of their time or money, just as with his orange daddy, they're part of the fucking problem. The media who continue to give them exposure and amplify their toxic foolishness, also part of the problem.

Forget the "cancel culture" nonsense -- this is cancer culture, and it's going to be the death of us all if we don't shape the hell up and stop giving these vile people oxygen.

Fight Liar with Liar

It's a very strange ongoing phenomenon to observe, on at least weekly and sometimes daily basis, not just the constant lies, personal attacks, innuendo, and outright slander and libel, but the degree to which it goes completely uncontested.

Let's look at just two (2) of the more recent notorious examples.

The first example is the recent resurfacing of the conspiracy theory arising from the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, who was an aide to outgoing congressman Joe Scarborough. It's easy to forget, after nearly twenty years, that in fact there did seem to be some shady shit around that event at the time, and it chased Scarborough around for a few years. It doesn't help that Scarborough's default setting is "smug, supercilious prick."

But whatever. For this example, it doesn't matter whether Morning Joe had anything to do with Klausutis' untimely demise. (For the record, I don't think he did.) From a cursory glance at his Twitter feed, it appears that Scarborough has chosen simply to take the vaunted "high road" and express sympathy for her family getting all this dredged up again, and retweeting supportive messages. All well and good.

But DID YOU KNOW [arches eyebrow ominously] that back in 1989, Donald Trump had three of his Taj Mahal executives killed in a helicopter crash, not long before the whole money-laundering operation went tits-up? It's true!

I dunno about you, but if some cheesedick piece of shit was publicly accusing me of murder, and said asshole had roughly a metric fuckton of serious dirt, rumors, allegations about him, and I had my own teevee show, I'd make a point of finding the nastiest thing I could, find a few bucks in the production budget for a couple decent private eyes, and flog that mule till the motherfucker dropped. Just keep hammering on it every day until someone squealed.

But hey, if Joe Blow wants to keep that "thoughts and prayers" high road, more power to him. We can see how well that has worked for so many other people, who just didn't want to sink to that level. [rolls eyes]

The second example involves Trump's ongoing lies about how the previous administration left the federal government completely unprepared for the current pandemic. He has repeatedly blamed Obama by name. This op-ed piece from the St. Louis Times-Dispatch lays out the lies pretty well.

Now, the general election campaign obviously has not really gotten into gear yet, but as someone who voted for Obama twice, I would like to see the man defend himself. I don't want to hear any bullshit about "presidential protocols" of not attacking other office-holders.

That taboo has clearly been shattered, and it's an odd thing to see one side uphold it while the other repeatedly, gleefully violates. Sorta like watching a duel where the participants agreed to use swords, but one side showed up with an assault rifle, and the dope with the sword just stands there, occasionally murmuring "but we agreed to use swords."

I want Obama to defend himself, and call out Trump's repeated, blatant lies for exactly what they are. But I also want him to say that on my behalf, and on behalf of the millions of Americans who supported him, and still do for that matter. He's not just saying you sucked, Barry, he's saying we were suckers for supporting you.

If I had the pulpit to say that's a fucking lie, I would. Then I'd remind everyone that he won't show his tax returns because he's been laundering bratva cash since before 9/11. But I don't. I'm just an anonymous schmuck, a drop in the vast internets ocean. It doesn't matter what I think or say.

But it does matter if a former President responds to the worthless piece of shit currently festering in the White House, and debunks those lies with specificity. Especially when the current guy is also lying about voting by mail, because he wants get those disqualified, so that he can cheat his way in for another term. Do ya think the situation is getting urgent? Okay then, it might be time to respond with a real sense of urgency. Waiting till November is not an option, when there's a significant non-zero chance that the election will be rigged or postponed.

I do think it's likely that Obama and/or Biden will respond to those lies at some point in the relatively near future. But the responses should be in real time, and should be forceful and declarative. No dancing around with carefully nuanced phrasing and word choices. These aren't "falsehoods" or "untrue statements," these are LIES -- as in they are completely false and Trump knows it.

I'm not a fan of Rick Wilson's history of political cockpunching, but I will say that he's talked better trash, baited Trump ably, and put together several powerful ads, than just about anything I've seen from the Democrats. It's kinda sad that a career rent-a-Republican wants these fuckers out more than the Democratic Party seems to most of the time.

Like I said at the top, this is a very strange phenomenon. We've become accustomed to it. People have decided that nothing can be done about it, so nothing gets done about it. No one even tries. Every Democratic politician should have been flooding the zone, every panel show, every Sunday shitshow, with a unified message -- that's a fucking lie, period, end of sentence. You are allowed to call liars what they are. Keep going down this path, and you might find that changed pretty soon. The bottom line is that no one has to take this shit from this fucking guy.

Did you ever know a kid who was bullied in school? Did the bully ever stop because the kid ignored them? Sometimes you have to fight back, and you might even end up with a black eye or a bloody nose. But the fucker knows you're gonna fight back next time, and that makes it more likely to move on.

When they know you're never gonna fight back, why should they move on?

Everything Trump Touches Dies

As irritating and demoralizing as it can be to watch an entire political party give its collective soul away to a vile would-be caudillo, there are some entertaining and even strategic points to observe in the ugly process. It seems only fitting that these points were mostly provided by none other than John Fucking Bolton.

The most superficial point has been watching the F Troop of slapdicks at Fixed Noise scramble themselves into a frenzy, trying hastily to excise Comrade Bolton from the photos and narrative of the People's Soviet, lest Comrade Von Clownstick be enraged or even inconvenienced by seeing a hint of Bolton's Cap'n Crunch facial hair. I don't know which frontal-lobe-impaired sliver of codgers in their withered audience is going to buy that truckload of horseshit, but Bolton was Trump's handpicked National Security Advisor, and the very same Fox hand-puppets crowed and snorted at all the libturds crying about Dear Leader's wise choice.

Ever heard of YouTube, motherfuckers? They can try to paint Bolton as a trouble-making commie all they want, but there ain't no memory hole anymore. The only people still buying Fox's tripe need it to stay alive now, to offset the possibility they walk too slowly past a mirror, realize what they support and what they've become, and blow their worthless brains out.

Which, honestly, I am surprised that mainstays like Lou Dobbs and Alan Doucheowitz and the morning-zoo crew haven't already done. You can see it in their eyes now. They know what they are -- and worse yet, they know that we know. Let them live with that, long and hard. This isn't business anymore, assholes. They're openly supporting the open betrayal of their country, hooting and yukking it up.

But that's small potatoes compared to watching #MoscowMitch's dopey gang of treasonous shitheads. They were sure as hell going to railroad this shit through, right up 'murka's poop-chute, and the Dummycrats were just going to have to sit there and take it, like Paul Manafort with his cellmate. McConnell was enjoying the prospect, you could see the evil gleam in his soulless eye-holes. He was getting off on it. He was going to get it over with before the SOTU speech, just the way Dear Leader wanted, and then they could get back to bamboozling the cult loons just long enough to make it to November and renew the prospect of looting the many for the very few.

They even brought in the most cynical team of dipshit "lawyers" imaginable:  the main White House counsel, who literally lied during his arguments on the Senate floor (which is grounds for disbarment); a professional "Christian" who is currently being investigated for (surprise!) embezzling millions of dollars from his megachurch (when he's not playing drums with a couple of discards from the band Kansas); Ken Starr, a sanctimonious, hypocritcal scumbag who would be tarred and feathered in any decent society; the drunk frat girl who took $25k from Trump to not investigate his fraudulent "university" in America's Wang. Like something out of central casting in a fourth-rate Animal House knockoff.

(Side note:  I have honestly lost track of how many times in the last few years some weird instance or assemblage of goofballs has occurred, where I seriously thought, If you wrote this in a treatment or script and pitched it, they'd kick it back for being too on-the-nose.)

So it was all set to go down, in the most humiliating way possible, and here comes Bolton -- and with him, a set of flash polls all showing that even a majority of Republican voters want to hear witnesses and evidence now. Turns out that even people who disagree passionately about the nature of the thing currently occupying the office of chief executive, still agree on the basic principle of if he's innocent, he shouldn't have a problem with presenting testimony and evidence that show how perfect the call was and how he did nothing wrong.

People who are old enough to recall the O.J. Simpson trial from a quarter-century ago remember that moment immediately after the bodies were found, the LA media copters hovering over the white Bronco, futilely trying to escape to Mexico. Certainly innocent people get railroaded and unjustly convicted sometimes, but only guilty people immediately assume that everyone else will assume they're guilty. You follow me?

The innocent person's initial instinct is almost always, Hey, I know I'm innocent. I have the truth on my side, and nothing to hide. I'll just tell them what I know, and go on about my day. Again, sometimes things don't work out that way once investigations and procedures get their wheels set in motion, but that's the initial response.

And of course the guilty person has the opposite response just as reliably. Their first -- and usually only -- instincts are to conceal and/or to escape, if they can. Since Trump cannot escape, he has to conceal, which is what he's done at every possible turn. He's had a million opportunities to straighten this whole thing out; the Democrats have pleaded with him to present all this evidence of how perfect everything was, to refute the sworn testimony provided last month by his subordinates that directly implicated him and Mike Pompeo, among others.

And at every opportunity, he's refused the chance to do so, angrily, insultingly. He thinks his sub-Nelson Muntz taunts of "Shifty Schiff" and the like are going to do anything but make Adam Schiff -- a trained prosecutor who's dealt with organized crime figures and competes in triathlons -- more dogged and determined to stuff that burger-hoisting garbage pail into the nearest jail cell, and strip him of every dollar they can find.

(Incidentally, this is just one of many reasons why intelligence really does matter to some extent. You should at least be sharp enough not to poke the people who can actually harm you.)

So everyone knows he's guilty -- the public, his own supporters, and the Republican members of Congress. The last two groups have made their own calculations about how and why they keep supporting someone whom they know is corrupt, and again, this is something they get to live with for the duration. They've rationalized themselves this far, you can be sure they'll continue to do so.

But it's that third group's calculations that become interesting in the strategic sense. Baked into the cynicism of the McConnell gang is the assumption that the general public will forget because they're easily rolled dupes, their own supporters will get ginned up over whatever bullshit they concoct for them in the fall, and they can all cruise to re-election. But throughout, they know not only that he's guilty of the bare minimum that he's being impeached and tried for, but that there's almost certainly plenty more shit that just hasn't bubbled to the surface yet, and that any or all of it could start coming out all through the rest of the year.

It was the only move they had, really, sticking with him at this point. You're all in or all out, bottom line. "The "heads on a pike" line may or may not have actually occurred, but does anyone seriously doubt that that's really the case? It's what his supporters like about him. It's why dozens of Republican House members, even from safe districts, have abruptly quit, finding suddenly that they no longer possess the intestinal fortitude to continue betraying their country day after miserable fucking day.

So the GOP Senate assholes had no choice. It was a sizable gamble, and it may be starting to backfire on them now, thanks to Bolton (who, again, let's be clear, is not motivated by any illusions of "patriotism" so much as an overweening arrogance and sense of self-regard). Because it turns out that Trump knew Bolton had a manuscript ready to drop -- and didn't even warn McConnell. So now they know that not only is more of his fuckuppery going to trickle out and stain all the carpets in the coming months, but there isn't even any honor among thieves.

What they've always said about Trump and "loyalty" is true, and can be empirically observed over decades of him never shutting the fuck up about anything (other than his money laundering):  The loyalty only goes one way, from you to him. It is never mutual, except as a matter of convenience to him.

So it is immensely entertaining to watch these genuinely despicable people find all this out the hard way. They richly deserve to be tossed out on their asses as soon as electorally possible, and then shunned for the remainder of their lives, and then rendered destitute by lack of further prospects, karma, worsening health, etc.

It won't happen, of course -- this is, after all, the nation that still allows a glowering pustule like Newt Gingrich to not have to live in a needle-filled alley sucking diseased cocks to feed his drug habit, like he deserves -- but there is at least a chance for them to lose at the ballot box, and they're starting to realize that. Nothing ever gets better with this guy, none of the scandals ever turn out to be less than initially thought. Always worse; always more. They're starting to realize that as well. More and more incriminating, stupid stuff is going to come out, and they're all going to be up to their necks in it.

Because they're accomplices, in the end, and even some of their own constituents, the ones not chugging the kool-aid and asking for thirds, are getting that as well.

They decided to have a Jersey Shore cult rally last night, and the Hoarse Whisperer has a very entertaining live-take thread of the festivities. I didn't (and wouldn't) watch the rally, but like Hoarse, I did watch some of them back during the campaign, all the way through, mostly to get a sense of why people were falling for this ridiculous grifter so hard, and what sort of nonsense was resonating with them, that sort of thing. They were just what you think they were -- amazingly dumb, hopelessly repetitive, demoralizing in that you realize that no matter how cynical you've ever been about the stupidity of people, it wasn't nearly enough.

And what Hoarse observes from tonight's rally is what I'm seeing lately in general, this kind of low-octane, lukewarm support. Don't get me wrong, they'll still vote for him, but the passion is fading, the novelty is wearing off, the "vote for change" excuse from before is no longer valid. You know what he's about, so you can't talk about "change" anymore -- you're either with this spiteful idiocy, or you're not.

I saw a lot of links today crowing about how all the hotels in Wildwood sold out in anticipation of the rally, all the crowds, blah blah. So here's the deal about that:  Wildwood has a population of a little over 5,000. That's five thousand. It's a resort town, so they do have more and better accommodations than most towns that size, but it's still barely more than a village in size. And Trump's rally promoters have been infamous in recklessly overselling these events. The convention center has a capacity of 7,000, which means they probably gave out 30-40,000 tickets, maybe more.

It has been their deliberate attendance model to pack the parking lot as well as the venue, which for a small resort town means traffic nightmares for a couple days around the event, and probably the stretching of the town's police resources, and definitely a security bill that Cheapskate McFrightwig will refuse to pay. All for a relative handful of suckers who think they want to be used as stage props for a traveling medicine show, who think they're pwning libturds by driving for hours and waiting for more hours out in the January cold of a Jersey Shore seaside town.

And then they get up there and realize they're really just there to hear the greatest shits, to chant USA and Lock her up! when prompted, like the barely-trained farm animals they really are. To spend an entire day waiting around, hoping above all else to get into an arena with a bunch of strange, sweaty groper types, to listen to a demented old man rant about dishwashers and how he'll fix their health care, while never really explaining even the broad strokes of how.

Clearly these are not the sharpest tools in the shed -- all you have to do is listen to them rattle for thirty seconds in any random YouTube video to see that -- but it may be starting to dawn on them finally. They're not really rubbing anyone's noses in anything, if they still can't afford health care, if they still have to work two jobs to survive, if they still live in crappy, boarded-up towns where the smart kids have left, the others are stuck or dead, and all those boarded-up lots are squatted on by out-of-town owners who don't care if the property ever re-opens or helps the town turn a buck.

And fuckin' Jim Jones up there at the podium in the high-school gym, with all the colorful insult-comic lines they can sing along to by now, like some discount Don Rickles, after the jokes are done and the circus has left town and they're back to their opioids and fast food and boredom, he's not going to do anything about any of that. Because he doesn't really care, not even a little bit. Shit, his dick-waving just got four dozen military personnel hospitalized with traumatic brain injuries, and he laughs it off as headaches. Walk it off, you pussies!

The schtick wears thin after a while; like any drug, the user has to chase more and more of it just to get anything out of it, never quite approaching that original euphoria. I think there is a very real cultural thread from Duck Dynasty to Trump, and as popular as that show was, it was done in five years. I mean, they basically beat everyone over the head on a constant basis with 130 "episodes" (I once caught one to see what all the fuss was about, and seriously felt stupider by the end of that interminable half-hour) and an unholy barrage of promotion and advertising and Wal-Mart swag and all sorts of cheap shit like that, but it wore out its welcome.

The human brain, no matter how dull and desensitized, can take daily barrages of nonsense and cognitive dissonance for only so long. And then it's old. If Trump knew how to give it a rest, or if the media knew how to change up their coverage a bit, it might be different. But they are all one-trick ponies, and maybe the American public is starting to get a bit war-weary. People are exhausted, and the one-liners are long past their sell-by date.

And even the most die-hard cultist has to wonder at some point, if Crooked Hillary is so crooked, and Republicans are in charge right now, then why haven't we actually locked her up? What's the hold-up here? Even the cynic has to wonder to themselves why they continue to sing along, if they know it's bullshit.

I make no predictions; my observations on the messiness of human nature are what they've always been. But the patterns are clear from an operational perspective, and from a perspective of how a rational actor would craft a strategic response to save their job and reputation:  the boss is erratic and impulsive and dumb and cruel, and would incarcerate every loyal minion and nuke the entire Midwest if it would make him a buck or save his worthless hide. Everything that is politically bad for them now is only going to get worse, never better. What do you do?

Either they hang together, or they hang separately. They know that. All it takes is for a few key players to break, though, and the floodgates will open. It is enormously fun to watch these mendacious shits twist in the wind.

Shame Spiral

The collapse of empire continues unabated:  Li'l Nero's six-page manifesto, apparently copy-pasted directly from his Twitter feed. Hilarious. Exactly what this country deserves, a place where (among countless other daily signs of sheer wretchedness) kindergartners hold bake sales so their classmates can eat lunch. But hey, at least we can say Merry Christmas again, amirite? We all recall the dark years when people were dragged by the hair into the middle of the street and beaten severely for such things. It was on the internets, so it must be true.

Wait until the actual impeachment vote comes down tomorrow, or someone explains to him that during the impeachment process, the pardon power is suspended. Buckle in for the Christmas rage-tweet-palooza. A bottle of Jameson's would be good to have on hand.

Never let them forget, the politicians and the voters who continue to give their support to this thing:  this is what you support, this doddering, raving, preposterous old man who never earned an honest dollar nor gave a straight answer. Hang it around their necks for all time.

Respect, Slight Return

Pretty sure Huckleberry meant to say "mouthful." In a business immersed in rank hypocrisy, this gutless clown takes the cake and fucks it like it's his very first time. What a worthless pile of shit he is. Do the right thing already, South Carolina, and flush your traitorous turd.

You Will Know Them By Their Fruits

It's good to see this story being covered in the midst of the never-ending shitstorm -- your tax dollars, friends 'n' neighbors, paying this fucking fraud to pose as a "spiritual advisor" to an avowed moral leper who's fucked around on every woman he's ever known, and has never earned a straight dollar. That second one would be precisely what she has in common with him.

[Fuckface]'s personal spiritual adviser, Paula White, launched a prayer effort alongside other evangelical Christian leaders on Tuesday, offering a prayer condemning the president's opponents, accusing them of being aligned with evil spirits and using sorcery.

Bitch, if we could use sorcery, he'd have never gotten anywhere near the White House in the first place. But it would explain why she looks like she does her own plastic surgery with a blowtorch and a spackling knife. As the poet Rodney Dangerfield once noted, the last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it. Doesn't matter what this hideous cow looks like though, the ugly goes clear to the bone on that one.

White is one of those "prosperity gospel" assholes, and while I would normally adhere to my principled stance of it is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money, the presence of these filthy animals at the highest levels of government, like flies drawn to shit, is profoundly disturbing. Where is Jesus with the whip when you could really use him?

When and if we get out from under this diseased chancre of an administration, the first thing we need to do is make scumbag grifters and hucksters like Paula White PAY THEIR FUCKING TAXES. And anyone calling themselves a "Christian" and seeing White as anything other than loathsome needs to read their bible again.

Crush 'em, Slight Return: Snowflake Season

The real legacy of this gaping cloaca of an administration will be the judges they have stuffed into our increasingly problematic judicial system, at all levels. This is simply unacceptable, though; how many of these fucking whiners must we be saddled with, these coddled rich white men who turn on the waterworks like some day-drinking housewife, every time their precious privilege is challenged in the slightest?

Having been in scores of interview and hiring panels over the past decade, let me put on the trusty HR hat for a second. Let's stipulate that, regardless of your spot along the political spectrum, we should all be able to agree with the simple principle that these little dog-and-pony "confirmation" hearings are essentially the functional equivalent of a job interview. Yes? Good.

So, whether for a privately held company, a publicly traded corporation, or a public-sector department or agency, there is no fucking way I would ever give a job to someone who cried (or yelled and talked about his drinking, as Boof O'Kavanaugh did at his hearing) during the job interview.

In fact, I would advocate more strenuously against it, the closer the position was to my team -- in other words, if it was a unit my team had to work with, and that unit's manager wanted the person for some reason, I'd do everything I could to talk them out of it. If it was for my unit and my superior wanted the person, I'd seriously threaten to walk. I don't work with emotionally volatile drama queens. There are far too many qualified people out there seeking the same jobs. Good grief, that shouldn't even need to be said, but there you have it. This is how far we have fallen.

This is the key quote from the article people should think seriously about:

Why does the Trump administration believe that someone who has done nothing but push fringe legal notions into the mainstream is fit to serve on a federal appellate bench? It’s a puzzler.

It's not a puzzler at all, and Dahlia Lithwick surely knows this, and she knows the reason why they're trying to push Crybaby McGee onto the federal bench for the rest of his sorry life. Obviously, Trump wouldn't know this fucking simp from Judge Judy or Judge Reinhold if you put them all in a lineup. The Federalist Society sends a list, Trump might ask how old they are, because he at least wants to make sure his fuckery carries on long after he's holed up in his Caudillo Suite at the Mag-a-Lardo, smearing chocolate cake and poop on the walls until you can no longer tell which is which.

But he goes from the list, and one thing you can be sure he agrees fully with the Federalist Society on is how far can we push it? Like every bratty four-year-old knows, the only way to find out where the limits are is to test them constantly, see how far you can push Mommy, when she's in a good mood, when she's in a bad mood, when she hasn't had any for a few weeks.

It was the same with Kavanaugh, and it worked perfectly for them. Even setting aside the sexual assault allegations, Kavanaugh's appointment was rammed through with an unprecedented lack of scrutiny -- barely ten percent of his judicial record was able to be reviewed, and he never explained how his substantial mortgage and credit-card debts just happened to be quickly paid off all at once, less than a year before his appointment, on a combined salary that, while significant by the standards of most Americans, was barely average for the DC area, and certainly not enough to knock down a quarter-million in Nats tickets.

But they got away with it, and that's all that matters, that's the only lesson they learn for the next time. And so now they have someone who will probably sit on the bench for another forty years, reliably siding with the looters and the polluters and the anti-abortion fanatics and the privatized carceral state.

They've already dumped a couple hundred of these fucking dirtbags into the system over the last few years, after preventing the black guy from doing it. That's why your vote and your dollars and your unwavering attention matter. It's a lot to keep track of, but either you care about the country your kids and grandkids inherit, or you just really need to jerk off and catch the new adventures of The Masked Singer. It's up to all of us -- and it will take all of us, and a little luck -- to say no, and mean it with every action.

Don't be distracted by their "cancel culture" con either, or their mindless "social justice warrior" carping. It's a lie. There is nothing "woke" about insisting that everyone should be equal under the law, about having a sense of real justice that holds everyone accountable, not just the poor and unprivileged and unlucky. There is nothing untoward about holding people responsible for the things they say and do, just like you would be at your job. Don't fall for their bullshit.

And definitely don't fall for that asshole's crocodile tears. He's just another reminder that lifetime appointments for judges at any level shouldn't be a thing in the first place.

Fuck Your Feelings

So Mister Man, smug and secure in thinking that he timed the killing of ISIS Guy #1 perfectly with appearing at the World Series last night. And wouldn't you know it, a crowd that wasn't paid and curated for the weekly klan rally in Pig's Taint, Mississippi had a different reaction than he -- and, of course, the useless eaters in the corporate commentariat -- expected.

You don't need me to belabor the finer points on this one. I'm only going to say a couple brief things about it:

1. Hoarse Whisperer is correct. This is the sort of thing that has (let's coin it) an invisible momentum to it. It breaches the misplaced certitude and unearned confidence of the cultist and the hack. He'll never show his worthless face to a non-handpicked crowd again, and even his most die-hard toe-suckers will know. They'll never admit it, but they know. It is a small but critical point that should be brutally hammered by the right people (lookin' at you, Dem candidates). He's a fucking loser, and always has been. That he still has a cult only proves that there's a mark for every two-bit con-man, no matter how bad.
2. Thanks to his MSNBC gig, his current choice of spouse, and his occasionally public disavowals of the man who he slavishly promoted a mere three years ago, Joe Scarborough has cultivated a false image of himself as a political moderate. He is not. His congressional seat is the one currently held by professional dipshit Matt Gaetz, who should be doing public service announcements reminding people that while there is not yet a cure for terminal fuckface-itis, there is treatment. But Scarborough was a dollar-scrounging Gingrich disciple, anti-abortion, anti-women's rights. An assistant died mysteriously in his office. But even if he's squeaky clean on the Lori Klausitis case, politically he was never anything but a reactionary turd. Whether it's next year or five or ten years from now, the next time you have a Democratic president or senate majority, Scarborough will turn tack and revert to his natural ankle-biting posture. Bet money on it.

And just in general, anyone you see in the corporate media today lecturing about "civility" and "respect for the office" and all that (parody link), stop giving them your time and attention immediately. Such comments reveal exactly who and what they really are, much more clearly than any posing on a particular issue. Turn the channel, and pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for them to be rendered bankrupt and forced to ply an honest trade.

Trump has no "respect for the office" he defiles, nor the people he presides over, nor even most of the people who voted for him. He has no respect for anyone, and respect must be earned to be given freely and honestly. I've never had an ounce of respect for that fucking asshole, not back in the day, and certainly not now.

I'm absolutely mystified by people who couldn't see that he was nothing more than a mouthy jerkoff losing other people's money back in the Eighties, and only got worse from there. He's every drunk asshole blowhard at the end of every dive bar in every shithole town across this great land of ours. He just happened to start out with $400M in tax-dodging trust funds that his daddy set up for him. As Michael Jackson proved, you can get away with being really bad at business for a long time, when you have easy money to insulate you from the consequences normal people would face quickly.

And we left "civility" back at the train station three years ago. At this point, one side being obliged to play by Marquess of Queensberry rules, while the other spikes the Calvinball in their faces daily, is simply agreeing to get slaughtered. Don't take the bait. Tell them -- and him -- to go fuck themselves, in no uncertain terms, and every chance you get. We really should have a better class of mediots, but in the end, like politicians, the best way to be rid of them is to tune them out, once and for all.

Oil's Well That Ends Well

Every time Dear Toddler manages to not fuck something up, he still finds a way to fuck it up, and then lie about it and try to paper it over. That is all part of the playbook of the clinical narcissist, I guess. It's nothing if not entertaining to watch.

The world is a better place without Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, no doubt about that. But as it goes with people like that, the world also produces an endless supply of them. And clearly not only do we have no strategy in that region anymore, we have ceded our role to the Russians. Forget being the "world's policeman," we're just the Saudis' mall cop now.

Or maybe the Russians killed him, or perhaps al-Baghdadi killed himself. It's not like you can trust anything -- not even so much as a weather forecast, to say nothing of a secret combat operation -- that comes from anyone in this rotting fish of an administration, certainly not the head. What we do know for sure is that when the op took place he was, believe it or not, on a fucking golf course. So they had to stage the tough-guy situation-room photo later.

Jesus. Look, I'm not going to compare him to Obama or Bush or Reagan or whoever. But you really have to wonder about the sort of person who sees guys like Trump and Pence and thinks they're tough or masculine. Trump is, and always has been, the schoolyard bully who uses his doughy bulk and loud mouth to intimidate smaller, weaker targets, until one of them finally fights back and knocks him flat with the first swing. Pence is the pussy sidekick, the "hype man" who turns tail at the first sign of actual pushback.

Instead of simply reading a brief statement about the terrorist's demise, and leaving it at that, Trump decided to take questions and extemporize -- which, you may have noticed, is not his strong suit. So he ends up using it as yet another opportunity to take a shit on his predecessors (and really, maybe it's high time one or more of them speak up for the country, if not their respective legacies); invent yet another narrative where he was the only one with the genius foresight to know that Osama bin Laden was a troublemaker; thanked Russia and Turkey for their help with the operation before remembering to throw in, you know, American service personnel; leaked enough detail to let the world know that if you say the phrase "opsec" to him, he'll have no clue what the fuck you're talking about.

This endless symbiosis of unbridled arrogance and utter stupidity, this vainglorious, preposterous grifter whose main concerns are getting the American taxpayer to subsidize his rat-infested properties and receiving thick envelopes from his petrocrat patrons, once again manages with ease to take something that just about everyone across the political spectrum can readily endorse -- the violent demise of a brutal thug -- and turn it into a seedy spectacle, a pathetic, needy old man making the world watch him jerk off all over himself yet again.

And the whole thing about the oil fields American combat troops are supposedly "protecting"? For one, Syria produces very little oil; for another, Assad signed the oil rights over to Russia. The only reason Americans are still there is to prevent all the newly escaped ISIS fighters from taking them over and funding a resurgence. Anything else is industrial-grade bullshit.

Trump speaks as if he thinks that "us" "protecting" the oil fields means that "we" get to "take" the product, as spoils of war or something. Well, that's a war crime, not to mention the fact that "we" don't have any of the logistical equipment to extract and transport through the desert to the nearest seaport (which would be Basra, which is in Iraq, which has made clear they don't want any American troops within their borders anymore, so how do you get this oil which is deep underground right now out and into trucks to drive all the way from Erbil to maybe Kuwait City, and how much would all that cost?).

Our policy in the Middle East is and always has been a devil's bargain, deeply flawed and frequently counter-productive. We should have started pushing renewable sources thirty years ago, and cut those fuckers loose first chance and let things sort themselves out (within reason). But the fact is that it took some extremely intelligent (not to mention greedy) and educated people generations to achieve the fragile equilibrium that exists in the region.

And it took Genius Q. Dealmaker there just three years to burn it all to the ground. If you look through all the financial and strategic partnerships and alliances that exist between and among Russia, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, you'll see pretty quickly how ugly this can get. Throw in the stateless Kurds, betrayed by their American partners to be slaughtered by Turkish-backed death squads, and all it takes is one Gavrilo Princip to go after the "right" figure (for example, Erdogan or Assad), with a vest full of Semtex and ball bearings and nails, to set the whole thing off.

And there are currently fifty US nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey, which despite its aggression is still a NATO ally that we are contractually obligated to defend. And you can bet the Iranian nuclear program went into overdrive the second they realized Trump was going to screw them over on the JCPOA. The only countries that have any incentive to work with us at all, or even pretend to be on "our" side, is our rented allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel.

This is why, after all the snark about this water-brained dullard and his fifth-grade vocabulary, competence matters. Intelligence and temperament and character all matter. This shit is complicated. This is why it takes an adult to do the fucking job, someone who knows what areas they don't know much about, and so they listen to people who do know about those things. This is not a fucking pro wrassling match with the strutting and the kayfabe and the trash talk. People are losing their lives already, and a lot more will -- maybe even people you care about -- before it's over.

Fuck your feelings, indeed. How's that working out? Hope it was worth it for them.

Strange Fruit

The dotard is not strategic, but his language is not accidental, especially heading into another hate rally in the deep south. It is absolutely elemental to his own deep insecurities, and those of the cultists, to phrase this situation -- entirely of his own making -- as one of victimization and persecution.

(It also links to their larger feelings of victimization and persecution; while most reasonable people can empathize with the crisis of people in their forties and fifties suddenly getting their jobs outsourced or commodified and being told to learn to code or whatever, it also begs the question of what exactly they did do when that job crisis hit them -- did they do anything at all to broaden their skill set, or improve their existing skills, or did they just retreat into a cocoon of Fixed Noise jabber in between the stream of court shows that show what those people do with their free time.)

Of course, some of the response to this ugliness is to offer the usual don't get distracted counsel, which is nonsense. We're functional adults with triple-digit IQs (hopefully), so we have the bandwidth to pay attention to all of it. And this is something that deserves attention, because the mentality that underpins that language is pervasive, and populates a politics composed of imaginary grievances.

And the corporate media continue to enable that bullshit narrative, with their Cletus safaris and their endless plaints about economic anxiety and such. The people in that crowded room in Sevierville, Tennessee are not good people making bad choices or whatever. They know exactly what they're doing and what they support, and they are not going to be persuaded by some focus-grouped idiocies cooked up by the usual gang of overpaid, weasel-faced consultants.

Frankly, at this point, I'd be more inclined to vote for a candidate that promises to enact policies to help them along to their ultimate destinations as quickly as possible, than one who spouts the usual pablum about "helping" them. Help them what, spend another twenty miserable years bullying everyone who isn't exactly like them, pretending that an entire system of violent oppression didn't permeate the region for a full century, that Emmett Till had it coming? These people don't do a goddamned thing besides suck up oxygen and health-care resources.

People on both sides of the issue keep dancing around the idea of "having to apologize" for the heinous acts of long-lost generations. But they're asking the wrong question. It's not that they think it's unfair being asked to apologize for the sins of their great-great-grandfathers, it's that they're not sorry about it. At all. They're still pissed that they lost. That's it. That's all there is to it. That's all it's ever been, and ever going to be. Stop trying to find "better angels" in people who really don't have them. It's not that complicated. Write them off and move on.

In the meantime, yes, this deserves attention, and no, it is not a distraction. Pay attention to the people defending the comment, and treat them accordingly moving forward. Lindsey Graham, who is the avowed Baghdad Bob for this administration, and a certifiable disgrace to the institution in which he holds office, is old. Make him retire in disgrace. Give every nickel you can spare to Jaime Harrison, and boycott every corporate media outlet that gives Graham air time to spread his shame. Hogan Gidley is young, thinks he has a career of some sort ahead of him. Remove that hope from him any way you can, again by boycotting any media outlet or company that gives him exposure or a job or any sort of recognition beyond a square kick in the balls. That little prick should spend the rest of a very long life knowing that he will never have respectable employment again.

I hate to sound like one of my long-passed elderly female relatives, but they were right about people. It comes down to two very simple principles:

1. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
2. People will treat you how you let them treat you.

If enough of us just let those two things guide our perceptions and reactions to all the players in this madness -- political weasels, media lackeys, soulless spokes-tools -- then we can't go wrong. These pigs live on money and attention, and when starved of both, they shrivel up. Don't engage them, don't debate them, don't give them the time of day. Just walk away from them.

The Onion Timeline

Parody is deader than Generalissimo Francisco Franco. No mere bloggerses such as yours truly, we lowly scriveners who occasionally cook up short burlesques for your and our amusement, would stoop to something this cheap and obvious. And yet there it is (as always, click to embiggen).

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times -- every day with this ridiculous, jabbering moron is like watching Wile E. Coyote paint a tunnel on the side of a mountain. The added bonus of his dipshit kids (and useless dingbat Meghan McCain) lecturing everyone on nepotism is just icing on the cake.

So he green-lights ethnic cleansing on a loyal ally that helped stop ISIS. So Turkey's dictator now has fifty of our nuclear bombs. So we might be sliding toward World War 3, and/or a recession, and/or more and worse climate change issues. As long as that greasy piece of shit still sits there and people still pretend he's remotely fit to hold any office, we get exactly what we deserve.

Oh well, maybe Sean Spicer is preparing his next Dancing with the Scars skit. Probably dressed up as Maria Schneider from Last Tango in Paris this time. Bring your own butter!

Video Games

These people, they just never stop, do they? These weird closet-case assholes who self-actualize by re-imagining an obese, drug-addled senior citizen who never exercises, probably can't walk more than thirty feet at a time and certainly can't run, as this righteous ninja taking down all his "enemies" like a bad-ass. Maybe they just ran out of fetish porn to liberate their knuckle-children to, who knows?

Apparently the video -- and we both know which video I'm referring to, right? -- has actually been out for some time, making the rounds of the incel sector of YouTube. Interesting that, in addition to showing "Trump" "killing" all the "fake news" networks, shown with logos for heads (wow, these guys just never cease to amaze with their profound creativity), and "celebrity" critics such as Kathy Griffin and Rosie O'Donnell, there are also political figures such as Rep. Maxine Waters, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Willard "Mitt" Rmoney, and Hillary Clinton, and former President Barack Obama. Seems like someone should get a visit from the good folks of the Secret Service.

There are the usual howls of outrage from the usual howlers, but we'll see how long it lasts until the next one. Corporate media journalists are particularly sensitive about this one, understandably so. But this has been coming for a long time, and it's not like he's bothered to conceal his contempt for them. Some of them are doing good work with limited resources and bandwidth. Others might want to pause for a second and ask themselves if anyone is really clamoring for another profile of some fist-shaking codger in a haunted Pennsyltucky diner.

Whatever the case, never doubt for a moment that these people have made themselves abundantly clear. Their "humor" is the humor of the Joker, the sadism of an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon or a bloody Deadpool (or in this particular case, Kingsman) movie. And that's not a slam against those movies; as mindless action movies go, they're well-made and passably entertaining.

But for these obsessive goons who worship a pathetic old huckster and make these little objects of devotion as a token of love, the line becomes blurred eventually, as their "works" become more notorious but strangely, women still won't fuck them. Obviously they're not successful at anything else in life, so it revolves around the one thing they're....well, good at is not the right word, maybe recognized for.

But even that has its limits -- this Carpe Donktum asshole is going to get doxed and outed, and probably shit-canned from whatever broom- or button-pushing job he has in meatspace. It's not like Commander Babyfingers is going to show his appreciation by appointing him Minister of Dopey Propaganda and throwing money at him. The real news is, that's not how Fat Donnie has ever operated. It's a one-way street, hoss. So good luck with all that.

The good news is that maybe now some folks can quit with the damned civility lectures. There's your fucking civility, champ. How do you like it? Maybe it's time to punch back by putting together a few two-minute compilations of Fatboy Says the Dumbest Things, give it Yakety Sax or sad-trombone bumper music, and make it viral.

The Stopped Clock

When he's right, he's right:

Romney is at least not an idiot (unlike Trump), which in this case makes it even worse. He knows he can and should do and say more, but simply refuses to. Partly this is because his character defects run nearly as deep as Trump's, it's just that Romney learned early on to mask his deficiencies with the appearance of fiduciary competence and moral rectitude, per the operational standard of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

However, if Romney somehow thinks his puling, chickenshit demurrals make him morally superior to Trump's boorish two-bit John Gotti antics, he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, nor anywhere near as upstanding.

In other words, contrary to Dear Leader's electronic imprecations, Romney is actually the very model of a modern major Republicon. But the rest of it? Yeah, spot on. A worthless, gutless, gormless pud. The day Willard Fucking Romney ever dismounts his goddamned high horse and actually does something useful will be the first time for such an event.

I'm a Loser, Baby, Slight Return: Rich Dud, Poor Dud

I have asked this question, with slight variations, many times over the years here:  if you had a billion dollars, what would you do? Specifically, what sort of activities would take up your day, which is now completely wide open -- more money than you could possibly spend, all the time you could ever want to do all the things you really want to do, with no concerns whatsoever about commercial viability or making a living.

Now, as celebrity chefs would say, let's kick it up a notch or two. You are worth ten billion dollars, and you are the chief executive of the United States of America, so you have real power and standing to go with your material wealth. What sorts of things do you choose to do?

You can travel anywhere, anytime, speak with pretty much anyone you wish. You can meet your favorite artists and actors and musicians, the people whose work has added to your inner life, made you feel things worth feeling, reminded you with their songs and stories why life is worth not just living, but experiencing, engaging.

You can almost literally do anything and everything you want, at any time, at any place.

Depending on the day, Trump claims to be worth anywhere from four to ten billion dollars. Since his real-estate portfolio is mostly private, and he doesn't pay taxes, there is no documentation to verify. But even Forbes magazine, whose annual wealth list generally amounts to padded toadying, can't seem to push Fatboy's net worth over three billion.

I mean, you know Trump's lying, because there is no personal anecdote or data item too large or small for him to lie about. About the only things you know for certain are his date and place of birth, and the names of his close family members. Everything else is a lie.

But let's say for the sake of argument that Forbes is somewhat in the ballpark; let's say they exaggerated his net worth by about two hundred percent. So he's actually worth only one billion dollars. That's still a lot of fucking money. And you have that political and cultural power of the office you hold.

So how's your holiday weekend going?

Again, more money than most hard-working people will see in ten generations, a wife, five kids, ten or so grandkids, infinite options for your day. And this is how he chooses to spend it, whining for the millionth fucking time about James Comey, and telling another "sir" story about the chick from Will & Grace, from like fifteen years ago.

It is impossible for me to complain about this. I think it is glorious. This right here is the vengeance I always wanted, when I think about it. The man could have anything he wants, and he's such a pathetic dullard, this is all he wants, to be seen as an embittered, crazy old man ranting about the last thing he saw on Fox & Fiends.

The only thing that would make this better is if he was doing it from Leavenworth, but this is still pretty good. He's nothing but a miserable old fuck, surrounded by people just like himself -- transactional to the bone, no genuine feeling or friendship anywhere he goes. Everyone either wants to suck up to him to get something out of him, or they want to tell him what a worthless turd he is. And that's his schtick with the rest of the world, so he gets nothing out of that.

One of my favorite things about Obama's tenure as imperial custodian was how much joy he clearly got from using the cultural power of the presidency. He likes music and books and sports, so he invited musicians and authors and athletes he enjoyed as an unabashed fan. He made the connections between art and greater civic life, and tried to put those forth as a show of the wonderful things people can create when they are sufficiently inspired and motivated.

Trump, on the other hand, is only a fan of his own vainglory and ricockulous self-regard, so this is really all there is for him, sitting at his own resort, watching propaganda teevee, cheating at golf, and shitposting sitcom actors. Waiting to see if the hurricane will visit 180 mph of karma on his roach-infested dump in Florida. That's exactly what he'll do when he leaves office, however that happens.

Whatever your political persuasion, whatever your opinion of Trump, you have to admit that's pretty damned pathetic. I personally know people who get by on fifteen bucks an hour, barely a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, working jobs they hate, no time for nothing, but they're over on the beautiful Cali coast right now with their families, enjoying the ocean, maybe grilling up a few burgers, enjoying life.

Hell, I've knocked out some lengthy posts in here over the weekend, but that's a blip in the middle of tons of other fun stuff -- playing and recording some musical ideas, working on a few creative writing and graphic projects, spending time with my family, firing up the barbecue and cracking open a few beers.

I mean, I gave these two schmucks a hard time about their weekend activity, but I also think there's a very strong possibility that because of their socioeconomic status, their geographic location, their clearly bad angle on interpersonal relations with flesh-and-blood humans, their choices were far more constrained even than most working-class dogs. For the millionth time, Trump can do anything he wants, and he wants to do this. I bet he misses giving Robert Pattinson unwanted dating advice, and trolling Rosie O'Donnell (I hear she's fat, you guys!).

That's just so awesome. If that's what you consider winning, I'd hate to see losing. I actually derive joy from knowing that it is impossible for him to derive real joy from anything in life. The only thing that makes him "happy" is fucking other people over or taking a public shit on them, and that's the happiness of the sociopath, of a person who literally does not know how to be happy. All those privileges and breaks his entire life, and for this.

The man is a complete waste of power, money, and fast food. Jesus, go play with your grandkids and leave us alone for one fucking day, you weird, wretched old man.

Bedbug

Bret Stephens, like many of his ilk on the NY Times' sorry excuse for an op-ed page, continues to find new and more efficient ways to demonstrate why, even on the occasions when that paper manages to not fuck something up, it's just not worth bothering with anymore. At all.

As long as they continue to provide sinecures to lazy thinkers and shitty writers such as Stephens (and Brooks, Dowd, Douthat, Friedman, and several of their primary political stenographers), life continues to be simply too short to wade into the muck. You know what they're gonna say, how they're gonna say it, etc.

There is literally no point in reading such a publication anymore. I couldn't care less about their 1619 project. There are countless academic texts out there covering the same ground, better and more thoroughly. Go to a fucking library once in a while.

By now, if you're in the mix, you already know the broad strokes:

• little-known associate professor at GW University refers to Stephens as a "bedbug" in a barely-read tweet;
• Stephens (who is so diligently hard-working, he apparently has time to Google himself for untoward references) happens across the post and summarily challenges Karpf to come to his (Stephens') house and call him that to his face, in front of his wife and children;
• tweet naturally blows up and goes viral because of Stephens' whining;
• Stephens contacts Karpf's boss and tries (unsuccessfully) to get Karpf fired;
• Stephens tops of a week of win with a column so infantile and self-regarding, in a rational universe it would be cause to inform Stephens of his new tax status, and send him on about his way finding honest work.

Bear in mind that just a couple months ago, Stephens had a column chastising people for using the term "concentration camps" to refer to the, you know, concentration camps where we are forcibly confining, under inhumane conditions, refugees seeking legal asylum. And back in 2013, when the Obama Administration was trying to craft the JCPOA to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions peacefully, Stephens wrote a column comparing Obama to Neville Chamberlain. Civility, y'all! Stephens, who is after all Jewish and spent much of his childhood in Mexico City, should actually know better than most about the implications of the things he writes. But his schtick is that of paid contrarian, and as such, once bought he stays bought.

Believe it or not, this is not to lambaste Stephens in particular. Frankly, anyone still reading him or the aforementioned page-monkeys alongside him deserve precisely what they get -- a paucity of any fresh thought or analysis, just the same litany of rearranged buzzwords one would expect from someone whose prime motive in life is to get invited to the elite Hamptons soirees.

Imagine the sort of inherited-wealth douchebag who spends six figures on their wedding and their kids' preschools and all that, and still has the balls to act like they earned every penny, and you have an idea of who Stephens writes for and aspires to hang with and to be.

The people who really run the country and own the assets and the political process; the people who talk enormous amounts of shit about everything and everyone that even mildly affects their eternal goal of permanent excess; the people who routinely refer to the poor and working class as other species, insect and otherwise; the people who immediately get their panties in a wad and pitch a yuuuuge fucking fit the second anyone criticizes them for anything, no matter how accurately.

There are niches within each, of course, but whenever you subject yourself to the unnecessary pain of reading yet another screed from Stephens or Bobo or Modo or Douthat, that is the subtext of the essay, whatever the particular subject on a given day:  what does a wealthy, do-nothing swell with an unearned sense of entitlement want to hear? How can I affirm that person's sense of self-regard?

One of the most pernicious ways each of them operates -- and this is simply part of the process of being a Times columnist in the first place -- is to reiterate the tautology that simply being on the op-ed page confers automatic legitimacy, therefore not being on the op-ed page renders critics as automatically illegitimate, worthy of discussion only as a point of refutation, or -- in Karpf's case -- an unwashed, unpedigreed Other, whose impolitic words instantly conjure up visions of 1930s Germany or 1790s France.

Just in the past two weeks, not to mention the last several years, the chief executive of the United States of America has:

• offered to purchase the sovereign territory of an ally, and cancelled a diplomatic visit when the offer was rightly rebuffed;
• referred to himself with divinely-inspired nomenclature ("the chosen one") in reference to his role in an ongoing fiasco with our largest trading partner; if there were an instructional handbook for aspiring dictators, referring to oneself with religious titles would be on page one, right before "renaming the months of the year after one's family";
• "temporarily" shut down the FEC, by making it unable to fill a quorum, and thus carry out its duty of safeguarding elections and ensuring that campaigns abide by the law (that no one enforces anymore anyway);
• committed a securities violation, by falsely stating at last weekend's G7 meeting that China "had called" him, which on the following morning raised the market out of the 800-point funk he had sent it into the previous Friday;
• committed a national-security violation, by tweeting a classified photo from a spy satellite of a failed Iranian missile test, essentially showing the location of the satellite;
• threatened his departing personal assistant, who was fired for bragging that she has a closer relationship to Trump than his own daughters.

No doubt I'm forgetting a few; feel free to remind me in comments. But this is just from the last couple weeks, and August is supposed to be the slow season when everyone is on vacation.

And yet to grossly overpaid idiot gatekeepers such as Bret Stephens, the real problem is all these intolerant liberals, you see, all these would-be Goebbels and Robespierre types who are dehumanizing their political opponents with their rhetoric, and sharpening the guillotine blades. Never mind that the US government is literally dehumanizing people every goddamned day, literally sentencing sick people to die from treatable ailments. Never mind that real honest-to-jeebus white-power types routinely make rape and death threats to (usually female) bloggers and tweeters routinely.

Fuck that "bedbug" shit, there are serious people out there making real threats that have other real people looking over their shoulders every time they leave their houses. Stephens is just a spoiled crybaby who got pissy with an academic, because he was insufficiently deferential to Stephens' gatekeeping greatness.

While you're reading this, while Stephens is writing his next unreadable, bullshit-laden jeremiad, these things are happening. Right now. Oh, look, there goes another one, another scared child raped in a foster home or dropping dead in a hot desert camp. Careful with that guillotine, Robespierre!

As we've been saying in here for a very long time, well before the bewigged gastropod oozed its way into the spotlight, we have to decide what kind of country we're going to be. Either we're the kind of country that shits on immigrants from the "wrong" countries purely as a punitive measure, or we're not. Either we're the kind of country that keeps monstrous demagogues from derailing the nation's collective trajectory, or we just passively sit there and watch it happen. Gee, this sucks.

An integral part of all this can be summed up in the classic kids' nutrition phrase you are what you eat. The New York Times, from its political coverage to its op-ed columnists to its society pages, is a verbatim transcript of smooth-brained establishment elite bullshit. Just because there's occasionally a few kernels of corn here and there doesn't make it any more nutritious if you pick those out and eat them. They think their once-a-year deep-dive coverage on Trump's crooked past (that they could  and should have done ten or twenty years earlier) or some such makes up for the other 364 days of shameless hackcess journamalism and their day-care center of tiresome slop-ed failchildren.

The fact that a significant percentage of the Times' op-ed columnists spend a non-zero amount of time worrying about the tone and civility of a literally powerless opposition should tell you everything you need to know about them -- as thinkers, as writers, as human beings. The problem is not that AOC has effectively coined the term "concentration camps" for those places, the problem is that Bret Stephens, who has a prime spot for commentary and could literally write about any subject he chooses and get it into the national conversation, chooses to write about how unseemly that term is, rather than the operational reality of those places.

Maybe Stephens should go talk to his wife and kids face-to-face about that; if he doesn't have the guts, I'll be happy to drop by and do so, since he's tweeting out invites. I'll even bring a six-pack of whatever beverage he chooses. I won't even drop an f-bomb, I promise. It'll be civil.

So people either support this nonsense with their dollars and their eyeballs, or they don't, period. Even then, even if Stephens were to get even more butthurt and decide to pretend to go out and ply an honest trade, he'd just go and write an unreadable book about his imaginary travails shoveling coal for the nation's flagship newspaper for hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, going on teevee and complaining about his lot in life whenever he chooses to, and having to deal with all those pesky internet Robespierres. Three hundred padded pages of boo-fucking-hoo, and yet another boo-hoo media tour to push that turd good and hard. He's gonna get paid either way, and the Times would just replace him with another interchangeable bedbug. The cycle continues.

But the bottom line really is that the worst possible thing you can do to someone like Bret Stephens is to completely ignore him, and the people who bankroll his crybaby nonsense. So maybe let's all do that. It's not like anyone's going to miss out on anything worthwhile.

I Moved On Her Like a Bitch

Let's play devil's advocate and say that the US purchasing Greenland has the potential to be the next Alaska -- it apparently is rich with rare earth minerals, and there is an Australian mining company already there, doing what mining companies do. And we did think about doing it previously, way back in 1946. Obviously, there are other strategic and military-basing considerations as well. We may not agree with the basic premises of plundering more minerals out of a groaning planet, or of expanding military response capacity past an already exceptionally high level, but in those contexts, it's not the worst idea.

But here, for the millionth time, is a clear example of how Captain Crybaby smashes his World's Greatest Negotiator mug once again. See, a normal head of state would use his diplomatic corps to reach out to their Danish counterparts, send feelers up the comms channel to determine the feasibility of the idea, and how open they would be to it.

Most things have a price, and sometimes they don't, and you just accept it and move on to the next thing. You do it on a good note so that maybe an opportunity arrives where you can circle back and give it another shot. But that's it. We never should have heard a word about any of this. It should just have been a quiet conversation between friends, a question asked and answered, and both parties going on about their business.

Trump's response to Danish PM Mette Fredriksen's understated "absurd" comment is, of course, the response of every privileged rich white boy who's had a girl reject his advances. This is a species that is used to having their every stupid whim indulged and fawned over. They do not get told no, so when it happens, they get weird.

So since Trump can't just rape Fredriksen in a department store dressing room to temporarily expiate his terminal inferiority complex, he now has to compound the problem by abruptly cancelling a state visit and giving the Danish a hard time about their NATO financial commitments. (Once again, bearing in mind that NATO "membership" is not like being a member at one of Trump's rat-and-roach-infested dumps. The money does not go to Trump, nor to the US, nor even to NATO.)

Here is where it bears repeating to all of our wonderful European friends and allies, who are being repeatedly shat upon by this bitter old man, this boiled ham soaked in gravy with a piss-colored bird nest stuck on it:  people treat you how you let them treat you. That is, if you choose to respond with subtlety and grace, but not actually do or say anything of substance, he'll just do it again and again.

After all, he's never really been given any reason not to be an asshole. Think about it. The guy's a fucking moron, and a disgraceful excuse for a human being on every level, and he's never had to experience any sort of accountability or consequences for any of it, ever. Seriously, why should he change, if everyone else just lets him get away with his behavior anyway? For Trump's entire miserable life, everyone he's fucked over or been an asshole to has just shrugged their shoulders and said whaddaya gonna do?, and then done exactly nothing about any of it. Of course he won't change, there's never been a reason for him to change.

Maybe the European NATO countries should consider forming their own defense alliance, without us and our weird bullshit. Even if we come to our senses and flush this turd next year, it means nothing if #MoscowMitch still runs the Senate (or is even still in the Senate; he had no problem fucking Obama up from a minority-leader position). Even if the Democrats take over the executive branch and both houses of Congress, the pendulum is swinging faster and faster, the rubes are seething, and the psychotic billionaires who own this country are dedicated to stoking the herrenvolk into a full-blown civil war, if it gets them just one more percent knocked off their tax rate.

So no matter what happens next year, we'll be back here in 2024 or 2028. Trump will probably have waddled off to whichever circle of hell has Burger King, and someone smarter and slicker will be in place, without the clown outfit and the idiot ass-kissers. The climate will be worse, and Greenland will start looking more and more like a great place to move.

In the meantime, here's hoping that Denmark -- and they're welcoming PRESIDENT OBAMA next month, so that should be fun to watch Fatboy's Twitter tears -- makes a real statement in response. Cancel the state visit permanently, and say so straight up. We don't have anything to meet about. Let's not waste each other's time. PNG the US Ambassador to Denmark, a Q-adjacent Z-list actress who has no business doing what she's doing. Stand up for yourselves and punch the bully back, or he'll be coming for your lunch money again.

Nothing will change until bad behavior has real consequences. Complaining does not equate accountability. How can we hold this fucker accountable, once and for all?

The Pot Calling the Kettle Fat

This dumb little skit from last week's empty-seat cult rally in New Hampshire is utterly meaningless, and yet perfectly encapsulates the operational aesthetic of this human centipede of an administration in general, as well as its top turd-sucker in particular:

President Trump on Thursday called the man he mocked for having a “weight problem” at a New Hampshire rally earlier that evening after discovering he was a supporter.

A senior administration official said Friday that after campaign staff got the rallygoer's contact information, Trump called him from Air Force One on the way back to Bedminster, N.J. [....to waste more taxpayer money playing fucking golf -- Ed.] The president left a voicemail message.

Fun! So let's break this down into its component parts, just to make sure we have it all covered:

• Morbidly obese septuagenarian who takes a golf cart to the shitter, and who literally believes exercise is bad for you, mocks a protester for being fat.


• Turns out the fat guy's a supporter, not a protester.


• Turns out that while he's not exactly Michael Phelps, he's not fat, either, certainly not compared to the spray-tanned, gravy-soaked tub of shit who mocked him from his very presidential stage.


• The fat guy who mocked the not-fat guy for being, well, fat decides to call and leave a very presidential voicemail in which he pointedly did not apologize -- because there is never anything to apologize for when you're oh-so-very-perfect in every conceivable way, and never wrong about anything, whatever and ever, amen.


• The chump at the receiving end of all this is such a cult-infused loser on wheels that he loves it, his support is unwavered in the least. Keep suckin' that dick, moron.

It's pretty sad to have to point out explicitly that pejorative terms such as "cult" and "loser" are not, and have never been (in this context, anyway) even mild exaggerations. This is textbook cult behavior, where the leader singles out an innocent member of the flock for punitive action or scorn, and the member loves Dear Leader for it.

A Modest Proposal

So let's find and clear an island somewhere -- or hell, build one, the Chinese seem to be pretty adept at that sort of thing -- and dump these useless cocksuckers on said island, with their weapons, and let them end each other, once and for all. I mean, I admire what Christian Picciolini has been able to do with some of these white-power assholes, and good luck to him, and it would be great if the federal gubmint took the threat seriously and maybe even funded some programs to combat the problem, but there are already too many people, and these jokers contribute fuck-all to the world.

A few days ago, seven hundred undocumented workers at a food-processing plant in [rolls eyes] Mississippi were raided and detained by your good friends at ICE (Ice Baby, word to your mother). Of course, none of the supervisors or managers or executives from this fucking dump were hassled -- in fact, it turns out that the plant had just lost a sexual harassment settlement to the tune of several million dollars. Awfully convenient timing, that.

What got somewhat less attention is that over half of the workers were released about twenty-four hours later, perhaps because someone quickly realized that they'd have trouble finding warm bodies to perform these dangerous, soul-crushing jobs for seven dollars and seventy-five cents an hour. [strokes chin thoughtfully, a la Ben Sasse]

Starving the Beast

Ho-hum, another week, another set of openly racist tweets from Captain Shitposter. What are the odds that he washes his tiny, tiny hands after each and every rage-dump? What are the odds that any number of important stories will be obscured in the coming week by tedious "debates" over whether he is or he isn't? We already knew the answer to that long ago. There is no point in watching the nonsense, engaging with it on any level, arguing with people who for whatever reason still support this fucker, none of it.

H.L. Mencken's old newspaper of record did have a quick and noteworthy response, which may as well have ended with and the horse you rode in on. Victor Blackwell of CNN had an on-air response that was, to be sure, sincere and poignant, and well worth watching. But it wouldn't be surprising if, in the next segment or today or tomorrow, CNN turns around and has Kellyanne Conway or Seb Gorka or some other pock-faced turd sitting there explaining the vampire's point of view as part of some panel of interchangeable shitheads.

The corporate media need to portray their dereliction of duty as the very opposite of that:  we're doing our jobs, because when the chief executive says something, it's news. And so it is. But when what that fucking thing says is clearly racist, it is then the responsibility of said stenographers to point that out with clarity and conviction, not mealy-mouthed qualifiers such as racist-tinged or racist-infused or a slight hint of racism with hints of oak and french fries and stale cheetos.

Les Moonves and Jeff Zucker weren't lying when they said it was good for business. Because they don't really have much of a revenue model anymore. It's easy to forget that by 2015 most major media outlets were in full-on panic mode -- newspapers especially were going the route of laying off the young and handing a few golden parachutes to the lifers, if they were lucky. But even the cable outlets were shitting a collective brick by the time Fatboy waddled down his fucking escalator that barmy June morning and threw his wig into the ring.