I swear before everything unholy and profane that, as sure as I am sitting here, this ad was going to end with a long, lingering shot of Lindsey Graham.
Showing posts with label #LeningradLindsey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #LeningradLindsey. Show all posts
Thursday, October 01, 2020
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Ruthless
We all knew the day was coming, we just didn't know when. The only surprise is that it wasn't, you know, on Election Day or something like that.
Hell, it could have been a week after Election Day, and Moscow Mitch and his little dog Leningrad Lindsey would have bulled through a lame-duck appointment of whatever forty-year-old FedSoc shithead they were instructed to.
The nihilist side of me wants it to happen, wants this whole rotted husk of a nation to find out the hard way what happens not just when Roe is repealed, but voting rights, employee rights, fucking Griswold gets overturned.
As repulsive as the pelf-grubbing Republicons and their moron base and the psychotic billionaires who rent them are, I reserve the greater measure of my contempt for the Democratic voters who couldn't be bothered to show up for the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Forty-one percent turnout in 2010, just over thirty-six percent in 2014.
If you are one of the folks that couldn't be bothered to show up for those votes, but now, now you're concerned, I cordially invite you to go fuck yourself in the neck with a rusty chainsaw. Because you're one of the ones to blame.
Liberals and Democrats talk a good game about "taking action" and all, and inevitably it becomes some lame, meaningless, purely performative street-protest bullshit. People have been protesting all over the country, all summer long, and they have nothing to show for it. Feel free to prove me wrong, show me some tangible outcomes from all that good trouble.
Now, if you want to take some real action and maybe have a sliver of hope to accomplish something, figure out how much money you have to spare, and go here and donate to as many Senate campaigns as you can. I'm going to donate $25-100 to each of the following:
- Sara Gideon (ME)
- Jaime Harrison (SC)
- Mark Kelly (AZ)
- Cal Cunningham (NC)
- Theresa Greenfield (IA)
- Steve Bullock (MT)
- Jon Ossoff (GA-1)
- Barbara Bollier (KS)
- Al Scott (AK)
- Amy McGrath (KY)
I wish I had more to donate. I wish candidates like Abby Broyles (OK) and M.J. Hegar (TX) had more of a fighting chance, because Jim Inhofe and John Cornyn are two of the biggest gaping assholes on the planet, not just in the Senate. But it is, as they say far too often, what it is, and unfortunately it becomes a self-reinforcing dynamic of putting the money where it's going to be most effective -- races that are closer precisely because people have been donating more money to them.
But I think seven or maybe eight of the ten candidates listed above have decent-to-strong chances of winning their respective races, and that's enough to flip the Senate back to a solid Democratic majority. Even five would be enough to do the trick.
And then they have to act, decisively and aggressively, with the fundamental understanding that even in the instance of a blowout victory, this is their last best chance to punish the traitors across the aisle, people who sold out their country for a bag of nickels. No more "norms" or "rules" or polite suggestions about how things should be, but a cold recognition of how they are, what they've become.
Pack the court, blow up the filibuster, ram through as many judges as possible, dig up every punitive procedure you can muster and ram them straight up the GOP's collective poop-chute, no lube, no mercy, no pretenses of collegiality. This is war, and if Democratic leadership is not prepared to lead it and fight it as such, they too can find honest work. Enough dithering and hand-wringing. Fight hard or fuck off already.
Churchill famously said that when you're going through hell, keep going, and so we should and must, if we want to leave anything of value behind for our children and grandchildren. But with that comes, once again, the need to see things for how they really are, rather than how we think they should be. It might be a blowout in the other direction. It might end up close enough to cheat and steal and weasel their way through to an illegitimate victory, but one that nonetheless carries with it the very real trappings of power.
And then you know, without any doubt or uncertainty, how things really are. If there really are enough people who don't care, or can't be bothered to show up -- or there really are as many or more of them than there are of us -- well, now you know.
And you should plan accordingly. Until then, you should expect more of yourselves, more of your fellow citizens, more of the people you send to DC to represent you. No more bullshit, no more excuses.
Give till it hurts. Make sure you can vote, and then show up and do so. Don't worry about the goons and closet-cases with their Dear Leader swag and flapping gums. They can yammer all they want, but they can't physically prevent you from walking through that door and casting your lot.
And then you can at least say you did what you could. And get your documentation in order, because you might find yourself with a sudden need to vacate the Republic of Gilead. Look around you, and see if you can tell yourself that I'm exaggerating even a little bit.
Monday, August 24, 2020
Useful Idiots
So this guy gets some level of street cred in the political media for being a "serious" "conservative" or whatever, and so these silly attempts at analysis get attention as substitutes for serious thought. Trump's incessant antics and nonsense provide a lot of rhetorical cover for these guys, so they can dance around the obvious truth -- he's the logical culmination of all their efforts for the last forty years at least.
The idea that now they suddenly don't "stand" for their supposed long-preserved "values" is just industrial-grade bullshit. The only problem they pretend to have with Trump is that he's an asshole. But even that's a lie -- they love that he's an asshole. They get everything they want and they get to blame Fuckface if he loses, and double-down on the process if he manages to cheat and steal a win.
It's the perfect racket for an organization that stopped being functional two generations ago. To be fair, I suppose you have to be of a certain minimum age, and never read any books about times you're too young to recall directly, in order to know just how ridiculous this all is.
Republicons made a deal with the devil back in the 1960s, preferring to use angry crackers and their bullshit grievances, and steep them in a potent brew of god-bothering jabber, in order to gull the working-class rubes into voting to make billionaires wealthier. It's a working formula, so it's hard to blame them for continuing with it.
What's changed in the past decade is how much eight years of a black president enraged them, and how social media showed them that there were enough like-minded assholes out there that they could say the quiet parts loud. So Trump spent five years rounding up the dipshits with his birther conspiracies, and #MoscowMitch and #LeningradLindsey took notes, pretended to be offended.
Again, their feigned horror at his boorish manners is tempered by their glee at how he gives them everything they want, provides them plenty of distractions so they can quietly push through unqualified judges to lifetime appointments, and the instant validation they get from the millions of douchebags who are completely down with all of it.
Democrats and liberals need to stop reading articles like this and believing it, because it peddles a seductive lie that establishment Dem pols want very much to believe -- if we can just get rid of Trump, we can get back to normal. Maybe they're just holding their fire until they see how the election shakes out for them, but anyone who genuinely believes that "getting back to normal" is even a remote possibility needs to do themselves and their constituents a favor and retire as soon as they can.
There is no going back, and not just because of the way Trump has burned through the "norms" and "rules" and useless performative fripperies they have all wasted time with all those years, but because the country is in truly dire straits, and getting worse by the month. It will take years of triage to undo not just Trump's destruction, but even the destruction wrought by the Cheney regime is still being undone. You think we're done paying for the fucking war?
Many Dems and libs want to tell themselves that the "fever" that has overtaken their opponents and their constituencies is the result of the permanent pernicious influences of Fox News and AM hate radio. Implicit in that is that these folks have been tricked or brainwashed, and that is a dangerous category error. Yes, they're being lied to, but that's not because they don't know the facts, it's because facts are irrelevant to them. Facts are not part of their decision-making process.
This is a very difficult thing for Democratic policy-makers and strategists to understand, because they are hard-wired to try to "reach out" to these people, somehow never learning their lesson, always managing to trick themselves into thinking that it's easier to poach a couple percent from an increasingly polarized bloc that despises them, than to convince ten percent of the much larger pool of non-voters that there's something worth showing up for.
As the Trump base continues its slide toward lunatic cultism, it is important to recall a truism: it is impossible to deal with irrational people using rationality. By definition they do not function or react with it. It's a waste of time. You're not going to deprogram them with ten weeks of thirty-second ad blasts, and you sure as hell aren't going to move them with [rolls eyes] your fuckin' binders of facts.
All this tedious theorizing from behavioral psychologists about tribal heuristics and cognitive biases and all that shit? Have you considered the possibility that maybe a lot of them are just indecent people, that you can attribute it to conditioning or temperament or social pressure or some combination thereof, but in the end, they're not going to listen to your appeals to rationality and so it doesn't matter?
They believe they're in a war for survival, and their elected representatives speak and act accordingly. They wield power. They don't fuck around. If the best-case scenario occurs, and Biden wins and the Dems flip the Senate, they need to act with a real sense of urgency, and do everything they can to crush the opposing party into a state of utter irrelevance.
And frankly, I don't see that they have that understanding among the leaders of the party. Again, they think Trump is an aberration, when he is the culmination. It's a vital difference that, if they fail to note and act upon, will bite them in the ass in 2024.
Meanwhile the nation's largest state is on fire throughout, hurricane season is kicking off with two storms converging on the Gulf Coast, the #TrumpPlague is still running wild, tallying up a 9/11-sized body count (that we know of) twice every week, tens of millions out of work, millions about to get evicted, economic depression looming, and only the handful of people who own the stock market are doing well.
And Tim Alberta's Republicon Party is fine with all of it. Does he really think Trump had to tell McConnell to sit on the hundreds of bills the House has passed over the last eighteen months, that Mitch had to be arm-twisted into withholding COVID relief that had been passed back in May? Fuck no, it's the same shit he pulled all through Obama's tenure as imperial custodian. And all his fellow senators stand by while Trump commits an impeachable act every week, sells out the country, shrugs his shoulders while a thousand Americans die every day.
Trump is just what an old-time street-crime team would call the "stall," the seemingly random guy that walks up to the mark and asks for directions while the partner comes up behind and picks the mark's pocket, or thumps him on the head with a sap.
The problem here is not that Tim Alberta's party suddenly became something he no longer recognizes; the problem is that Alberta knows full well that his party is openly, actively, gleefully destroying this nation, because all they really ever stood for was power and money. They see an opportunity to have it all, and they're giving it their best shot. They're a bunch of fucking traitors, and Alberta knows it.
There's no "coming back" from the things they've done just this calendar year, the monstrous things they've stood by and silently supported. Two hundred thousand Americans dead in about one hundred fifty days, and they couldn't care less. The economy is a shambles and it's a de facto banana republic, and they could stop it but refuse to. They have no shame.
They betrayed their country, and simply count on the fact that there are just enough awful people out there to keep them in business. They might be right about that, as it turns out. Maybe in time, a party of actual conservatives can be formed from the ashes of the current group of Russian dupes and flat-out turncoats. But it's disingenuous to pretend that this just started when Orange Foolius blundered into the room, especially as long as shitbags like Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr still draw breath.
The idea that now they suddenly don't "stand" for their supposed long-preserved "values" is just industrial-grade bullshit. The only problem they pretend to have with Trump is that he's an asshole. But even that's a lie -- they love that he's an asshole. They get everything they want and they get to blame Fuckface if he loses, and double-down on the process if he manages to cheat and steal a win.
It's the perfect racket for an organization that stopped being functional two generations ago. To be fair, I suppose you have to be of a certain minimum age, and never read any books about times you're too young to recall directly, in order to know just how ridiculous this all is.
Republicons made a deal with the devil back in the 1960s, preferring to use angry crackers and their bullshit grievances, and steep them in a potent brew of god-bothering jabber, in order to gull the working-class rubes into voting to make billionaires wealthier. It's a working formula, so it's hard to blame them for continuing with it.
What's changed in the past decade is how much eight years of a black president enraged them, and how social media showed them that there were enough like-minded assholes out there that they could say the quiet parts loud. So Trump spent five years rounding up the dipshits with his birther conspiracies, and #MoscowMitch and #LeningradLindsey took notes, pretended to be offended.
Again, their feigned horror at his boorish manners is tempered by their glee at how he gives them everything they want, provides them plenty of distractions so they can quietly push through unqualified judges to lifetime appointments, and the instant validation they get from the millions of douchebags who are completely down with all of it.
Democrats and liberals need to stop reading articles like this and believing it, because it peddles a seductive lie that establishment Dem pols want very much to believe -- if we can just get rid of Trump, we can get back to normal. Maybe they're just holding their fire until they see how the election shakes out for them, but anyone who genuinely believes that "getting back to normal" is even a remote possibility needs to do themselves and their constituents a favor and retire as soon as they can.
There is no going back, and not just because of the way Trump has burned through the "norms" and "rules" and useless performative fripperies they have all wasted time with all those years, but because the country is in truly dire straits, and getting worse by the month. It will take years of triage to undo not just Trump's destruction, but even the destruction wrought by the Cheney regime is still being undone. You think we're done paying for the fucking war?
Many Dems and libs want to tell themselves that the "fever" that has overtaken their opponents and their constituencies is the result of the permanent pernicious influences of Fox News and AM hate radio. Implicit in that is that these folks have been tricked or brainwashed, and that is a dangerous category error. Yes, they're being lied to, but that's not because they don't know the facts, it's because facts are irrelevant to them. Facts are not part of their decision-making process.
This is a very difficult thing for Democratic policy-makers and strategists to understand, because they are hard-wired to try to "reach out" to these people, somehow never learning their lesson, always managing to trick themselves into thinking that it's easier to poach a couple percent from an increasingly polarized bloc that despises them, than to convince ten percent of the much larger pool of non-voters that there's something worth showing up for.
As the Trump base continues its slide toward lunatic cultism, it is important to recall a truism: it is impossible to deal with irrational people using rationality. By definition they do not function or react with it. It's a waste of time. You're not going to deprogram them with ten weeks of thirty-second ad blasts, and you sure as hell aren't going to move them with [rolls eyes] your fuckin' binders of facts.
All this tedious theorizing from behavioral psychologists about tribal heuristics and cognitive biases and all that shit? Have you considered the possibility that maybe a lot of them are just indecent people, that you can attribute it to conditioning or temperament or social pressure or some combination thereof, but in the end, they're not going to listen to your appeals to rationality and so it doesn't matter?
They believe they're in a war for survival, and their elected representatives speak and act accordingly. They wield power. They don't fuck around. If the best-case scenario occurs, and Biden wins and the Dems flip the Senate, they need to act with a real sense of urgency, and do everything they can to crush the opposing party into a state of utter irrelevance.
And frankly, I don't see that they have that understanding among the leaders of the party. Again, they think Trump is an aberration, when he is the culmination. It's a vital difference that, if they fail to note and act upon, will bite them in the ass in 2024.
Meanwhile the nation's largest state is on fire throughout, hurricane season is kicking off with two storms converging on the Gulf Coast, the #TrumpPlague is still running wild, tallying up a 9/11-sized body count (that we know of) twice every week, tens of millions out of work, millions about to get evicted, economic depression looming, and only the handful of people who own the stock market are doing well.
And Tim Alberta's Republicon Party is fine with all of it. Does he really think Trump had to tell McConnell to sit on the hundreds of bills the House has passed over the last eighteen months, that Mitch had to be arm-twisted into withholding COVID relief that had been passed back in May? Fuck no, it's the same shit he pulled all through Obama's tenure as imperial custodian. And all his fellow senators stand by while Trump commits an impeachable act every week, sells out the country, shrugs his shoulders while a thousand Americans die every day.
Trump is just what an old-time street-crime team would call the "stall," the seemingly random guy that walks up to the mark and asks for directions while the partner comes up behind and picks the mark's pocket, or thumps him on the head with a sap.
The problem here is not that Tim Alberta's party suddenly became something he no longer recognizes; the problem is that Alberta knows full well that his party is openly, actively, gleefully destroying this nation, because all they really ever stood for was power and money. They see an opportunity to have it all, and they're giving it their best shot. They're a bunch of fucking traitors, and Alberta knows it.
There's no "coming back" from the things they've done just this calendar year, the monstrous things they've stood by and silently supported. Two hundred thousand Americans dead in about one hundred fifty days, and they couldn't care less. The economy is a shambles and it's a de facto banana republic, and they could stop it but refuse to. They have no shame.
They betrayed their country, and simply count on the fact that there are just enough awful people out there to keep them in business. They might be right about that, as it turns out. Maybe in time, a party of actual conservatives can be formed from the ashes of the current group of Russian dupes and flat-out turncoats. But it's disingenuous to pretend that this just started when Orange Foolius blundered into the room, especially as long as shitbags like Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr still draw breath.
Sunday, February 02, 2020
Groundhog Day
Ho-hum, just every single day now, where you have a trial, and not only does the jury foreman openly collude with the defendant on the outcome ahead of time, but the defendant's lawyers openly bribe the jury foreman and key members of the jury.
This is your country now, America. How do you like it?
This is your country now, America. How do you like it?
Friday, January 31, 2020
Learn to Swim, See You Down in Arizona Bay
Character is fate. -- Heraclitus
Some say a comet will fall from the sky, followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
And some say the end is near, some say we'll see Armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I could use a vacation from this stupid shit. -- Tool, Ænema
Here we go. After a brief feint at pretending to dither over their foregone conclusion, the cowardly scum that comprise the Senate Republicons did their sworn duty to their orange overlord and wrapped this farce up tighter than Yertle McConnell's favorite leather gimp.
No one is shocked or even surprised. We knew they would do this, because this is what they are. They hate this country, they hate most of its citizens, and they fully intend to cling to power by any means necessary. Now that they have openly authorized the chief executive -- as long as he's from their party, of course -- to do as he pleases, up to and including offering monetary inducements to foreign leaders to influence US elections, expect the phone calls and thick envelopes to fly fast and hard.
Like I keep saying: Don't despair, prepare. Of course people feel like crying or throwing their hands up and saying fuck it, and checking out from all of it. What good does any of it do, if they're just gonna cheat to win?
Well, again, if they weren't worried about the outcome, they wouldn't need to cheat at every turn, now would they? Just a little over a year ago, people showed up for the midterms, and it paid off. Democrats retook the House. All the hearings and witnesses and evidence that came out during this process, the very fact that you were allowed to know about any of it is entirely due to the fact that people showed up in November of 2018. It's the difference between Adam Schiff running things, and a corrupt shit like Devin Nunes brushing it under the rug and running to lick his master's boots.
You don't have to wait until November to start voting either. Vote with your wallet, every day. Make your choices count. You know how much money things like the Kentucky Derby and NCAA basketball and Jim Beam bourbon dump into Kentucky's economy? Sit 'em out this year, until that festering turd McConnell finally gets flushed. Tons of teevee shows and movies are made in Georgia. What companies are still buying commercial time on Fox News?
You want things to change and improve, it's going to take a little work. Those things are bare minimum, but I guarantee you if enough people do them, it will make a difference. If you have more money, donate to some of the opposition candidates; if you have more time and the inclination to act like a Jehovah's Witness, I guess you could go door-to-door or hit the supermarkets, and get people to register to vote. If you have free time and some speaking skills and the patience to deal with idiots in the audience, maybe you run for your local planning commission or school board or city council.
(I've actually been asked by quite a few people in my area over the years, liberal and conservative, to run for some sort of local government seat. I'd be fucking terrible at it. I have the knowledge and passion, but not the patience. I've sat in on a few city council and county board meetings over the years. I know some of the members of these groups. It is nothing more than assembly-line tedium. Everything starts with pro-forma nuisances like reciting the pledge of allegiance, then before actually getting to business you have to give the audience a chance to speak. The only people who have time to attend these things are either elderly folks with nothing else to do, or idiots who are riled up over some $2.00/year mosquito abatement assessment being voted on. (That one is real, I can still recall it quite clearly.) Look at every time a new Krispy Kreme shop opens, or a new $1,000 phone is released with a slightly improved bezel. There is simply a certain percentage of people whose time is worth literally nothing to them. And they all show up at local gov't meetings. The first few episodes of the sitcom Parks & Recreation were pretty much a documentary of that phenomenon. So, thanks but no thanks.)
It's going to be difficult to keep the faith between now and then. The corporate media are engineered and incentivized to demoralize you, the better to keep you in your place. That's why they beat on Sanders and Warren, because either one of those two will actually do something. The media will go after Biden and Buttigieg and Klobuchar as well. It's always someone's turn in the barrel. They want to stir up infighting between the candidates' supporters, to depress turnout in the general election.
This is not incidental, this is the goal. An actual liberal media would not keep doing these tired-ass Cletus safari pieces, venturing out to talk to these spiteful hicks who won't fucking die already, who hate their grandkids and whine about communism but hey, where's my entitlements?
So boycott them too. Seriously, when was the last time CNN gave you anything of value? Why on earth would you read most of the Times columnists, or their lap-dog "reporting" and "anonymous" sourcing?
Of the five remaining "main" Dem candidates, I would honestly say each of them has some chance to win. There are people who have a vested interest in maintaining that Bernie or Warren are "too left" and therefore susceptible to a McGovern-type landslide. You may want to check if any of those folks offered predictions about 2016, and how that turned out.
Everyone got 2016 wrong. I got it way wrong (though, oddly enough, I do think that some of the breakdown and analysis in the linked post might still hold at least some water). Nobody, not even Trump himself, thought he would or even could win. A fake businessman with multiple bankruptcies, ridiculous appearance, a long track record of failure and incompetence, no experience in public office, had no chance against probably the most over-qualified person ever to apply for the job.
But he won because there really is a deep current of frustration and anger in this country, and he understood it well enough to monetize and weaponize it. Sanders clearly taps that discontent with just as much efficiency. Warren is getting better at it too. The panel monkeys and smart-set slop-ed columnists all beat the how're we gonna pay for it? drum like it's the only song they know.
It doesn't occur to them that some under-employed single mom with a sick kid or two and no insurance -- or hell, even with insurance, it's not like it's a vast improvement -- hears that argument and reflexively thinks about all the bullshit that gets paid for without so much as a blink. And now we're three years into paying that fat fuck to play golf on his own courses every goddamned weekend, so he can force the Secret Service to rent golf carts and jet skis and hotel rooms directly from him. Tell us again how we just can't find any money to cut working families some slack on the decades of interest payments they're forced to make to student-loan corporations.
That's the real reason the Cletus safari doofuses need to get their heads out of their asses and talk to some Democratic voters once in a while -- because we're fucking pissed too. There is a misconception that Trump's cult of cousin-fucking yahoos have some kind of monopoly on righteous anger, and that's entirely because they're the only ones the corporate media will talk to. They don't realize that Sanders and Warren have just as much of a shot as Biden -- maybe more -- because those two have learned very well how to empathize with the anger, and give it voice.
The bottom line on all this is to keep in mind one definite inevitability -- none of the remaining candidates will be ideal for everyone. Someone will have to compromise, someone will have to hold their nose for someone they really don't care for. To which I would respond, Are you sure you dislike Candidate X more than the doddering asshole that's been in there? Because that's the choice right now. It's a process -- you remove the person you're tired of, replace them with someone you can live with for the time-being, and then start looking for someone better for the next go-round.
Think of it as a slump-buster, if that helps. Sometimes you just need a warm body for a short period of time to get you out of a rut, until you find your rhythm again. I am fine with having Amy Klobuchar as a slump-buster, if it gets that clog out of the White House toilet. Hell, I'll vote for Mike Bloomberg or Tom Steyer if that's what it takes. We all need to focus on getting that fucker out, period. Worry about policy specs later.
Take a good, long look at the last two weeks, that despicable sham in the Senate. Get pissed. Make them pay, with your votes and your wallets. Be creative, be consistent. Make it hurt and don't stop the pain. Most of all, show up every time. Never forget that that's exactly what they don't want you to do.
Every election is always the most important one ever, which is another way to desensitize people over time to how things really are. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this year really is that important, and in fact may actually be a make-or-break scenario for the continuation of what we might still recognize and hope to be a relatively free country. The upcoming sham "verdict" will legitimize what these fuckers have already done, as well as what they are going to do, and they've probably already started doing it.
It's not an exaggeration that a we saw this week a major step toward formalizing the turn into a "soft authoritarian" state, a shell of a representative democracy but really just an open rubber stamp parliament at the behest of the despot and his cronies. This country has always been run by the wealthy and conniving, and we've been heading down this road even before Trump got into politics. But it was done with a wink and a nod and at least a sop to the proles here and there.
It's all wide out in the open now. It's Lamar Alexander -- who turns eighty in July, is independently wealthy, and is retiring later this year -- casting the die for this treachery, as one final favor. Not to Trump, but to Bill Barr, who now heads an organization that has been more or less explicitly empowered to engage in whatever tactics domestically that Barr sees fit.
Bearing in mind, of course, that Barr is an Opus Dei fanatic who is on record as another one of those "moral decay" assholes that really wants to force everyone to go to the same church. Notwithstanding the inconvenient fact that Barr's own father was a pervert who wrote sex-slave pulp sci-fi books and gave Jeffrey Epstein his first real job, a job that Epstein was literally unqualified for.
Remember when the Feds raided Epstein's Manhattan sex castle last summer and confiscated truckloads of evidence? Yeah, good times. Wonder how that all turned out. I don't mean Uncle Jeff's "suicide," I mean what happened to all the fucking evidence? Maybe someone could get a House subcommittee going to investigate that.
I get why people might get confused or frustrated with this endless barrage of connections and people and timelines and dirty deeds done for fun. They can only get so far in before they throw up their hands and decide that they all do it. Everyone is corrupt, doing the same awful things to the same lurid degree. I might as well just either check out, or at least cast my lot with the guy that pushes my buttons.
That's how you end up with a mendacious pro-wrestling clown. That how you end up with fifty-one grown-ass adults who are perfectly willing to sell their country all the way down the road to despotism, under an erratic, impulsive, vindictive, blindingly stupid criminal -- someone they all know full well is guilty and incompetent and corrupt to his bones, someone they all deeply detest on a personal basis, because he is weird and pathetic and needy and completely unlikable in the way a whiny, self-absorbed brat is unlikable. They sold their souls and their country for nothing, for a brief extension to their tenuous grasp on power, and the money they can't take with them when they die.
That's how you end up with such despicable, miserable people -- by abdicating your responsibilities, by not showing up, by hoping someone else will come along and do it, because someone always does. Welp, Superman's not comin' to save the day this time, podna, so you best take stock of the situation, figure out what you can and what you can't control, and prepare accordingly.
There are many ideas and emotions that compel me to persist in pissing my thoughts into the electronic void ad nauseam, but if there is a single key defining characteristic, it's this: a sense of justice. I hate seeing scumbags go unpunished or rewarded, while decent people who work hard and play by the rules get trampled. It drives me nuts when people just accept it as "the way things are." No, the reason things get that way is because enough people are willing to accept it. As long as it's not them or theirs, it doesn't matter. It's someone else's problem, even if it's preventable.
All that we need to do is to look at these people and the things they do, assess them accurately and objectively, and act accordingly. Liars, hypocrites, thieves, killers, the people who enable them and do their dirty work for them -- bring them to account in all the possible ways. Maybe that means bringing them to account in a court of law if they've committed a crime, maybe it means heckling them out of restaurants if they're just really awful excuses for humanity.
The reason you hear the phrase "cancel culture" so much these days is because there is a subsection of wealthy or powerful or influential people who, thanks to the wondrous technology of social media, are being held publicly to account by people from "lower" classes, who in the past had no way to effect any sort of recourse at all for the Important Person's misdeeds. The Important People can't stand it that the great unwashed can now tell them to go fuck themselves, either in Twitter or Instagram, or in public if there's a sighting.
Sometimes this gets out of hand and hits people who just made a slightly off-color comment that they later wish they hadn't. Sometimes people over-react. Who knew? But the good outweighs the bad, and the proof of that was last summer, when within the space of a few weeks, you had Maureen Dowd and Bret Stephens, two wealthy and influential people who are rewarded handsomely even though they are terrible at their job, both whining (again, in their well-paid sinecures at the nation's (erp!) flagship newspaper) about how all the nasty emails and tweets they got presaged guillotines and Kristallnacht.
I mean, when you can get that level of high-pitched whining and pearl-clutching, you know you've hit the mark. But it's also a sad reminder that, since Dowd and Stephens still have their jobs, someone still enjoys reading them. People out there still plan to vote for Trump enthusiastically, no matter how much of a thin-skinned, incompetent criminal he is, no matter how many farmers hang themselves because his genius trade war bankrupted them.
Having a sense of justice is also the inevitable, hard understanding that it is truly rare. Plenty of horrible shit never gets resolved; countless horrible people throughout history were never held accountable. They slept fine right up until the end and died comfortably. No one did jack shit about them.
That's what you really have to prepare for -- more and worse things could and probably will come out as this year progresses, and there's still a good chance that he wins. The Democrats are already showing their talent for fucking things up in the nomination process, and their fallback position is to complain that the media tools are never fair to them. Obviously the reality goes further than that. There are a lot of people in this country whose actions are incoherent and spiteful, and there are plenty who are so untroubled by all of it, they can't even be bothered to show up. If he wins, it means they win; it means once again that maybe this country isn't what you thought it was.
I don't know much, but I know at least two things: one, that my dad didn't fight the fucking nazis and imperial Japanese in WW2 for this bullshit, any of it; two, I'm getting old and really don't feel like spending the rest of my years concerning myself with an idea that doesn't exist anymore. In other words, if the majority wants to make Idiocracy a documentary, then maybe it's time to seek greener pastures. I can't imagine doing that to my daughter and eventually grandchildren, sentencing them to some pinched, cruel, oligarchic fascist state that thinks The Handmaid's Tale is an instructional text.
We've got about 277 days or so to figure this out, folks; there really may not be a next one at this rate. We might not even get this one. It only works if enough people have enough spine and sense to stand up for themselves.
And if they can't be bothered or roused or convinced -- well, that too is an answer.
Some say a comet will fall from the sky, followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
And some say the end is near, some say we'll see Armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I could use a vacation from this stupid shit. -- Tool, Ænema
Here we go. After a brief feint at pretending to dither over their foregone conclusion, the cowardly scum that comprise the Senate Republicons did their sworn duty to their orange overlord and wrapped this farce up tighter than Yertle McConnell's favorite leather gimp.
No one is shocked or even surprised. We knew they would do this, because this is what they are. They hate this country, they hate most of its citizens, and they fully intend to cling to power by any means necessary. Now that they have openly authorized the chief executive -- as long as he's from their party, of course -- to do as he pleases, up to and including offering monetary inducements to foreign leaders to influence US elections, expect the phone calls and thick envelopes to fly fast and hard.
Like I keep saying: Don't despair, prepare. Of course people feel like crying or throwing their hands up and saying fuck it, and checking out from all of it. What good does any of it do, if they're just gonna cheat to win?
Well, again, if they weren't worried about the outcome, they wouldn't need to cheat at every turn, now would they? Just a little over a year ago, people showed up for the midterms, and it paid off. Democrats retook the House. All the hearings and witnesses and evidence that came out during this process, the very fact that you were allowed to know about any of it is entirely due to the fact that people showed up in November of 2018. It's the difference between Adam Schiff running things, and a corrupt shit like Devin Nunes brushing it under the rug and running to lick his master's boots.
You don't have to wait until November to start voting either. Vote with your wallet, every day. Make your choices count. You know how much money things like the Kentucky Derby and NCAA basketball and Jim Beam bourbon dump into Kentucky's economy? Sit 'em out this year, until that festering turd McConnell finally gets flushed. Tons of teevee shows and movies are made in Georgia. What companies are still buying commercial time on Fox News?
You want things to change and improve, it's going to take a little work. Those things are bare minimum, but I guarantee you if enough people do them, it will make a difference. If you have more money, donate to some of the opposition candidates; if you have more time and the inclination to act like a Jehovah's Witness, I guess you could go door-to-door or hit the supermarkets, and get people to register to vote. If you have free time and some speaking skills and the patience to deal with idiots in the audience, maybe you run for your local planning commission or school board or city council.
(I've actually been asked by quite a few people in my area over the years, liberal and conservative, to run for some sort of local government seat. I'd be fucking terrible at it. I have the knowledge and passion, but not the patience. I've sat in on a few city council and county board meetings over the years. I know some of the members of these groups. It is nothing more than assembly-line tedium. Everything starts with pro-forma nuisances like reciting the pledge of allegiance, then before actually getting to business you have to give the audience a chance to speak. The only people who have time to attend these things are either elderly folks with nothing else to do, or idiots who are riled up over some $2.00/year mosquito abatement assessment being voted on. (That one is real, I can still recall it quite clearly.) Look at every time a new Krispy Kreme shop opens, or a new $1,000 phone is released with a slightly improved bezel. There is simply a certain percentage of people whose time is worth literally nothing to them. And they all show up at local gov't meetings. The first few episodes of the sitcom Parks & Recreation were pretty much a documentary of that phenomenon. So, thanks but no thanks.)
It's going to be difficult to keep the faith between now and then. The corporate media are engineered and incentivized to demoralize you, the better to keep you in your place. That's why they beat on Sanders and Warren, because either one of those two will actually do something. The media will go after Biden and Buttigieg and Klobuchar as well. It's always someone's turn in the barrel. They want to stir up infighting between the candidates' supporters, to depress turnout in the general election.
This is not incidental, this is the goal. An actual liberal media would not keep doing these tired-ass Cletus safari pieces, venturing out to talk to these spiteful hicks who won't fucking die already, who hate their grandkids and whine about communism but hey, where's my entitlements?
So boycott them too. Seriously, when was the last time CNN gave you anything of value? Why on earth would you read most of the Times columnists, or their lap-dog "reporting" and "anonymous" sourcing?
Of the five remaining "main" Dem candidates, I would honestly say each of them has some chance to win. There are people who have a vested interest in maintaining that Bernie or Warren are "too left" and therefore susceptible to a McGovern-type landslide. You may want to check if any of those folks offered predictions about 2016, and how that turned out.
Everyone got 2016 wrong. I got it way wrong (though, oddly enough, I do think that some of the breakdown and analysis in the linked post might still hold at least some water). Nobody, not even Trump himself, thought he would or even could win. A fake businessman with multiple bankruptcies, ridiculous appearance, a long track record of failure and incompetence, no experience in public office, had no chance against probably the most over-qualified person ever to apply for the job.
But he won because there really is a deep current of frustration and anger in this country, and he understood it well enough to monetize and weaponize it. Sanders clearly taps that discontent with just as much efficiency. Warren is getting better at it too. The panel monkeys and smart-set slop-ed columnists all beat the how're we gonna pay for it? drum like it's the only song they know.
It doesn't occur to them that some under-employed single mom with a sick kid or two and no insurance -- or hell, even with insurance, it's not like it's a vast improvement -- hears that argument and reflexively thinks about all the bullshit that gets paid for without so much as a blink. And now we're three years into paying that fat fuck to play golf on his own courses every goddamned weekend, so he can force the Secret Service to rent golf carts and jet skis and hotel rooms directly from him. Tell us again how we just can't find any money to cut working families some slack on the decades of interest payments they're forced to make to student-loan corporations.
That's the real reason the Cletus safari doofuses need to get their heads out of their asses and talk to some Democratic voters once in a while -- because we're fucking pissed too. There is a misconception that Trump's cult of cousin-fucking yahoos have some kind of monopoly on righteous anger, and that's entirely because they're the only ones the corporate media will talk to. They don't realize that Sanders and Warren have just as much of a shot as Biden -- maybe more -- because those two have learned very well how to empathize with the anger, and give it voice.
The bottom line on all this is to keep in mind one definite inevitability -- none of the remaining candidates will be ideal for everyone. Someone will have to compromise, someone will have to hold their nose for someone they really don't care for. To which I would respond, Are you sure you dislike Candidate X more than the doddering asshole that's been in there? Because that's the choice right now. It's a process -- you remove the person you're tired of, replace them with someone you can live with for the time-being, and then start looking for someone better for the next go-round.
Think of it as a slump-buster, if that helps. Sometimes you just need a warm body for a short period of time to get you out of a rut, until you find your rhythm again. I am fine with having Amy Klobuchar as a slump-buster, if it gets that clog out of the White House toilet. Hell, I'll vote for Mike Bloomberg or Tom Steyer if that's what it takes. We all need to focus on getting that fucker out, period. Worry about policy specs later.
Take a good, long look at the last two weeks, that despicable sham in the Senate. Get pissed. Make them pay, with your votes and your wallets. Be creative, be consistent. Make it hurt and don't stop the pain. Most of all, show up every time. Never forget that that's exactly what they don't want you to do.
Every election is always the most important one ever, which is another way to desensitize people over time to how things really are. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this year really is that important, and in fact may actually be a make-or-break scenario for the continuation of what we might still recognize and hope to be a relatively free country. The upcoming sham "verdict" will legitimize what these fuckers have already done, as well as what they are going to do, and they've probably already started doing it.
It's not an exaggeration that a we saw this week a major step toward formalizing the turn into a "soft authoritarian" state, a shell of a representative democracy but really just an open rubber stamp parliament at the behest of the despot and his cronies. This country has always been run by the wealthy and conniving, and we've been heading down this road even before Trump got into politics. But it was done with a wink and a nod and at least a sop to the proles here and there.
It's all wide out in the open now. It's Lamar Alexander -- who turns eighty in July, is independently wealthy, and is retiring later this year -- casting the die for this treachery, as one final favor. Not to Trump, but to Bill Barr, who now heads an organization that has been more or less explicitly empowered to engage in whatever tactics domestically that Barr sees fit.
Bearing in mind, of course, that Barr is an Opus Dei fanatic who is on record as another one of those "moral decay" assholes that really wants to force everyone to go to the same church. Notwithstanding the inconvenient fact that Barr's own father was a pervert who wrote sex-slave pulp sci-fi books and gave Jeffrey Epstein his first real job, a job that Epstein was literally unqualified for.
Remember when the Feds raided Epstein's Manhattan sex castle last summer and confiscated truckloads of evidence? Yeah, good times. Wonder how that all turned out. I don't mean Uncle Jeff's "suicide," I mean what happened to all the fucking evidence? Maybe someone could get a House subcommittee going to investigate that.
I get why people might get confused or frustrated with this endless barrage of connections and people and timelines and dirty deeds done for fun. They can only get so far in before they throw up their hands and decide that they all do it. Everyone is corrupt, doing the same awful things to the same lurid degree. I might as well just either check out, or at least cast my lot with the guy that pushes my buttons.
That's how you end up with a mendacious pro-wrestling clown. That how you end up with fifty-one grown-ass adults who are perfectly willing to sell their country all the way down the road to despotism, under an erratic, impulsive, vindictive, blindingly stupid criminal -- someone they all know full well is guilty and incompetent and corrupt to his bones, someone they all deeply detest on a personal basis, because he is weird and pathetic and needy and completely unlikable in the way a whiny, self-absorbed brat is unlikable. They sold their souls and their country for nothing, for a brief extension to their tenuous grasp on power, and the money they can't take with them when they die.
That's how you end up with such despicable, miserable people -- by abdicating your responsibilities, by not showing up, by hoping someone else will come along and do it, because someone always does. Welp, Superman's not comin' to save the day this time, podna, so you best take stock of the situation, figure out what you can and what you can't control, and prepare accordingly.
There are many ideas and emotions that compel me to persist in pissing my thoughts into the electronic void ad nauseam, but if there is a single key defining characteristic, it's this: a sense of justice. I hate seeing scumbags go unpunished or rewarded, while decent people who work hard and play by the rules get trampled. It drives me nuts when people just accept it as "the way things are." No, the reason things get that way is because enough people are willing to accept it. As long as it's not them or theirs, it doesn't matter. It's someone else's problem, even if it's preventable.
All that we need to do is to look at these people and the things they do, assess them accurately and objectively, and act accordingly. Liars, hypocrites, thieves, killers, the people who enable them and do their dirty work for them -- bring them to account in all the possible ways. Maybe that means bringing them to account in a court of law if they've committed a crime, maybe it means heckling them out of restaurants if they're just really awful excuses for humanity.
The reason you hear the phrase "cancel culture" so much these days is because there is a subsection of wealthy or powerful or influential people who, thanks to the wondrous technology of social media, are being held publicly to account by people from "lower" classes, who in the past had no way to effect any sort of recourse at all for the Important Person's misdeeds. The Important People can't stand it that the great unwashed can now tell them to go fuck themselves, either in Twitter or Instagram, or in public if there's a sighting.
Sometimes this gets out of hand and hits people who just made a slightly off-color comment that they later wish they hadn't. Sometimes people over-react. Who knew? But the good outweighs the bad, and the proof of that was last summer, when within the space of a few weeks, you had Maureen Dowd and Bret Stephens, two wealthy and influential people who are rewarded handsomely even though they are terrible at their job, both whining (again, in their well-paid sinecures at the nation's (erp!) flagship newspaper) about how all the nasty emails and tweets they got presaged guillotines and Kristallnacht.
I mean, when you can get that level of high-pitched whining and pearl-clutching, you know you've hit the mark. But it's also a sad reminder that, since Dowd and Stephens still have their jobs, someone still enjoys reading them. People out there still plan to vote for Trump enthusiastically, no matter how much of a thin-skinned, incompetent criminal he is, no matter how many farmers hang themselves because his genius trade war bankrupted them.
Having a sense of justice is also the inevitable, hard understanding that it is truly rare. Plenty of horrible shit never gets resolved; countless horrible people throughout history were never held accountable. They slept fine right up until the end and died comfortably. No one did jack shit about them.
That's what you really have to prepare for -- more and worse things could and probably will come out as this year progresses, and there's still a good chance that he wins. The Democrats are already showing their talent for fucking things up in the nomination process, and their fallback position is to complain that the media tools are never fair to them. Obviously the reality goes further than that. There are a lot of people in this country whose actions are incoherent and spiteful, and there are plenty who are so untroubled by all of it, they can't even be bothered to show up. If he wins, it means they win; it means once again that maybe this country isn't what you thought it was.
I don't know much, but I know at least two things: one, that my dad didn't fight the fucking nazis and imperial Japanese in WW2 for this bullshit, any of it; two, I'm getting old and really don't feel like spending the rest of my years concerning myself with an idea that doesn't exist anymore. In other words, if the majority wants to make Idiocracy a documentary, then maybe it's time to seek greener pastures. I can't imagine doing that to my daughter and eventually grandchildren, sentencing them to some pinched, cruel, oligarchic fascist state that thinks The Handmaid's Tale is an instructional text.
We've got about 277 days or so to figure this out, folks; there really may not be a next one at this rate. We might not even get this one. It only works if enough people have enough spine and sense to stand up for themselves.
And if they can't be bothered or roused or convinced -- well, that too is an answer.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Amor Fati
He'll get away with it, you know. All of it. He always has. No one has ever really held him accountable for much of anything. The closest call he ever had with real accountability was back in 1990, when he nearly bankrupted one of his shitbag casinos in AC, and as part of the bailout the creditor banks put him on an "allowance" of $450k -- per month.
And so he never learned anything from his many failures and stupid excesses, because why should he? There's never been any reason to. Just like the Wall Street wizards who lawn-darted the economy a decade ago, looted the wreckage, and still had the balls to insist on their performance bonuses. We don't hold rich and/or powerful people accountable.
Well, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein might beg to disagree with that. There are always exceptions. But they are notable precisely because of their scarcity.
And this impeachment trail farce. Right out in the open, like whaddaya gonna do about it, same as it ever was. Ol' Moscow Mitch, he didn't even bother with the pretense of a reach-around, the thin veneer of fake comity and moderation. In what trial court does the jury foreman declare his intent to work with the defendant and the defendant's counsel throughout the process and to acquit the defendant before the trial even starts? And what jury pre-emptively decides that they don't need to call any witnesses or demand any evidence that might prove the defendant's guilt?
More importantly, what sort of diseased society is okay with all of that? We may just be too far gone at this point, seriously, as a functioning republic or democracy or however you want to term it. This is pure despotism, right here. That's all there is to it. And an incredible percentage of people seem to be okay with it, or inexplicably apathetic to it.
The fix is in, and nobody will or can do anything about it. Not his party, because they're all in at this point, counting on cheating, suppression, and pig-blind stubbornness to carry them over the line. Not the opposition party, too intimidated to fully commit to what they've started, yet seemingly not understanding that if they fail and he stays, they're all targets. They should be setting up an ad hoc committee to investigate and draft more articles of impeachment right now, ready to load soon as this dog-and-phony show is through.
The media certainly won't challenge them, long as there's a buck to be made selling tickets to the circus. The librul media helped him in his ascent, every filthy, corrupt step of the way. He may be dumber than a bag of rocks, but intelligence and cunning are two different things, and the ability to read people and spot the most credulous, dull-witted saps in the room is a by-god bona-fide skill.
If you really think about it, the main ability required to screw people over, lie to them constantly and poison their brains, is just a willingness to do it and stick to it. Never relent, never break character, never admit guilt or defeat. There will always be people who want to believe the lies, and there will always be people who will ingratiate themselves to your cause and assist with it, in order to capitalize on the opportunity.
So it comes now to the people of this fair land to sack up, show up, and hold them all -- there's that pesky word again -- accountable. Like the impeachment, and even the crimes that led to the impeachment, it is an all-or-nothing proposition. It is not enough merely to remove Trump; a Democratic president with the House and Senate as is will be hamstrung and obstructed at every opportunity, with no small amount of assistance from the agitprop fiends at Fixed Noise.
The Republicon party has to be removed from power at every possible point, at every possible level. Period. They are nothing more now than a malevolent, destructive force that wants only to sow discord and wreak havoc. That is not an exaggeration. You want this bullshit to end, they have to end. There is no other way.
Frankly, I think voting is pretty much a waste of time. You're either outnumbered by the bastards, or cheated and no one does anything, or you win, but your guy gets prevented from doing much of anything regardless, and is mostly undone within months after leaving office anyway. It historically changes very little, and as Emma Goldman famously put it a century ago, if it did change anything, they wouldn't let us do it.
Having said all that, you should still vote anyway. Not because of any moral or patriotic duty, or any of that flag-humping, group-chant nonsense. Do it because it's the practical thing to do, because of game theory -- if you don't show up, things will definitely not improve, but if you do show up, not only is there at least a small chance of improvement, but the odds go up in direct proportion to participation.
You have the ability to increase the odds. The proof of that is if you didn't, if there really was nothing to be done regardless, they wouldn't keep investing so much in cheating and suppression. You don't need to cheat at a game that doesn't matter in the first place. Again, let math and logic and reason demonstrate what mere "patriotic duty" apparently does not.
And after all that, after all the fine thoughts and good deeds, he still might win again. There's actually a pretty good chance of it. What then? I wish I knew the answer to that.
Back in my wild youth, I did have my quieter moments when I read philosophy and economics, classics, things like that. I probably had a grip at the time on philosophy about like Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, but being older and hopefully a bit wiser now, it comes back around with more heft. Re-reading the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca and such, is a good reminder about understanding what we can and can't control, and adjusting accordingly for ourselves.
So at the very least, don't despair, but prepare. Think about what specific aspects of your life will be adversely affected by the return of this demented old wet-brained pervert. It could be something concrete like your access to decent health care, or something more abstract, like the sinking realization that this country has a very deep sickness in its collective soul right now, and it simply may not recover in your lifetime. Maybe never.
All the people and things that we care about eventually come to an end. Toxins build up, systems break down, parts corrode and fall into disrepair. You can treat it and maybe prolong the inevitable, but sooner or later the bill comes due. The people who yap loudest about how much they supposedly love their country, refer to it as a living thing, as she or her, often seem to be the ones causing the most damage. The old gal is taking on some serious water these days, and the people who have the most power to help seem intent on drowning her.
So each of us really needs to consider the odds, and what our responses are to various scenarios. Maybe you decide you've had it, you don't want to leave but you can't stay anymore to continue watching the controlled demolition, helpless and mute. How do you move on? Maybe it's time to get your passport in order, see what the emigration requirements are to various places. Just in case.
For me, it's still a bit cathartic to vent and complain about the whole lot of it, but it's a very small part of my daily life, and I do and engage in other, more constructive things. I'm sure most of you do as well, and maybe it's healthier for us all to do more of those things and less of this thing.. I think we all need to find ways to insulate ourselves from the penumbra of pro-wrestling madness from these people, as well as to assure ourselves of the ability to just keep going with our jobs, families, money and health issues, all the things that we are all affected by to some degree, and can be made worse if we let ourselves get demoralized by the bastards.
There are some things you simply cannot get around -- the monopolies you pay each month for all your utilities; the needs for food and shelter and love and culture -- but we have choices about what we read and see and where we spend our money. Instead of bitching about the New York Times just drop them like a sack of manure, and don't look back. Instead of complaining about CNN having the teen rapist Alan Doucheowitz or the liar Kellyanne Con-Way defiling our teevee screens one more fucking time, just cut CNN loose. They're fucking useless anyway. Instead of griping about why no one is doing anything about climate change, look at what your contribution to that is, and reduce it by ten percent, then another ten percent.
If enough people do these things, all of which are within their power, things will change. A big part of it is the gatekeeper corporate media, whose vested interest is to get you riled up about shit you can't control, and hey while you're here check out our ads for cheeseburgers or boner pills or a big gas-guzzling truck to take your mind off your tiny dick. I stopped watching all teevee news, except for local weather, and that's one sure way to clear your head. I can't recommend it enough.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with the concept of amor fati -- to love or embrace whatever fate has in store for us, but you get the idea. If the fate of the country is Trump getting re-elected and ramping up his agenda, knowing he can get away with literally anything now, I don't think it's necessary or even wise to simply embrace that, or even passively accept it.
But we should prepare for it, not only because of how it will enable him and his henchmen to continue killing off this country, but because of what it clarifies about the citizenry. Blame the electoral college or the media or Russian Fakebook nonsense or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that there are enough people here who are okay with all of it -- they either actively support it, or are simply too goddamned lazy to get off their asses and do their job as citizens.
The 2016 election posed a conundrum to the engaged observer -- did the result reflect what the country had become, or did it reveal what it has always been? It seems to be a large measure of both, now infused and empowered with technology and authoritarianism and incoherent rage.
We can laugh at those dorks in Richmond yesterday, with their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle camo-drag and their dick substitutes positioned in often comically dangerous places. Look at the photos of these morons, you wouldn't hire any of them to sweep your front porch. They're useless and they know it. Their biggest enemy is not Antifa, it's hardening arteries and sodium benzoate.
But they won. They marched with masks and .50 cal sniper rifles and even grenade launchers, through the streets of a state capital, defying laws and challenging authorities to do something about it. Their intent is to set up "sanctuary counties" where people can have whatever weapons they want, and the sheriffs won't enforce the laws.
And no one did or will do a goddamned thing about any of it. You think these assholes are up on it now, you wait until their boy skates on impeachment, tells Schiff and Pelosi to go fuck themselves in the SOTU speech, and openly cheats his way to re-election.
The beauty of it is, if everyone just ignores all that and shows up anyway, we can beat them back. Always remember, there are more of us than there are of them. We just have to stop dicking around, herding cats and worrying about what MoDo and Bobo and the rest of the slop-ed losers think about anything. They are trying to demoralize you. Stop letting them.
And so he never learned anything from his many failures and stupid excesses, because why should he? There's never been any reason to. Just like the Wall Street wizards who lawn-darted the economy a decade ago, looted the wreckage, and still had the balls to insist on their performance bonuses. We don't hold rich and/or powerful people accountable.
Well, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein might beg to disagree with that. There are always exceptions. But they are notable precisely because of their scarcity.
And this impeachment trail farce. Right out in the open, like whaddaya gonna do about it, same as it ever was. Ol' Moscow Mitch, he didn't even bother with the pretense of a reach-around, the thin veneer of fake comity and moderation. In what trial court does the jury foreman declare his intent to work with the defendant and the defendant's counsel throughout the process and to acquit the defendant before the trial even starts? And what jury pre-emptively decides that they don't need to call any witnesses or demand any evidence that might prove the defendant's guilt?
More importantly, what sort of diseased society is okay with all of that? We may just be too far gone at this point, seriously, as a functioning republic or democracy or however you want to term it. This is pure despotism, right here. That's all there is to it. And an incredible percentage of people seem to be okay with it, or inexplicably apathetic to it.
The fix is in, and nobody will or can do anything about it. Not his party, because they're all in at this point, counting on cheating, suppression, and pig-blind stubbornness to carry them over the line. Not the opposition party, too intimidated to fully commit to what they've started, yet seemingly not understanding that if they fail and he stays, they're all targets. They should be setting up an ad hoc committee to investigate and draft more articles of impeachment right now, ready to load soon as this dog-and-phony show is through.
The media certainly won't challenge them, long as there's a buck to be made selling tickets to the circus. The librul media helped him in his ascent, every filthy, corrupt step of the way. He may be dumber than a bag of rocks, but intelligence and cunning are two different things, and the ability to read people and spot the most credulous, dull-witted saps in the room is a by-god bona-fide skill.
If you really think about it, the main ability required to screw people over, lie to them constantly and poison their brains, is just a willingness to do it and stick to it. Never relent, never break character, never admit guilt or defeat. There will always be people who want to believe the lies, and there will always be people who will ingratiate themselves to your cause and assist with it, in order to capitalize on the opportunity.
So it comes now to the people of this fair land to sack up, show up, and hold them all -- there's that pesky word again -- accountable. Like the impeachment, and even the crimes that led to the impeachment, it is an all-or-nothing proposition. It is not enough merely to remove Trump; a Democratic president with the House and Senate as is will be hamstrung and obstructed at every opportunity, with no small amount of assistance from the agitprop fiends at Fixed Noise.
The Republicon party has to be removed from power at every possible point, at every possible level. Period. They are nothing more now than a malevolent, destructive force that wants only to sow discord and wreak havoc. That is not an exaggeration. You want this bullshit to end, they have to end. There is no other way.
Frankly, I think voting is pretty much a waste of time. You're either outnumbered by the bastards, or cheated and no one does anything, or you win, but your guy gets prevented from doing much of anything regardless, and is mostly undone within months after leaving office anyway. It historically changes very little, and as Emma Goldman famously put it a century ago, if it did change anything, they wouldn't let us do it.
Having said all that, you should still vote anyway. Not because of any moral or patriotic duty, or any of that flag-humping, group-chant nonsense. Do it because it's the practical thing to do, because of game theory -- if you don't show up, things will definitely not improve, but if you do show up, not only is there at least a small chance of improvement, but the odds go up in direct proportion to participation.
You have the ability to increase the odds. The proof of that is if you didn't, if there really was nothing to be done regardless, they wouldn't keep investing so much in cheating and suppression. You don't need to cheat at a game that doesn't matter in the first place. Again, let math and logic and reason demonstrate what mere "patriotic duty" apparently does not.
And after all that, after all the fine thoughts and good deeds, he still might win again. There's actually a pretty good chance of it. What then? I wish I knew the answer to that.
Back in my wild youth, I did have my quieter moments when I read philosophy and economics, classics, things like that. I probably had a grip at the time on philosophy about like Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, but being older and hopefully a bit wiser now, it comes back around with more heft. Re-reading the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca and such, is a good reminder about understanding what we can and can't control, and adjusting accordingly for ourselves.
So at the very least, don't despair, but prepare. Think about what specific aspects of your life will be adversely affected by the return of this demented old wet-brained pervert. It could be something concrete like your access to decent health care, or something more abstract, like the sinking realization that this country has a very deep sickness in its collective soul right now, and it simply may not recover in your lifetime. Maybe never.
All the people and things that we care about eventually come to an end. Toxins build up, systems break down, parts corrode and fall into disrepair. You can treat it and maybe prolong the inevitable, but sooner or later the bill comes due. The people who yap loudest about how much they supposedly love their country, refer to it as a living thing, as she or her, often seem to be the ones causing the most damage. The old gal is taking on some serious water these days, and the people who have the most power to help seem intent on drowning her.
So each of us really needs to consider the odds, and what our responses are to various scenarios. Maybe you decide you've had it, you don't want to leave but you can't stay anymore to continue watching the controlled demolition, helpless and mute. How do you move on? Maybe it's time to get your passport in order, see what the emigration requirements are to various places. Just in case.
For me, it's still a bit cathartic to vent and complain about the whole lot of it, but it's a very small part of my daily life, and I do and engage in other, more constructive things. I'm sure most of you do as well, and maybe it's healthier for us all to do more of those things and less of this thing.. I think we all need to find ways to insulate ourselves from the penumbra of pro-wrestling madness from these people, as well as to assure ourselves of the ability to just keep going with our jobs, families, money and health issues, all the things that we are all affected by to some degree, and can be made worse if we let ourselves get demoralized by the bastards.
There are some things you simply cannot get around -- the monopolies you pay each month for all your utilities; the needs for food and shelter and love and culture -- but we have choices about what we read and see and where we spend our money. Instead of bitching about the New York Times just drop them like a sack of manure, and don't look back. Instead of complaining about CNN having the teen rapist Alan Doucheowitz or the liar Kellyanne Con-Way defiling our teevee screens one more fucking time, just cut CNN loose. They're fucking useless anyway. Instead of griping about why no one is doing anything about climate change, look at what your contribution to that is, and reduce it by ten percent, then another ten percent.
If enough people do these things, all of which are within their power, things will change. A big part of it is the gatekeeper corporate media, whose vested interest is to get you riled up about shit you can't control, and hey while you're here check out our ads for cheeseburgers or boner pills or a big gas-guzzling truck to take your mind off your tiny dick. I stopped watching all teevee news, except for local weather, and that's one sure way to clear your head. I can't recommend it enough.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with the concept of amor fati -- to love or embrace whatever fate has in store for us, but you get the idea. If the fate of the country is Trump getting re-elected and ramping up his agenda, knowing he can get away with literally anything now, I don't think it's necessary or even wise to simply embrace that, or even passively accept it.
But we should prepare for it, not only because of how it will enable him and his henchmen to continue killing off this country, but because of what it clarifies about the citizenry. Blame the electoral college or the media or Russian Fakebook nonsense or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that there are enough people here who are okay with all of it -- they either actively support it, or are simply too goddamned lazy to get off their asses and do their job as citizens.
The 2016 election posed a conundrum to the engaged observer -- did the result reflect what the country had become, or did it reveal what it has always been? It seems to be a large measure of both, now infused and empowered with technology and authoritarianism and incoherent rage.
We can laugh at those dorks in Richmond yesterday, with their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle camo-drag and their dick substitutes positioned in often comically dangerous places. Look at the photos of these morons, you wouldn't hire any of them to sweep your front porch. They're useless and they know it. Their biggest enemy is not Antifa, it's hardening arteries and sodium benzoate.
But they won. They marched with masks and .50 cal sniper rifles and even grenade launchers, through the streets of a state capital, defying laws and challenging authorities to do something about it. Their intent is to set up "sanctuary counties" where people can have whatever weapons they want, and the sheriffs won't enforce the laws.
And no one did or will do a goddamned thing about any of it. You think these assholes are up on it now, you wait until their boy skates on impeachment, tells Schiff and Pelosi to go fuck themselves in the SOTU speech, and openly cheats his way to re-election.
The beauty of it is, if everyone just ignores all that and shows up anyway, we can beat them back. Always remember, there are more of us than there are of them. We just have to stop dicking around, herding cats and worrying about what MoDo and Bobo and the rest of the slop-ed losers think about anything. They are trying to demoralize you. Stop letting them.
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Fighting Back
Big props to Congressman Ted Lieu for literally telling Devin "Traitor" Nunes' lawyer to shove his letter up his own ass. This is the only proper and reasonable way to respond to these scumbags, period. You cannot "work with" them (sorry, Joe Biden), you cannot "compromise" or "reconcile" with them. They have made themselves abundantly clear, multiple times. They are not your colleagues, they are your enemies, by their own actions and words. They can only be opposed, the more forcefully the better. Lieu has the right idea. His next letter should end with "and the horse you rode in on."
Bear in mind that Nunes, who is invested in a winery that does business with Russian distributors, is the ranking Republican (and was the chair until the midterms flipped the House) of the House committee that gathered and investigated evidence in the impeachment charges, as well as the Mueller investigation. As has long been suspected, but now confirmed by Lev Parnas, Nunes is balls-deep in this thing. Of course he was trying to brush it under when he ran the committee, he was "investigating" himself. Seriously, do the Russians get a bulk rate for investing in this party of shameless treason-weasels?
These people are impossible to parody. I look forward to Nunes being forced to resign, investigated, tried, convicted, being bankrupted in the process, and doing a few years in Club Fed.
***Kick a sawbuck or three to Phil Arballo, who is running to unseat this worthless punk.***
Prison pro-tip for Sweet Cheeks there: if you leave it out in the sun for a few minutes while you're on the yard, a Jolly Rancher candy can be rolled into an elongated tapered point, and used as an untraceable break-off stiletto. Aim for the neck veins, cowboy!
Bear in mind that Nunes, who is invested in a winery that does business with Russian distributors, is the ranking Republican (and was the chair until the midterms flipped the House) of the House committee that gathered and investigated evidence in the impeachment charges, as well as the Mueller investigation. As has long been suspected, but now confirmed by Lev Parnas, Nunes is balls-deep in this thing. Of course he was trying to brush it under when he ran the committee, he was "investigating" himself. Seriously, do the Russians get a bulk rate for investing in this party of shameless treason-weasels?
These people are impossible to parody. I look forward to Nunes being forced to resign, investigated, tried, convicted, being bankrupted in the process, and doing a few years in Club Fed.
***Kick a sawbuck or three to Phil Arballo, who is running to unseat this worthless punk.***
Prison pro-tip for Sweet Cheeks there: if you leave it out in the sun for a few minutes while you're on the yard, a Jolly Rancher candy can be rolled into an elongated tapered point, and used as an untraceable break-off stiletto. Aim for the neck veins, cowboy!
Friday, January 17, 2020
Newt Gingrich Is Right
But not for the reasons he thinks he is.
I mean, come on. This is almost too easy. The very first point of response from anyone -- corporate mediots, Democratic politicians, panel-show assholes -- should be to point out that the last "client" Starr and Doucheowitz teamed up to defend was a dirtbag who pimped underage girls to "elite" predators (one of which was Doucheowitz himself), and ended up suicided on the floor of a jail cell, the case swept under the rug by the son of the man who originally hired said sex predator as a teacher at a private high school.
We really need some new writers. This script is making daytime soap operas look like Errol Morris documentaries. At this rate, it's going to turn out that one of these animals has a long-lost twin.
It's impossible to keep all your energies focused all the time on keeping all the fuckery straight with these turds. There's too much of it going, constantly and everywhere.
So, for example, while one might rail against whatever jabbering bluster Dear Leader is up to any given day, one might also contain the awareness that enablers such as McConnell and Graham are actually worse on a practical level, as they have completely sold out their country in service to a madman. They are in a governmental body that was literally written into the Constitution, which they pretend to revere, as a balancing entity against an executive branch run amok.
And we've had scumbags and hypocrites oozing through the hallowed halls of gubmint forever, even before Preston Brooks nearly beat Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor for daring to suggest that the continuation of slavery was a moral crime that a free country could no longer abide. (I love the fact that despite resigning and immediately being re-elected, Brooks died less than a year after attacking Sumner, at the ripe old age of 37. Fuck that piece of shit.) There have always been worthless people -- and by that I literally mean people who are completely worthless just as human beings -- in positions of power. Obviously.
But you would hard-pressed to find any politician in the modern era as ethically bereft and morally corrupt as Newt Gingrich. The man is fucking scum to the very bone, and he systematically laid the path for his party to mutate and pervert language and talking points in order to undermine competent governance and hand it all over to equally corrupt oligarchs.
He's made the world an objectively worse place by actions over the years, and has no remorse at all -- indeed, he's enjoying himself way more than anyone with his track record should. And that doesn't even touch on his grotesque personal life. One can only hope that his quiet moments are anything but, when the lights are low and the rest of the world is asleep, and Newt has time to reflect on who and what he really is.
That is all he is, all he's ever been, and it will be his legacy when he finally boards his trolley to hell. Keep it in mind the next time some simpering corporate media hack has that bastard on to peddle more of his evil tripe. Might as well dig up Dahmer and Gacy for their side of things, for what it's worth.
We really need some new writers. This script is making daytime soap operas look like Errol Morris documentaries. At this rate, it's going to turn out that one of these animals has a long-lost twin.
It's impossible to keep all your energies focused all the time on keeping all the fuckery straight with these turds. There's too much of it going, constantly and everywhere.
So, for example, while one might rail against whatever jabbering bluster Dear Leader is up to any given day, one might also contain the awareness that enablers such as McConnell and Graham are actually worse on a practical level, as they have completely sold out their country in service to a madman. They are in a governmental body that was literally written into the Constitution, which they pretend to revere, as a balancing entity against an executive branch run amok.
And we've had scumbags and hypocrites oozing through the hallowed halls of gubmint forever, even before Preston Brooks nearly beat Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor for daring to suggest that the continuation of slavery was a moral crime that a free country could no longer abide. (I love the fact that despite resigning and immediately being re-elected, Brooks died less than a year after attacking Sumner, at the ripe old age of 37. Fuck that piece of shit.) There have always been worthless people -- and by that I literally mean people who are completely worthless just as human beings -- in positions of power. Obviously.
But you would hard-pressed to find any politician in the modern era as ethically bereft and morally corrupt as Newt Gingrich. The man is fucking scum to the very bone, and he systematically laid the path for his party to mutate and pervert language and talking points in order to undermine competent governance and hand it all over to equally corrupt oligarchs.
He's made the world an objectively worse place by actions over the years, and has no remorse at all -- indeed, he's enjoying himself way more than anyone with his track record should. And that doesn't even touch on his grotesque personal life. One can only hope that his quiet moments are anything but, when the lights are low and the rest of the world is asleep, and Newt has time to reflect on who and what he really is.
That is all he is, all he's ever been, and it will be his legacy when he finally boards his trolley to hell. Keep it in mind the next time some simpering corporate media hack has that bastard on to peddle more of his evil tripe. Might as well dig up Dahmer and Gacy for their side of things, for what it's worth.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
The Pope of Staten Island
You want to take down a cult leader, make him (and all churches) pay taxes. You want to take down Cult 45, it's even simpler -- point and laugh at him. Every time.
This is not complicated. It's as plain as the as the tang-coated, adderall-stuffed nose on his fat fucking face. You don't need another interminable psych composite to recognize a narcissistic sociopath when you hear and see one, especially when you can scarcely avoid them for years on end.
The defining characteristic of this honking, soulless turd is his vainglory, and its complete lack of being tethered to reality. It would be one thing if he had some or any skill or core competence. It should be clear to all but the cult that he does not, unless you count incessant lying and losing other people's money.
Where he gets traction is that he recognizes that we are in a time and a society that has little use for facts or empirical data. This allows people with no conscience or character to simply manufacture self-serving lies, or repeat a familiar litany of them that the fan club can sing along to. The sociopath also knows that his honorable opponent will waste time and energy trying to refute the lies, while the sociopath just shrugs and moves on to the next one.
What do I keep saying about knowing your audience? A corollary to that would be if you want to poach market share from a competitor, you should not only know your audience, but your competitor's audience as well.
This is not complicated. It's as plain as the as the tang-coated, adderall-stuffed nose on his fat fucking face. You don't need another interminable psych composite to recognize a narcissistic sociopath when you hear and see one, especially when you can scarcely avoid them for years on end.
The defining characteristic of this honking, soulless turd is his vainglory, and its complete lack of being tethered to reality. It would be one thing if he had some or any skill or core competence. It should be clear to all but the cult that he does not, unless you count incessant lying and losing other people's money.
Where he gets traction is that he recognizes that we are in a time and a society that has little use for facts or empirical data. This allows people with no conscience or character to simply manufacture self-serving lies, or repeat a familiar litany of them that the fan club can sing along to. The sociopath also knows that his honorable opponent will waste time and energy trying to refute the lies, while the sociopath just shrugs and moves on to the next one.
What do I keep saying about knowing your audience? A corollary to that would be if you want to poach market share from a competitor, you should not only know your audience, but your competitor's audience as well.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Let's Get Physical
So Preznit Fat Albert hey-hey-heyyyyed his way over to Walter Reed yesterday to begin "phase one" of what is apparently a multi-phase routine physical (uh, as such things tend to be?).
To be fair though, it probably will take multiple visits to remove the heads of Lindsey Graham, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and Matt Gaetz from Fatboy's capacious cloaca. Plus his intravenous mayonnaise feedings may have to be reduced to once a week.
When that fucker finally kicks off, all his homiez will upend forty-dogs of KFC gravy on the sidewalk. I usually don't indulge in gratuitous fat-shaming, but for that worthless asshole, we'll make an exception. Every time you see him in a polo shirt, his gut and his ass look like three hundred pounds of chewed bubble gum.
To be fair though, it probably will take multiple visits to remove the heads of Lindsey Graham, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and Matt Gaetz from Fatboy's capacious cloaca. Plus his intravenous mayonnaise feedings may have to be reduced to once a week.
When that fucker finally kicks off, all his homiez will upend forty-dogs of KFC gravy on the sidewalk. I usually don't indulge in gratuitous fat-shaming, but for that worthless asshole, we'll make an exception. Every time you see him in a polo shirt, his gut and his ass look like three hundred pounds of chewed bubble gum.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
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.
Friday, November 08, 2019
OK Bloomer
The plutocrats have worked very hard for decades: gobbling up rivals to stave off the threat of actual competition; buying media outlets to push their free (for them) market freebooting ethos; renting politicians to faithfully carry their water. And it has paid off handsomely for them -- they own pretty much everything, and thanks to an abundance of loopholes and relatively low taxation, they have more than enough to buy everything else.
Some of them will try to purchase public goodwill as well, by using crumbs from their tax savings to fund this or that charitable cause. Their "philanthropy" is really just their way of (to them) ensuring that their tax dollars get spent on exactly what they want, nothing more. (To his credit, Bloomberg's philanthropy is real, unlike Trump's, and it takes place in this country, unlike some others. Not that digging wells in Rwanda isn't important and valuable, but there are a lot of places in the US that give the Third World a run for their horrifically inflated money.)
If only we peons had the same privilege, right? I would much rather my tax dollars stayed in my own state to help out with its many issues and challenges, rather than being sent to some southern taker state that shits on my ilk with every foul breath, but eagerly cashes my fucking checks. Or being forced to subsidize the burgeoning evilangelist grifters who have taken over the White House like a swarm of cockroaches. But that's part of the deal -- everyone is paying for someone or something they personally disapprove of.
So Liz Warren has a plan for everything, and one of those plans is to institute a wealth tax (2% over $50M; 3% over $1B) to pay for something resembling a civilized health care system, like every other modern nation has. Since our media ecosystem is entirely bought and paid for by our insect corporate overlords, and exists primarily to reassure them of their innate rightness about everything, we have seen a barrage of nonsense spewing from everyone with a ten-or higher-digit net worth, fuming that they might end up with only eighty billion dollars instead of eighty-four billion dollars or whatever their fucking problem is.
(Obviously, we know what their problem is: the two simple words in the English language they refuse to understand are no and enough. And frankly, why shouldn't that be the case? If you or I were constantly surrounded by yes-people, sucked-up to and feted and cosseted by the influencers and tastemakers and power-brokers, we'd be in that epistemic bubble as well. I'm rich because I'm smart, and I'm smart because I'm rich. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop.)
Whatever else he may be, Bloomberg is not an idiot, nor is he particularly evil. Hell, if he somehow became the Democratic nominee and went up against that fucking thing, I'd vote for Bloomie in a heartbeat. Not even a close call. Same with Tom Steyer.
But this is clearly nothing but an ego trip for these guys, rich-dude wish-fulfillment. Bloomberg and Steyer are intelligent guys; they know full well that if they wanted to do the most good with the most impact for the greatest number of American citizens of all socioeconomic strata, the most effective way for them to do that through the political system would be to find the ten most vulnerable Republicon senators up for re-election next year, and give each of their Democratic challengers $25M.
It doesn't matter if Warren or Biden or Bloomberg gets that shitbirds out of the White House, if Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsey are still pushing ass out of their respective seats. Every single candidate has to know this, whether they admit it or not.
Bloomberg is simply jumping in to take the side of the Monopoly dude with the monocle and the waxed mustache, the misunderstood failsons who inherited every dime and still think they're Hank Rearden. Again, if these guys really wanted to "solve problems" they have the means to do so. No doubt the Wal-Mart heirs are watching closely, to see if one of their spoiled grandchildren might need to "help" by running for governor or senator from Arkansas.
Some of them will try to purchase public goodwill as well, by using crumbs from their tax savings to fund this or that charitable cause. Their "philanthropy" is really just their way of (to them) ensuring that their tax dollars get spent on exactly what they want, nothing more. (To his credit, Bloomberg's philanthropy is real, unlike Trump's, and it takes place in this country, unlike some others. Not that digging wells in Rwanda isn't important and valuable, but there are a lot of places in the US that give the Third World a run for their horrifically inflated money.)
If only we peons had the same privilege, right? I would much rather my tax dollars stayed in my own state to help out with its many issues and challenges, rather than being sent to some southern taker state that shits on my ilk with every foul breath, but eagerly cashes my fucking checks. Or being forced to subsidize the burgeoning evilangelist grifters who have taken over the White House like a swarm of cockroaches. But that's part of the deal -- everyone is paying for someone or something they personally disapprove of.
So Liz Warren has a plan for everything, and one of those plans is to institute a wealth tax (2% over $50M; 3% over $1B) to pay for something resembling a civilized health care system, like every other modern nation has. Since our media ecosystem is entirely bought and paid for by our insect corporate overlords, and exists primarily to reassure them of their innate rightness about everything, we have seen a barrage of nonsense spewing from everyone with a ten-or higher-digit net worth, fuming that they might end up with only eighty billion dollars instead of eighty-four billion dollars or whatever their fucking problem is.
(Obviously, we know what their problem is: the two simple words in the English language they refuse to understand are no and enough. And frankly, why shouldn't that be the case? If you or I were constantly surrounded by yes-people, sucked-up to and feted and cosseted by the influencers and tastemakers and power-brokers, we'd be in that epistemic bubble as well. I'm rich because I'm smart, and I'm smart because I'm rich. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop.)
Whatever else he may be, Bloomberg is not an idiot, nor is he particularly evil. Hell, if he somehow became the Democratic nominee and went up against that fucking thing, I'd vote for Bloomie in a heartbeat. Not even a close call. Same with Tom Steyer.
But this is clearly nothing but an ego trip for these guys, rich-dude wish-fulfillment. Bloomberg and Steyer are intelligent guys; they know full well that if they wanted to do the most good with the most impact for the greatest number of American citizens of all socioeconomic strata, the most effective way for them to do that through the political system would be to find the ten most vulnerable Republicon senators up for re-election next year, and give each of their Democratic challengers $25M.
It doesn't matter if Warren or Biden or Bloomberg gets that shitbirds out of the White House, if Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsey are still pushing ass out of their respective seats. Every single candidate has to know this, whether they admit it or not.
Bloomberg is simply jumping in to take the side of the Monopoly dude with the monocle and the waxed mustache, the misunderstood failsons who inherited every dime and still think they're Hank Rearden. Again, if these guys really wanted to "solve problems" they have the means to do so. No doubt the Wal-Mart heirs are watching closely, to see if one of their spoiled grandchildren might need to "help" by running for governor or senator from Arkansas.
Saturday, November 02, 2019
Crush 'em
Another day, another tough guy leaving a threatening voicemail for a congress-critter who has the gall to disagree with Dear Leader. These losers really are a dime a dozen.
When all is said and done, if we really want to save what's left of the republic -- and hey, maybe we don't want to save it; there's a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that it's run its course, and is now just an empty husk for the plutocrats to take turns using like a blow-up doll -- but if we do think there's still something worth preserving and restoring to goodness if not greatness, then fucking well commit to it.
Obviously that means voting, despite how futile and pointless it seems anymore. Even so, game theory teaches that however dismal the odds, they're still slightly better if everyone votes than if they don't vote. And the good thing is that the more people that show up, the better those odds will get.
Unfortunately, you only get to do that every couple years at best, not counting special elections. What do you do in the meantime? Plenty -- for starters, make sure you can vote. Double-check with your local elections office to be sure. See if you can register to vote by mail, which you can do early, and is immune from the usual election-day shenanigans you read about taking place all across the angry-cracker states. No compromised voting machines to change your vote or "lose" a power cable or any of that bullshit that people do.
THEY CHEAT BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY CAN'T WIN FAIR AND SQUARE.
Keep that in mind at all times, and use it as a weapon. Think about the thought processes involved in them not only cheating on the day of, but planning and strategizing how to cheat in advance, starting with #MoscowMitch (Putin's Bitch) preventing all election security legislation that has been drafted by the House, to come to a Senate floor vote. Many states use electronic machines whose software was created in -- wait for it -- Serbia. Yeah, no way the Russians could possibly hack our elections at all.
But simple math, and the results of the 2016 election, tell you that as awful as the cultists are (and no, it's not snark when I say repeatedly that I sincerely wish on them all the very worst things life has to offer), there are more people who see Dear Leader for what he is, and despise him for it, than there are of these simpering morons who would gladly let him fuck their wives and take a dump on their dinner tables. That's why they have to cheat -- there are more of us than there are of them, and they know it, pure and simple.
So use that day-to-day. Maybe I'll have to repeat this on a daily basis until I pull the plug on this popsicle stand in a year or so, but if enough of us boycott the companies that support the shows that put the liars and the propagandists on, they'll have to notice. Their money people will panic. The companies will pull ad space. I check into random Fox News shows every month or so, and they're running out of advertisers. It's all catheter companies who have nowhere else to go, or pharma companies that can absorb the hit.
But most of it's just in-house promo at this point, which means Fox is having to subsidize itself. That's not a sustainable business model, not even for an evil Australian bastard whose sole goal in life was to ruin the world. And you accomplished it, Rupert. Now kindly go off to your celestial reward.
As for the rest of it, the pro-wrestling spectacle that dominates the airwaves? Tune it out, turn it off, leave it. Don't listen, don't engage, don't respond. It seems like most of us have already gotten to that point, where we don't even bother to respond to that idiot relative or friend that we all have, that insists on sending whatever crap appeared on their front porch that morning. We don't even give them the satisfaction of a "bullshit" in response.
The goal at this point should be simply not to just elect any Democrat, but whichever Democrat understands the most that we can no longer return to some imaginary era of bipartisan comity. People like Joe Biden want to pretend that if we can just get rid of Trump, then we can go back to "getting things done," whatever the fuck that means. To which I would just reply, for starters: Merrick Garland. Bokay?
Trump is not the cause of what ails us these days, but the natural culmination of thirty or forty years of Republicon propaganda and gaslighting, bankrolled by a handful of psychotic billionaires who should be rendered destitute at the earliest possible opportunity. And the party is all in on him at this point, and why shouldn't they be? He's given them everything they wanted, and told everyone to go fuck themselves in the process. He's perfect for them, and them for him. When he's gone, they'll just return to being obstructionist doorstops and discount fabulists. It's as if Diamond Joe has forgotten what Obama's entire second term was like.
So we all need to get on the same page and stay there. These people must be crushed, completely removed from power, and ended as a viable political entity. Period. You end the party, and you end the cult. Don't bother arguing with them or protesting. Explain only with your wallets and ballots, at every possible opportunity, and they will have to listen to you, I promise. It's not politics, it's math.
When all is said and done, if we really want to save what's left of the republic -- and hey, maybe we don't want to save it; there's a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that it's run its course, and is now just an empty husk for the plutocrats to take turns using like a blow-up doll -- but if we do think there's still something worth preserving and restoring to goodness if not greatness, then fucking well commit to it.
Obviously that means voting, despite how futile and pointless it seems anymore. Even so, game theory teaches that however dismal the odds, they're still slightly better if everyone votes than if they don't vote. And the good thing is that the more people that show up, the better those odds will get.
Unfortunately, you only get to do that every couple years at best, not counting special elections. What do you do in the meantime? Plenty -- for starters, make sure you can vote. Double-check with your local elections office to be sure. See if you can register to vote by mail, which you can do early, and is immune from the usual election-day shenanigans you read about taking place all across the angry-cracker states. No compromised voting machines to change your vote or "lose" a power cable or any of that bullshit that people do.
THEY CHEAT BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY CAN'T WIN FAIR AND SQUARE.
Keep that in mind at all times, and use it as a weapon. Think about the thought processes involved in them not only cheating on the day of, but planning and strategizing how to cheat in advance, starting with #MoscowMitch (Putin's Bitch) preventing all election security legislation that has been drafted by the House, to come to a Senate floor vote. Many states use electronic machines whose software was created in -- wait for it -- Serbia. Yeah, no way the Russians could possibly hack our elections at all.
But simple math, and the results of the 2016 election, tell you that as awful as the cultists are (and no, it's not snark when I say repeatedly that I sincerely wish on them all the very worst things life has to offer), there are more people who see Dear Leader for what he is, and despise him for it, than there are of these simpering morons who would gladly let him fuck their wives and take a dump on their dinner tables. That's why they have to cheat -- there are more of us than there are of them, and they know it, pure and simple.
So use that day-to-day. Maybe I'll have to repeat this on a daily basis until I pull the plug on this popsicle stand in a year or so, but if enough of us boycott the companies that support the shows that put the liars and the propagandists on, they'll have to notice. Their money people will panic. The companies will pull ad space. I check into random Fox News shows every month or so, and they're running out of advertisers. It's all catheter companies who have nowhere else to go, or pharma companies that can absorb the hit.
But most of it's just in-house promo at this point, which means Fox is having to subsidize itself. That's not a sustainable business model, not even for an evil Australian bastard whose sole goal in life was to ruin the world. And you accomplished it, Rupert. Now kindly go off to your celestial reward.
As for the rest of it, the pro-wrestling spectacle that dominates the airwaves? Tune it out, turn it off, leave it. Don't listen, don't engage, don't respond. It seems like most of us have already gotten to that point, where we don't even bother to respond to that idiot relative or friend that we all have, that insists on sending whatever crap appeared on their front porch that morning. We don't even give them the satisfaction of a "bullshit" in response.
The goal at this point should be simply not to just elect any Democrat, but whichever Democrat understands the most that we can no longer return to some imaginary era of bipartisan comity. People like Joe Biden want to pretend that if we can just get rid of Trump, then we can go back to "getting things done," whatever the fuck that means. To which I would just reply, for starters: Merrick Garland. Bokay?
Trump is not the cause of what ails us these days, but the natural culmination of thirty or forty years of Republicon propaganda and gaslighting, bankrolled by a handful of psychotic billionaires who should be rendered destitute at the earliest possible opportunity. And the party is all in on him at this point, and why shouldn't they be? He's given them everything they wanted, and told everyone to go fuck themselves in the process. He's perfect for them, and them for him. When he's gone, they'll just return to being obstructionist doorstops and discount fabulists. It's as if Diamond Joe has forgotten what Obama's entire second term was like.
So we all need to get on the same page and stay there. These people must be crushed, completely removed from power, and ended as a viable political entity. Period. You end the party, and you end the cult. Don't bother arguing with them or protesting. Explain only with your wallets and ballots, at every possible opportunity, and they will have to listen to you, I promise. It's not politics, it's math.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
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:
(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:
- When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
- People will treat you how you let them treat you.
Sunday, October 06, 2019
Take Out the Trash
I need to remember to do this more often, but Her Royal Whineness Fuckface Von Clownstick has that way of sucking every molecule of oxygen out of the room: the down-ticket races matter just as much, or even more, as/than the vote for president.
Liz Warren won't be able to do jack shit if that fucking traitor Addison (#MoscowMitch) McConnell is still in the Senate, much less running it. Henchman #LeningradLindsey Graham is just as bad, as is the useless hand-wringing of Susan Collins, whom the great state of Maine should be thoroughly ashamed of by now.
Below are three donation links to kick all three of these turds to the curb:
#MitchMustGo
Stand With Jaime Harrison
#RESIST Susan Collins
Do your duty America -- flush twice. And throw in a few bucks to each of these worthy candidates.
Liz Warren won't be able to do jack shit if that fucking traitor Addison (#MoscowMitch) McConnell is still in the Senate, much less running it. Henchman #LeningradLindsey Graham is just as bad, as is the useless hand-wringing of Susan Collins, whom the great state of Maine should be thoroughly ashamed of by now.
Below are three donation links to kick all three of these turds to the curb:
#MitchMustGo
Stand With Jaime Harrison
#RESIST Susan Collins
Do your duty America -- flush twice. And throw in a few bucks to each of these worthy candidates.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Feet of Clay
Couple of interesting observations about the Obama years and legacy that are worth checking out, as we head into what will surely be an entertaining year in which we will hopefully do as little as possible. Whatever caveats and qualifiers people want to post hoc onto Obama's tenure as imperial custodian, the bottom line is that he was far better than the fool who preceded him, the chumps he ran against, and especially that damned thing that succeeded him. That said, his flaws deserve to be revisited, if only so that they can be avoided in the future.
I always felt that Primary Colors was an underrated gem of a movie, with pitch-perfect performances from the entire ensemble. It captured perfectly how the canned idealism of the Clintons so quickly soured into endlessly triangulated cynicism.
One of the better lines from that movie -- can't find it online right now, so going from memory -- was from Billy Bob Thornton's character, referring to Kathy Bates' true believer character, that when that sort of person finds out their guy isn't really the rock that their church was built on, it devastates them. They're not sure what to do going forward.
I think that's what's happened with all the post hoc analyses of Obama's terms. For one, he benefits simply because the people he ran against, and the people he governed against, were so awful. He comes out looking better simply by being a normal human, instead of a steadily worsening sequence of Star Wars cantina critters.
But what did he actually do to effectively combat that wretched hive of scum and villainy? Not much, it turns out; in fact, considering the massive scale of Democratic losses at all the lower levels, maybe worse than nothing at all. Maybe his health-care initiative will survive in some form. Everything else is already gone.
Obama was effective in conveying that feel-your-pain stuff that good pols need to have, but the be-the-change-you-want stuff kinda backfired. You can't tell the harried single mother working three jobs to keep her family afloat that you know what she's going through, and then when you get elected tell her that she has to step up and be the change. That's what she voted for you to do, dummy, to stand up to the animals keeping her down. She should have showed up for all the midterms, of course, but one might be able to see how such a person might have noticed by those points in time that nothing much was really going to change for their situation.
The Democratic candidate that can forcefully convey that they will fight on their constituents' behalf, and not back down or take some weasel way out, will be the one that can win, and win big. Stop whining about the corporate media and call them out, challenge the individual scriveners to step up and do real work, instead of theater criticism and pithy observations on how to eat corn dogs. Stop complaining about #MoscowMitch and his mastery of procedure, and learn to master it yourselves. He seemed quite able to stonewall things when he led a forty-one seat minority. Do that.
That's really the only worthwhile lesson to take from Obama, that all the well-meaning thoughts and words and intentions mean nothing against people who are dedicated to destroying you. Norms, rules, decorum, all of it -- utterly meaningless if only one side is bothering to observe those things.
Someone (can't recall who or where right now, but very recently) observed that Democrats could have 70% support on an issue, and still be waffling over how well it'll play in Real 'murka or whatever, worrying about what the Fixed Noise drones will say, while the Republicons will trot out some nonsense that barely has the support of their 30% wingnut base, but they'll drive it full throttle, damn the torpedoes.
The sooner the Democrats figure out why that is, and adjust accordingly, the sooner they can set about the righteous work of driving these clowns and monsters directly into the goddamned sea. No mercy, no remorse, no idiotic attempts at comity and collegiality. The Republican Party needs to be ended as a political entity, period, or nothing will ever change.
I always felt that Primary Colors was an underrated gem of a movie, with pitch-perfect performances from the entire ensemble. It captured perfectly how the canned idealism of the Clintons so quickly soured into endlessly triangulated cynicism.
One of the better lines from that movie -- can't find it online right now, so going from memory -- was from Billy Bob Thornton's character, referring to Kathy Bates' true believer character, that when that sort of person finds out their guy isn't really the rock that their church was built on, it devastates them. They're not sure what to do going forward.
I think that's what's happened with all the post hoc analyses of Obama's terms. For one, he benefits simply because the people he ran against, and the people he governed against, were so awful. He comes out looking better simply by being a normal human, instead of a steadily worsening sequence of Star Wars cantina critters.
But what did he actually do to effectively combat that wretched hive of scum and villainy? Not much, it turns out; in fact, considering the massive scale of Democratic losses at all the lower levels, maybe worse than nothing at all. Maybe his health-care initiative will survive in some form. Everything else is already gone.
Obama was effective in conveying that feel-your-pain stuff that good pols need to have, but the be-the-change-you-want stuff kinda backfired. You can't tell the harried single mother working three jobs to keep her family afloat that you know what she's going through, and then when you get elected tell her that she has to step up and be the change. That's what she voted for you to do, dummy, to stand up to the animals keeping her down. She should have showed up for all the midterms, of course, but one might be able to see how such a person might have noticed by those points in time that nothing much was really going to change for their situation.
The Democratic candidate that can forcefully convey that they will fight on their constituents' behalf, and not back down or take some weasel way out, will be the one that can win, and win big. Stop whining about the corporate media and call them out, challenge the individual scriveners to step up and do real work, instead of theater criticism and pithy observations on how to eat corn dogs. Stop complaining about #MoscowMitch and his mastery of procedure, and learn to master it yourselves. He seemed quite able to stonewall things when he led a forty-one seat minority. Do that.
That's really the only worthwhile lesson to take from Obama, that all the well-meaning thoughts and words and intentions mean nothing against people who are dedicated to destroying you. Norms, rules, decorum, all of it -- utterly meaningless if only one side is bothering to observe those things.
Someone (can't recall who or where right now, but very recently) observed that Democrats could have 70% support on an issue, and still be waffling over how well it'll play in Real 'murka or whatever, worrying about what the Fixed Noise drones will say, while the Republicons will trot out some nonsense that barely has the support of their 30% wingnut base, but they'll drive it full throttle, damn the torpedoes.
The sooner the Democrats figure out why that is, and adjust accordingly, the sooner they can set about the righteous work of driving these clowns and monsters directly into the goddamned sea. No mercy, no remorse, no idiotic attempts at comity and collegiality. The Republican Party needs to be ended as a political entity, period, or nothing will ever change.
Thursday, August 01, 2019
Taking Debate
No, I didn't watch the debates, and hopefully you didn't either. Even the few spare post-mortems I did skim offered nothing of value, per expectations.
If we accept the basic premise that the media are gaslighting us as much or more as Trump or anyone else, then what exactly would we expect the result to be from packing in candidates -- more than half of whom are wasting everyone's time and have no business being there -- ten at a time, to field framed questions from principals of that very same ongoing system of corporate gaslighting? In other words, what value to the political process in general, or your decision-making process in particular, is provided by having Jake Tapper lob some bullshit provocation at Kamala Harris or Jay Inslee or whoever?
If we accept the basic premise that the media are gaslighting us as much or more as Trump or anyone else, then what exactly would we expect the result to be from packing in candidates -- more than half of whom are wasting everyone's time and have no business being there -- ten at a time, to field framed questions from principals of that very same ongoing system of corporate gaslighting? In other words, what value to the political process in general, or your decision-making process in particular, is provided by having Jake Tapper lob some bullshit provocation at Kamala Harris or Jay Inslee or whoever?
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