TheFerret
TheFerret's JournalThe One With James Madison's Flute (Ferret)
Friends, knowing what’s in store for you in the paragraphs to come….well, I hope you like white grievance, cuz you’re getting a heapin’ helpin’ of it tonight. The lunch lady is dispensing softboi whinging with an industrial-grade scoop this week. Plop. Plop. Plop. I apologize in advance.
(And yeah, it’s all much more fun in living color, with news links, here: https://showercapblog.com/the-one-with-james-madisons-flute/)
The general consensus, amongst the least impressive specimens in circulation anyway, is that Our Culture Is Being Destroyed Because A Successful Black Woman Was Permitted to Touch This Flute Not One of Us Had Ever Heard Of Until Two Minutes Ago. Many a fit was pitched. MANY.
Somehow they’ve convinced themselves that when they melt down publicly over stuff like this, they’re merely blowing the faintest of dog whistles, ever so gently, rather than yelping like a Junior Klansman who got his robes caught in the rusty old lawnmower he was listlessly dry-humping.
Listening to Ben Shapiro whine about Lizzo playing James Madison’s flute is like being locked in a sauna with a fifty gallon drum filled with spoiled vanilla pudding that shrieks somehow. Why does anyone choose to live this way? Isn’t it exhausting? Don’t you just irritate the living shit out of yourself? See, the reason we know your culture sucks is that you’re incapable of emotionally navigating extremely minor, completely inconsequential changes to the world around you.
You don’t need to set your hair on fire every time they change the box butter comes in, y’know. You don’t need to show up armed to drag queen bingo. And if Mr. Potato Head happens to “go woke,” you always have the option of simply shrugging and moving on with your life, which I would argue is the only sensible response to fluctuations in the volatile world of potato toy branding.
It would almost be funny, were the wingnut media bubble not so liberally seasoned with voices like Roger “Let’s Get Right to the Violence” Stone’s. It’s a nifty little assembly line they’ve put together; the Shapiros and Hannitys rile ‘em up, out-and-out maniacs like Mike Flynn give ‘em a radicalizing shove with mad tirades about war-declaring governors, and before you know it, you’ve got Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and various ancillary asshats running about, rioting and firing nail guns.
You see a lotta headlines n’ thinkpieces these days, in our sickly, Cillizzafied, political press, about the profane competition taking place between Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, as they vie for squeals of glee from the bloodthirsty MAGA mob.
I’m told Kayleigh McEnany has pitched hosting a game show, as a lead-in to Tucker Carlson’s White Power Hour, where Republican governors construct dueling obstacle courses (at taxpayer expense, of course) for asylum seekers to cross, while staffers hurl slurs from the stands. It’ll be like American Ninja Warrior, only a little…y’know…Nazier.
‘Course, the Dotard’s mostly mad because these wannabes keep stealing his best ideas, though in his version, the federal government would deliberately transport “rapists and murderers” to “liberal cities” in order to “destabilize” them, which strikes me as a rather odd thing for a fellow to want to do to a country he’s president of, but I suppose the world looks different through spite-tinted glasses.
Anyway, you can’t get anywhere in Republican politics anymore without performative cruelty to the nonwhite. You can see the panic in Glenn Youngkin’s eyes as he tremblingly protests “Virginia is a border state,” which it absolutely isn’t. If Virginia were a border state, Glenn would have his own migrants to traffic, but he doesn’t, which is why he’s all pouty in the first place.
Now, Doug Mastriano is a fully post-dog whistle Republican candidate, unashamedly embracing professional anti-Semites like Andrew Torba and Jack Posobiec, as well as Christian nationalists like Lance Wallnau, all while daydreaming of prosecuting women for murder over abortions. Pennsylvania voters seem decidedly unenthusiastic about the prospect of being governed by their embarrassing racist uncle who got the whole family banned for life from Chili’s, thank god.
Arizona’s Kari Lake brings a lot more media savvy to many of the same terrifying ideas, so she’s polling better than Doug, which isn’t awesome. Is this an awkward time to mention that she hired an admitted heroin dealer to work on her campaign? And not just any heroin dealer, but one who plotted the assassination of an FBI informant?
But it’s John Fetterman who’s SOFT ON CRIME he’s got SCARY TATTOOS because he’s in a GANG just like THOSE PEOPLE did I mention they let a BLACK LADY play JAMES MADISON’S FLUTE?
Ted Cruz thought he might gin up a little attention for himself by being the lone vote on the Senate Rules Committee against the electoral count reform bill, but as such a well-known asshole, his braying faded into the background, as per usual. Sure is cute watchin’ the lil’ fella try, though!
By now, I’m sure you’re well acquainted with that familiar trope of the omnipresent Turd Reich tell-all genre: the “he was even weirder and dumber and racister than you knew” anecdote, something about Donald Trump trying to stick his finger in the King of Thailand’s ear, or the time he locked himself in a West Wing bathroom and, fearing starvation, devoured eleven rolls of toilet paper before the locksmith arrived, eight minutes later. Anyway, Maggie Haberman’s book was always gonna be the Oops! All Berries version of that.
We got new details this week about that almost incomprehensibly pathetic 2019 incident where the government tried to hide a whole-ass destroyer from President Shithead on an overseas trip, because he was feuding in his mind with the dead guy whose name was on the side of the boat, and I guess if I were in the market for a personality to build a cult around, I would rule out the debilitatingly insecure ones right off the bat.
Juggling both law and order as only a Republican attorney general can, Ken Paxton fled a subpoena server in a truck driven by his state Senator wife, probably straight to Aileen Cannon’s house.
I gotta get me one of them Judge Cannons, by the way. Looks pretty handy, owning your own, personal, private, federal judge…’specially one so willing to accept custom orders on short notice. “The law is whatever your tenth-rate strip mall legal team needs it to be, Mr. Trump, sir!” You could throw quite a party with power like that.
I guess Ginni Thomas professed her sincere, religious belief in the Big Lie to the January 6th commission, which triggers the constitutional right to overthrow the government, as every pigtailed schoolchild knows. Pretty cool this loon was texting Q shit to the President’s Chief of Staff during an attempted autogolpe, huh?
Speaking of SCOTUS, it’s always delightful when Sammy Alito adds his gasbag wail to the cacophony of wingnut grousing, isn’t it? Look, either take the speech rights, too, or learn to deal with criticism of your theocrat tyranny, you preening taintblister.
Sometimes I wonder how we fell so far down this shitty, shitty rabbit hole…then I see something like Chuck Todd “interviewing” Congresswoman Nancy Mace about her party’s intention to impeach President Biden, without it ever once occurring to either one to mention a potential justification for such an extreme measure, and…I get it. I mean, I weep uncontrollably for an hour or two, but I get it.
So, Mike Lee says it’s “overreach” for the FBI to arrest a “Catholic father of seven” accused of twice assaulting a 72-year-old abortion clinic volunteer, because Mike Lee’s political and religious beliefs align more closely with the attacker than the victim in this instance, and golly, what a fun, healthy, not-at-all-semi-fascist standard that is! Apropos of nothing, please enjoy this link to Evan McMullin’s campaign site.
J.R. Majewski, who you’ll remember from last week’s tale of stolen valor, may not be particularly good at lying, but you gotta give him an E for effort. This time next week, he’ll be claiming he led the Bin Laden raid, only the deep state won’t let anybody know. For any Republican strategists out there, this is another really useful cautionary tale about the dangers of selecting candidates based on the game show hosts they paint on their lawn.
Apparently, in the red states, if you’re really good at football, they let you steal millions of dollars from the poor now. Yeah, they just snatch the money away from the neediest and most vulnerable, and deliver it (by horse-drawn carriage no doubt) directly to wealthiest people they can find. Keep electing Republicans, Mississippi, it’s really working out.
Hey, party at my place in seven months when the fashy new government installed in Italy’s low-turnout election this week collapses. Get it out of your system, kids.
The young men of Vlad Putin’s reborn Soviet Empire seem curiously uninterested in their glorious leader’s gracious invitation to get puréed by HIMARS in Ukraine, and are instead fleeing their homeland in droves, fancy that.
For whatever audience remained, Poots went ahead with his sad, petulant, completely illegal annexation ceremony, held at the Moscow branch of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, where he ranted like some incel trying to get Don Jr’s attention on Truth Social. It was all very impressive. Superpower shit. Truly.
(Man, imagine all the weird, weird shit Putin’s saying to Russian Maggie Haberman right now.)
Anyway, in the time it took you to scroll through this silliness, I’ve sold 783 “Ashli Babbitt Died For James Madison’s Flute” bumper stickers to the Don’t Fauci My Florida email list I bought off DeSantis. Rube-bilking is a growth industry, and daddy needs beer money.
I’ll see y’all in a week. You stay safe out there, there’re roving gangs of clowns trying to force-feed “rainbow fentanyl” to your kids, y’know.
Yeah, But Wouldn't You Need a Functioning Brain to Think About Declassifying Something? (Ferret)
If anybody asks you what life in the United States was like in 2022, well, the big thing was Donald Trump trying to drive as many people as possible violently insane, because he figured the threat of further terrorism was his best shot at avoiding prosecution. The real bitch of it is, despite failing at everything from steaks to vodka to casinos (casinos!) to pandemic management, turns out the guy has a real gift when it comes to driving people violently insane.
(As ever, this nonsense makes more sense with links n’ such: https://showercapblog.com/yeah-but-wouldnt-you-need-a-functioning-brain-to-think-about-declassifying-something/)
So, Youngstown. Yikes. Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
They have a salute now, I see. That’s…not great.
It’s gettin’ weird, innit? I mean, it’s always been weird, and I certainly didn’t expect Off-Brand Orbán’s tightening embrace of QAnon to lead to puppies and rainbows or anything, but I guess I was hoping we wouldn’t get to the cult music/saluting phase for a while yet.
Now, 99.9% of what goes down at these rallies is awful and depressing and frankly scary as fuck, but I do enjoy the bit where the game show host takes the Big Fancy Wannabe Senator Man and rubs his face around in a pile of shit, just cuz he can. And of course that bit’s scary, too, it’s one of the fashier bits, but JD Vance doesn’t deserve dignity, and it’s fun watching it drain from him.
Well, turns out the Constitution did not imbue Judge Aileen Cannon with supreme statute-inventing authority after all, so proposed special master Judge Raymond Dearie barely had time for a quick You Drooling Fuckwits Expect Me To What Now? before the 11th Circuit put an end to this latest legal joyride, though I’m sure Cannon and maniac Trump appointees like her will be a source of fun, fascist fuckery for years to come.
Undeterred by reality’s latest incursion into his Adderall-soaked fantasy world, the Deposed Dotard went on Hannity to claim he possessed the power to declassify whatever struck his fancy, simply “by thinking about it.” They only give that power to the really special Presidents, y’know…the cognitive test passers.
See, this is my favorite Donald Trump: the preening jackass who cannot stop himself from showing the world how badly his brain works. The guy who suggests disinfectant infusions and doctors weather maps with sharpies. No, there are no laws that allow anyone anywhere to declassify anything “by thinking about it.” That would be stupid. Why would anyone want that? Why would anyone suggest that? What a stupid, stupid thing to say.
And now, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit not only threatens the business empire his dad paid for, but subjects the Velveeta Vulgarian to his greatest lifelong fear: public exposure of the truth about his pathetically overinflated claims of wealth. Must suck to be an unusually fragile narcissist when shit like that happens.
As delightful as Fat Q*bert’s courtroom faceplants always are, he’s hardly the only wingnut scumbag getting dog-walked through the justice system these days. From James O’Keefe to Alex Jones to Mike Lindell to the Hitler cosplay Capitol rioter, it’s been a veritable festival of consequences out there. Keep it up, sez me. At this moment in history, I feel like the rule of law is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition.
With so many world-class asshats running for Senate seats and governorships, to say nothing of the election-denying conspiracy theorists seeking control of our voting infrastructure, it’s easy to overlook the skidmark brigade attempting to swell Kevin McCarthy’s Kooky Kakistocrat Kaucus, but SURPRISE they suck, too.
Let’s start with John Gibbs in Michigan, who liked America better before all the uppity broads got to vote on shit like their so-called “bodily autonomy.” Be sure to dive into Gibbs’ scholarly musings on male supremacy, by the way. That there’re more gaps in his “logic” than in Donnie’s border wall certainly doesn’t interfere with the lad’s confidence, because there’s no effect realer than Dunning-Kruger.
Then there’s J.R. Majewski, seeking election in the new Ohio 9th, who understandably felt the need to embellish a resumé thin beyond Well I Painted Donald Trump’s Face On My Lawn Once, and figured a lil’ stolen valor would do the trick.
The Manchurian Manchild endorsed both these dolts, by the way, which is how they won their primaries in the first place. And maybe letting an emotionally stunted egomaniac handpick candidates based solely on their ability to capture his attention with public displays of obsequiousness isn’t a great system. Just a suggestion.
Lowering expectations before a debate is a time-honored tradition for idiots seeking office the world over, but Herschel Walker was always going to face an unusually steep climb here. Still, I think he got it about as right as humanly possible, telling reporters, “look, if I get through this without eating out of a cat box, I think I deserve a parade.” Or something very similar, I didn’t click the link.
I’m starting to think Ron DeSantis maybe didn’t think things all the way through before he pissed hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars away on that wacky human trafficking stunt last week. The investigations n’ lawsuits are piling up already, and despite the triumphal bleating of the right-wing jagoffosphere, not a single lib was owned. Still, this performative cruelty to dehumanized minorities will almost certainly boost his standing with Republican primary voters, and what a festive snippet of conventional wisdom that is.
You might not have even noticed the House GOP releasing their sad, flimsy Contract With America II: Lazy White Nationalist Boogaloo. Lordy, what a flaccid regurgitation of grey, dusty Gingrich cud. I know there isn’t a lot of readin’ and writin’ going down on y’all’s side of the aisle lately, but goddamn.
Of course, all the energy Republicans save by never giving a single passing fuck about any actual issues facing the nation goes into the elaborate construction of what Kellyanne Conway might call “alternative problems,” which are better than real problems, frankly, at least when it comes to riling up the rubes, since you’re free to manufacture maximum menace.
Like fentanyl. Fuckin’ FENTANYL, the demon drug that can kill you from like, ten feet away. Just reading the word “fentanyl,” here in this paragraph, will cause fatal overdoses in 3-4% of my readership, and I certainly apologize to the families affected. In many ways, it’s the anti-ivermectin.
And they’re putting it in YOUR CHILDREN’S HALLOWEEN CANDY!
…at GREAT PERSONAL EXPENSE!
…for SOME REASON!
Gibbering idiocy. Doesn’t come within ten fucking miles of making sense. Not even a good lie. And still, major Republican officials belch this garbage up, on “news” programs. Ronna NotRomney. Kevin McCarthy. Fabricating catastrophe to distract from their own party’s very real assaults on our fundamental rights. It’s all very normal and healthy.
Kash Patel, who is one of the Dennis Hopper types in this Aldi version of Kurtz’s camp, wrote a Big Lie children’s book, and I figure you’d need Steve Bannon’s Pornhub password to find anything as obscene as the idea of passing this demented ideology down to your kids. Christ.
House Republicans, called upon to love their country just enough to support the Hey Let’s Not Do That Coup Thing Again Act, once again failed to clear the lowest imaginable moral hurdle. Arming that flock of buttholes with committee gavels seems unwise. Vote in the goddamn midterms.
I’m told a new MAGA dating service has encountered struggles attracting women, and gosh, we’ll need our finest detectives on that one.
What else, what elllllllllse? Who’s getting death threats this week? Ummmmmm, the National Archives…lawmakers representing Martha’s Vineyard (for insufficient hatred of migrants, y’see)…presumably Eric Swalwell still…I dunno, pretty much everybody by now, surely.
Look, Putin is totally winning the war in Ukraine, it’s just that he needs another 300,000 or so fresh bullet sponges to drop in front of those HIMARS, which sounds like a really fun job, though in completely unrelated news, draft-age men appear to be fleeing Russia in great numbers. Still want those history books to talk aboutcha, Vladkins? They’re gonna.
It’s all just so stupid and exhausting. And stupid. And exhausting. I’m gonna go make myself some NyQuil chicken and watch a Star War. Please stay safe out there amidst the weirdness, my friends.
Why Isn't the Mike Lindell Hardee's a National Monument Yet? (Ferret)
Y’know, I think it’s perfect, actually, that we’re watching our stupid, stupid history unfold in fast food chain parking lots. We earned this. We cut zero corners constructing this madhouse. Holy shit, this country is sick in some genuinely strange ways.
(Get the post with nifty nooz links here: https://showercapblog.com/why-isnt-the-mike-lindell-hardees-a-national-monument-yet/)
My week started with Louie Gohmert, who remains the single dumbest non-child human I have ever observed with any regularity. Louie was a lot of fun back when he was a largely harmless idiot, but like a lot of recently-harmless idiots, he’s a dangerous idiot now, because now he’s in this gang of idiots.
Anyway. Louie Gohmert, apparently desperate to drench himself in as much shame as possible on his way out of Congress, desecrated an American flag, in an obscene ceremony honoring a Covid conspiracy theorist/convicted capitol rioter. At the risk of editorializing, ritual glorification of law-breaking and violence is NOT FUCKING HEALTHY.
This is how you get bomb threats at a children’s hospital. This is how you get unhinged bigots threatening dictionary publishers. (Little on the nose with that one, America.) Or dudes attacking the FBI with nail guns. It’s happening all the goddamn time now.
This is how you wind up with headlines like Trump supporter in clown wig arrested at a Dairy Queen after threatening to ‘kill all the Democrats.’ Stop riling these losers up, you assholes; the rest of us are tired of getting shot at. I have a constitutional fucking right to venture out into my community for frozen treats without getting executed by some drooling fuckwit IN A CLOWN WIG who broke his brain watching Tucker Carlson.
Anyway, see you all at the Kyle Rittenhouse Festival, it’s the weekend after CPAC, there’s corn mazes and hayrides and you have to sign a nondisclosure agreement promising you won’t tell the media about whose pictures we put on the targets at the shooting range haw haw haw.
Yeah, we’re in a real, real healthy spot right now. As of posting time, we’ve managed to avoid erupting into a shooting war over Little Mermaid casting, though it’s certainly not for want of trying.
A U.S. Congresswoman (allegedly) kicked somebody today, (of course it was Marjorie Taylor Greene, no points for guessing) because in her work as a raving internet maniac, I guess she felt the time had finally arrived to spice up the usual racist tirade with a touch of assault.
Look. You’re not supposed to spend your life running around, screaming at people and kicking them. And I feel like that used to be a fairly non-controversial idea, but MAGA culture seems to’ve diverged here.
Look at Lauren Boebert’s week, from a poo-flinging debate tantrum to apocalyptic ranting at a dominionist cult rally. She’s on the CAMPAIGN TRAIL, folks. This is Lauren Boebert with her best foot forward. No shortage of GOP candidates letting it all ride on batshit, and I’m not seein’ a lot of ‘em lose their primaries.
Quite the contrary, the forces of cray-cray completed their swing state Senate sweep in New Hampshire, though it’s certainly been amusing, watching Don Bolduc try the ol’ post-primary-pivot-to-the-center maneuver on…the Big Lie.
It’s almost adorable, the way they think they can just change hats and smile blankly and make everyone forget a half-decade of extremism. Like, everybody’s mad at Lindsey Graham for his proposed nationwide abortion ban, as though there’s any chance whatsoever at bamboozling all the women registering to vote post-Dobbs. “Oh, it’s up to the STATES? Well, golly, what was I even mad about? Back to the kitchen, I suppose, tee hee!”
(Incidentally, let this be a lesson to all the aspiring young autocrats interning on proto-fascist congressional staffs: next time, remove the voting rights first, THEN the bodily autonomy. It’s all so clear in hindsight.)
I think most midterm voters understand the GOP is little more than a revanchist howl of white nationalist rage these days, it’s just a matter of whether or not they like that. And a lot of people do. Are the polls accurately capturing how many? We’ll find out, they’re certainly trying their best…perhaps looking into per capita clown wig sales would prove illuminating.
Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters has a wacky plan to purge the U.S. military of wrongthink, imposing sweet, MAGA conformity on a death machine so potent, it’s destroying the Russian army by proxy. And as not-fascist as that sounds, Blake, I’m going to gently nudge my readers towards Mark Kelly’s campaign site, lest a salivating goose-stepper such as yourself secure a spot on the Armed Services Committee.
Getting back to the performative cruelty of right-wing electoral politics, I see Ron DeSantis engaged in a little light human trafficking, in his latest bid for the applause and adulation of the braying, bloodthirsty base. They sure do enjoy hurting people, don’t they? Yeah, nothin’ semi-fascist about that. And that surge in anti-Semitic/white power activity in Florida is entirely unrelated to the Governor’s meticulously staged authoritarian power displays, surely.
Look, every third grader understands the Constitution clearly states the law of the land contorts automatically to suit the passing whims of a single narcissistic crook, and if Mr. Trump thinks a special master will help him stay out of jail, then Mr. Trump gets a special master, by gum! Or maybe Judge Aileen Cannon was busy eating paste the day they explained this shit, there’s disagreement on the issue.
They’re gonna need a boatload of Judge Cannons to get through what’s coming. Subpoenas have all but blackened the skies over Mar-a-Lago, as prosecutors home in on criminal conspiracies ranging from fake electors to the how-the-fuck-are-you-rubes-still-falling-for-this-shit “Save America PAC” scam. Almost more crimes than you can keep track of, though Sean Hannity’s got a helpful roundup if ya need it.
Shit, the FBI seized Mike Lindell’s phone at a Hardee’s, and because he’s basically single-handedly paying for Fox News these days, the whole world got to hear him whine about it. Bet that’s rough. I guess Mike’ll have to console himself with his exciting, new branding partnerships in the white nationalist community.
But yes, the law appears to be closing in on Off-Brand Orbán, so he once again emerged to threaten America with mob violence, on Hugh Hewitt’s show this time, because thuggish posturing just plays better next to a man you’ve broken so completely.
Of course he’s going full QAnon now; from his point of view, the only problem with the last murder mob he whipped up was that they didn’t manage to actually lynch anybody. The next “election justice protest” needs to be much larger and crazier and more threatening if Daddy’s to stay out of prison.
By the way, back when he was President*, seems Tangerine Idi Amin offered the West Bank to the King of Jordan, and it’s amazing how not surprised you were to hear that, isn’t it? “Well, naturally he thought he could do that, remember when he tried to swap Puerto Rico for Greenland?” It’s the kind of diplomacy you only get with a genuine cognitive-test-passer in charge.
Well, it took all the financing George Soros could muster, but the dastardly deep state completed the necessary child sacrifice ritual, in the Pizzagate basement, to the extra-dimensional demon god that powers Hunter Biden’s laptop, successfully concealing their many crimes from the prying eyes of the John Durham investigation. He was a worthy adversary, outside of his complete and total failure to uncover the slightest bit of evidence supporting Trumpworld’s persecution narrative.
Rand Paul, in the most Wile E. Coyote-like behavior I have ever witnessed, picked yet another fight with Dr. Fauci, which of course went exactly the way all their previous fights went. No doubt Rand’s feverishly flipping through the ACME catalogue right now, looking for something larger and louder to blow up in his own face.
There’s no convincing these weirdos, once they get a bug up their ass about something. Whether it’s one fake doctor’s cringey compulsion to bump epidemiological chests with the nation’s chief epidemiologist, or the growing movement desperate to believe that we are a nation beset by a plague of furry children shitting in litter boxes at school, they’re gonna keep pounding their skulls against reality until one or the other breaks.
Gosh, the mood sure has shifted in the Land of Busted Ferris Wheels, excuse me, I mean the “Mighty Soviet Empire Reborn,” huh? Following the latest round of humiliation administered by the Ukrainian people, Vlad Putin was forced to endure some very public spankings by the leaders of China and India. I’m told Poots can be found late at night in karaoke bars near the Kremlin, offering up a bitter, yet surprisingly vulnerable rendition of Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.
And with that, I shall retire for the weekend. I have a strange craving for fast food, for some reason. And beer, of course. Stay safe out there, folks. No, really, I mean it; if you see a clown wig…duck.
* Remember that? Boy, what a bad idea that was.
Cannon's Constitutional Calvinball & Other Semi-Fascist Shenanigans (Ferrrrrret)
I hope the leather-bound, multi-volume tomes on the Rise and Fall of Whatever the Fuck We Wind Up Calling This Madness are able to capture just how goddamn irritating it was to live through. Like, when you open the book, maybe a speaker in the spine emits a shrill, piercing whine? There’s a mood you need to set, y’know?
(Makes more sense with the links, I promise, plus it’s way, way shinier: https://showercapblog.com/cannons-constitutional-calvinball-other-semi-fascist-shenanigans/)
Well, this week, we learned it’s a helluva lot easier to loot lucrative state secrets when you can judge-shop until you land your case in front of some scruples-free sycophant auditioning for a gaudier uniform in the Reich to come.
Judge Aileen Cannon helpfully made Donnie Dotard’s case for him, since his idiot lawyers couldn’t, fabricating statutes as necessary to grant magical executive privilege rights to a cheap thief who was rather decisively stripped of executive powers by the American people not so very long ago.
Naturally, DoJ appealed Cannon’s loony attempt to elevate a larcenous reality television personality beyond the reach of the law, citing the damage caused to national security by her clumsy, clownish power grab. Since we’re trying to determine the whereabouts of the docs that once dwelled in all those empty folders, y’know? Like, did he swap ‘em to MBS for a golf tournament and a crate of experimental hair tonic, or just roll ‘em up to whack Eric on the nose for wetting the bed again?
Permit me to suggest that if former presidents were indeed allowed to hang onto classified intelligence pertaining to foreign nations’ nuclear capacity, like hotel towels or some shit, there would be extremely clear laws stating as much. There aren’t, of course, because that would be insane, though Kevin McCarthy’d probably instate jus primae noctis if asked.
Anyway, you can see why Team Treason tried to get their ridiculously frivolous (fridivulous?) lawsuit targeting Hillary Clinton and her Nebulous Confederation of Deep State Accomplices (who’ll be touring next spring in support of a new album, I’m told) heard by Cannon. Denied the crucial element of a robed accomplice, that one just got laughed out of court so derisively, Rudy Giuliani booked the parking garage next to Hyatt Regency Tuckpointing to complain about it.
Now, all this shameless lawlessness went a long way towards proving President Biden’s “semi-fascist” theory, but the MAGA-infected Republican Party still spent most of the week enthusiastically offering additional evidence at every opportunity.
Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot led the charge himself, throwing a cozy little hate rally for the Pennsylvania GOP’s absolutely batshit 2022 ticket. You definitely want to publicly praise oppressive dictators when you’re trying to prove how not fascist you are. Make sure to wank enviously to Xi Jinping’s “iron fist” while you’re at it, though I’d be hesitant to bring up fists of any kind, iron, ham, or otherwise, were I notoriously hypersensitive about my own tiny, inadequate, baby hands.
But surely only the unfascistest boy in the whole wide world would volunteer such a sad, simpering endorsement of flailing tyrant Jair Bolsanaro, right?
There’s certainly no better character witness to call than Marjorie Taylor Greene; it’s not like she’s world-renowned for spewing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories or anything. Speaking at the Pennsylvania rally, Marj credulously spread that silly furry-kids-shitting-in-litter-boxes-at-school hoax from a few weeks back, because fucking of course she fell for something so obviously fake…I’m sure it’ll be a staple in mass shooter manifestos going forward.
Meanwhile, some MMA fighter got it into his head (erroneously) that some new study finally proved that suck it Fauci, ivermectin really actually truly worked this whole time, and the wingnut internet gathered for yet another giddy, taunting victory lap, because Some Guy Said Something Incorrect on the Internet. The fun thing about MAGA culture is you never know which random blockhead’s stray tweet’s gonna tumble into the scripture.
I’ve never seen people so willing, so positively horny to be lied to. No wonder the papers’re full of stories about criminal investigations into various rube-bilking operations. My god, the fucking money the ticks suck out of these fevered fuckwits. More than $135 million to Save America PAC, a three-card-monte-obvious scam that’s now the target of yet another federal investigation earning subpoenas from grand juries.
“I gave Steve Bannon money, because he said he’d use it to build a wall on the Mexican border!” Wow, what a stupid fucking thing to do! Does Steve Bannon strike you as someone who knows one fucking thing about building anything? Did you check? Before you gave him your money? Yelp reviews? Anything? No? Huh.
Bannon got indicted again, which of course you already knew. Forgetting his gag reflex-triggering personality, he seems to believe he has a shot at being perceived as some sort of heroic political prisoner, like incel Nelson Mandela, I guess. Still, in a cult that canonizes the likes of Donald Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse, his chances aren’t awful.
(Incidentally, at a certain point in the very near future, I think we’ll need to examine whether or not recent unemployment figures have been warped by the sheer number of Americans serving on grand juries investigating the Trump cabal.)
Let’s not move on without belly-laughing at the institutional GOP’s fundraising woes; everybody’s bitching and moaning and pointing fingers as the grifter gravy train reroutes to Marm-a-Lago. Yeah, turns out that once the wall-builders and the Big Liars and the wild-eyed pillow merchants have taken their tithe, there isn’t much MAGA mad money left over for JD Vance, Adam Laxalt, or Blake Masters. I may be up all night crying about that.
Bet they could use some of those millions of dollars Rick Scott set on fire. Or the millions Rick Scott flushed down the toilet. The millions Rick Scott flung at the peasants from his luxury yacht during his recent Italian vacation, hoping to induce them to fight to the death for his amusement would surely be most welcome, but that money’s gone forever, alas; may I interest you in Rick Scott’s toxic policy platform instead? Cuz that’s what’s left.
Well, that and the exploitation horror movie roadside circus you weirdos nominated for Senate seats. You guys, Herschel Walker is polling well right now, and all he does is wander around Georgia, demonstrating how badly his brain works. Why is it so important to these people to grant fearsome political power to the manifestly unfit? Don’t you at least want competent assholes?
Nope, they want the freakiest freaks flopping around in their increasingly freaky mosh pit. Dangerous creeps with sinister ideas about democracy and freedom, because what the MAGA Republican base wants right now is leadership that condones law-breaking and violence. Because they’re such patriots, you see.
Heck, if watching video of a fake elector ushering a couple of Sidney Powell associates (or “kraken tentacles”) into a county elections office to breach the voting system doesn’t make you want to salute an apple pie, I don’t know what will. Seein’ folks come together like that, in a criminal conspiracy to steal our government from us, and lay it at the feet of a man who’s spent years bragging about passing a cognitive test, that’s Norman Rockwell shit.
Like those Michigan GOP officials, training poll workers to break rules in order to serve the party as “undercover agents.” Excuse me for a moment, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to fondle a bald eagle.
See, they tell one another that they’re justified in cheating because WE cheat, in the same way they tell each other that horse dewormer cures Covid, or that liberal teachers let children shit in boxes; misconceptions used to justify misbehavior, demands of vengeance for imaginary wrongs…just because it’s become so commonplace doesn’t make it any less insane.
And the dirtbag propagandists stoking this madness know exactly what they’re doing, as proven by the leaked Fox Nooz email reading:
While we’ve all learned to tolerate, and perhaps even quietly enjoy Jeanine Pirro’s drunken racist aunt shtick, those’re actually some fairly dangerous lies she’s belching up between boxes of Franzia, so maybe we ought to, I dunno, deplatform her before the country catches fire?
Anyway, she got promoted.
A New Mexico judge removed capitol rioter Couy Griffin from his post as Otero County Commissioner, on account of his seditious terrorism and general brownshirtiness. What a great fuckin’ idea that is. Barring violent insurrectionists from positions of power? Yes, please.
‘Specially with the Anti-Defamation League’s new list of “elected officials, military members, and law enforcement officers” on the Oath Keepers’ membership roll. 373 of those fuckers, if you’re curious, “including at least 10 chiefs of police and 11 sheriffs.” Three hundred and seventy-three card-carrying members of a known domestic terror org, each wielding their own, personal slice of state power. How fun.
Former U.S Attorney Geoffrey Berman’s new book details all the pressure his not-all-fascist bosses in the Turd Reich applied, hoping to force unjustified prosecutions of political opponents, essentially the same sort of gangster corruption Government Cheese Goebbels got impeached for pulling with Ukraine. Anyway, no semi-fascists, quasi-Nazis, or I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Klansmen here, clearly.
Dr. Oz says that the filthy takers don’t deserve health and that his daughters don’t want to fuck him because his musk repels them and also that he should be a United States Senator, and, well, there’s a lot to disagree with there.
I see Vladimir Putin has arrived at the hope-nobody-notices-me-buying-weapons-from-North-Korea phase of his inevitable march to immortality, amidst a shockingly successful Ukrainian counteroffensive. Somewhere in the world, there’s a restaurant so exclusive you have to be the leader of a superpower to get in, and the maître d’ at that joint has been openly rude to Pooty since April.
…the book should not only scream at you while you read it, they should print it on paper that smells bad, like room temperature fast food farts and the brittle rage of the petulantly mediocre. Christ. No wonder I always need beer by the time I’m done writing this. Well, whatever your circumstances or preferences happen to be, my friends, I hope you find some equivalent way to take the edge off. Stay safe out there.
Yes, Joe Biden is the Divisive One. Die On That Hill. (Ferret)
Y’know, if this does all fall apart, at least future generations will be able to easily distinguish between the first American Civil War and the Dumb one. Silver linings.
(Makes more sense with the links, plus it’s all shiny, too: https://showercapblog.com/yes-joe-biden-is-the-divisive-one-die-on-that-hill/)
Okay, we better get the documents thing out of the way first, because it’s all so stupid, I’m afraid I’ll suffer an orbital fracture facepalming if I think about it any longer than I have to.
The secret ingredient here is the almost incomprehensible incompetence of Donald Trump’s lawyers. And yeah, we’ve been reading about that for years now; he can’t get anybody to represent him, because in addition to the ever larger, dumber crimes he insists upon committing at every available opportunity, he’s literally famous for not paying the people who work for him. He’s actually got worse attorneys now than he had during his failed coup.
So my expectations were pretty low going into this thing, but watching ‘em in action has been…zounds. It’s a fuckin’ geek show. They truly are two years dumber than Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, if that makes sense, and I don’t think I comprehended the enormity of that until this week.
Admittedly, mounting a legal defense when you’re this unambiguously fucked surely carries challenges. It hardly helps that the client can’t seem to stop confessing to felonies on his sad, sagging social media platform, but, crucially, these dopes don’t know enough to know what they don’t know, and they keep leaping, face first, from cow pie to cow pie…it has been a sight to behold, my friends.
They filed what they sincerely, adorably believed was a request for a special master, but was in actuality an invitation to the Justice Department to crotch-punt them all into the fucking sun. And punt they did.
And while it’s certainly impressive that they made it all the way back from the sun, things aren’t going so well otherwise. Like, one of ‘em went on TV to volunteer the information that the room with the stolen classified intel had all kindsa visitors. Why, access to national security secrets was only an insincere bit of flattery to an easily manipulated manchild away! Good lawyerin’, kid!
And though we’re already miles past the wildest limits of dumbness e’er dreamt of by poets or philosophers, somehow, it gets dumber still.
Because just as the dastardly deep state was about to get away with their greatest assault on freedumb to date, in swept Donald Trump, waving a sword made of pure, incandescent truth, to reveal, in a voice clear, yet trembling with righteous indignation, that he, poor persecuted he, did not keep his purloined, o-so-clearly-marked classified documents recklessly ‘pon the floor like some common scofflaw; ‘twas the FBI who placed them there, in an act of treachery most monstrous.
…no really, that’s the play. The FBI “staged” the photo, on the FLOOR, y’see, and somehow it is the floorness of the staging that is so…I dunno, nefarious? Bad, somehow? Fuck, you tell me. It’s legal scholarship from the ideology of ivermectin, why would it make sense?
He’s demanding to be immediately reinstalled as President, based on the floor thing. He may be willing to settle for calling another election, which is uncharacteristically gracious.
In fairness, yapping about flooring is likely the only move left to you, once your own unforced error opens the door to the utter annihilation of your already flimsy cover story. The DoJ filing establishes a long, clear, documented pattern of deliberate (and, it must be said, oafish) obstruction, including moving and hiding requested documents, and you twerps can keep shrieking about Hillary’s emails if you think it’ll help, I guess.
The latest member of this legal Traveling Wilburys, Jim Trusty, (yes, that’s his real name; I guess Dipshit McFlunkedthebar was unavailable) equates one cheap gangster’s attempt to steal state secrets to a spat over an “overdue library book,” which reminds me of that time MBS gave me $2 billion for that copy of Encyclopedia Brown Lends a Hand I checked out in 1985, on the condition that I held the bonesaw while he changed into clean clothes.
THEY DIDN’T PUT HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP ON THE FLOOR, THAT’S FER GODDAMN SURE!
Man, I wish I believed in anything as much as these dizzy clods believe in Hunter Biden’s laptop. There’s a MOVIE, y’all. An honest-to-goodness, Breitbart-distributed Hunter Biden movie. Satire is impossible when reality is this farcical; I showed the trailer to Oscar Wilde, and all he managed to say was “welp.”
Because the state of our political discourse is so healthy and intelligent, America requires an entire class of bullshit-debunking pundits nowadays, perpetually on standby in case CNN needs someone to clarify for the public that no, documents do not magically become declassified when a defeated former President smears his own feces all over them.
Anyway, as you can see, for a variety of reasons, a legal defense isn’t really an option for Off-Brand Orbán, which would probably be funnier if the back-up plan wasn’t mob violence. And while he’s had trouble retaining attorneys, when it comes to obediently bloodthirsty psychopaths, he’s got run of a well-stocked buffet.
Backed into the shittiest corner of the internet with the entire QAnon idiotwad is actually the worst possible place for Donald Trump, so let’s get him into prison ASAP, okay? Dedicating his ample free time to lobbing raw meat at the feral asshats who actually use Truth Social is going to get people killed, which is of course the point. Just, y’know, casually riling up maniacs on the off chance one of them happens to murder the one guy that’ll keep him out of prison. Good a plan as any, I guess.
All of this law enforcement hullabaloo ‘round the house has been quite the nuisance for poor Melania, who simply wants to plug her new NFT con in peace. I gotta say, that’s a better plan than waiting to knife fight Junior n’ Eric over whatever scraps’re left once the law’s finally done with Daddy’s estate, but to anybody out there contemplating an investment in NFTs from Melania Trump, just buy lottery tickets, you’ll have more fun.
Okay, I don’t like being a wet blanket, but you’re not allowed to read any further until you finish your lesbian dance theory homework. You don’t want to wind up like Lauren Boebert, do you?
Speaking of grifters, I see Sarah Palin’s latest attempt to elbow her way back to the trough fell a bit short. Heh. ‘Course, she only lost cuz ranked choice voting is a Soros-funded frazzledrip Jade Helm plot to feminize the electorate, it couldn’t’ve possibly had the slightest thing to do with any of her widely-known shortcomings, like, say, the fact that the last time the people of Alaska elected her to do a job, she quit to pursue a now-stalled career as a celebrity nitwit.
Determined to create the illusion of a voter fraud problem where none exists, agents of the Florida state bureaucracy worked out a naaaaaasty little conspiracy to entrap a handful of ex-cons, cuz that’s the sort of the thing Republicans think government is for. Truly, the states are the laboratories of kakistocracy, and DeSantistan is the Troma version.
Equally sinister were the anti-democratic hijinks of the Republicans on Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers, who had the fucking gall to block an abortion rights ballot initiative because of a “spacing error.” They may not be very good at fixing problems or improving lives, but they’re really quite clever when it comes to cheating Americans of their right to self-governance.
Doug Mastriano doesn’t want this latest confederate uniform scandal to distract the public from his ties to white nationalist gathering hole Gab or his presence at the Capitol Riot or his penchant for axe-murdering Waffle House waitstaff or his abortion extremism and I only made one of those up, folks.
From aboard a yacht christened “Medicare Fraud,” Rick Scott dictated a pouty little op-ed to some butler or indentured pool boy, insisting that America actually adores his preposterous party’s proffered slate of potential Senators, who are very good candidates indeed, and not, as they appear at first glance, a collection of characters cut from Todd Solondz films.
Well, let’s check under the hood of that clown car, see how Rick’s theory holds up.
Herschel Walker remains my one-man walking insurance policy against a slow news week. First, he falsely accused Raphael Warnock of lying about owning a dog, for lord knows what reason, then he spent a few hours strutting around in his Crackerjack box deputy badge, somehow believing that would go well for him, and he wound up babbling incoherently about bicycles. Pretty tame week, by Herschel’s standards.
Meanwhile, Blake Masters is now claiming to be the ghost of John McCain possessing Blake Masters’ body, part of the larger trend of Republican candidates backing away from the extreme abortion positions they trumpeted two weeks ago, desperately hoping moderate voters are as easy to bamboozle as the zombies who mainline Alex Jones in the parking lot behind the abandoned laundromat. I mean, all you need to do is make millions of women forget about the rights you stole from them, how hard could that be?
Eager to help out, Ted Cruz provided his unusually punchable face to the Republican movement to claw back that ten grand in student loan forgiveness Biden just announced, despite the fact that the PPP loan Ted’s parents took out to pay kids to sit with him at lunch was completely forgiven.
Turns out Ginni Thomas, star of Peacock’s Insurrectionist Housewives of D.C., attempted to overturn the 2020 election in more states than we initially knew about, so update your scorecards.
Whenever Tate Reeves pops up in your news feed, you know you’re about to lose some of the swagger that comes with citizenship in a superpower. See, now the fella who brought the second-highest Covid death rate IN THE WORLD to American soil can’t even deliver drinkable water in his own capitol city. Who’s the shithole now?
Well, it took a couple days, but Cult45 finally remembered they’re supposed to feign outrage when somebody points out they’re fascists. Or even when, out of an abundance of undeserved courtesy, President Biden generously attaches every conceivable qualifier in order to spare your fashy fee-fees.
Strictly as theatre, it’s been excruciating; give me the honest batshit meltdown of January 6th any day over the jowlsy bloviating of the Republican enabler class. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who has barely managed to harrumph derisively at the blazing hate orgy his party has become, was among the first to demand an apology.
…to demand an apology. Let me get something out of the way real quick.
Fuck your apology. Fuck Chris Sununu and every single pearl-clutching paperweight like him. Double fuck Kevin McCarthy of course, with the rustiest garden tool in the Saw franchise. Or perhaps with the “electric cord of liberty.”
I cannot fathom how these invertebrates imagine they have the right to lecture anyone anywhere on anything. Demand an apology from the coward in the mirror, you like demanding so much. Better yet: shut the fuck up. At long last, just shut the fuck up.
Incidentally, you’re not allowed to wallow in this particular victimhood puddle with Lindsey Graham gawkily signaling to Oath Keepers and Proud Boys on the other channel. Who do y’all think you’re fooling? You can gaslight some motherfuckers all damn day long, sure. You can drive them right off a cliff like lemmings, we’ve seen you do it. But to most of us, from the outside, you look like this blurred mass of furious clowns, ferociously rubbing shit into one another’s hair, for reasons that are difficult to determine. You truly do.
Like, do you little creeps understand how badly you’ve been behaving, to get the generic congressionals where they are right now? During inflation like this? People are sick of you and your shit and all the bizarre ways you insist upon inflicting harm on the rest of us.
After all we’ve suffered at the hands of these petty, vicious asshats; the disease spreading and the street violence and the endless, bleating griping; let me just say that I am supremely unwilling to be threatened by the likes of Lindsey Graham.
“My dad’s mob can beat up your justice system.” Bitch move, Senator. It’s like that time Ted Cruz challenged Ron Perlman to a fight…with Gym Jordan. You butt-suckling leeches. You mud-breathing weasels. Josh Hawley can call his book whatever he likes, if there is any group of Macy’s catalogue mediocrity models who are decidedly not man enough to deserve to plunge this nation into autocratic darkness, it’s the quivering vanilla pudding mound that is the Senate Republican Conference. Again I call upon them to SHUT THE FUCK UP, one and all.
Despite, or perhaps because of swift, decisive debunking, Tucker Carlson, “Libs of TikTok,” and their ilk redoubled their trans panic stochastic terror freakout targeting Boston Children’s Hospital, but I guess it’s unfair to disparage patriots who just want to get a few doctors murdered. My deepest, sincerest apologies for having offended you, Governor Sununu.
I don’t think they’re getting their apology from Biden, though. Seems he had something slightly different in mind.
Under the satanic light of the blood moon, Joe preached his dark gospel of democracy, berating the nation with divisive, partisan positions like “white supremacy is bad,” and “Republicans should incite less terrorism,” and he didn’t call for his hecklers to be physically assaulted even once.
And since then, it’s been a sonic wall of wingnut mewling, like every spoiled toddler in human history shitting themselves at once. MAGA culture has become an inescapable air horn of the petty grievances of the subpar, and it is unenfuckingdurable.
…which is why I must excuse myself now, to rinse my cranium out with beer, and repeat my nightly prayer to get Rip Van Winkled out of this Age of Derp. Stay safe out there, folks, we need ya for the midterms.
Liars, Lawyers, Laura Loomer, and...Listeria? (Ferret/Shower Cap)
How does it keep getting dumber and dumber every single week? Mathematically speaking, it shouldn’t be possible to get too terrifically much dumber than bragging about passing a cognitive test, or telling folks to inject disinfectant, but damned if we don’t just keep on spiraling downward. There has to be a bottom at some point…right?
(As ever, links n’ the shiniest of colors await ye at this link: https://showercapblog.com/liars-lawyers-laura-loomer-andlisteria/)
Well, Merrick Garland’s nefarious persecution of a private citizen who only wanted to steal six or seven hundred pages of classified documents from the United States government continues apace, and I don’t even recognize my country anymore. Can somebody PLEASE explain to me, what’s the point of America’s vast intelligence apparatus, if not to enrich a single felonious game show host?
Thanks to the court-ordered release of the redacted affidavit used for the Marm-a-Lago raid, we learned a fair amount about what the shifty fucker stole: “184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET,” plus the Macho Man Randy Savage bobblehead Peter Strzok kept at his desk, and while it’s perhaps premature to jump to conclusions regarding the identity of the break room Lean Cuisine thief, let me just say I have suspicions.
Oh, and word is, Lil’ Donnie Dotard wants his bottom-of-the-barrel, strip-mall “lawyers” to get “his” docs back from th’feds. All of ‘em, apparently, including the (checks notes) nuclear state secrets. Considering the difficulties these Lionel Hutz wannabes are having with the more rudimentary aspects of their job, I’d scale back my expectations, bro. Maybe see if they can successfully deliver breakfast in bed without pouring Diet Pepsi on your Froot Loops before you go gettin’ greedy.
Wax museum escapee Rick Scott, eager to prove the doubters right in the wake of extremely public accusations of pissing millions of the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s hard-bilked dollars down the crapper, haughtily criticized President Biden for spending his weekends in Delaware…while vacationing in Italy, aboard a luxury yacht, like the regularest of Joes. Look, I wouldn’t presume to tell you creeps how to run your death cult, but maybe there’s like, a box you can click on LinkedIn that weeds out the medicare fraudsters?
I don’t quite understand how, but apparently, despite all the incest and treason, Rudy Giuliani still has friends, including one who sent Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot a letter requesting an all-encompassing pardon, $2.5 million, and, oh yeah, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Suddenly, I feel kinda insecure about my own relatively unambitious Xmas list. Tell ya what, Santa, let’s tack on a couple suitcases full of unmarked euros, and a beachfront bungalow someplace with no extradition treaty, but don’t think you’re off the hook for the train set or the Vosges sampler, either…come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I’m still owed that Ninja Turtle Blimp from 1991.
A recount of the recent abortion vote in Kansas confirmed the Republican base is comprised of credulous buffoons, willing to piss away enormous sums of money on doomed efforts to prove Alex Jones’ Second Theory of Objective Reality, (“nothing I don’t want to believe is true can possibly be true, provided I stamp my feet hard enough”) in addition to the indisputable, inescapable fact that they got their theocrat asses handed to them in this referendum. Have fun this coming November, dirtbags.
Speaking of which, I may need an entire spinoff blog just to chronicle all the staggering idiocy unfolding on the 2022 campaign trail, where the stupidest motherfuckers walking God’s green earth self-immolate hourly. My working title is “Things Republican Candidates Say That Would Get You Immediately Fired From Any Conceivable Hardee’s,” whaddya think?
In Georgia, Herschel Walker made a big play for the notoriously swingy People Who Despise Trees vote, compounding Senator Warnock’s problems with an electorate that has long perceived him as a puppet of Big Arboretum.
Meanwhile, Mehmet Oz, barely perceptible beneath the avalanche of mockery he brought down upon his own head with Cruditésgate, required several days and god knows how many political consultants to develop his new YEAH WELL YOU’RE FAT AND YOU HAD A STROKE counterstrategy, which I suppose will work as well as any of the quack remedies he’s proposed over the years.
As this cycle’s mouthbreathingest incumbent, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson must be feeling intense pressure to keep up with all these brash, upstart morons, which may explain why he publicly confessed to joining the criminal conspiracy to overthrow the United States government, but only for, like, a little while.
I guess somebody finally told Blake Masters that Arizona’s birthing vessels, excuse me, Arizona’s “women” are still allowed to vote, (for now) so he made some hasty edits to his campaign website, erasing draconian abortion positions, no doubt imagining voters will ignore his well-documented extremism if he simply dons a sufficiently jaunty hat.
And while Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake “tries to run from (her) antisemitic ties,” Ron DeSantis sprints in the other direction, campaigning alongside Gab-wallowing white nationalist scumfuck Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the Lügenpresse won’t tell you about the equivalent bigotry on the Left, probably because it stubbornly refuses to exist.
Well, after more than five decades of public service, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced his retirement, which you’d think would be welcome news to the ivermectin-chuggers who crafted a whole damn religion around loathing him, but no, they’re puking up more acid bile than ever, promising “accountability,” no doubt in the form of televised hearings, featuring the likes of Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert, shrieking about hydroxychlorquine and the taxpayer-funded petting zoo he had constructed in Wuhan. Anyway, if anybody anywhere has earned a break, it’s America’s handsomest epidemiologist; that he didn’t throw up his hands and tell us all to go ahead and medicate at the feed store if we wanted to is a testament his character.
There was surprisingly little pushback from the GOP when President Biden referred to their careening resentment crusade as “semi-fascism,” likely because multiple prominent Republicans were tackled by their own comms staff before they could hit send on that WHO YOU CALLIN’ SEMI press release.
Incidentally, not only did the Darkest of All Possible Brandons pop the very last remaining vein in the Right’s collective forehead by announcing billions in student debt relief, he waited for the inevitable FILTHY TAKERRRRRRRRRRRRRZ shitfit before dropping receipts, in the form of many a yapping plutocrat hypocrite’s forgiven PPP loans. Diamond Joe’s been scraping Republicans off the heel of his boot longer than I’ve been alive.
Sensitive election files from Georgia and Michigan were shared with seemingly every drooling fuckwit on Mike Lindell’s email list, including a professional surfer, a delusional meteorologist, a “seduction and pickup coach,” a talking orangutan, Norm from Cheers, and the meth-addled bees that dwell in Sidney Powell’s cranium, further affirming conservatives’ longstanding commitment to information security.
Yet another prominent Trump campaign official has been arrested on charges of sexual abuse, an occurrence so commonplace, it hardly seems newsworthy anymore. This one's called Perry Hooper Jr., and he hails from Alabama, that family values Shangri-La that gave us insurrectionist Mo Brooks, pedophile Roy Moore, and Jefferson Beauregard “Too Racist For the 80’s” Sessions III.
At this point in the blog, I’d like to ask any children, or adults with heart conditions to leave the room, for the time has come to gaze upon the cyclopean cosmic horror that is…the Florida Republican primary.
Temporarily unincarcerated child rapist Matt Gaetz cakewalked to victory, because of course the QAnon crowd are hypocrites about the one fucking thing they claim to care about. What sort of viscous marmot turd do you have to have for a soul to walk into a voting booth and fill in the bubble next to that sex-trafficking degenerate’s name? Voting for Matt Gaetz should land you on the no-fly list.
At least Luis Miguel, running on a “plan” to permit Floridians to murder federal law enforcement agents, lost his bid for a seat in the state House, along with his Twitter account. On the bright side, Miguel will now have plenty of time to pursue his other passions, such as Christian nationalism, and seeking the execution of Bill Gates.
Laura Loomer, who is subpar even by MAGA nation’s limbo-contest-in-the-Mariana-Trench standards, also lost, but only by single digits, because I guess “unusually shitty fascist” isn’t a deal-breaker anymore. It goes without saying she’s refusing to concede, and pledging to handcuff herself to…I dunno, something. She got more than 37,000 votes. To be a U.S. Representative. To write LAWS. Sleep tight.
In New York, Carl Paladino lost as well, though he certainly got more votes (and more endorsements from members of House GOP leadership) than anybody who praised Hitler really ought to get, ideally, in a country that doesn’t want to be governed by Hitler admirers, which I dearly hope still includes the one in which I reside.
Former Turd Reich capo Ryan Zinke can add “lying repeatedly to federal investigators” to his rap sheet, and though he remains the frontrunner for that new Montana congressional seat, one cannot help but wonder if his crimes, however plentiful, qualify as violent enough for the discerning MAGA electorate out in Big Sky Country.
Speaking, as we so frequently must, of the American Right’s growing propensity for violence, the IRS has deemed it necessary, amidst round-the-clock screeching about “87,000 armed, jackbooted thugs,” to conduct a comprehensive security review, and one wonders when the party of fiscal responsibility will protest the inevitable billions pissed away, likely for decades to come, protecting civil servants from the mob of misinformed maniacs unleashed by Rupert Murdoch’s well-compensated stable of terrorism inciters.
So, some unfathomable buttnugget apparently decided that what the proto-fascist Republican Party really deserves is not a thorough paddling and a century or two in timeout, but rather ONE POINT SIX BILLION DOLLARS in unaccountable “dark money,” to be dispensed without oversight, promoting the Federalist Society’s next wave of dominionist weirdos, who won’t stop repealing rights until we’re all quartering redcoats on our living room sofas.
Alas, none of that lunatic largess appears to be earmarked for Truth Social’s unpaid web hosting bills, although I have to say, if you’re foolish enough to go into business with Donald Trump at this late date, you don’t fucking deserve money.
Conservatives may not support your right to vote or read or control your own body, but the liberty to spread disease is goddamn sacrosanct. There’s actually a fairly straight line between their pandemic petulance and Tucker Carlson’s latest cause célèbre, an Amish farmer who just wants to poison customers with his listeria-laced raw milk in peace, the way the Founders intended. Honestly, if it doesn’t hurt anybody else, is it really even freedom?
Lordy.
…and yet, despite all the preceding madness and jagoffery, still we plummet dumbly further into the abyss of dumbness, ever denied the sweet oblivion of hitting rock bottom. Ah well, at least there’s beer. See you in a week, m‘loves, you stay safe out there.
Crudits And Terrorism: Portrait of a Party Gone Mad (Ferret/Shower Cap)
So, I’ve never been a big slasher movie guy, are there ones where the Attractive Vacationing Youths find themselves locked up with, like, hordes of heavily-armed morons? Gibbering idiots, incapable of so much as processing objective reality, yet still imbued with furious, fanatical, murderous certainty? I feel like such a genre would thrive in the current climate.
(As always, shiny colors and nifty nooz links await ye here: https://showercapblog.com/crudites-and-terrorism-portrait-of-a-party-gone-mad/)
Forgive me, I’m a little grumpy tonight, I’m all but completely incapacitated by the hangover I don’t have from celebrating the political demise of the Cheney family. My head should be throbbing right now. My blood type should be Kölsch. But noooooooo, Wyoming voters didn’t reject Liz Cheney by a 40-point margin over her plutocrat economics or her daddy’s war crimes, but because she defended democracy, and in doing so blasphemed against their festering shitpile god. Which actually isn’t awesome at all.
Once again, ascendant American fascism is the turd in our punchbowl.
And fuck everyone involved for making me want, shit, making me ache for “the Republican Party of Liz Cheney.” The Republican Party of Liz Cheney was room temperature dog poo on stale toast, and I MISS IT SO MUCH FUCK YOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUU.
Because the rapidly congealing consensus is that the Marm-a-Lago raid is a political positive for Off-Brand Orbán, tightening his tiny-fisted grip on the rage-warped idiot death cult known as the GOP. I guess they’re looking to beef up that otherwise nonexistent platform with populist policy proposals like This One Game Show Host Should Be Allowed to Commit Any Crime He Likes, Up To And Including Theft of Nuclear Secrets.
Cult45 is actually showering the crooked bastard with donations right now, (which is rude, frankly; everyone knows he prefers hooker piss) while somehow making time in an already jam-packed death threat-sending schedule (more on that in a minute) for the FBI.
In short, what’s left of MAGA nation following natural selection’s recent team-up with ivermectin is dumber, angrier, and crazier than ever. Unless the great resignation takes a turn, and thirty or forty million of us decide to take up cult deprogramming, I imagine we’re in for a pretty freaky ride in the days to come.
Just how freaky? Well, former CIA Director Michael Hayden approvingly shared a tweet from columnist Edward Luce, reading “I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.” It’s hard to disagree. And you have to figure, in Hayden’s line of work, one encounters a fair amount of nihilistic/dangerous/contemptible types.
Hard to think of three words that suit this oozing clump of rectal tumors better, honestly, though I would also be willing to accept “gullible” or “malodorous.”
But let’s focus on “dangerous” for a minute. You’ve probably noticed a bumper crop of columns n’ think pieces lately, on America’s growing right-wing political violence problem, many of which take on the “welp, guess this is life now” tone that only surfaces in history’s healthiest democracies.
‘Course, if you asked the fashy agitators down in Trumpworld, they’d tell you the trouble is there’s not enough violence. They’re threatening to reveal the identities of the FBI agents dispatched to reclaim the government’s stolen property, while demanding the unmasking of the witnesses who provided DoJ with the evidence necessary to procure the warrant, because there’s a whole legion of Ricky Shiffers waiting in the wings, hoping to become America’s Next “Lone Wolf” Terrorist.
But I’m sure the vanquished Velveeta Vulgarian’s offers to “reduce the heat” are sincere. As sincere as his wedding vows.
Certainly nobody else in the GOP got the memo. (Perhaps the FBI seized it?) New York congressional candidate Carl Paladino wants to execute Merrick Garland, while Mark Finchem, the party’s nominee for Arizona Secretary of State, and card-carrying Oath Keeper, kept a “treason watch list” on Pinterest, which really oughta be the very first thing that pops up when you google “the banality of evil.”
Anyway, until they get their marching orders from the Emperor of Hemorrhoids and Crotchrot, th’base will just have to content themselves with terrorizing the staff at Boston Children’s Hospital, the latest target of stochastic terror influencer Chaya Raichik, via her vile “LibsofTikTok” Twitter account. Everybody’s gettin’ their reps in, see.
Meanwhile, music ground to a halt at the fascist debutante ball that is Ron DeSantis’ governorship, when a federal judge partially blocked his “Stop WOKE Act,” (yes, he really calls it that, being seven years old emotionally) because the First Amendment is still a thing, or at least it was when I published this post; I don’t want to get cocky without access to Kavanaugh’s to-do list.
Still, book-burning remains nearly as popular on the Right as sending death threats to children’s hospital doctors. If any of these thought police types were capable of handling criticism, or, y’know…learning, I might casually suggest that when you ban The Diary of Anne Frank, certain conclusions will be drawn, but I imagine there are more productive uses for my time.*
Turns out Lauren Boebert didn’t marry the warm, thoughtful, well-liked literature professor you’ve no doubt always pictured, but rather a rampaging drunk who picks fights with neighbors and runs over their mailboxes and such. There’re Palins everywhere, of course; most folks just know better than to vote for ‘em.
Turdmaggot Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty to fifteen felony charges, joining the long and lengthening list of confessed and/or convicted criminals in a certain Deposed Dotard’s inner circle, including Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Mike “The Turkish Delight” Flynn, Michael Cohen, Steve Bannon, George Nader, Rick Gates, and even little Georgie Papaderpaderp, remember him, anyway, there’s obviously no way any law enforcement action against a guy who’s surrounded himself with felons for decades could possibly be legitimate, see you at the civil war.
Weisselberg will be testifying against the company as part of his plea deal, so I imagine Wee Donnie One-Term wishes he could get a semi-competent lawyer or two to represent him, which he categorically cannot. Yeah, being King of the Losers looks really cool, until you actually need something done professionally. You can incite a whole-ass murder mob, sure, but what fucking good are they, if they can’t even lynch one teensy-weensy Vice President?
Maybe he can hire Rand Paul, who believes he’s stumbled onto the solution to all of Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot’s legal woes: simply repeal the laws he broke! After interminable years of listening to the dipshit Paul clan shoot their fool mouths off about shit they don’t understand, (which is everything) I’m more convinced than ever that the sole function of libertarianism, as a philosophy, is to aid mediocre men in their lifelong quest to ignore the clown makeup staring back at them from every mirror.
Anyway, there’s gotta be a supply-side problem when it comes to attorneys who’re simultaneously experts in sedition law and indifferent to the idea of getting paid, especially considering recent legal setbacks for Lindsey Graham, Eric Herschmann, and ol’ Trenchmouth McCousinfucker himself, who is not just a witness, but a target in the Fulton County investigation.
Getting back to Mikey Hairshirt, he says he’s willing to “consider” testifying before the January 6th commission, which I guess almost counts as bravery in the spineless cuckwad that comprises the Party of Lincoln these days. Show me on the doll where he made you abandon EVERY FUCKING PRINCIPLE YOU EVER FUCKING HAD EVERY FUCKING DAY FOR FIVE FUCKING YEARS, Mike.
Turns out a Sidney “The Krackhead” Powell-led effort to illicitly procure sensitive election data was much more extensive, and (yikes) successful than previously known, because we’re trapped in this mega-fun moment in history where even the past gets scarier. Yay.
It was an especially obscene week for post-Dobbs horror stories, between the woman forced to carry an unviable, indeed partially headless fetus because PRO LIFE, and the Florida court that ruled a 16-year-old is insufficiently mature to qualify for the basic human right to bodily autonomy, which is just life-y as all get-out. Life life life. Much lifier than those heathen days when we didn’t deploy the power of the state to torture quite so many women. It’s a regular life-a-palooza out there.
Sending my best Jeremiah Johnson nod to Dwight Garner at the Failing New York Times, for his review of Jared Kushner’s silly, self-aggrandizing, new “book,” even though it doesn’t have enough swears for my taste. Should the last, fraying thread of my sanity finally snap, I may offer Dwight my blog before I run, screaming, into the night.
Against the backdrop of so much frankly terrifying shit, I’m almost grateful for the ongoing misadventures of bumbling telegrifter Mehmet Oz, who’ll soon have plenty of time to go crudité-hopping between his ten homes, once he wraps up this unpaid internship on the Fetterman campaign. Y’know, I may never be a millionaire or a celebrity or a Senator, but at least I can get in and out of a grocery store without driving a steamroller over my own nutsack.
Jesus. Even after all these years, I confess I’m still blown away by how very, very stupid all of this is. Sigh. Well, stay safe out there, folks…stupid has a way of turning dangerous real quick lately.
*Like drinking.
He Thought He Could Steal Nuclear Secrets...And Keep Them...At His House. (Ferret)
Well, the news continues its lascivious, herky-jerky dance ‘twixt the slapstick and psychological horror genres. You’re trying to enjoy the simple purity of laughing at some masturbatory wingnut performance art, when WHOOPSIE, one of ‘em did a terrorism again! It’s exhausting.
(Links n’ shit, you know the drill: https://showercapblog.com/he-thought-he-could-steal-nuclear-secretsand-keep-themat-his-house/)
As you are no doubt aware, the single greatest act of tyranny ever committed against the American people occurred earlier this week, when the FBI trundled down to Marm-a-Lago to reclaim some of the shit Tangerine Idi Amin stole.
Yeah, I guess Donald Trump’s criminality is the great civil rights cause of our time. And while it’s certainly interesting that you freaks are so ready to kill and die for a game show host who’s spent years bragging about passing a cognitive test, I just don’t think whether we have a civil war or not should be up to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Civil war is called for, y’see, because there’s no conceivable way Donald John Trump has ever done anything, in his spotless life of piety n’ service, to merit any law enforcement activity whatsoever, nay, not even one as mild as the execution of a legally-obtained search warrant. Civil. War.
Over Donald Trump. Who steals for the pleasure of stealing. Steals from charity. Revealed classified intelligence to the Russians in the Oval Office. Has been credibly accused of sexual assault by more people than I speak to most months. Who spent two months trying with all his might to overthrow the federal fucking government, culminating in crazed mob attacking Congress in the mind-numbingly moronic belief that disrupting a ceremony would make the entire constitutional order disappear like a fart on the wind.
So many crimes, you can’t keep ‘em straight. Shit, you’ve already forgotten about the article where we learned he wanted “his” generals to behave like Hitler’s, and that wasn’t even a week ago.
In a different case, the doddering old fop pleaded the Fifth like he didn’t know any other words in the English language. (No, not the case where his company’s accused of tax evasion, a different different one.)
And, as we’ve seen so often, he’s way too dumb to cover his tracks. It’s like he’s some sort of idiot bug monster that molts evidence. No possible way this dude earned this warrant, nah, it HAS to be tyranny. Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus, it’s like saying horse dewormer cures COVID-19, it’s - ohhhhhhhhhh now I see it.
I guess when you start at “Donald Trump cares about me, and if I vote for him, he’ll work on my behalf,” it’s a fairly short trip to hydroxychloroquine enemas and armed insurrection; the first absurdity on the road to atrocity.
And I certainly understand blind fealty to a celebrity that doesn’t have the first fucking clue you even exist. Why, when that Winona Ryder shoplifting thing happened, I declared myself a sovereign citizen and spent eleven months developing an elaborate plot to kidnap the Department of the Interior undersecretary I held responsible, but I carelessly scheduled the op for what turned out to be a federal holiday*, so it kinda fizzled.
Behaving precisely as a man with nothing incriminating in his safe would, the Dotard in Exile swiftly declared those dirty deep state dastards had surely planted evidence to besmirch his good name. And say what you will about Cult45, for all their deficiencies, they hate who they’re told to hate. This week, that’s law enforcement, specifically the FBI, which is…I mean, I’ve seen less ominous behavior.
In the end, there is, objectively, much, much more evidence that Donald Trump has committed a number of fairly ginormous crimes than there is that gay people are “groomers,” or that “critical race theory” is being used in public schools to indoctrinate children, but of course, one of the big perks of living inside a disinformation bubble is that any resistance to the harm you inflict automatically transforms into evidence of the persecution you face, thus justifying further retaliation on your part!
And this endless, lurching cycle of victimhood and aggression is pretty much the Republican Party’s entire GOTV strategy now, which I suppose is why damn near every prominent politician and pundit on the Right spent the week spouting the craziest, Proud-Boy-pokingest lies imaginable, miles beyond the rhetoric that got Steve King kicked off his committees just a few short years ago.
And we’re not talking about pimply randos, live-streaming from their mom’s basement, these are the most powerful elected Republicans in the nation. Rand Paul. Marco Rubio. Steve “David Duke Without the Baggage” Scalise, alleging, with nary a shred of evidence, that somebody in the FBI went “rogue.” Kevin “How Hard Can Herding Nazi Cats Really Be?” McCarthy, vowing retaliation, should he be handed such power to abuse.
It took a matter of mere hours for this organized, concentrated propaganda barrage to drive some addled fuckwit to attack an FBI office in Cincinnati, with an assault rifle and a nail gun, (a MOTHERFUCKING NAIL GUN) fantasies of sparking civil war dancing through his broken brain like sugarplum fairies. Left the saddest, stupidest Well I Done Got Muhself Killed farewell note on Off-Brand Orbán’s pathetic Twitter knockoff. Even the loser hate cult that made a martyr of Ashli Babbitt isn’t gonna be able to do much with this doofus.
Now, after such a smashing success, you might expect the nation’s stochastic terrorists to close up early for some celebratory day drinking at Chili’s, but it turns out, they were just getting warmed up.
Brian Kilmeade, filling in on Tucker Carlson’s White Power Hour, presented the most blatantly, clownishly doctored photograph you’ll ever see, depicting the judge who approved the Mar-a-Lago warrant partying with child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Knowing everything we know about the violence caused by QAnon, he hung that target on that judge’s back. I guess because he didn’t explicitly offer to pay airfare for the first ten callers who expressed willingness to take a weekend off to go axe-murder the poor guy, we’re supposed to believe Kilmeade was just doing normal, journalist-y stuff here.
The judge was already receiving so many anti-Semitic death threats that his synagogue had been forced to cancel events, but there just never seems to be enough right-wing violence to satiate Rupert Murdoch’s bloodlust.
Unwilling to be outfashed, Elise Stefanik approvingly recited the nail gun creep’s manifesto, more or less word for word, a stupefyingly awful decision, made for abhorrent reasons, though coincidentally the very same ones that earned her Liz Cheney’s old job, and the platform she now desecrates daily, in the first place.
Also, suddenly last week’s BACK THE BLUE-shriekers today demand we DEFUND THE PO-PO, and while there’s likely no bipartisan common ground to be found there, the meetings sure would be interesting.
Anyway. Merrick Garland, forced into a game of political chess with a reckless manchild who thinks all the pieces are butt plugs, took a moment out of his day to effortlessly outmaneuver his forever overmatched foe, offering to release the warrant Wee Donnie One Term and his stooges were having such fun lying about.
And then, just as we’re all buckling under the weight of this fathomlessly batshit moment in history, they tell us the seized documents contain nuclear secrets, classified at the highest possible level. Documents they’ve made previous attempts to recover, and which were waiting for them, exactly where they knew they’d be, as their warrant, obtained with meticulous caution, confirms.
How did they procure such a wondrous, prescient warrant, you ask? Well, at least partially with witness testimony. Turns out there’s a MOLE in Shartopia’s highest halls, which has apparently introduced an element of paranoia into what I’m sure is an otherwise serene work environment.
Anyway, we got to see the warrant, and they’re investigating the 45th President of the United States of America for violating the Espionage Act, which feels like big news. It’s like a Tom Clancy novel, if they made him write it with somebody bludgeoning him in the forehead with a monkey wrench the entire time.
Still, even I have to admit it was pretty sketchy of the FBI to pull this shit while Hunter Biden roams free, committing every crime known to man simultaneously. The Hunter Biden hearings are gonna be so, so stupid, you guys. Howler monkeys flinging poo at the walls. Live on C-SPAN. For TWO YEARS.
Oh, also, Assclown Autogolpe apparatchik Scott Perry got his phone seized by the FBI, probably over that criminal conspiracy to end American democracy forever, but I’m not ruling out kiddie porn just yet. Alas, young Scottward made the rookie mistake of committing high crimes and/or misdemeanors without first procuring the services of a substantial, reliable lynch mob, so he’s havin’ some trouble generating attention for his lil’ plight. Poor guy.
The Mar-a-Lago raid made things tough for propagandists all over; in Putin’s troll farms, they don’t know whether to shit or go blind, though perhaps they’re just overworked from futile attempts to spin Russia’s biggest loss of military aircraft since WWII. That’s one mighty empire you’ve got there, Vlad. Everybody’s super impressed.
Some personal news: I’ve accepted a post as one of Joe Biden’s 87,000 new IRS stormtroopers. I start Tuesday. Can’t wait. Gonna go all Jade Helm on these weirdos. No more writing off livestock medication, ya filthy takers!
Anyway, it’s been kind of a one-story week, but let me try to hit a few random things before I collapse into a gibbering mess.
Turns out the GOP’s candidate for Michigan attorney general illegally breached voting equipment, in search of bamboo fibers or Mike Lindell’s pubes, or…who knows? Who cares? I assume even the water commissioner are dogcatcher nominees are fascists now.
Boy, government doesn’t get much smaller than the state scrolling through a mother’s private messages with her daughter in order to prosecute both for exercising the basic human right to bodily autonomy. Sometimes, there’s The Handmaid’s Tale so quickly.
Also, apparently Alex Jones sent Roger Stone nekkid pictures of his wife. I acknowledge this is not particularly newsworthy, but I saw it, so you have to, too.
I guess we could check in on the Democrats…anybody stealing state secrets over there? Riling up extremists armed with power tools? No? Oh, they passed the, whaddyacallit, the, the biggest climate bill ever? The one with all the massive drug cost savings? That was a thing. (The GOP’s one successful, spiteful swipe at the legislation kept the cost of insulin high for as many diabetic Americans as possible, and they sure are proud of themselves for that.)
Anyway, next person who says “may you live in interesting times” gets tased. I got a really nice taser on Prime Day, and I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.
*I never remember fucking Presidents’ Day. Never.
Kansas, Jobs, Alex Jones...Are We Doing Good News Now? Did I Miss a Meeting? (Ferret)
Folks, I gotta tell ya, I had a little trouble with this week’s blog. Just couldn’t get into the right headspace for some reason. Sure, there was the usual litany of abject madness to document, but there was something else, too.
(Makes more sense on the site: https://showercapblog.com/kansas-jobs-alex-jonesare-we-doing-good-news-now-did-i-miss-a-meeting/)
I think it was maybe…hope? That’s a word, right? “Hope?” Feels kinda weird in my mouth, honestly. But good weird.
So, I grew up in Kansas, which is a wonderful place for a young progressive to move away from, and, based on all previous experience, my expectations of that electorate heading into Tuesday’s abortion referendum were…not real high. There wasn’t a lot of polling, and besides, we’re all battle-conditioned to expect that last-minute horde of rampaging regressives to emerge from yet another sewer Marist somehow failed to detect.
But let me say, it’s quite a bit more fun on the other side of an unforeseen voting surge. Wonder if Rich Lowry still feels so smug about the negligible effects of the “abortion controversy.” Of course, it’s still only one data point, and we can’t really know what it means for November until we get there, but the election nerds on the internet have been saying some mighty interesting things, and even better, the activists in Kansas helpfully left the rest of us one helluva mobilization blueprint.
But the good gnus didn’t stop there, as last week’s deus ex Manchina gave way, after a mildly excruciating waiting period, to Sinemania, and holy crap, it looks like we’re gettin’ a reconciliation bill! Then there was that unexpectedly good jobs report, plus, I found a nickel on the bathroom floor by the urinals!
Yeah…”hope.” I’m pretty sure that’s a real word, but it might be something I got from Dr. Seuss. I’ll look it up later.
Because there’s still an entire Augean stable of Republican madness to muck out, same as every week. Still, it is nice, for a change, to wade through it with some concrete reasons to believe all this asshat theocrat overreach is about to blow up in these motherfuckers’ faces.
Let’s start with the primaries.
YIKES.
We’re replacing What’s the Matter with Kansas? with By Satan’s Unholy Butthole What the Living Fuck is Wrong with You, Arizona? I don’t know what sort of artisanal, small-batch ivermectin they’re mainlining in that wing of the death cult, but it is very, very bad for the part of the brain that evaluates leadership qualities.
Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake damn nears blacks out a conspiracy loon bingo card, yet still pales in comparison to the odious Blake Masters, who’ll fit right in on the unfit fuckwit Senate kickline, right between Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz.
I know I toss the word “kakistocracy” around a lot, but what else do you call this? If you were playing a game called What Job Should Herschel Walker Have, how many generations of your family would live and die before anyone suggested “United States Senator?”
Meanwhile, Tudor Dixon, the whackjob picked to take on Governor Whitmer in Michigan, is “only” an election denier and an anti-abortion fanatic, so she hasn’t generated much national media attention, since she hasn’t said anything like, I dunno, “George Soros puts carcinogens in Levi’s to give Real Americans butt cancer.” Yet.
At least the Missouri branch passed on both the violent sex criminal and the celebrity gun-pointer, though the Eric who emerged dominant from that particular turd-wrestling pit looks plenty disastrous on his own.
Speaking of, we really must mention the Velveeta Vulgarian’s mega-weaselly “I’m endorsing ALL THE ERICS tee hee” bet-hedging here, because it was such an exquisitely Trumpian piece of business, even more pathetic than the whole wait-till-the-polling-tells-me-who’s-going-to-win-and-I’ll-endorse-that-guy act he’s been pulling all year. Inheriting billions of dollars must be a ton of fun, but if it came with an inescapable, debilitating fear of being perceived as a loser, I think I’d pass.
(Spending every waking moment of your life in mortal terror that everyone around you thinks you’re a loser is what makes you a loser, by the way, you massive fucking loser. It takes literal cult-level indoctrination to make people overlook your towering loserdom.)
Anyhoo, all the usual wingnut primary rituals were observed; the losers’ furious proclamations of cheating, rigging, and general Jewish space-lasering; as ever, the smaller the vote total, the louder and shriller the yapping. The winners won fair and square of course, though the road to November runs through antifa country, and you best believe any voter who doesn’t want to be governed by meth-huffing freaks is a deep state plant, and probably a pedophile.
The Senate GOP finally ended their self-destructive shitfit, and passed the PACT Act, perhaps understanding this isn’t the moment to provide extra evidence of their loathsomeness to the public. Sure was fun watchin’ ‘em squirm, though. Shit, any time Ted Cruz feels like picking a messaging fight with Jon Stewart, I’m clearing my calendar.
Still, hydroxychloroquine spokesdolt Ron Johnson helpfully reminded the electorate that, in addition to their radioactive culture war aggression, Republicans would very much like to slash popular safety net programs, like Medicare and Social Security. Every day RoJo manages to get his shirt on without suffocating himself is a fucking miracle.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am hereby announcing that, like damn near every member of the Trump Administration, my text messages from January 6th, 2021 have mysteriously vanished, though mine revolved around a far humbler criminal conspiracy, to procure a small number of, let’s call them “special” brownies, from a gentleman of my acquaintance who prefers to remain anonymous at this time. I apologize and pledge to behave in exactly the same manner going forward.
Ron DeSantis, as part of his ongoing audition to become America’s Next Top Autocrat, suspended a democratically elected state attorney for refusing to flog all the filthy sluts who don’t understand that Ron DeSantis owns their bodies. You know, small government stuff. Not the move I’d make, post-Kansas, but then, I’m not a goose-stepping thug.
And the Deposed Dotard teamed up with the journalist-dismembering House of Saud to play some controversial new version of golf where, as I understand it, instead of putting, you rub blood money all over your nude, flaccid body. Box office for this revolutionary collision of brazen corruption and golf’s intrinsic boringness was, well, on-brand.
And yes, while Wee Donnie One-Term throws poorly-attended golf parties for terrorists, Joe Biden’s more inclined to send freaky, sci-fi knife missiles to kill them, which would probably give those sagging approval ratings a boost, if we still lived in a society with a bipartisan consensus that terrorism is bad.
While we’re on that topic, you remember last week, when it took days of public pressure to make Doug Mastriano grudgingly condemn his white nationalist buddy, who runs a social media hate site? Well, the response from the Gab "community" was a full fucking fusillade of anti-Semitic threats, which is absolutely bone-chilling, occurring so close to a Republican gubernatorial campaign, and I just had a stray vision of some future GOP where Dougie here is the venerable statesman, urging moderation as Donald Trump III calls for the forced sterilization of everybody who’s left-handed, and I don’t know whether to chuckle or weep.
The whole damn American Right, top to bottom, keeps on fumbling with fascism’s bra clasp in some shadowy corner of the Romney family car elevator, but I guess we’re numb to that by now. Vikky Orbán gave his sinister little Fascism For Dummies seminar at CPAC, to an audience of aspiring concentration camp middle managers, and America barely blinked.
You scroll right past articles about Capitol rioters getting sentenced, and some epidemiologist-threatening weirdo getting sentenced, with a vague sense that yeah, there’re always a bunch of domestic terrorists workin’ their way through the justice system nowadays, but then you land on New York Cop Bought Rifle for Neo-Nazi ‘Rapekreig’ Marine Who Planned Synagogue Attack, which is maybe the most disturbing procession of words I’ve ever encountered, and you think maybe we shouldn’t docilely accept this insanity as our new normal.
…still, at a certain point, Republicans’ll run the numbers, and “evolve” on felon voting rights, that’ll be something. All kindsa logistical difficulties pop up when your turnout strategy relies on inciting terrorist violence.
If you’re wondering why I gouged my eyes out, it was Alex Jones’ testimony this week. It’s delightful, of course, to finally bleed some cash out of that hate-engorged tick, but his shamelessness in the face of all the harm he’s caused, I just find it unbearable.
…the text messages bit was pretty sweet, though.
Those texts are on their way to every law enforcement outfit from the feds to the January 6th commission to the Teen Titans, by the way. Just think, Alex, all that time you spent terrorizing grieving families, you could’ve been googling “how can you tell if your lawyer’s brain is actually a half-consumed pudding cup that hasn’t been stored properly?” instead. Ah, hindsight.
Yeah, it’s been pretty gross out there, but I’m still dancin’, because KANSAS, y’all. It’s a whole dang new world out there; you stay safe so you can enjoy it with me.
I got big plans for that nickel, too.
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Joe Manchin (Ferret)
American politics is like some sort of warped nature show, about animals behaving in impossibly self-destructive ways that upset everything we believe about evolutionary survival instincts. You can almost hear the gobsmacked British narrator, wondering why on earth that herd of wildebeests is lapping up that hydroxychloroquine spill.
(Better with links: https://showercapblog.com/or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-joe-manchin/)
Hey everybody, we’ve got a brand new sponsor here at Shower Cap’s Blog! Please give a warm Resistance welcome to MANHOOD, the forthcoming tome on “masculine virtues” scribed by lynch mob-inciting Senator Josh Hawley, who famously possesses neither masculinity nor virtue.
Joshie’s gonna sell a ton of these. To his own campaign, sure, maybe a couple crates to the RNC, assuming they can actually get out from under the Deposed Dotard’s legal debt, but loads n’ loads, I assure you. Like, even the incel community Hawley is targeting here will have no trouble recognizing the author’s lack of expertise on the topic at hand.
Anyway. Yet again, we don’t get to just sit back and laugh and laugh and laugh at Josh Hawley, which both he and we so richly deserve, on account of all the Nazi shit. Even Hawley’s shit is Nazi shit, really, albeit of a largely harmless, and decidedly amusing variety. “Manhood.” Lordy.
A little on the scarier side are Trumpworld’s fast-congealing plans, to rot the federal government out from within, by staffing it with obsequious, amoral thugs, should the Turd Reich rise from the fashy ashes in 2024. Thugs like Jeffrey Clark, who’ll either be Attorney General or disbarred, depending on how the Rust Belt swings, which I suppose makes as much sense as anything in our gameshowified politics.
Read the whole Axios two-parter on this shit, if you haven’t already, but…keep the lights on, y’know? Because the hoods’re starting to come off, have you noticed that?
Seriously, what does it take to get a fascist disinvited from CPAC these days? (Read that in a Rodney Dangerfield voice if it helps.)
Viktor Orbán has never been a particularly subtle fellow. Everyone knows what he is: the prototype for every racist, fear-mongering, wannabe autocrat in the West. That’s why he got invited to CPAC in the first place. Behold the Tyrant in His Splendor. Gather at his feet, and learn of his secrets.
But now, a longtime advisor has resigned, comparing him to Goebbels for his objectively Goebbelslike statements on the undesirability of “race-mixing.” See? No hood on Vikky. He’s proud of what he is. So fucking of course he’s still speaking at CPAC. Probably getting a nicer gift basket now. Artisanal bath salts, and an advance copy of MANHOOD, autographed imperceptibly by the author with his ink-dipped pencil dick.
Now, you know democracy’s firing on all cylinders when you find yourself within a single calendar week containing multiple stories about Republicans refusing to condemn the literal, actual Nazis in their ranks. Yes, the High Priests of DeSantistan sure get mad when you point out the swastika flags that keep popping up at their events, but they never seem to get mad at themselves for throwing the sort of parties that attract Nazis in the first place, don’t you find that strange?
And as much as I would love to move on from this distressingly specific topic, Doug Mastriano won’t let me. It is truly obscene, the amount of public pressure it took to make this freak, who wants to be Governor of a whole-ass state, distance himself ever so lightly from his ally and associate Andrew Torba, founder of the social media hate site Gab, who unapologetically hung a No Jews Allowed sign on their shared “movement.”
Always on the bleeding edge of ascendant American fascism, Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to know, what’s so bad about Christian nationalism anyway? Which is not even the vilest thing she said this week, from her perch in the United States Congress, where she was sent by the voters of the Georgia 14th, in their infinite wisdom.
Gleefully snatching the dominionist taunting baton from Marj was Justice Sam “I Am the Boss of You, Actually” Alito, who’s clearly feeling saucy about the way he gets to impose his puritan will on all us heathen peasants. Have your fun, old man. Today is not forever.
Do not let these fucks troll you, by the way. The louder they crow about all the shitty, unpopular things they’ve done, and all the shitty, unpopular things they can barely wait to do, the quicker they build the coalition that’ll reverse their work.
Honestly, how long do these asshats imagine the American public will tolerate these abuses of their stolen, illegitimate power? These assaults on our fundamental human rights?
Not long. The generic congressionals are swinging exactly as hard as you’d think they would in the face of a hostile takeover by a vindictive, fanatical minority. And, with the January 6th commission’s stupendous work piledriving Trumpism’s ballsack into powder, suddenly Republican bigwigs are starting to wonder whether fielding a sackful of buttholes as their Senate slate was really such a good idea.
For example: J.D. Vance, who qualifies, terrifyingly, as the GOP’s least insane swing-state candidate, turns out to be not only the sort of fellow who believes women should stay in violently abusive marriages, but one who believes it so much that he presents it, in public, as a Very Good Idea of His That Other Folks Ought To Adopt, as he seeks election. That’s all it’ll take to make America great again, folks…just a little more domestic violence. Makes perfect sense.
So yeah, the We’ve Made a Huge Mistake articles’ve begun mysteriously cropping up around that campaign. Herschel Walker’s is at the My God What Have We Done stage. Meanwhile, Dr. Oz wanders to and fro, dazed and clownlike, in the background, seemingly oblivious to his opponent’s extremely effective (and frankly hilarious) campaign to define him to the electorate.
New data from the fashometer reveals that nearly 1 in 3 Americans think it’s just about time to do some violent insurrecting/Capitol rioting of their own. And that’s a spine-chilling statistic by itself, but the trouble is, we all know these pollsters need to ask a few follow-up questions here. Like, say, “How many hours per day do you spend fantasizing about murdering your personal and political enemies? In these fantasies, do you use a hatchet, an AR-15, or, I dunno, that sex pillow you had custom-made to look like your cousin?”
When you get the chance, run that poll by Clay Higgins, who certainly gave America an illuminating peek inside his skull, at his, um, shall we say, “detailed” cop-killing fantasies, during a congressional hearing on gun violence. At the risk of editorializing, the only thing a raving maniac like Clay Higgins needs less than a firearm is a seat in the House of Representatives.
Speaking of that madhouse, ‘twas a busy week for Congressman Gaetz, as he struggled to work his way through history’s skeeviest bucket list, before the feds close in, and he begins his new life, as a celebrity child rapist in prison, sure to be a lengthy tale if nothing else.
He joined the creepiest creeps in his creepy creep caucus in voting against an anti-sex trafficking bill, for essentially the same reasons Betty Crocker would vote against a bill banning cake.
Oh, and, attempting to emulate his Turd Emperor, young Matthew made some snide, snickeringly infantile comment, demeaning women’s looks, as though the entire world doesn’t know his own sex life consists of paying to rape children.
Elsewhere in the House, some subpar twerp called “Glenn Thompson” voted against gay rights before tromping cluelessly off to his gay son’s wedding, but it’s only that second part that might get him in trouble with his party’s base. Those shameless hypocrisy seminars with Scott DesJarlais have served Republicans well.
So, on the eve of the defamation trial that will hopefully bankrupt him, Alex Jones went on Steve Bannon’s podcast, and oh shit, I forgot to mention that you shouldn’t read this paragraph if you’ve eaten in the last hour. Bannon called Jones “one of the great thinkers,” and Jones returned the favor, complimenting the unsettling, but undeniable grandeur of the bizarre ecosystems that have formed in the primordial layers between his host’s shirts.
Congratulations to Rand Paul and Tulsi Gabbard for landing on a list of prominent Russian propagandists; you can stick that on one of the many shelves in your office that aren’t full of Legislator Who Did a Good Job Serving Their Constituents awards.
The massive corruption scandal in Mississippi has reached the doorsteps of former governors and Very Important Football Men, so naturally, they’re firing the investigators. Yeah, they’re really draining the swamp down there, which means they’re gonna need to find someplace else to bury all the folks Tate Reeves got killed during the pandemic.
The enormous, Soros-funded, deep state conspiracy against all thing Real and Murican runs even deeper than we knew, all the way up the goddamn phylogenic tree of life, y’all. Or so says Sean Hannity, anyhow, in an entirely rational, extremely normal, not-at-all loony diatribe, about the coronavirus unfairly singling out Donald “Drink Bleach” Trump for a meaner version of Covid than Joe “Actually Don’t Drink Bleach, That Would Be Silly and Ineffective” Biden caught.
Yes, all is well and good in the United States of America, where some purchase their own, personal, private dinosaur skeletons, while others are asked to exchange their labor for fried chicken. Don’t let the lamestream liberal media tell you there’s an income inequality problem, though. Take your MyDewormer and go to bed.
Buried as we are ‘neath this avalanche of scat, surely only Andrew Yang’s vanity project can save us, says Andrew Yang, fooling Andrew Yang and no one else. Oh man, it’s gonna be so fun, seasoning this struggle to save democracy with a bunch of fruitless internet arguments with toxic third party bros. Again. So fun.
I know there’re folks out there who worried that Merrick Garland spent the last year and a half playing Minesweeper, so I hope everyone’s resting easier now that we officially know DoJ has been investigating Donnie One-Term’s role in the Stoopid Coo.
‘Specially since they’ve got Mark Meadows’ phone records. I guess there’s not much time to worry about OPSEC when you’re doing lines with Junior, so you can stay up one more hour, brainstorming ways to sneak Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell onto the Supreme Court, but goddamn, that guy left one helluva trail.
You’ll be pleased to learn that U.S. veterans exposed to toxic burn pits while risking their lives in service to the nation, those filthiest of takers, shall suckle no treatment from the teat of your government, thanks to the great patriots of the Senate Republican Caucus.
This was part of the larger GOP tantrum in response to the week’s unexpected deus ex Manchina, when a certain West Virginia Senator decided that actually, he’d quite enjoy using reconciliation to pass the most significant climate bill in American history, thank you kindly. And there was much rejoicing.
…except amongst Mitch McConnell’s decidedly un-merry band of obstructionists, of course. They always get pissy when Democrats do that Democrat thing, where we solve the problems we’re elected to solve, instead groveling before reality television personalities, or mucking out the DeVos family stables. Highlights unflattering differences between the parties, y’see.
So it’s time once more for the ol’ How Dare You Wield the Power You Earned at the Ballot Box meltdown, which I don’t remember hearing during the heady days of SCOTUS heists and tax cuts for the rich. Susan Collins, dissatisfied with her existing shameful place in civil rights history, poutingly threatened to withhold support for the LGBTQ rights bill, because Susan Collins will always find the path to simpering fecklessness; it’s simply what Susan Collins does.
But yeah, Biden’s actually doing pretty damn well these days, (for a deepfake hologram man, anyway) deftly outmaneuvering the Party of No with razor-thin congressional majorities. Why, it’s almost like it’s not his first rodeo.
Good, cuz we could use the wins. And I could use a beer, now that I think of it. So I’ll sign off till next week. Stay safe out there, chums.
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