TheFerret
TheFerret's JournalAbsolute Batguano Insanity
The madness has gone into overdrive ever since the Dried-out Play-Doh Manatee decided he didn't need no stinkin' oversight and fired James Comey, and we're all just careening around the Wasteland in search of fuel and crullers these days.
Let's start with the dastardly act of deception perpetrated by the Russians in the very Oval Office itself! It seems a photographer from a Russian state-owned media agency took a photo of Drumpf with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and published it without American consent! "They tricked us," a White House official said, "They lie!"
Well, what sort of le Carré-worthy plot landed a Russian propaganda photojournalist, unscreened, carrying God only knows what other recording equipment, in the innermost sanctum of the executive branch?
Well y'see...Lavrov said "Do not worry about it, comrade, he is with me."
And every single person in the White House, up to and including the President, went "Sounds good, bro, come on in! You want a coke? We gots a button for it!"
Is this really all it takes to "trick" the guy with nuclear codes? Does Steve Bannon play "got your nose" with the President and make him sign executive orders before he'll give it back? Will he send the marines into Nigeria to rescue that prince that keeps e-mailing him?
(By the way, everybody's favorite Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak was in the meeting, too. We only know that because of the Russian photos, cuz the official White House readout doesn't mention it. Maybe he's like, invisible to republicans, or something?)
Anyhow, the Marmalade Shartcannon rampaged through a number of media interviews with the clear intent of getting himself involuntarily committed. He told the Economist that he invented the phrase "priming the pump," which was hilarious enough until we started digging around and learned he's filed trademark applications for a number of things, including "red baseball caps," "opposable thumbs" and "toast."
In an interview with Time, he ranted at length about a number of personalities on CNN and MSNBC, which then insisted he does not watch. He even called Stephen Colbert "filthy" before lamenting that no one seems to get close enough to him to grab by the pussy anymore. He also dropped a little gem about how he bombed Syria because he wanted the world to stop laughing at him, finally demonstrating why we don't let seventh graders vote. Or make military combat decisions.
But Holy Christ on Toast, the main even was his interview with NBC's Lester Holt, which can only be viewed as a housewarming gift to the inevitable impeachment prosecutors. He casually undercut the entire bullshit story that nobody believed anyway, but that his team had been furiously spinning for a day and a half about the Comey firing. "No, it wasn't Rosenstein, it was all me! ME AND MY NORMAL SIZED MAN HANDS CAN FIRE WHO I WANNA." He said he didn't fire Michael Flynn after finding about all his lying and foreign agenting because it didn't seem like a big deal and anyway BROS BEFORE HOS only instead of "hos" it's "the security and integrity of the United States and its citizens."
Oh, and he said he was thinking about the Russia investigation, which he whinged about being a "hoax" dreamed up as an "excuse" by Democrats (which it demonstrably is not), when he was making the decision to fire James Comey.
Which is a confession of obstruction of justice. On television.
In unrelated news, multiple sources are telling me everyone in the White House counsel's office has banded together in a death pact, and have begun making sacrifices to a television they've kept hidden from Reince Priebus so as to watch something other than Fox News; they call it Maddow-Ra, and claim it as their God.
Generally, the collapse of the excuses for the Comey firing, like a Jenga tower built from soggy Cheerios, was the day's overarching theme.
The initial story was that Rod Rosenstein, some sort of holy man of unimpeachable character who rode into the Justice Department on a horse made of pure light, took one look at the dastardly dealings of Mr. Comey and demanded he be cast out posthaste!
But Rowdy Roddy didn't like being made the jackass in this game of Pin the Blame on the New Guy, so he threatened to quit and demanded the record be set straight, which didn't seem to be a problem since Donnie Darko doesn't like to give the impression that anyone talks him into anything, as he is the Firer of the Fired.
The initial story was, hilariously, that it was Comey's conduct in the Clinton e-mail investigation that led to his dismissal.
But the Ravenous Swarm of Leakers That Drumpf Will Never Ever Ever Ever Be Able to Contain Ha Ha Ha Suck It Loser surfaced as you knew they would, with stories of Dorito Mussolini yelling at his teevee when Comey was on it talking about his traitorous ass being investigated, of requests for the FBI to investigate totally-not-illegal leaks of stuff that's just embarrassing because he's a fuckup who doesn't know how to do his job, of the President demanding "loyalty" from the dude in charge of investigating him, which is a totally reasonable thing to demand.
The initial story was that Comey had lost the confidence of the rank-and-file in the FBI.
But then everybody in the FBI, publicly and privately, was all, "No, he was an asshole, but he was our asshole and we actually love him so don't speak for us, you lying turdcakes!" and even I-guess-I'm-in-charge-for-a-few-hours-anyway acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said "Nope. Lies."
But Substitute Spicey Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she has talked to countless thousands of FBI agents who were all "Fuck that Comey guy, you guys rule for firing him," and the White House press corp laughed at her and said "Yeah right, name two FBI agents," and HuckSands retorted "I will not, just trust me, when have I lied to you except at yesterday's press conference when every word out of my mouth has since been proven to be so much unfiltered bull?"
The initial story was that the Russia investigation is just an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot investigation, hardly an investigation at all really, but McCabe shat on that one too, and said "Oh boy is it a big investigation, getting bigger every day, it'll be going off to college before you know it, thanks for asking."
And of course there's the tiny detail that Comey seems to have asked for more money for the investigation right before he got canned, which is a ZANY coincidence, but Jeff Sessions sez it didn't happen and he's praying to the God of Racist Yokels Who Shouldn't Have the Jobs They Have that nobody else can back up Comey but bad news Beauregard, it looks that they can.
Fuck, actually all kinds of shit is leaking. Trump said "something was wrong" with Comey, Comey called him "Crazy," and Steve Bannon keeps putting post-it notes that say "Cuck" on Jared Kushner's back. WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT'S BEEN, AMIRIGHT?
The Shart was apparently planning a lil' visit to FBI headquarters, but he cancelled when he found out he'd be greeted with a Carrie-style shower, only with buckets of poo not blood. Heh.
Meanwhile Orange Julius Caesar's poll numbers continue to plummet. It turns out the American people hate the President, and they hate his Ass Face, and his Ass Health Care Bill, and his Ass Tax Plan, and his Ass Firing of the Guy Who Was Investigating Him.
Senate Republicans are reportedly worried that the whole "Presidential treason" thing might drag down their agenda, which, for those who forgot, is making the wealthy wealthier at the low low price of shortening the lifespans of the unwashed masses, who're really too unwashed and mass-y to deserve life anyway, right?
Of course the genuinely horrifying news of the day was President Skidmark creating a commission to "investigate" voter fraud, and placing reincarnated Cossack Kris Kobach in charge of it. Kobach's life's work is fabricating bullshit "studies" to keep non-white folks from voting so that Klan-leaning white dudes like Kris Kobach can have more pie, so maybe let's skip the commission and jump straight to the terrifying wave of voter suppression bills these assclowns will concoct to keep themselves in power.
Oh, and a journalist was arrested. In America. For asking HHS Secretary Tom Price a question. And Price was all "fuck yeah they arrested him, wasn't that rad?"
No, Tom Price. It was not rad.
Craziest day yet. And that's saying somethin'.
After dallying for a few days in the realm of the merely nutty, the news took a turn for for the poop-flingingly insane today, folks. What the walking hell is going on in this country?
Remember how we all gathered around our phones and tablets Sunday afternoon waiting for the French Presidential election results to roll in? Because this is what we do now, we tune in every few weeks to the hot new game show "Nazi, or Nah?" And thank god (or whatever the God of France is, some sort of large, rude, talking crepe, I imagine) they elected the one who isn't a Nazi and other countries were learning from our mistakes and we smiled and felt good and then we noticed that we were still only two minutes closer to the midterms.
Team Elephant hit the Sunday Shoz with the unenviable task of Pissing On America's Leg and Telling Us It's Raining, schilling their Growing Old is Only For the Rich bill, excuse me, the AHCA. Taking a page from Boss Shart's playbook, they've decided to just strap on a creepy smile and lie and lie and hope nobody ever notices. They insist that taking 800 billion dollars out of Medicaid won't lead to anyone losing insurance, that their so-small-they're-like-the-Trump's-fingers-of-health-care "high risk pools" will take care of everybody just fine despite the long observable history of high risk pools doing no such thing, that despite the billions in tax cuts bestowed upon the wealthy, somehow the wealthy are not getting a massive cut paid for by, y'know, stealing health insurance from millions of serfs.
And boy howdy, Republicans, from columnists to pundits to congressdemons are RIGHTEOUSLY INDIGNANT that Democrats are out there telling everybody about the millions of people who will lose insurance and the thousands who would inevitably die. They are particularly angry at Jimmy Kimmel for his dastardly assertion that maybe a kid who happens to be born with serious health problems deserves a shot at a decent life, that CUCK. Newt Gingrich stood atop the holy mountain and, his voice shaking with self-regard, told us Jimmy is a terrible person for worrying about pre-existing conditions because babies can't be denied emergency care which is technically true but means exactly FUCKALL to a human being who has to navigate all those pesky non-baby years with a chronic health condition. (If you don't believe me, next time you get cancer, pop up at your local ER and tell 'em you want George Clooney to administer a six month chemotherapy regimen.) Y'see, in the old days, before the ACA, those folks had two options: 1) Find your way to the obscenely large amount of money necessary to treat their conditions over the course of their entire lives or 2) Die like the plebe scum they are.
Of course, while they're talking Big n' Tuff on the teevee, at home in their districts, the GOP congressmonsters are mostly just hiding. While 217 bravely cast their vote to destroy millions of their constituents' lives, it seems only 14 were brave enough to look those constituents in the eye at town halls on the current recess and explain why their lives are worth less than the donor class' summer homes. HUH.
Rod Blum, which seems to be the name of an Iowa congressman and not a hippie porn star, decided to make himself famous by bolting from an entirely tame interview like a cat running away from a vacuum store. Raul Labrador huffed and puffed and haughtily proclaimed, "Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care," which strikes me as a good way to get your ass good and righteously haunted by the ghosts of all the folks who died because they didn't have access to health care. Raul was so chastised for the blowback tohis heartless arrogance that he decided to announce a run for Governor of Idaho, which he will probably win, because Idaho. Sigh. Living Muppet Villain Paul Ryan spewed his usual bullshit about everyone having "access" to great insurance, in the way that everyone has "access" to Lady Gaga tickets and space tourism and custom-made sex dolls that look like Haley Barbour if that happens to be what you're into. It's all so much horseshit, but they seem to have faith that their constituents will keep on insisting that accurate coverage of the effects of the AHCA is FAKE NEWS right up until ten minutes after their last credit card gets maxed out and their respirator gets unplugged.
But then yesterday we all digitally gathered around capitol hill to watch Ninja Superhero Iron Chef Vampire Slayer Wandering Ronin Sally Yates drop the Mother of All Truth Bombs on the unspeakably corrupt cabal occupying our executive branch.
(Also in attendance was Adorably Cantankerous Old Fart Who Has Also Probably Killed Men With His Bare Hands James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence. Mr. Clapper spent some time clarifying terms like "unmasking" and "incidental collection" in attempt to calm down the rabid maniacs trapped in the right wing media bubble, I bet that worked out great, don't you?)
And Sally Yates acquitted herself quite nicely, thank you very much
The Republicans on the panel generally wanted to talk about anything except the shady Russian connections that so very very very very many members of the sitting Republican administration (Senator Al Franken did us the solid of listing them one after another with the punchline being that there were so very very many) seem to have, which is weird, don'tcha think?? So they tried to talk about the weather, or the Nationals, or ANYTHING BUT RUSSIA PLEASE GOD. Lindsey Graham, for example, was not so terribly upset that a foreign agent who lied about earning all them sweet sweet rubles held a very important national security post that he had no business holding, but GOLLY he had a bee in his bonnet that the American people found out about it! And he's a-plannin' to bring down the full power of his julep-soaked jowls on those damn dirty leakers who are clearly the real problem and not the Russians who interfered with our democracy.
John Cornyn of Texas scolded Miss Sally for forgetting her manners and standing up for the rule of law while the menfolk were busy stranding doctors in airports with their executive orders, and Yates not only threw up her middle fingers but threw 'em up sideways like she was in some Tarantino flick, and told him "I work for the constitution, not that Racist Orange Thumb in the White House and I am not scared of doddering old white dudes so if you wanna talk about how disappointed you are in me, you should know my last fuck is buried in an unmarked grave, SIR." Ted Cruz was particularly gleeful for the chance to trot out his phony preacher voice, since nobody cares what he thinks anymore since that time he couldn't even out-racist a reality TV host. He tried playing Fancy Impressive Senator man at Sally Yates by quoting a statute at her, but she quoted a more recent statute back at his doughy, punchable, Ted Cruz face, and so he ran away to cry in the Senate coat room about how spends his life kissing the ass of a man who insulted his wife and father.
Meanwhile, John Kennedy of Louisiana chose to use his time to raise awareness of what an unbearable asshole John Kennedy of Louisiana is.
The moral of the story is Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates ain't nothin' to fuck with. She told the tale of warning the new administration about all the lawbreaking shenanigans Michael Flynn had been up to, and how they responded with stupid questions like "If everybody in the executive branch is lying to each other, what's the biggie anyway?" and she had to say "HAVING A NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR WHO IS SUSCEPTIBLE TO RUSSIAN BLACKMAIL IS NOT A GREAT IDEA YOU UNBELIEVABLE JAGOFFS."
An then they decided not to fire him anyway, despite all the lying and foreign agenting and whatnot, until the press got ahold of the story and they were all "fine, he's fired, but the real problem is that somebody told the press all this stuff, our corruption should be classified and shit."
(And we can also now more perfectly imagine the gut-busting laughter that greeted Michael Flynn's overtures for immunity. "HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHNoseriouslyyou'regoingtodieinjailHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH"
Meanwhile, Il Douche's racist-as-fuck Muslim Ban got its day in court. Now, Team Trump has tried to argue that they're not administering a religious test for immigration, which would most likely be unconstitutional, but ACLU lawyers keep using the dozens of instances of the campaign promising a Muslim ban against them, so far to great success. After being confronted about this in a Spicer briefing, somebody scrubbed the references to the Muslim ban from the Trump campaign website, like that would make the whole case fall apart, leaving the flustered ACLU types shaking their fists at the sky, cursing their wily foes for executing such a master stroke.
This has actually become a popular tactic all across the right this week, as both the Marmalade Shartcannon and his little Shartkins in congress have taken to erasing or rewriting their campaign promises, particularly on health care, on their websites. "Did you think we promised access to affordable health care? You must've misheard, we promised access to cold, unfeeling death. Your mistake."
We learned that FBI Director Gavrilo Princip, excuse me, "James Comey" told a bit of a fib when he testified under oath to congress that Madame Hilldawg forwarded All The Classified Emails to Anthony Weiner's dick-pick-dispensing machine, WHOOPSIES. Totally a coincidence that Comey's less-than-honest version gives him a sliver of ethical cover in blowing up the election and turning the nation over to a cabal of lunatic Ku Klux Klownsmen, INNIT? (When I wrote this paragraph earlier today, I thought it was all the Comey gnus fit to print, BOY WAS I WRONG.)
Oh, and the New Yorker published a piece, that said, among other things, that the most powerful human being on the planet believes that the human body is a "battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted" and that means that EXERCISE IS BAD FOR YOU AND WILL KILL YOU FASTER HOLY SHIT THIS MAN IS SO FUCKING DUMB HOW DOES HE EVEN USE THE BATHROOM WITHOUT HURTING HIMSELF?
Anyhow, stung by his Yates-born smackdown, Donnie Darko decided to send a letter to congress signed by his mom saying he has no business ties with Russia plus the school cafeteria can't make him eat the vegetables on his tray if he doesn't want to, I GUESS THAT CLEARS UP THE RUSSIA STORY FOREVER. Never mind the thing that JUST broke where Eric "Inherited His Daddy's Brains" Trump bragged about all the millions of dollars in Russian money that finances their golf courses.
And Cud-Brained Spokesdoorknob Sean Spicer tried a little light smearjob on the Divine Miss Sally, but he fucked it up, literally citing "rumors" as his evidence, because Sean Spicer so stupid a man that the daily act of putting on pants is a life-threatening endeavor. He dropped a line about how happy President Scrotal Fungus was to have his Russia ties investigated, a statement destined to become fucking hilarious in just a few hours. I think maybe we should stop being so hard on Sean, and just applaud him for making it to work today without putting his underpants on over his suit.
(It was right around now that Team Shart's social media director started bragging about how he was going to post a video of Hillary Clinton's election night concession phone call, because that is something that mature adults who can be trusted to wield unchecked power do.)
Anyhow, right as cocktail time rolled around, SHARTUS fired the man heading the investigation in his campaign's ties to Russian intelligence agencies.
But then the Pence family introduced an adorable bunny who will be living in -WAIT WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY? YES, I'M SCREAMING THAT AT MYSELF ALONE IN MY OFFICE WHY DO YOU ASK?
The President of the United States, Donald John "Twenty Pounds of Shit in a Ten Pound Bag" Trump, fired FBI Director James "Ok, so I fucked up the whole world, sue me" Comey, the dude in charge of the investigations into Team Shart's possible collusions with a hostile foreign power.
Turns out the President's Loyal Huntin' Dawg, Beauregard, not only recused himself from the Russia investigation, but reserved the right to also recuse anyone who might be tempted to actually conduct it. In a bit of satire so dark it'd make Oscar Wilde cry tears of blood, these malevolent tumors festering in Democracy's colon had the audacity to use Comey's handling of the Clinton/Abedin/Weiner's Peen e-mail debacle as the excuse for his termination.
Got that? At every opportunity, for months, Orange Julius Caesar has been lamenting Comey's decision to not prosecute his Democratic rival, but the day after Sally Yates testified in front of the whole world, suddenly Jolly Jim Comey had to go because of how mean he'd been to Hillary "Lock Her Up" Clinton.
Anyway, I'm sure the President will appoint a fair, impartial, replacement, who will shepherd the FBI's investigation with the diligence it demands.
And if you believe that, I'd like to tell you about the service I provide caring for your pets after the rapture. Payment due up front.
Leakers tell us that Tangerine Idi Amin went to the Justice department and was all "Will no one rid me of this troublesome FBI director?" (Just kidding, "troublesome" is way too high-school a word for Trump to use, I'm just making a history joke so that I come off smart), and Jeffy and his deputy (who I assume is a droopy-faced cartoon puppy with an oversized cartoon tin star, of course) were all too happy to provide the cover.
Needless to say, the whole word is going apeshit as I type this, except for the majority of congressional republicans, who somehow still expect us all to believe that is totally normal.
Senator John McCain expressed his "disappointment" in the firing before authorizing Lindsey Graham to cast his vote in absentia for whatever the fuck Donald Trump wants, because Johnny Mac talks like a Maverick but votes like a Company Man.
In the wake of tonight's breaking news, Barely-Perceptible Congressamoeba Tom Garrett told constituents at a town hall meeting that the currently sitting and serving President of the United States of America is "small potatoes compared to Nazi Germany," because that's the discussion we're having in our country tonight. The fucking NIXON LIBRARY is out there tonight tweeting about sure, Tricky Dick was a scumbag, but he never pulled shit like Trump's pulling.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, goonspawn/deputy press secretary, went on Fox to present the novel theory that everybody should just "move on" from the Russia thing, which injects an almost-charming naïveté into tonight's madness. Literally while Huckabee Sanders was speaking, news broke that prosecutors were subpoenaing a number of Michael Flynn's associates, so my guess is Sarah doesn't get her wish.
Oh, and Antonio Sabato Jr. is running for congress. Isn't that just a ZANY-ASS LITTLE STORY? ISN'T LIFE JUST WACKY THESE DAYS? ANTONIO SABATO JUNIOR WHO WOULDA GUESSED?
If anybody needs me, I'm the guy in a bathrobe hosting a little tea party for his cat, a Spider-Man action figure, and an autographed 8 x 10 of Judge Reinhold. WE'RE ALL CRAY HERE.
The GOP tripping over themselves to show us all just how much they hate the American people
Well, the GOP decided to throw a little theme party this week, and the theme was CRUELTY. Stung by all those You Ain't Done Shit About Shit 100 days pieces, everybody from the lowliest wannabe Klansman serving on a small town school board to the dead-eyed demons occupying the highest perches of political power decided to show the country just what the Republican Party is all about: the vengeful, destructive hatred of everyone who disagrees with them. There was punch, a piñata that turned out to a DREAMer, and a rousing game of musical chairs where a group of plebes with kids who were born with genetic diseases competed believing the winner would get health insurance, but when there was just one chair left Paul Ryan took it away and everyone laughed and toasted with champagne that costs more than most folks' rent.
The big story remains the House Republican Caucus' efforts to find the precise number of American lives they can get away with destroying in order to pass their Die, Taker Scum bill, excuse me, the "AHCA."
Last night, Jimmy Kimmel gave a moving monologue on his show about the life-threatening heart condition afflicting his newborn son, pointing out that this brand new human doesn't deserve a life of constant illness and terror and financial hardship just because of the way he was born, and a number of Republican commentators jumped down his throat because now all the parents are gonna want all the sick children to live and money doesn't grow on trees and keeping sick kids alive means the Koch brothers will only be able to sprinkle gold leaf on their breakfast oatmeal six days a week YOU RIFFRAFF.
Meanwhile, a group of so-called "moderates" led by Bloated Shitweasel Fred Upton engaged in some genuinely grotesque political theatre, beating their breasts over the plight of Americans with pre-existing conditions, who, under a new amendment brokered by the bloodthirsty maniacs of the Freedom Caucus were granted the Freedom to have insurance they can't afford, which is supposed to be a greater Freedom than the one they already have, which is insurance they CAN afford, DON'T FUCKING ASK ME, THIS IS WHY I'M NOT REPUBLICAN.
Shitweasel Upton's grand scheme is to throw the change from America's sofa into a "high-risk pool," offering about enough funding to secure 42 hours worth of insurance plus a two-for-one-coupon to Chick-Fil-A to the millions of people this bill would leave out in the cold. And of course everyone's pretending that we never tried high risk pools before, and that they weren't proven to be about as successful as the fucking XFL.
Anyway, these rampaging assholes seem hellbent on ramming this bill through the House before the people can see what's in it, and before the CBO can score it, because maybe they think tomorrow never comes, I guess? Like, if they stick their fingers in their ears and hum the Andy Griffith theme as loud as they can, nobody will ever learn how many early graves they're so gleefully digging?
Everybody hates the bill, doctors groups, hospital groups, insurers, patients groups, the AARP, the AMA, the AHA, the March of Dimes, lions, tigers, bears, and oh yeah, American citizens who don't want their government to kill them. Everybody's all bent out of shape over the silly notion that the federal government shouldn't be actively working to usher in the early deaths of its constituents, the CUCKS.
Anyway, look for these fucks to get straight to work on some voter suppression laws, cuz the midterms are now set to be biggest toilet flush in American history. "I was just concerned that too many of my constituents lived without the life-enriching constant fear of medical bankruptcy" seems like a less-than-inspiring campaign slogan.
Oh, and in the midst of processing all the senseless suffering the AHCA would inflict on countless millions, it can easy to forget that the whole thing is being done simply to give a massive tax to the wealthiest people in the country. Don't.
Also, we discovered Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's entry for this evening's Sadism Pagent. See, Rickie decided to cut off the subsidies for the Flint residents who were having trouble paying their monthly water-but-it's-actually-poison bills, and so there are a bunch of families who're having their homes foreclosed on because they fell behind on paying for the lead-ridden sludge that will fuck up their children's entire lives, but don't worry, that's a pre-existing condition so you'll go into a high-risk pool and you'll get a free lollipop to go with the brief, pain-filled life your Republican government gave you so that it could save a few bucks by not making sure your water wasn't poison. YAY CONSERVATISM.
Meanwhile, we learned that our Marmalade Shartcannon President, who can't be bothered to learn the contents of the bills he's trying to pass, became personally involved in the quest to hunt down the modern day Benedict Arnold who tweeted the dastardly state secret that the Shart's inauguration wasn't as well-attended as that of his predecessor, duh, because we all fucking hate him so very very much.
Speaking of things the Idiot Manchild doesn't know, he gave a little a TED talk about how easy it'll be to work out an Israel/Palestine peace deal, because I guess nobody tried real hard before. But fear not, he's outsourcing it to his son-in-law, because Jared was able to do the one thing Donnie Darko has always wanted to do but hasn't been able to (NUDGE NUDGE FUCK IVANKA) so he must be the greatest dealmaker of all time.
After barely pulling off the fucking Easter Egg Roll, the Shart House has decided it needs a golf break, and so it canceled the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration in favor of lurking around courthouses waiting for undocumented immigrants to report domestic violence.
Dr. Ben Carson popped up to talk about the Most Lamentable Tragedie that people who live in public housing may occasionally enjoy a passing minute or two during their lives, and aren't regularly flogged for their sins, because it was Cruelty Day, and Dr. Ben is a company man.
Sleepwalking Skeksi Rex Tillerson held a meeting trying to boost morale at the State Department in the wake of the news that he's planning to trim 2,300 employees from our diplomatic corps without understanding fuckall about what any of them do. I'm told it didn't go well.
Unwilling to be outdone by all them fancy Washington elites, the grassroots got in on the cruelty action, as a Mississippi funeral home decided not to honor an agreement to cremate a dead fellah cuz the dead fellah liked kissing other fellahs when he was a not-dead fellah, because after all Jesus spends most of the Bible talking about how God mostly wants us to be dicks to people who are grieving.
We also got the news that the Justice Department, led by the President's Loyal Huntin' Dawg, Beauregard, has declined to prosecute the officers involved in the Alton Sterling shooting, because everybody knows there ain't nuthin' atawl illeguhl about shootin' a fellah who's bein' restrained by a couple of law enforcement officers, if'n the fellah happens to be a colored fellah.
Besides, the Justice Department has their hands full prosecuting 61-year-old women for the High Crime of laughing at ol' Beauregard.
Ok, you got me, that one's too ridiculous, too over-the-top, too Villain-in-an-Alan-Moore-comic to possibly be- wait, what? That was REAL LIFE ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?
NOPE! Jeff Sessions used his position as our nation's chief law enforcement officer to bring the hammer down on a protester who laughed when somebody suggested that ol' Beauregard had a history of treating of all Americans fairly, which is objectively laughable since Jeff was previously found to be Too Racist For the 80's. Anyway, the protester was convicted (along with two others) and faces a fine and up to a year in jail, which is a totally normal thing that happens all the time in America, RIGHT?
There was a whole thing with James Comey, too, God fuck him eternally with a potato masher. I guess he said he gets a tummy-ache when he thinks about his role in turning the keys of government over to band of blisteringly incompetent white supremacist assclowns. POOR JIMMY.
...shit be cray.
Another day in the asylum our country has become
I don't know if you've heard, y'all, but Shit be Cray.
The first hundred days mark has come and gone, and the Candycorn Skidmark gave a bunch of interviews, trying to pitch the American public the idea that what had been keeping America from being Great Again was too many national parks and too little coal ash in our drinking water. Instead, he reminded everyone what a horrifyingly perfect collision of malicious stupidity of unearned self-regard he possesses, like a Reese's cup of Qualities You Don't Want in an American President. He assured us his health care bill would do something that it demonstrably does not do, spewed some nonsense about Andrew Jackson and all the slaves he owned preventing the Civil War, and MY favorite, on being confronted with his horseshit accusations of being wiretapped by his predecessor, petulantly ended the interview, saying "I don't stand by anything," which should be the banner on his family crest (Which is a picture of a fat asshole golfing while everyone laughs at his tiny, tiny hands).
Also, the Man With a Cancer-filled Scrotum For a Heart continues to reshape America's foreign policy like a guy getting a little too into playing Germany in a game of Axis & Allies. Having insulted the leaders of Germany and Italy to their faces in front of the media during their White House visits, Il Douche heaps praise on autocratic monsters like The Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, who has turned his country in a murder-ridden hellhole, and Turkey's Tayyip Erdoğan, who is such a good friend to our nation he just had a bunch of our closest allies in Syria killed. Hell, Donnie even talked about how "honored" he'd be to meet Kim Jong Un, because undermining decades of unified international isolation of that lunatic regime without giving a fleeting moment's thought to the consequence is JUST HOW HE ROLLS, BITCHES!
For reasons you'd need a small army of psychiatric professionals to explain, the House GOP continues to attempt to whip votes for the Mass Murder of the America Poor Act, or what they'd have you call the "AHCA." To placate the rabies-infected clown car known as the Freedom Caucus, Paul Ryan added some "sweeteners" to the bill, if "sweeteners" means "human corpses." The new version is even grosser and more needlessly pain-inflicting than the original, kind of like the Anne Heche PSYCHO remake, only you die instead of just wanting to for a couple hours. What's extra-strange about all this is these twits have ample evidence available to them that the American people don't want them to take away millions of folks' health care (HUH) and will punish them electorally if they keep trying to. It's like watching a dude hit himself in the temple with a ball peen hammer over and over, wondering why it isn't teaching him how to play the bassoon. Anyway, the "no" votes keep piling up, so it looks like the Freedom Caucusers are gonna wind up with blue balls again, so they'll just have to get together in Ted Cruz's basement to circle jerk to the chapter in The Grapes of Wrath when Jim Casy gets killed.
Former Castle Garden Gnome Brought to Life By a Witch's Curse Who Then Went Into the World to Make His Fortune Laundering Money for Russian Oligarchs and Wasn't Around When the Beast's Curse Was Lifted and Thus Has Been Unable to Regain Human Form Wilbur Ross, who is our Commerce Secretary for some reason, told a super funny joke about how launching the air strike on Syria was super-fun after-dinner "entertainment" at Marm-a-Lago, and it was especially great because "it didn't cost the President anything," HAW HAW HAW, except that it cost all us chump taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and the Syrian Air Force was launching strikes from the base we hit less than a day later, so they joke was apparently on us HAW H...heh...hee?
The best news this week has been the spending bill, which, despite Republican control of the entire government, looks more like Democratic budget than it has any right to. The team that worked out the compromise took Mr. Big Bad Negotiator, Mr. Shart of the Deal's Big Important Budget Proposal and put in on rolls for the Capitol Hill restrooms. Then they took Fake Wonk Paul Ryan's document, looked at all the things he wanted, and just said "Nah," over and over until he disappeared in a puddle screaming "What a world, what a world." If negotiations ever got too heated, Chuck Schumer would just hold up a cheap paper mask on a popsicle stick of Mark Meadows' face and remind "Speaker" Ryan that he was welcome to try to find enough republican votes to pass his bill. They kept Planned Parenthood's money, gave Drumpf much smaller increases than he wanted and blocked the majority of his proposed cuts (to say nothing of genuinely important funding for coal miners' health care and for Puerto Rico). They even secured INCREASES in funding for the NEA and NIH because FUCK YOU DONNIE THAT'S WHY.
Most hilariously, they insisted on language that says "By the way, under no circumstances is anybody allowed to use one thin dime for any Mexican border walls any spraytanned dickheads might be thinking about building." And they're gonna make that Assclown sign it.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
Like, Chuck and Nancy are gonna march that bill into the Oval with Mitch McConnell on a leash with a ball gag in his mouth, Schumer's gonna stinkpalm him, and everybody'll take selfies with Shartboy holding the page that says NO WALL MONEY, FUCKO, and then Steny Hoyer's just gonna whip it out and piss right in the middle of the fucking room, and as they're walking out they'll draw everybody's attention to a rider nobody mentioned before that says Steve Bannon has to do the truffle shuffle before he's allowed in the building from now on. And just before she leaves, Pelosi'll say, without even facing him, "You can sit at the Resolute Desk, but that don't make you President, Son."
In the background, suddenly everybody from Pelosi to Samantha Bee is talking about how much they miss George W, which makes you wonder if, in a decade or so, Republican voters will deliver us into the arms of some monstrous fuckstick who'll make us long for these days of nonstop careening madness. It'd have to be some drunken, illiterate, Volcano God who demands regular human sacrifices, I guess.
And every couple of weeks, the Washington Post will track down some yokel who just had his wife and daughters tied to a stone slab and bled out, and he'll say "That Volcano God tells it like it is, man. Plus he promised me a high paying job. And a slave."
Still More Madness
Oh wow. I don't usually do these on back-to-back days, but the news kept coming at me today like a tommy gun full of bat guano, so let's all tear our clothes off and run naked through the poppy field that is the news these days.
We started with the national media picking up last night's story about the Marmalade Shartcannon seeking a review of the last 21 years' worth of national park designations, with an eye on reversing a few. Seriously, he wants to UN-DESIGNATE SOME FUCKING NATIONAL PARKS. Oddly, rather than being the plot of a Muppet film, this turned out to be objective reporting on the actions of the President of the United States. Hey, maybe you want to preserve our nation's natural beauty for your kids and grandkids, but the dudes in Rex Tillerson's poker game don't have quite enough mad money for recreational space travel, so FUCK YOU.
In the meantime, we gaped in horror as Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi told a group of high school kids that if a fella dressed in lady clothes walked into a room full of red blooded Murican Man-Men, that would be a super UNCIVIL thing to do, and if that made a gang of neanderthals gang up and Matthew Shepard him, well, what did he expect with his shameful lack of civility. Issuing a non-apology later in the day, Enzi claimed he was just trying to promote respect, and well, considering Mikey's long anti-LGBT history, he probably actually believes he's being unnaturally courteous in not setting up Chechen-style concentration camps in his home state's wide open spaces. Anyhow, Enzi is one of those fucks who usually quietly blends into the pasty-white GOP background, but don't forget he's just as big a raging fuckhead as a loudmouth like Ted Cruz.
There was also the thing where the nominee for Army Secretary threw a little hissy fit over the tricksy liberal conspiracy to paint him as a "hater" by quoting him saying incredibly hateful things. Over and over. For like, his entire adult life. Honestly, what are we coming to, where a man's own lengthy history of hate speech can be used to make him look bad? SOMETHING SOMETHING ANN COULTER SOMETHING SOMETHING FREE SPEECH.
Meanwhile, some soulless monster named "Tom MacArthur" seems to have drafted an amendment to the Mass Murder of the American Poor Act - excuse me, the "AHCA" finally cruel enough to placate the feral hyenas of the Freedom Caucus. It would allow red states to return to the bad old days of allowing insurers to sell plans that don't actually provide any practical insurance coverage, and to make insurance for the older and/or sick so expensive that those who need it most will be able to afford it least, though they'll still have ACCESS WINK WINK in the same way everybody has access to buying yachts and gold toilets and talking monkey cyborgs. Anyhow, Mark Meadows and company have declared the amendment to be Sufficiently Bloodthirsy, and now we have to see if the Tuesday Group centrists are more afraid of the raving Tea Party lunatics or the Hey-Please-Don't-Kill-Us types in their home districts. Obviously, the morality of stealing health care from millions of Americans is unlikely to be a factor in the calculus of these so-called "moderates."
Word is, Il Douche wants a vote on the bill by Friday, cuz he's frantically scrambling around looking for first-100-days accomplishments to clutch in his tiny, tiny hands. To that end, he released his much-anticipated foray into the insanely complex realm of tax reform, a single-page memo that says "Hey, cut every tax anybody with my last name has to pay, WOW ISN'T THAT A FUCKING COINCIDENCE, I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE THE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS I'D GET TO KEEP, WEIRD, HUH?" This includes, among other oligarch fertilizer, full repeals of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. Did you forget that thing when Rachel Maddow showed us the Shart's taxes? And he paid the AMT, without which he would have paid practically nothing? Yeah, google that. And no, of course Toupee Fiasco won't release his taxes! Then you'll know EXACTLY how much he's trying to steal from roads and cancer research and the military!
That his big tax plan got rolled out by a couple of Goldman Sachs alums and mostly benefits the ultra-wealthy and corporations is pretty weird, what with all the swamp-draining that I'm told has taken place.
Speaking of panicked attempts to earn extra credit before the end of the term, The Candycorn Assclown seems to be about to sign an executive order withdrawing from NAFTA, without really examining the consequences or consulting with anyone who would stand to be affected. This is just coke-fueled, insecure, "Fuck you, Obama, I'll bet YOU didn't dissolve any multi-national trade agreements in YOUR first 100 days" governing. Apparently there is another one of them "Competing Power Center" arguments going on, with some folks screeching "BURN THE WHOLE FUCKER DOWN" and others going "Or maybe think about it for a day or two first?" Because this is how our government works now, SLEEP TIGHT.
Oh, by the way, EPA head Scott Pruitt is about to violate the Hatch Act, appearing at a political fundraiser in his home state of Oklahoma, which is illegal in no small way. Under any other president, that'd be a massive scandal and front page news, but even you, reading this right now, are like "Hatch Act Schmatch Act, get to the good stuff!" Along the same lines the Failing New York Times published a story about Jared Kushner's business entanglements with another criminal billionaire, but he didn't turn out to be Russian, so we all went "ho-hum."
Anyhow, the Shart o' the Deal had made some threats about not making some important Obamacare payments, to show off how he's a Big Boy Who Pulls Up His Own Pants and Everything, but Democrats said "Well, then good luck trying to pass your spending bill without any of our votes, SPOILERZ YOU CAN'T" and so Mr. Super Deal Maker totally backed down again without getting anything he wanted, which he seems to do an awful lot for someone whose speciality is the making of deals, don'tcha think?
Littlefinger also threw a tantrum about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals holding up his sanctuary cities order, which it didn't (it was a lower court), and we all laughed at his childish mistake until he started talking about breaking up the 9th, and we were all reminded "oh yeah, he's a wannabe fascist dictator who'll bulldoze the fundamental pillars of American democracy if we let him." And then we put on our Resistin' Pants, and said "Over my dead, checks-n'-balances-lovin' body, you Rectal Tumor!"
Speaking of La Grande Sharte's fascist tendencies, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announced the opening of an office to specialize exclusively in demonizing immigrants by drawing extra attention to victims of crimes perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. Now, nobody wants to bring Nazis into these things, but this is exactly what the Nazis did, just with Jews, back in the day, and it is an absolute horror. Side note, I don't see any rush to assign special status to the victims of the racist shitsacks riled up by the President's two-year-long White Supremacist Hate Tour.
Also, White House advisor and Very Real Fascist Sebastian Gorka seems to have a Very Fake PhD, which is kind of funny until you realize that not only is he a white supremacist advising the President of the United States, but that he probably doesn't even crack the Top Three White Supremacists Currently Serving in the U.S. Executive Branch. BARF.
Later, Team Shart made quite a show of inviting the entire Senate to the White House for a briefing on North Korea. They don't seem to have offered any new policy or any new information, and Senators reported the briefers were evasive and uninformed when pressed to go deeper than their initial talking points. This shouldn't really surprise us; this administration briefing the U.S. Senate on foreign policy must be sort of like That One Douchey Guy Who Plays John Mayer Songs at College Parties briefing Pete Townshend on guitar playing.
Anyhow, if you can somehow follow all the madness of the news these days, you can even spend some time checking in on the weapons-grade insanity of the Alex Jones custody trial, which is like the deleted scene on the DVD of The News that had to be cut from the theatrical release in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. I started to read a little, but then I noticed all my targeted internet ads were suddenly for helmets and straight jackets, so I decided to check some sports scores instead.
There's more. There's always more. There's Moore. Roy Moore, possibly the Most Bigoted Man In Alabama, is apparently running for the Senate, for Christ's sake! But I'm about to go stone blubbering insane, so I'm out.
Shit be cray, folks...shit be cray.
Another day, another descent into madness.
The Ostomy Bag With a Dead Tabby on Top occupying the Oval Office is pitching fits this week, because he's creeping up on the very special day when every Televison network/Newspaper/Blog/Child Drawing on the Tablecloth With Crayons will publish identical pieces, all titled "We Knew He Was a Twit, But Seriously If We'd Elected a Half-Empty Can of Mello Yello President It Would've Achieved More In Its First 100 Days." He tried the "Aw, nobody cares about the dumb ol' first 100 days anyway," tactic, somehow hoping no one would notice the video footage of the dozens of times he promised to Solve All the Problems and Create All the Jobs and also invent a delicious chocolate cake that burns fat and cures cancer and whispers BOMB SYRIA in the voice of a sultry Russian spy, all in, ahem, his first 100 days.
Word is, he's been tugging on Paul Ryan's sleeve saying "Hey, I know you're busy hunting the poor for sport and all, but is there any chance you could pass a comprehensive health care bill this week? Why this week? Oh, no reason."
Flailing about for accomplishments beyond Turning Our Rivers Into All-the-Coal-Ash-You-Can-Drink Bars and Showed Kid Rock My Cool New Desk, Tangerine Idi Amin decided he was gonna put on his deal-makin' pants and get his big stupid wall built! Mustering all his fearsome negotiating might, he said "Mr. Schumer, pay for this wall! Or I will withhold crucial ACA payments, blowing up the insurance market and stripping health insurance from millions of Americans!"
Chuck Schumer then pinched himself fifteen times to make absolutely sure this was really happening in the real world. Was this clown really saying "gimme what I want or I start letting working class folks die from treatable ailments?" Did he somehow forget the humiliating defeat just weeks ago of the Trumpcare bill, sunk because the American people got righteously fightin' mad that the GOP was trying to take health care away from millions? Was Dorito Mussolini really threatening to do THE VERY SAME FUCKING THING HE WAS UNEQUIVOCALLY SHIT ON FOR JUST THE OTHER DAY? Well, if the President was so hell-bent on running face first into the same glass door he had just run into, what could Chuck do except buy some popcorn, set up a lawn chair, and laugh his ass off?
With no chance whatsoever of success, Drumpf backed off his demands today. And so the Shart of the Deal, the dude whose whole pitch was "Hey, I might a racist creep but I'm the best at deals," has utterly and completely failed in his only two attempts to cut deals with congress. His attempts to cut deals have yielding precisely Nothing He Wanted. He has a zero per cent success rate at dealmaking as President. He has exactly as many deals as there are good Transformers movies.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Word is, Donnie Darko is thirsty to move on to tax reform, floating a massive reduction in a certain type of corporate tax allllllll the way down to 15%. That this would result in the President pocketing a fuckton more money than he currently can is surely a coincidence, and the dishonest media is FAKE NEWSING by pointing this out, but seriously, does this assclown really imagine that using the power of his office to pass a giant cut to his own personal taxes will go well? I'm setting up a chair next to Chuck Schumer.
But Team Shart's bumbling ineptitude certainly hasn't been limited to legislation. When the Time/Life set of Trump's Biggest Fuckups comes out in a few years, I think we'll all smile nostalgically when we remember such hits as Telling a Purple Heart Recipient "Congratulations," or Having the Unbridled Temerity to Give a Hollow Statement at a Holocaust Remembrance Event After Embracing White Nationalism And Dragging His Feet Condemning Anti-Semitic Terror Acts And Also Refusing to Condemn David Duke For Weeks, or my personal favorite, I Got the Best Ratings Since 9/11. Determined to cement his image at a comic book supervillain, he's even ordered a revue of 21 years worth of national park designations with an eye on reversing a few, because he's FUCKING ANTI NATIONAL PARK TOO? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? DOES THE NEXT EXECUTIVE ORDER ABOLISH CUPCAKES AND PUPPIES?
Anyhow, Princess Invanka went on a little German vacation to play diplomat, because actual diplomatic experience is a disqualifying trait these days, and it went as well as you'd expect. She tried to talk about how super rad her dad is for women, and the Germans in attendance went Böööö (Which is German for "Boooo" , we all know he is a püssy-grabbing piece of shit you don't fool us, and also what the fuck is up with this "My daughter is also my advisor despite the whole No Relevant Experience thing? And she was all "Oh, I'm figuring out as I go along, isn't that cute," and the Germans were like "Nö it is not cute, you are all horrible." Oh and later it turned out that the Duchess of Nepotism's clothing line is produced by sweatshop workers, because of course it is.
Speaking of Diplomacy, Meandering Sleepwalker/Somehow the Actual Secretary of State Rex Tillerson apparently set up a meeting with African Union Chairperson and just...decided he didn't wanna, or forget about it cuz he got swept up in a MATLOCK marathon or something, resulting in no meeting and some seriously pissed off African diplomats. I don't know that it's fair to get mad at ol' Rex for this, though...it's not like it's his job to oversee our entire nation's diplomacy or anythOH WAIT.
Chief of Staff Rinse Pubis (I'm pretty sure that's his name, right?) tried to blame Democratic obstruction for his boss failing to nominate anyone to fill the eleventy-million open executive branch jobs, which is of course insane, but barely merits a mention in the general Shit Circus in the Middle of a Flaming Sharknado we all apparently live in now.
Meanwhile, advisor Sebastian Gorka tantrumed out of a panel at Georgetown because the students called him a Nazi for the TOTAL BULLSHIT reason that he's a Nazi. Indiana Jones is gonna catch up to you one of these days, Sebastian.
Polling continues to be an perpetual-motion-nut-punching machine for Il Douche. He and his team and his agenda (especially his health care bill and his big stupid wall) keep getting less and less popular, while Obamacare, and even IMMIGRATION (suck it Jeff Sessions) are gaining ever more fans. But of course all polls are fake gnus, except that one that showed a sturdy majority believes his hands are totally normal-sized.
Eager to show what a Big Strong Boy he is, especially having backed off his tough guy talk on labeling China a currency manipulator, the Idiot Manchild decided to pick a trade war fight with Canada over softwood lumber. Now, the U.S. National Association of Home Builders tells us that the new tariff will lead to a $1,300 increase in the construction cost of new single-family homes, and cost the industry more than 4,500 full time jobs. But hey, if that increases the cost of YOUR house, or costs you YOUR job, well you can just join those who make their living in the tourism industry and those in industries that rely on undocumented immigrant labor to keep costs down on the Go Fuck Yourself Bus; the President wants errybody to know what a Badass Hater of Furreners he is, and if you have to pay for it with a hit to your bank account, well FUCK YOU.
And then a federal judge blocked another executive order, the one that tried to strip funding from cities that refused to turn their police forces into an immigrant round-up Gestapo. My sources tell me that the Attorney General, our President's Loyal Huntin' Dawg Beauregard, was so upset on hearing this news, he wouldn't even play with his favorite chew toy (probably a stuffed animal of some non-white cartoon character) and wandered out onto the White House lawn to howl mournfully at the moon.
And OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT the steady drip drip drip of the Russia scandal filled up another pail this morning, as it turns out our old chum Mike Flynn broke the law in hiding payments from Russians so bad that even lame dick Jason Chaffetz has a problem with it. At least now we know why Mikey was slinking around asking "I can haz immunity?" a few weeks back. Good luck with that, dirtbag.
There's more madness, of course, from the Shart promising a Mars landing to one of his state campaign officials being charged with sex trafficking a minor to Alex Jones being sued by a fucking yogurt company, but there's really only so much of this anyone can take without their brain melting through their ears and running screaming into the night. So forgive me if I missed anything.
Oh noes! Not the NOOJ!
Ooooooo...Shartboy invited Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent to the White House and they took a photo by Hilldawg's portrait and the libtards would be SOOOOOOO MAD except that we're still too busy laughing about how all us snowflakes sunk your healthcare bill and you'll have no signature legislation at the end of your first hundred days and the democratic turnout in these special elections has you pissing yourself so seriously take whatever photographs you want, kid.
Further insanity, I need a damn straightjacket.
Maybe the last few days haven't been as batshit insane as some of the really nutty ones, or maybe as we approach 100 days of being locked in Arkham with these assholes, our standards for what constitutes true madness have shifted. Like if Charles Manson was your roommate, standing on a counter in Starbucks throwing poop at all the baristas wouldn't seem like that big a deal. On the other hand, having demoting Steve "Darth Wino" Bannon after a series of costly failures, perhaps the the Shart Administration has settled into a new normal of low-grade bumbling malice. So let's take a bit to laugh at these clowns as they wander around and crash into shit like so many bumper cars. Racist, hateful bumper cars.
Maybe you enjoyed a laugh over the weekend at the headlines about the Most Powerful Man on the Planet struggling to pull off the White House Easter Egg Roll (God love 'em, they got it done. The day after Easter, but nobody caught on fire, so it's probably making the 100 Days accomplishments list) or Alex Jones' own lawyer referring to him as a "performance artist" in a custody battle (and let's get an Underground Railroad going to get those kids away from that bellowing freak, by the way. You'd be better-adjusted if you were raised by a dead chinchilla and half-eaten package of watermelon Oreos than Alex Jones. Fuck.).
The last few days have been full of hilarious tales of GOP reps facing their constituents at town halls, defending the president's bi-hourly golf outings, or their "If you didn't want to die, you shouldn't have gotten sick before you made six million dollars" health care bill. They flailed and floundered, some insisted on digging themselves in even deeper holes, screeching about how their constituents don't actually pay their salaries (boy howdy that right there was a dumb fucking thing to say) or about how you wouldn't yell in church so don't yell at me, to which I say if my pastor was scheming to take away my health care I would absolutely yell at him in church, and by the way so would Jesus so shut your whore mouth, Congressman-for-now LaMalfa.
The news broke that Ivanka just so happened, WHAT A COINKYDINK to be granted a few trademarks in China on the I SWEAR, IT JUST HAPPENED, ISN'T THAT WEIRD very same day she had dinner with President Xi of China at her daddy's NO SERIOUSLY, THE TRUMP FAMILY IS USING THE ASSETS AND INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES TO NEGOTIATE PERSONALLY FAVORABLE FINANCIAL DEALS WITH CHINESE BUSINESSES AND NONE OF US WILL EVER SEE A NICKEL'S WORTH OF BENEFIT golf club, which, I am told, is not a newsworthy story at all.
Oh, and there's that little story where a white supremacist is suing the President for inciting him to violence at a campaign rally where he is in turn being sued for assaulting an African-American woman. (FUN FACT, this is not the only story about a white supremacist man assaulting a woman in the news today, isn't that neat?) Remember when that happened to President Obama? Or Bush? Or Clinton? Or Taft or Pierce of Harrison or Monroe or Frank Fucking Underwood? WELL SHIT, I DON'T REMEMBER THAT EITHER.
The most hilarious news of the day, possibly of all human history, came when the Failing New York Times issued a push notification to let the world know that when Orange Julius Caesar was bragging about sending "an armada" over to North Korea to intimidate them into giving up their nuclear program and instead devote themselves to composing song cycles praising the ratings of The Apprentice before that German fellah took over, the ships in question were in fact SAILING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Incompetence on that level, that easily-observable-to-the-entire-world level, is hard to comprehend. It's like the driver of an ice cream truck, instead of selling fudge pops to children, fills his freezer with rat corpses, drives into a playground swing set, and stands atop his vehicle screaming profanities until the authorities cart him away.
We learned that Dorito Mussolini joined the King of Saudi Arabia, (Where "Hey, should we let women drive cars?" qualifies as a major controversy) the President of Azerbaijan (Whose Veep is his fucking wife), the Borg Collective, Bill Cosby and the Red Skull as the handful of people so lacking in decency as to call up President Erdogan of Turkey to congratulate him on his disputed-by-international-election-monitors autocratic power grab, and probably asking him to write an article for Cosmo on 10 Easy Tips For Arresting Journalists While Not Looking Like a Jagoff For Having a Too-Long Necktie.
Toupee Fiasco's bumbling didn't stop there, as, in an interview with Fox (The official network of creepy old dudes who work in news in order to have access to blonde newscasters to harass) the COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE MIGHTIEST WAR MACHINE THE EARTH HAS EVER SEEN revealed that he thinks North Korea has been governed by the same man for untold decades, some sort of immortal super-leader who never ages but has made sure American Doesn't Win Anymore since 1776, probably. You sort of wind up hoping that that this dick-comparing-in-reverse posturing between Drumpf and Kim Jong Un winds up with the two of 'em getting in a hammer fight in the aisles of the Wal-Mart in Paducah, KY, don't you?
Things took a not funny/straight nasty turn later in the day when we learned that the Shart's little brownshirts in ICE had deported their first DREAMer. These fucks like to pretend they're focusing on "bad hombres," but any fool can see they're rounding up everybody they can track down, so they'll be able to have a nice fat deportation count to throw out to the "Build a Wall" crowd during the re-election campaign, since they won't be able to show them the high-paying jobs they promised. Steve King, the Iowa congressman who's been polishing his collection of Nazi memorabilia these last few weeks in anticipation of being named commandant of his very own concentration camp, tweeted a photograph of a beer to the deporters, because he's a terrible human being with a gas station urinal cake where most people have a heart. He's an extra-large pile of shit, because he sent a picture of a beer without actually intending to buy anyone an actual real-life beer.
Anyway, a bunch of polls have been released in the last few days, and they're all showing that the nation continues to absolutely hate the Giant Orange Baboon's Ass occupying the White House, even after he blew up a bunch of gravel in Syria, so what did he bother blowing all that Syrian gravel for, anyhow? Independents are abandoning him and even his base is starting to have doubts (just wait until those manufacturing jobs stubbornly refuse to return just cuz El Sharto keeps saying they will) and as I post this the results from the special election in the Georgia Sixth are rolling in, and you know everybody in the Shart House is well past pissing themselves, and have moved on to ordering sandwiches from Jimmy Johns, white meat chicken, chewing silently in their cold, piss-drenched chairs.
Running the government not like a business, but like a junior high clique.
Who would've imagined that Donald Trump's election would usher in an entirely new genre in political journalism?
Still, it seems we can't go 18 hours without a fresh entry in the Anonymously Sourced Inter-staff Hunger Games Pit Fight series between the various groups of advisors struggling for the affections of our Idiot Manchild President. It's like the Sweet Valley High books, only with atomic stakes.
Y'see, there are competing "power centers" in the White House, the press keeps breathlessly telling us. Like tweens fighting over seats at the popular kid's table in the cafeteria at lunchtime, they're constantly at war with one another over the handful of moments when the President's attention span can be focused on the fate of the nation, between golf games and flipping through the Victoria's Secret catalogue.
We have the "nationalists," led by festering rectal boil Steve Bannon, and the "New Yorkers," (or "Cucks," if you speak Micropenised Internet Rage Monster) led by Jared Kushner and an undisclosed number of the heads of the hydra that runs Goldman Sachs. Somewhere in the middle, Reince Priebus, a man who realized long ago that he's destined to be played in film version of this steaming mess by Brad Dourif and decided to lean into that, presents himself as the face of the Rational Republican Establishment while sweating through nine shirts a day hoping nobody notices his ability to competently deliver results stops at Tying His Shoes Like a Big Boy.
The chosen field of battle for this Battle of the Bastards is the media, of course. The Failing New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and Politico. This is probably the single most hilarious trope of the genre, as the leak-plagued administration sees the inevitable sentence: "This article is based on interviews with 8 White House Sources," or "12 White House Sources" or "74 White House Sources plus we put a tape recorder by Bannon's face when passed out drunk after reading that article where Donnie Darko said he barely knew him and he talked in his sleep about how Betsy DeVos likes to hunt the homeless for sport."
And so the rival camps snipe and peck at their frenemies in the press all day long. Rather than tending to their own responsibilities, aides follow the Boss around like a pack of Mean Girls, terrified of what the others would say behind their back if they're not in the room.
All this might be funny if Trump weren't so blank and so persuadable. Dorito Mussolini has no concrete beliefs, (Ok, that isn't quite fair. The racism, if nothing else, is deeply and honestly held. Can we ever forget him dismissing even the possibility of Judge Curiel's professional impartiality, repeating "He's a Mexican," over and over, as though it were the simplest truth in the world, like saying "Parks and Recreation didn't really hit its stride until Season 2?" and all these assholes attaching themselves to him like so many dickhead remoras view his term as an opportunity to wield the power of the American Presidency for a couple years without that pesky need to present their ideas to the American electorate. After this week of flip-flops, on some of his biggest and most consistent campaign "promises," from the whether NATO is the Blockbuster Video of international alliances to labeling China a currency manipulator to non-intervention in the Middle East, we now know for certain there's no pledge he won't jettison in the name of Winning or Respect or Please Daddy Why Did You Ship Me to Military School Don't You Love Me?
Now, it seems like only yesterday when the the white supremacist faction was buzzing the New Yorkers' houses, taunting "GLOBALISTS, COME OUT AND PLAYYYYYAYYYYYYYY", but all the news lately is how Bannon's stock has plummeted, and that's certainly cause for celebration, because Steve Bannon is bipedal tumor that somehow gained the faculty for speech, a man whose hatred is so acute and extreme he'd seem cartoonishly out of place as the villain in a Bond film, right? If the dude who's actively pursuing an apocalyptic conflict with an entire freaking religion, and brags about being a Leninist who wants to transform the "administrative state" into a giant robot that shoots a laser that deports anyone who speaks Spanish and erases any post-8th grade education from every single female brain loses the ear of the most powerful man in the world, that's a good thing, right?
What you notice after a minute though, is there's no Folks Who Understand What Their Job Is and Do It Really Well faction. Our President is notoriously skeptical of "experts," opting instead to believe that the only legitimate measure of a person's expertise is the size of his bank account. Moreover, there's been a concerted effort to lock anyone who's ever criticized the Big Orange Glob out of executive branch jobs, placing vindictiveness over competence, a trend felt with particular acuteness in the realm of foreign policy.
And thus, Jared Kushner, who carries himself with the arrogance of a man born on third base who doesn't believe he hit a triple, but that he hit a long single and then stole second and third off Yadier Molina, finds himself in possession of an ever-expanding "portfolio," which seems to mean that every time Dipshit discovers another task the executive branch is responsible for, he drops it on Jared's desk and says "Wouldja take care of this? I got golf." And Jared, like his father-in-law, is too arrogant to admit that he doesn't know what he doesn't know, and so we're left wondering whether we're better off being governed by Kushner's Paris Hilton or Bannon's Hitler's-Brain-Implanted-in-a-Cyborg-Gorilla.
Do you remember back during the campaign? When John Kasich's people told us that Donnie offered him not only the running mate slot, but all the powers of the Presidency? Kasich would be in charge of all domestic and foreign policy, while Drumpf himself would take on "making America Great Again," which is basically what he does now, wandering the countryside taking credit for every lemonade stand that opens as though he were personally responsible? We really should've paid more attention, because he was telling us how completely uninterested he was in actually doing the job he was running for.
And do you remember when he nominated Retired General James Mattis to head the defense department? In more normal times this would've been a major HELL NO warning sign on its own. We normally have civilian oversight of the military in this country, but amongst the Devoses and Pruitts and Mnuchins and Dr. Ben Carson repurposing HUD as a place to store grain, Mattis looked like he might be the closest thing to an adult in the room, and so we looked the other way as it took a special waiver from congress to install an only recently-retired general, a fellow nicknamed Mad Dog because of a quote about wearing human skin like a poncho, to a post traditionally occupied by someone inclined to check the military's impulses rather than boosting and enabling them.
And this is where the collision of the President's lack of conviction and his near-infinite persuadability becomes really dangerous.
With no disrespect meant to our military, they've been promising presidents quick, decisive, military victories for longer than I've been alive, and it's been quite awhile since they've delivered.
And now, perhaps for the first time in American history, they have an executive branch inclined to defer to their wishes without a moment's consideration given to the consequences of their actions. Trump himself has said he's given "his" military "total authorization," horrifyingly implying he's given the military permission to do whatever the hell they want to and don't interrupt his teevee time with the details. It hasn't taken long for the consequences to manifest: Airwars reports at least 1,782 civilian casualties from U.S. and coalition airstrikes JUST IN MARCH. While no American official is willing to publicly state the rules of engagement have changed, from the botched Yemen raid to the Mosul air strike that killed more than 200 civilians, to the recent strike in Syria which hit allies rather than enemies, it's clear the American military's priorities have shifted, and only an infant would believe that recklessly slaughtering civilians on such a massive scale comes without consequences.
This then, is the real danger of the Trump Presidency; a disconnected, uninterested chief executive, mindlessly farming out his every responsibility because he finds governing a tedious imposition on his cake-eating/pussy-grabbing/pocket-lining/golfing time. And without a stern civilian hand to guide them, the U.S. Military rampages across the globe, indiscriminately killing because killing is their job, and protecting the homeland from the inevitable terrorist strikes from the children of the war dead is someone else's.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the background, Kellyanne Conway roams the halls, writing Alternative Facts on the walls in her own feces, though no one knows what she's doing or if anyone's listening to her. Perhaps her plan is to simply continue drawing a paycheck for years after everyone assumed she was fired, finally burning the White House down in a fit of pique, believing Jeff Sessions stole her stapler
Another insane goddamn day
Well folks, while not quite up to standards of some of the more chaotic trips around the sun since the Marmalade Shartcannon took office, I hope everyone invested in fertilizer manufacturers, because today was another Bat Guano Nutty Day.
We all woke up and immediately checked in on that deleted scene from V FOR VENDETTA where the guy gets bloodied in the process of being dragged off an airplane by law enforcement for refusing to give up his seat when the airline wanted to give it to an employee on an overbooked flight after he'd already boarded.
Wait, what? That was real life? You're shitting me.
Anyhow, we all watched in awe as the brass at United took the, shall we say "novel" approach of blaming the dude they had the cops beat the shit out of for the ass-kicking they ordered to be administered to him.
In the background, maybe you saw some of the pieces that rounded up the responses to a PRIVATE FUCKING CORPORATION ENLISTING TAXPAYER FUNDED LAW ENFORCEMENT TO BEAT THE FUCK OUT A PRIVATE CITIZEN BECAUSE THEY APPARENTLY RESERVE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO TAKE BACK THE SEAT YOU PAID FOR AT ANY POINT PROBABLY UP TO AND INCLUDING THIRTY THOUSAND FEET ABOVE THE ROCKIES HOW THE FUCK DID WE LET IT COME TO THIS from supporters of the man we all pay to golf and periodically sign executive orders, and, surprise surprise, THEY TOOK THE AIRLINE'S SIDE. We didn't know just how much hunger there was in this country for a strong, sadistic, authoritarian state, did we? In related news, I'm launching a kickstarter to fund a series of dominatrix parlors in the Rust Belt. HILLBILLY ELEGY PART TWO, BITCHES.
Of course the same little Shartkins are apparently flocking to Bill O'Reilly's show, actually BOOSTING his ratings in the midst of the revelations that Fox has settled a number of sexual harassment suits against an old man who very clearly has to pay for sex. I tell you, folks, the Deplorable economy offers a number of unique opportunities. It's like "Well, I'm looking for someone to redo the shingles on my roof, but I'm hoping to hire somebody reprehensible. Do you have any multiple rapists on staff?"
And we all had a laugh that the congressman who is famous for screaming YOU LIE at President Obama going home to a town hall where a bunch of his constituents screamed YOU LIE at him, which has a fun sense of comeuppance to it. This congressman likely has a name, but I don't give a flying fuck what it is.
We learned that the Shart may have bombed Syria (or at least some useless gravel in Syria, since the Syrian military launched strikes from the base we bombed less than 24 hours after we hit it, can't these people even blow up a stationary target without fucking it up?) because his daughter told him to, which is a totally normal thing that happens in all developed countries with strong constitutional democracies. OR IS IT? Maybe Ivanka will get equally upset at all the children who were killed in the recent Mosul air strike or the botched Yemen raid, and Dorito Mussolini will order a strike on the perpetrators, without realizing exactly what he's done until the sandtrap on the 8th hole at Marmalago gets an unplanned expansion.
The President's Loyal Huntin' Dawg Beauregard, our Yokel General, was all over the news again today. A couple of days back, he made it clear that he didn't want our Justice Department focusin' on no civil rights, and today he ordered them to instead focus all available energies on punishing brown-skinned people for the high crime of not being white. Much was made of how his prepared remarks used the word "filth" to describe his preferred targets, but how he declined to actually call them "filth" in the delivering of the speech. Because that's the state of the immigration debate in American today, right? Whether or not we call our fellow human beings "filth." Anyhow, Sessions got a good sturdy taint punt today when a federal judge struck down Texas' super-racist voter ID law just for being ridiculously super-racist. Because we still have to argue about poll taxes. In the United States of America. In the 21st century. Sleep tight. By the end of the day, Ol' Beauregard was assurin' the press that the cawngruss would mos' happily make Americuhns pay for that big 'ol border wall, because...well, because there's no reading test to run for the Senate in Alabama, I guess. After giving his last interview, Sessions returned to chewin' on an old shoe by the fireplace.
Rex Tillerson, who is our Secretary of State because he's a rich guy who...(shit, man, I need Mad Libs to finish that sentence because I've never found one halfway compelling reason this Oil Stooge was made our top diplomat) made some headlines by wondering aloud "Why should U.S. taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?" I'll tell ya, Rex, there are a lot of reasons American taxpayers don't want to see the world on fire, at the very least we should understand that we can't sell PAUL BLART: MALL COP DVDs to residents of a war-torn wasteland. (This was probably the moment the day tipped officially into madness for me. Just one year ago, a mind-bogglingly asinine statement like this from our chief diplomat would've been headline news, a major international scandal. Today, you probably didn't even notice it. It was on page twelve. You did the crossword, read your Garfield, and moved on.)
And then ALONG CAME SPICEY. Sean Spicer rode into the White House Press Room on a steam shovel and declared "today I will dig myself into the deepest hole in human history, and before the sun sets not even Jules Verne will be able to find me," and Sweet Christ did he deliver. The lead spokesman for the President of the greatest nation on Earth stood in front of the assembled media of the world and engaged in some light Holocaust denial ON FUCKING PASSOVER and for a minute we were all like "Of course he did, this is just what life is like now," but after a second we realized this was crazy shit even by our ever-plummeting standards. And poor Spicey squirmed and shifted, issuing clarifications that got edited every eleven seconds (no, I mean Hitler didn't kill his own people, he just killed Jews, NO WAIT, I mean he didn't gas innocent people NO WAIT I mean he gassed innocent people he just didn't drop gas on them, he invited them to HOLOCAUST CENTERS and we all have to thank him for introducing "Holocaust Center" to the culture lexicon, right?). And we all laughed until he issued an apology which is what any normal human being would do immediately, without hesitation, if they FUCKING DENIED THE HOLOCAUST ON PASSOVER.
Just when the madness was starting to take over, right when you're thinking about how you'd look with half a pound of pickled beets stapled to your face, WaPo breaks the story that the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page, a foreign policy advisor to Toupee Fiasco's (That one's not mine, but it's good, isn't it?) campaign. And then you noticed that WAIT HOLD ON WHAT DID YOU FUCKING SAY? A lot of wacky terms have been thrown around over the last few months, like "emoluments" and "Defending World Champion Chicago Cubs," but this is what the poet would call a Big Fucking Deal. You have to demonstrate to a FISA court that there is PROBABLE FUCKING CAUSE to believe that a dude is acting as a FUCKING AGENT OF A FOREIGN FUCKING POWER to get one of these things. And Carter Page, he of the Steele Dossier, he who was cultivated as an unwitting asset by Russian intelligence not so long ago, passed the test. Drip drip.
Before you even finished that article, you got your CNN push notification (God bless this era in which our news outlets compete to scoop one another with stories that undermine the Clowncar Full of Assholes that governs us) for the story showing that Devin "Pigfucker" Nunes essentially made his whole bullshit story up, between the fucking of various pigs. The CNN story featured a few quotes from Sebastian Gorka, which is surprising since his face melted off during the climax of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
By the end of the day, Bill O'Reilly announced that he was going on a vacation for a spell, which was totally planned all along and has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that so many advertisers have ditched him that he has to shorten his show and broadcast ads from companies that convert your MP3 files into 8-track tapes and offer to take care of your pets after you've been raptured. Anyway, Bill O'Reilly's gonna go somewhere quiet and focus on just sexually harassing Bill O'Reilly for awhile, know what I mean?
And then SCROTUS made some surprisingly negative comments about Steve Bannon in an interview, downplaying his role in the campaign and suggesting he might not be around much longer. My Shart House sources tell me that upon hearing this news, Bannon shrieked and expelled ink on several aides through previously-undisclosed orifices.
Meanwhile there was a special election in Kansas' Fourth Congressional District to fill the seat vacated by Mike Pompeo, who left it to join the Dick Tracy rogue's gallery known as our President's cabinet. Despite being one of the safest GOP seats in the country, the Democratic candidate threatened to pull off an upset. How red is this district? Before Pompeo won the seat, Kansas' Fourth was represented for seven terms by a VHS copy of BEDTIME FOR BONZO (look it up). Anyhow, the republican won, but by a shockingly low margin, and folks, if a Berniecrat can get within 8 of getting a house seat in Wichita, KS, where it's illegal to make eye contact with a member of the opposite sex without a permission slip signed by at least 9 apostles, then we need to pour money into the upcoming special elections in Montana and Georgia, and the midterms are gonna be Little Bighorn 2.0.
There's more. There's really more. They're still engaged in a dick-measuring contest with North Korea, and trying to pass some version of their Let's All Murder the Poor, excuse me "Health Care" bill, and they're even fucking up the Easter Egg Roll (google it, seriously) but I am now tired, you're on your own.
In the end...shit be cray, folks. Shit be cray.
This post was brought to you by Big Earl's Holocaust Center and Water Park! Come on down to Big Earl's for all your Holocaust needs! Ten dollars off with specially marked Pepsi cans.
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