None Dare Call It Reason

As long as we're making up crimes and punishments, I call for this worthless cocksucker to be strung up in a filthy back alley, and his bug-eyed corpse to be dumped in the nearest outhouse. I mean, it's West Virginia, so you know there's a fuckin' outhouse within earshot.

Look, I'm as skeptical of HFC as the next cat, but this is ridonkulous. These crazy assholes need to beaten down, hard. No mercy. Twenty points is not enough of a spread; 99-1 would be more suitable. These knuckle-draggers must be repudiated wherever they crawl out of the woodwork. If they cannot mount a campaign of principled disagreement and proportionate response, then the gloves must come off.

I don't know if Michael Folk has noticed, but there is a climate of violence brewing across the nation right now. Cops are abusing and killing citizens, madmen are murdering cops that had nothing to do with any abuse issues, terror attacks are occurring hither and yon, and people are kind of on edge. We do not need this sort of incendiary rhetoric.

Additionally, Folk may want to review the tape of Jim Comey declining to prosecute HFC for her email issues. I can take it or leave it, but Comey is not a Dem partisan hack, by any means. If he says he saw smoke, but not fire, we're all just going to have to leave it at that and move on, especially considering that General Petraeus' issues with classified emails was much more egregious and criminal, and he walked away from it.

Not only that, but even if Comey had decided to prosecute HFC over the emails, it's not a hangin' offense. Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, what the fuck is wrong with these people? One expects this sort of dipshit booga-booga from random YouTube or Twitter assholes, places that treat their comments section like the bathroom wall at the filthiest rest stop on I-80. But Michael Folk is a state legislator. Is it too much to ask that he behave as such? Apparently it is.

(Just a reminder:  Jim Comey was Patrick Fitzgerald's assistant prosecutor in the Scooter Libby trial. You may recall that one, where a CIA field agent was outed, endangering her life, as well as those of her field contacts. That was not a hanging offense either.)

I don't know about you, but I've had enough of these people, and their tedious bullshit. I do not seek rapport or common ground with them, when they talk like that. Fuck them, fuck their voters, fuck their families, their communities, their social clubs. Everything they touch is tainted, and must be razed to the fucking ground. I want HFC and the Democratic Party to go scorched earth on them, burn them to the ground, salt their ashes and the earth beneath them, take a healthy dump, and plow it all under.

They won't of course; the Democrats are as feckless and gutless as the Republicans are stupid and spiteful. It will be enough of a challenge to get the Dems out of their natural circular-firing-squad posture. But there's always hope.

Ramblin' Man

Let the ritual humiliation of Mike Pence begin. Couldn't happen to a nicer asshole.

Runner(heh)-Up

Now go get your fuckin' shine box.

Ass Ipsa Loquitur

If you have the stomach and patience, here's last night's Drumpf putsch in Cincy, complete with suckup / pseudo-historian Newt Gingrich introducing him. You have to see one of these to believe it, to really put it all into context. Everything you've read and heard about these things is true, the nonsense, the lies, the bloviating, the hooting and bellowing from the crowd.

For the terminally obtuse, on his two main defensive points:

• The deal with the star is not that Drumpf is anti-Semite; the deal is that the graphic originated at one of these sleazebag white supremacist outlets. And this is not the first or second or third time this has happened, that Drumpf has re-tweeted something that originated from places with names that ought to be a clue (for example, "White Genocide"). Whether it's social media dickhead Dan Scavino or Drumpf himself stumbling across these little gems, maybe take two minutes and check out where it came from. Otherwise it's just another dog whistle to the white power animals going whole-hog for Drumpf. (Not to mention that Drumpf, who holds events at his own places so that he can funnel campaign donations right back through them, is at least as corrupt as he claims HFC to be.
• Does Drumpf admire Saddam Hussein? No, of course not. (Hopefully, that is.) But again, the pattern is there. Over and over and over again, the guy professes his admiration for the ability of tyrants and despots to "get things done." Even if one accepts that Saddam was effective in rooting out real terrorists (as opposed to internal dissidents and political opponents), the direct implication Drumpf is aiming for is that the current administration is allowing ISIS to proliferate. And it's simply not true; the area of territory they control in Iraq and Syria has been cut in half. There are bombing sorties and Special Forces in-country. Unless Drumpf is proposing to simply nuke Baghdad and have done with it, civilians and all, this is a complex issue that takes some time.

I've watched three or four of these events over the past year, drink in hand of course. And every time, I come away thinking -- wishing -- that Drumpf's cult followers could get what they wish for, and the rest of us could avoid the consequences. Much like the Brexit dopes, who are going to feel the consequences the most directly, these people should have to own every ounce of impact that this lunatic would hit them with: trade wars, actual wars, shitty business practices. This guy fucking talks up Don King and Mike Tyson about 43 minutes into this mess, and it gets worse from there.

Nothing has changed. These are truly the dumbest fucking people on the face of the planet, and they deserve everything that's coming to them. I sincerely hope they get every last drop of it.

Street Executions

I wish I had more to say on the two state-sanctioned street executions in the last forty-eight hours, but Ed and many others have pretty well covered it. Plus, res ipsa loquitur and all.

Noting that Louisiana is an open-carry state (though Alton Sterling, as a convicted felon, should still not have possessed a gun), or that Philando Castile had a concealed-carry permit and is seen on video as alerting the officer to that fact as he tried to hand over his identification, will mean nothing to the usual cops-are-always-right-even-when-they're-wrong morons. Nor will you hear a peep from the gun nuts, for obvious reasons.

It would be nice to think that the Department of Justice would crawl up the ass of every national, regional, state, and metropolitan police union and fuck them sideways on excessive use of force, but we all know that won't happen either. But whether or not it does any good, it needs to be pointed out that -- for starters -- Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Robert Dear, and Dylann Stormfront Roof were all brought in safely and alive after they had killed multiple people, forty-two people total between them.

Keep that in mind some lying piece of shit from the FOP gets in front of a mic and lectures you about how scary the job is and how they had no other choice. Bull. Fucking. Shit. Ten bucks says no one loses their job over either of these most recent civilian shootings.

This is how it is in a police state, just as it is in a true authoritarian or totalitarian state:  conformity is culturally enforced, compliance is expected and enforced, by violence if necessary, and frequently even when it isn't necessary.

[Update 7/7/16 9:27 PDT:  Well, this isn't going to help.]

Another Man's Freedom Fighter

Would it be too much trouble at all for someone, anyone in the Responsible Corporate Media to ask the once and future Kanzler von Clownstick about this weird admiration he professes for various and sundry strongmen?

More to the point, his most recent burble about how Saddam Hussein -- Saddam Fucking Hussein! -- really knew how to take care of terrorists, what precisely does he think Saddam considered a "terrorist"? This is where Clownstick's pig-blind stupidity becomes not only a thing of wonder, but a thing of danger.

This is all of a pattern, the (for now) impotent threats to shut down the nation's fourth-largest (and the national capital's largest) newspaper; the empty promise to "toughen" the nation's non-existent libel laws (libel laws, of course, vary by state, but to Mister Man that's a difference without a distinction, except States' Rights, amirite?); the refusal when asked to bear witness to Vladimir Putin's track record of murdering dissidents and journalists; the long-ago admiration for the Chinese government's role in the Tiananmen Square massacre of its own citizens; the North Korean regime's ability to run a tight ship; and now, Saddam's brutality against "terrorists".

Careful What You Wish For

So Feeb Director Jim Comey has finally weighed in and decided not to put his thumb on the electoral scale. There goes my dream of HFC's indictment, followed by Joe Biden running and beating Drumpf like the rented, tick-eaten mule he is, instead of this derping along with a polling lead barely above the margin of error. What the fuck exactly does Hair Fuhrer (Cheetolini? Kim Don Un? Mobutu Sese Fuckface?) have to do to lose by the margin he richly deserves?

The problem, despite the braying of the horserace corporate media, is not so much a matter of HFC's "trustworthiness" (although there's certainly an issue with that, and always has been). This imputes that we cannot know how closely her actions would align with her rhetoric, which is ridiculous. She's been playing this game for a quarter-century now, we know exactly what she'll do -- stand and fight tepidly for more gutless incrementalism, for meaningless compromises with avowed enemies who have nothing to gain and everything to lose being seen working or even cooperating with her.

We'll Create a Cure; We Made the Disease

A couple posts back I linked to the new George Saunders exegesis of the Drumpfsters in the upcoming New Yorker, but it deserves its own reference. It makes sense to be charitable and assume that Saunders' effort was at least in part to humanize them more, make them look less like hateful morons.

And yet, afaic, it fails utterly in that regard. This is about more than the mere clash between two opposing sides with "non-intersecting data sets and myths," this is about cult behavior in the political arena, people motivated by nothing more than foolishness and lies, hatred and spite. It's not even wanting to burn the village in order to save it, but merely the pyromaniac's impulse to simply burn the motherfucker down, without worrying about who might still be in the edifice.

Fire in the Hole

Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts And Prayers. THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS YOU GUYS!

According to police, Stephen J. Brumby, 14, and his dad, William C. Brumby, 64, were practicing in a shooting lane against a wall when the accident took place.

"After firing a round, the spent shell casing struck the wall causing it to deflect and fall into the back of (the elder) Mr. Brumby's shirt. Brumby then used his right hand, which was holding the handgun, in an attempt to remove the casing. While doing so, he inadvertently pointed the firearm directly behind him and accidently fired," a police statement reads.

....

No charges have been filed.

[emphasis mine]

Nothing could have been done, you see, nothing at all. Accidents happen, right? The idea that an old dumbass using a loaded gun basically as a fucking back-scratcher is, for lack of a better word, STUPID, does not enter the discussion. It's funny how guns are the only implement where criminal negligence not only goes completely unpunished, but seems not to exist at all.

Does Anyone Here Know How to Play This Game?

A couple of weeks ago, Brazil -- a giant, swampy, third-world slum masquerading as a real country -- had a ceremony to celebrate its hosting of the Summer Olympics this year. During the ceremony, a jaguar -- which had been rescued as a cub and brought up at the zoo where the ceremony was being held -- was shot dead after it got loose from its handler and attacked a soldier.

Considering that Brazil is also the country that, just two years ago while hosting the World Cup, transported materials up the Amazon for the sole purpose of building a full-size stadium just for the World Cup, that sounds about right. I assume their national anthem is played on a sad trombone.

This is the future of Olympic games in particular, if not world sporting events in general. Real countries are no longer interested in the enormous expense required to host the events; the "prestige" conferred by hosting is just not worth it for American and European municipalities and states that are already cash-strapped.

Huis Clos

Jesus Christ, fucking go already. Really, do us all a favor. Get gone, Texas. Take the rest of the south with you. See how you and Florida like supporting the freeloader states.

Every goddamned year or so Texas "threatens" to secede, and then there's floods, or a town explodes because illegal levels of explosive fertilizer become, you know, exothermically volatile. Then their fucking hands are out for FEMA dollars.

But I sincerely hope that if enough of these mouth-breathers want out, that they get their wish, and that they take their whiny neighbor states with them. Maybe they can resume owning and selling other people, and taking their labor by force and murder. Whatever's clever.

I think the crying baby would make a perfect flag for them.

Nihilism

Britain's vote to leave the EU has everyone in a panic, and it seems almost certain to cost them (as it has already, between stock losses and the pound dropping like a stone). Larger questions like whether Scotland will re-vote for independence (probably) or other countries may start opting to the leave the EU (probably not) are open to speculation for now. In the meantime, the country already seems like the proverbial dog that finally caught the car it was chasing, only to realize that it has no idea what to do with it.

What's perhaps more interesting is the apparent parallels in voting "philosophy" between "Leave" voters and American Drumpf voters. The socioeconomic contexts appear to be very similar, in that the people likely to be hurt the most economically by those respective policies are the most enthusiastic for them.

While it may be one thing for an investment banker to understand that they ‘benefit from the EU’ in regulatory terms, it is quite another to encourage poor and culturally marginalised people to feel grateful towards the elites that sustain them through handouts, month by month. Resentment develops not in spite of this generosity, but arguably because of it. This isn’t to discredit what the EU does in terms of redistribution, but pointing to handouts is a psychologically and politically naïve basis on which to justify remaining in the EU.

There have been any number of similar assertions from Drumpfsters interviewed over the past year, many of them bizarrely attesting that Drumpf is "one of us". Presumably "one of us" in this context can basically be taken to mean, much like "speaks his mind", something along the lines of "not afraid to be a toxic asshole".

Hack Attack

What do you think the odds are that Mark Halperin knows whether or not Drumpf uses bronzer on his shriveled old-man penis? I'd put some actual cash on that, podna!

Is this a serious question? How many different ways can we answer that?

• Who does Halperin mean by "popular" and/or "qualified"? Newt Gingrich? Sarah Palin? Oh yeah, please pick either one of them. Bob Corker? Jeff Sessions? Establishment hacks. Hell, Sessions useta be a Democrat.
• Anyone who is actually popular and/or qualified has enough career sense to stay clear of the listing Trumptanic.
• Halperin is one of those idjits that needs a horserace to cover, so even if Clownstick picked one of the remedial kids (Rick Perry, Scott Walker), Halperin would do his damndest to spin it as an "inspired" choice.
• This "change DC" meme. Specifics please. Drumpf's central thesis is that he's not of these people or their corrupt world (although baked into that thesis is the convenient brag that Drumpf used to rent said pols he despises). So how exactly do you "change" an entire culture that you proudly know nothing about?
• Of course Drumpf will lean on the "Hillary=status quo" trope. HFC has already laid the groundwork to counter that argument, by improving on what currently exists.
• Halperin probably believes quite sincerely that a genuinely popular, qualified veep pick would magically make everyone forget about the last year of toxicity, of Drumpf's forty years and counting of public buffoonery. Too late. Drumpf's constant in-your-grill media presence has now baked in the irreversible perception of a privileged, loudmouth moron. Yes, despite what Dilbert says on the matter, Drumpf's a toxic idiot, not a brilliant persuasive strategist.  #drunkonbarstool
• Here's a counter-question:  What if -- and I'm just spitballin' here, so bear with me -- HFC also picks a "popular, qualified" running mate? Would that offset Drumpf's supposed veep boost? Would light matter and dark matter collide and explode and destroy the political universe? The possibilities are endless!

Also, too:  Can we just collectively agree to boycott MoDo, and maybe she'll finally be sent on her way? How the fuck do these people manage to stay gainfully employed?

I'm With Stupid

Until the votes are cast and counted, it's always too early to get confident and smug, but it seems like Mister Man has fallen off a cliff since clinching the Gooper nom. More specifically, it appears that the precise date was Drumpf's speech on May 27 (my birthday, as it happens, so you'll forgive me if I consider it a small gift from the universe) excoriating Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Since then, Drumpf has only compounded his problems, most notably with his tone-deaf insinuations after the Orlando massacre.

At this point, it's easy and tempting to consider the popular meme that Drumpf is really a plant from the Clinton campaign; after all, even Drumpf himself noted that he had a conversation with Bill Clinton shortly before making his fateful descent on the escalator and throwing his hairpiece into the ring. It makes a certain amount of perverted sense, and really nothing would surprise most of us anymore. The only reason I don't quite believe it is because Drumpf has always been a man of tremendous ego -- yuge, really -- and it's difficult to see him deliberately spend a year becoming a complete jerkoff for someone else's benefit. It's much easier to look at his history and see that he's always been a complete jerkoff.

See You Next Tuesday

It's just sad to consider the remote -- but still, in a nation of 320 million people, many of whom are simpletons, all too real -- possibility that someone out there still takes Sarah Palin seriously on any subject at all. She's a liar and a calumniator and a fucking dunce, and the world will be a better place when she finally fucks off and goes home for good. We should all just chip in five bucks and bribe her to go the fuck away already. It would be money well spent. Whoever these brain-dead morons are that still listen to her nonsense, they would seriously be better off if they went back to eating their own poop and impregnating their siblings.

For the millionth time:  no one wants to take your precious guns away. Nobody in their right mind even thinks it's possible. But it's not unreasonable to say that if you're not allowed on an airplane, you probably shouldn't be allowed to purchase a gun, likewise if you're a raving lunatic who's been investigated by the FBI.

Say the Magic Words

The right-wing obsession with politicians -- particularly, of course, Democratic politicians, who are always and forever having to prove their loyalty to this country, never to any avail -- using the phrase "radical Islam" to describe incidents of domestic terrorism, is nothing short of pathological. It is the lapel flag pin of this decade. They are as pathetic as Stallone saying "cup my balls, say my name" to an extra giving him a blowjob in his trailer. (Best hot mike incident ever? Yes. Best. Ever.)

Any attempt to tease out the practical ramifications of the obsession with this magic phrase is almost certainly wasted motion, yet reveals much about the people who insist on it. Obama, of course, has wisely resisted their imprecations, for the same reason that we don't (officially, at least) negotiate with terrorists. (HFC, on the other hand, had no problem with rightly throwing the phrase right back in their faces.) You delegitimize yourself when you give idiots equal standing, or validate their moronic arguments.

It Takes a Thief

From Clownstick's Twatter feed yesterday:

Cool story bro! Is that the same Don King who literally stomped a man to death on a fucking sidewalk back in the day? Sheeeiiit, between him and convicted rapist -- not racist, rapist -- Mike Tyson, you got the black vote nailed down, yo!

I would definitely encourage Drumpf to keep schlepping down this particular dirt road. See, a serious observer would realize that Drumpf is not truly a racist nor a sexist, despite the recent portrayals. Other humans are simply role-players in whatever scenario he happens to be in at the moment -- in the Dungeons & Dragons sense, they are simply NPCs.

In this light, Drumpf's travails with Judge Gonzalo Curiel become clearer. Despite Drumpf's plaints about building that fucking wall, Curiel's heritage really doesn't matter. He could be Irish or Polish or Swabian or Ruthenian -- the problem is that he disagrees with Drumpf's little real estate "university" scam, and as such is The Enemy. Curiel could be a sixth-generation "real" 'murkin of lily-white Yer-a-peein' heritage, and Drumpf would find something to complain about because Curiel is not buying the monorail. Individuals are meaningful only insofar as they heartily endorse the Clownstick ethos. Otherwise, regardless of race or ethnicity, they're something Clownstick scrapes off the bottom of his shoe.

I'm not going to claim to be locked into the "black community" as such, but I know this -- people are people, wherever you go, whatever they do to get through the day. If Drumpf wants to tout his main black endorsers -- King, Tyson, Dennis Rodman, the jive turkey bloggeristas Diamond and Silk -- let him. I promise you that no black person serious about getting ahead in this one life we're all given has more than half a fuck to give about what any of those people think about anything. In fact, most of them look at a thieving, murderous piece of shit like Don King and are embarrassed, not that they should be. King is no more representative of black people than, say, Meat Loaf or Gary Busey are representative of white people. (Wait, maybe those guys do represent a certain swath of Cracker Nation.)

When Clownstick gets an endorsement from a black person that isn't a sellout or a card-carrying shitbird, then we can be impressed.

Stay Classy

So a psychopath murders and injures dozens of people at a nightclub, and the first thing this asshole can think of is you people got what was coming. (Apparently Patrick posts a bible verse every Sunday morning on his Twitter account, so it is actually possible that this wasn't specifically in response to Orlando, but it's hard to buy that his office needs to plan ahead three days in advance for a bible verse tweet. Come on.)

More importantly, this is the sort of thing that Clownstick lies in wait for, to beat his dead "radical Islam" horse. Never mind that the killer was a US citizen, and that his support for ISIS is a rumor so far, and is likely one-way anyway. Clownstick seems to think his willingness to say the phrase is a badge of honor, and Democrats' supposed unwillingness to use the phrase is a sign of cowardice, rather than more ecumenically based.

(It should also be noted that a massacre, planned to take place at today's Gay Pride Parade in Los Angeles, was averted by good police work. The would-be killer was -- get this -- an angry white asshole from Indiana. If we could only ban those motherfuckers.)

It's a predictable routine now, in the wake of tragedies like this; all the political opportunists come out of the woodwork. We're not banning guns or Muslims, so both sides will be disappointed. But between this incident and another one in Florida just the night before, where some stalker creep piece of shit walked up and murdered a singer after a concert, maybe it's time states asked themselves what they are or should be doing to keep the ability to murder dozens of people in a matter of minutes out of the hands of psychopaths.

Rational Self-Interest

Interesting convo in the comments section over at Steve's jernt (guest-posted by aimai). On the broader points made by aimai in the post and comments, I think most sensible people would agree -- a flawed but generally supportable candidate is better than the Drumpfster fire being floated by the other party. Staying at home and clutching one's purity shawl does no one any good.

I would take some issue at the "it's not about you" meme, however. Not to sound like some asshole Randroid off the pages of Atlas Shrugged, but I vote for my own self-interest first. The very rich own the government, and the very poor have a number of programs available to them to help. Folks in the middle tend not to have those things.

So while I support the ACA, and will continue to do so, I resent the fact that the insurance my (government) employer provides sucks rhino balls, and costs me (and my employer) more and more every year, an entirely foreseeable consequence of enacting the grotesquely mutated final version of the ACA. When a cornerstone legislation is literally written by the industry it's designed to regulate, it's stupid not to expect consequences.

Jesus Is Just Alright With Me

Money quote for the weekend, courtesy of Michelle Goldberg at Slate:

The spectacle of self-proclaimed Christian conservatives cheering a foul-mouthed ex-casino owner for his pledge to turn away refugees tells you pretty much everything you need to know about what the religious right has become—or maybe what it always was.

Fuckin' A. Look, Hillary Clinton (aka HFC from here on out) is not exactly a kindly nun, but come on. It's bad enough if a secular person cannot distinguish between HFC and DMB, but a religious person? The best one could politely suggest to such a person is that they are not nearly as principled as they pretend to be.

HFC might be an irredeemably corrupt, power-mad grifter with a "foundation" that best resembles The Human Fund, but there's no disputing that the foundation actually has done some good for some people. DMB, on the other hand, talks a good game about supporting the vets and all, but withholds actual funds until he gets media scrutiny.

Turds of a Feather

Completely agree with Driftglass' assessment that professional asshole Newt Gingrich will get tabbed by the Drumpf-Miller-Barron (DMB) Group for running mate. I can't think of anyone (besides, of course, Sarah Palin) who would be more well-suited for the job. Like DMB, Gingrich is a hypocritical serial monogamist, and like DMB, Gingrich has made a career out of perverting the English language for his own nefarious purposes.

In an alternate universe, DMB and Gingrich are married to each other, with the former sincerely thinking he can impregnate the latter with thrice-weekly raids on Gingrich's doughy, pale buttocks and prolapsed rectum. Alternate Universe Gingrich, on the other hand, understands how biology works, but is content with letting his paramour mount him at will because he figures there's a pot of gold at the end of the cornholed rainbow.

Wait till he finds out that DMB's business model is mostly predicated on stiffing creditors, shareholders, subcontractors, and employees alike, just because he can. By the time Gingrich gets all the spray-tan wiped off his ritually abused ass-cheeks, the election will be over and DMB will have gone back to the tower to plot his next mega-grift.

They are both useless cocksuckers who would seriously be doing the world a favor if they self-exiled themselves to a polluted Siberian outpost, never to be heard from again. As such, they would be the perfect ticket for what's left of the Republican party.

Implosion?

Well, well. Looks like sort-of-fuckable Florida AG Pam Bondi solicited campaign contributions from Mr. "When I call, they kiss my ass" right before her office coincidentally decided not to pursue charges against Fatboy's glorified flipping seminar. Timing is everything, you know.

That this information comes out on a day that also featured an in-depth report on what a clusterfuck dumpster fire his campaign really is, and an additional report on how he called out his own staff for not adopting his bizarre strategy of doubling down on his baseless attacks on Judge Curiel, is just too good to be true. Keep fucking that chicken, asshole!

It really is a borderline insane tack to take, this continued attack on the judge. How precisely has Curiel been "unfair" to Drumpf, in a case that has yet to be adjudicated, and in fact was pushed back past Election Day by the judge? Curiel could just as easily have insisted that Clownstick spend valuable campaigning time skulking into the deposition room to lie further about his scam.

I think it's important for whatever's left of the sanity of this nation that Drumpf -- and more crucially, his cult followers -- get blown out in the election. A squeaker won't cut it; they'd just whine that they were close enough to win it, but it somehow or other got stolen from them. No, they need to get absolutely crushed, and learn a lesson.

It's not as if Drumpf isn't doing his part to throw it by twenty points. He barely bothered lobbing back at HRC after she delivered a blistering rebuke last week, preferring instead to focus on whatever underhanded maneuvers the unfair Meskin judge has done to poor Donny. He seems fixated on the guy, at the expense of everything else. He's supposedly got cretins like Sarah Palin and Jan Brewer on his veep short list. The "plans" on his website for various things are just the same old incoherent nonsense we've come to expect from Dopey Dumb Old. There really is no there there. Sad!

It's way too early say that this is finally getting fun, because the outcome looks more possible (if not yet nearly certain), but it might be starting to.

French Tickler

At some point, I expect Bill Kristol, after some inevitable dipshit "idea" or "observation" in the near future, to break character and go, "Aaah, I'm just fuckin' with ya!". I mean, has this guy ever been right about anything? How bad at your "job" do you have to be before you have to go out and earn an honest paycheck?

Wake Me Up Before You MoDo

The fact that Maureen Dowd still writes for what is still considered this nation's flagship newspaper is an indictment both of the condition of our corporate media and of our collective willingness to allow idiots to do jobs that should be done by rational people. Seriously, between her, Bobo, Douthat, and Friedman, one could reasonably get the idea that "meaningless, dithering equivocation" is literally part of the job description.

I don't have the gut to willingly read any of those folks, but on the rare occasions I do, I always come away with the same sensation I get when watching, for example, the head coach of a winless, incompetent NFL team on the sideline during a game, in the middle of a 55-0 blowout:  I could do better than that, and for a lot less money. 

But He's Our Asshole

The one and only Ben Stein affirms his de facto role as conservative intemellectual type perfectly, in managing to simultaneously rake Drumpf-Miller (a division of Clownstick University LLC) over the coals as a (get this) know-nothing buffoon who doesn't "[know] a goddamn thing about economics," would start economically devastating trade wars, and attempt to "bring jobs back" that cannot be brought back. (Gee, sounds like Stein's been reading this blog.)

And yet, in the end, despite praising Hillary Clinton to a much greater extent than he does Clownstick, Stein says that he will be voting for the evil clown. Why?

Are you surprised that Trump is basically the nominee of the Republican party?

I am absolutely … I am open-mouthed, gasping, unbelievable. But he has his charms. There must be something people like about him. I don’t get him but there must be something people like.

I’ll vote for him, by the way. I’ll vote for him because I think he does personify a kind of national pride which I think has been lacking in the Obama days and would be terribly lacking under Bernie Sanders and terribly lacking under Hillary Clinton. But I think his economics is way, way out of whack and he seriously needs some education about it.

Wow. Quite a bit to unpack there, but let's just hit the main notes:

• Stein (rightly) is uncomprehending of Drumpf's appeal to his flock, and so he punts with what might be called the "50 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong" theory, which especially in this case is even less comprehensible. There is not much middle ground on Drumpf -- people either love him, hate him, or may begrudgingly vote for him only because they despise HRC more.
  
  None of that means that someone who doesn't "get" his "appeal" is missing something. It doesn't mean that at all. In fact, more people hate him than love him, so even by Stein's own twisted logic, it would make more sense for Stein to take that tack wrt Drumpf. I mean, if it's a fuckin' popularity contest, then be consistent about it.
• What kind of "national pride" specifically has been "lacking" under Obama, yet would be magically restored under an isolationist pelf-grubbing dupe like Drumpf? I have yet to see a single critic who raises this sort of nonsensical issue, who seems equipped to elaborate on such a fatuous accusation. Obama's great sin seems to be the fact that he understands that globalization has made the world multipolar and interdependent, and that we may regard ourselves as first among equals, but we still have to deal with the lesser mortals of other nations, who incidentally have mostly been around for centuries or millennia longer than we have.
  
  A much bigger sin than supposedly not exhibiting enough bluster and arrogance in the name of "national pride" is the sin of thinking that you already know everything you ever need to know. That, more than anything by far, was Fredo Arbusto's biggest problem, and it's why he didn't take his office seriously, except when it was time to play dress-up. Not to mention that there's nothing in anything Clinton or Sanders has ever said that would indicate that they don't take pride in this country. That's just Stein spouting the usual conservatard propaganda, probably something he either read or wrote in National Review or one of the other wingnuts welfare rags.
• At the end of his final sentence and elsewhere in the interview, Stein seems in the context of the conversation to believe that Drumpf can be "educated" on his fatally flawed approach to economic prospects. I am not being the least bit snarky when I say that I have no fucking clue where Ben Stein would have gotten that impression. Not because Drumpf cannot be educated (though at this point I doubt that he can be educated on any substantial issue to any meaningful extent), but because he has made a point for many years, well before this nightmarish campaign began, of lying, misrepresenting facts, selling bullshit by the truckload, and generally making it clear that he keeps in own counsel on everything.
  
  Seriously, this is the guy who fucking said with a straight face, "I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me." So again, what exactly makes Ben Stein think that Drumpf could be "educated" on anything? He says what he wants to say, doesn't care if it's true or not, doesn't care if it would be economically or politically devastating to this country, defies you to fact-check him, and when you do, usually just denies he said it or changes the subject.

This sort of shit pisses me off on a lot of levels. For one, Stein is just the latest in a long line of oh-so-principled conservatives who rightly expressed skepticism about a reality-teevee blowhard clowning his way to the highest office in the land, and then quickly changed their tune soon as he weaseled his way to the nomination.

But worse than that, Ben Stein is someone who consistently presents himself as a serious, educated voice of (in his mind) sensible moderation. And he's completely abdicated that role here.

I mean, no one gives a shit that Rick Perry called Drumpf a cancer on the party and now is nervously fellating him for some sort of cabinet post. Nor does anyone care that an unprincipled fuck like Chris Christie sold his soul for a possible shot at Attorney General in a Drumpf regime. People expect weasels to act as such, every time. That's what makes them weasels. It's just hilarious that every goddamned one of them lost their spines practically overnight. You can bet that if Drumpf had rightly been laughed off six or nine months ago, he'd still be trash-tweeting every last one of them.

Stein, on the other hand, presumably is not jockeying for any position in a Drumpf regime. He has no mercenary reason to sell out his common sense for bullshit. Which somehow makes it worse, in that neither his rationale for voting for him, nor his stated logic in arriving at that rationale, are intellectually honest, or even make any sense.

The Republicans are riding a very dangerous dragon with their presumed nominee, because of the coalitions of disaffected yahoos he has cobbled together to support him. They are damned whether or not he wins: if he loses, there could be unprecedented down-ticket losses to go along with it; if he wins, it legitimizes what are turning out to be some of the worst, most ignorant and bellicose voices in American politics for close to fifty years. And Drumpf is turning 70 in less than two weeks, so he is not going to be a long-term presence regardless. But the brand will be stained all the same.

A Perfect Fit

Political fanfic scrivener PrickDick Morris has a new home, at the National Enquirer, which is owned by the equally aptly named Drumpf butt-buddy David Pecker. Yes, it's just too bad Morris and Pecker don't get married, at which point Morris could be Dick Pecker.

Morris is one of those lowlife scumbags for whom the terms factotum or dogsbody or toady or fuckface doesn't quite capture it. He doesn't have an eye for the real grift, the way fellow shitbird Karl Rove does. Morris' primary skill is ball-licking, giving verbal rimjobs to the highest bidder.

It seems only fitting that Morris now shovels shit for a manure factory, but it's equally fitting that, since he first came to prominence as hatchet man for the Clintons, they now have to deal with him. Karma doesn't exist, but every once in a while you have to wonder.

Acceptance Speech

scene from the near future

[INTERIOR SHOT:  The floor of Cleveland's QUICKEN LOANS ARENA is packed and thrumming with activity. THE CANDIDATE is about to be introduced. The sense of anticipation is palpable, electric. The stage is empty and brightly lit.]

M. BUFFER:  Lay-deeeeez and gentlemen, please welcome your nominee for President of the Yew-nited States, from New York City, standing six-feet-one and weighing in at two hundred and seventy-three pounds.

The Glower in the Tower, the Con King of Queens, the Son of Scam, the Bastard of Disaster who will eventually be enshrined in plaster. He likes his women rare and his steaks well-done. The Headmaster of Trump University, Donald Joooohhnn TRUMP!

[THE STAGE LIGHTS suddenly point toward STAGE RIGHT, where THE CANDIDATE emerges, walking to the podium, briskly but not hurriedly. He is in his element. The crowd rises to its feet all at once, applauding their new messiah. They are ALL IN, fully invested in this man.]

[THE CANDIDATE approaches the podium, looks left and nods benevolently, looks right and center and nods benevolently to each. He waves at some, points at others, making each person feel as if he is waving and pointing at them. He is ready to confer his grace upon these people. He soaks in the adulation, feels their love, feeds off their energy. THE CANDIDATE is in his moment.]

[THE CANDIDATE pulls a live chicken out of his suit jacket, holds it aloft, brings it down and bites its head off, all in one quick, smooth motion. He spits the head out of his mouth, and it flies just over the podium, rolls an extra few inches near the edge of the stage.]

[THE CANDIDATE looks out to the crowd, as they reach a fever pitch, and grins, blood running out over his chin and jowls, his teeth now coated with blood and a few feathers. This is his dream and theirs, and THE CANDIDATE pauses for maximum effect, ten seconds, twenty, thirty. Finally, he drops the chicken carcass and approaches the microphone, arms outstretched to the crowd.]

THE CANDIDATE:  The Aristocrats!

Six Words That Explain Everything

We would also have accepted, "You fucked up! You trusted us!"

Tough Guy

"There isn't a goddamn difference between Don King and Don Trump. One guy's hair goes north and south, the other's goes east and west." -- Charley Steiner, radio voice for the USFL New Jersey Generals

If they pray over at CNN, chances are it's something along the lines of give us this day our daily clickbait. Then Wolf Blitzer breaks out his party surplice and farts around with the election hologram touch-screen doodad, while deep twit-thoughts scroll across the base of the screen. News you can use!

Let's not get confused over the success of Clownstick's cheap one-upmanship jabs. It's part blue ocean strategy, mostly sheer audacity and down-punching ego. No mystery there. The "establishment" candidates were a step or three behind because it was in their nature; the establishment media have been behind the whole way because they're used to covering establishment candidates. Everyone was stuck in the traditional playbook, because at heart this is a money game, and everyone was making money, so there was no reason to change anything.

Now their conventional wisdom has shifted to covering Drumpf's nonsense as if it has any validity, simply because it's "working," except it looks more and more like it's only working on the converted. His attempt to bait a federal judge may well end up going down as an all-time blunder, right up there with Crystal Pepsi and drafting Jamarcus Russell at #1 overall. Even I know you don't fuck with judges.

(Also, too:  This is the guy Clownstick's whining about, someone who literally risked his life to take on the Mexican drug cartels. If there was any remaining doubt about whether Fuckface Von Clownstick is an ignorant, whiny, pissy little cunt, let it be removed once and for all.)

Clownstick Syndrome

Perhaps one blessed day these beleaguered scriveners might ask themselves and each other:  What if he gave a press conference, and nobody came?

Better yet, instead of whinging about this being "what it's going to be like" when it's been like that the entire time, perhaps the energy you use to sit and stenograph the man-baby's tantrums could be better utilized in, oh I dunno, exposing this con man and fraud for what he is? It's not like the details aren't out there. Start pounding that drum for a change, and see what happens.

The Heretic's Dilemma

Twenty-five years ago, about this time of year, I went what is probably the only true vacation of my adult life, a six-week trip around Europe. We started and ended in Ireland, where I have cousins who live in a house that has been in the family since the early 17th century.

From there we went on through Wales and England, and to the Continent, through France, Switzerland, Austria, what was then still a unified Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Belgium (in that order), before heading back through the British Isles.

We spent a few days in Paris, which was not nearly enough, but we did see the main sights. At one point we went to Sacre Coeur, which is every bit as amazing as it looks.

Looking back, I suppose I made the shift from believer to agnostic to atheist from ages 10-14, give or take. And at the time we were in the Sacre Coeur, I was twenty-four years old, long hair, proud (and sometimes arrogant) unbeliever, caring only about working a job to feed my habits -- guitars, women, motorcycles, beer, and weightlifting. It was a warm June day, but it didn't seem right to wear shorts, so I wore jeans, a blank t-shirt, shoes. These details matter somewhat, as we'll see.

Everybody Calm Their Shit

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Let's assume that you have received the official internutz memo about the most recent thing your are supposed to be OUTRAGED about -- the senseless murder of a noble gorilla, into whose enclosure had fallen a young child. Naturally the cries went up instantaneously, as if the zookeepers were just supposed to wait and see what a 400-pound, immensely strong beast was going to do with the toddler he was dragging.

Tragically, initial reports did indicate that Harambe the gorilla was indeed being kind to the child, and had not harmed him. But the very act of trying to extricate the kid -- or even to tranquilize Harambe -- might have set him off. Life is about risk management, when you get right down to it, and that is simply a risk that no decent parent would be willing to take with their young child.

Now, the argument is being made that the mother (both parents were there, but most of the verbal attacks seem to be directed at the mother) is negligent; after all, what kind of parent lets their kid fall into a gorilla enclosure? Who knows? Maybe there was a hole in the fence, maybe there was just a low spot that the Cincinnati Zoo will be surprised to find had not been breached yet. Kids have a way of taking off when you turn your back on them for even a second, stop go get a soda, take a dump, whatever. That someone might have been technically negligent for a split-second does not necessarily mean that they were criminally negligent, or even negligent in a more general sense.

Flawed Rationale

The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf makes a good-faith attempt to engage a young (22-year-old) John Miller acolyte. To his credit, the acolyte attempts to respond in good faith as well, and actually answers with more depth and intelligence on a number of issues than his Oompa Loompa overlord.

In Which Microsoft Is Cordially Invited to Go Fuck Themselves

Seriously, I don't want Windows 10, okay? I don't care how many dopey commercials you run pimping your spyware OS, the real problem is that my Win 7 PC is five years old, and likely does not have enough memory or hard drive space to handle the upgrade.

And I'm fine with that; the machine does what I need it to do. I blog, surf, read, run my other websites, work on my guitar tabs. I run Malwarebytes to keep out the nasties, and CCleaner to clear out the pipes. At some point in the future, things wear out, and I'll have to replace my beloved trusty workhorse, and take whatever OS is going at that moment in time. But I'll make that determination, assholes, not you.

So leave me the fuck alone already. Your shitty, ubiquitous "daddy blog" commercial is no more convincing than your shitty, ubiquitous smiling babies commercials.

But they can't leave us alone, can they? YOU MUST TAKE OUR FREE UPGRADE. JOIN OR PERISH, MORTAL. They can't help themselves. Maybe the NSA is pushing them, as is noted in comments in the linked article at the beginning. Who knows?

One thing I do know is that it's pretty goddamned weird when a monolithic corporation tries so hard to give you something. It's even weirder when they're humping your leg every five fucking minutes with the aforementioned shitty teevee commercials to give you something.

There's always a catch, whether it's MOAR AND BETTER tracking bots feeding your porn searches to the gubmint, or a forced upsell to be announced at a date yet to be determined. I wish I was techier so I could just run Linux and be done with these bastards.

Startin' Up a Rumor

I'm not gonna say that Donald Trump is a fat, sweaty, spray-tanned asshole who tells lies the way most people draw breath, or that he keeps a small herd of specially-bred goats on his private jet to relieve him sexually after each of his campaign rallies. I promised I wouldn't say those things, so I'm not saying them.

But, you know, the fact is -- and I'm not saying this -- that his audiences should know that when he's talking to them, he's really thinking about tapping some sweet goat ass immediately after the show.

But I would never say that.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It's getting to be about that time in the electoral cycle, when the usual Nader-baiting groundhogs pop up from their holes to gaze at their navels and stroke their chins. The quadrennial Passion Play of the Gorestoßlegende, with its ever-rotating cast of sanctimonious characters, thunders on.

There's no debating these people, anymore than you can persuade a Drumpfkin of his folly. But the fact of the matter is that more Florida Democrats defected for Bush than for Nader in 2000. They keep overlooking this, erm, inconvenient truth (see what I did there?), and it's not hard to see why.

Feel-Good Hit of the Summer

On the one hand, freedom of speech and all; on the other hand, fuck this guy.

Billion Dollar Baby

I'm not familiar with PoliticusUSA, so cannot vouch for the veracity, but for one, it seems far more professionally written and laid out than rightie sites, such as your Bartbrite or Right Wing News or Western Journalism, and for another, it's about Donald Drumpf Fuckface Von Clownstick John Miller, so frankly, I don't give two fucks if it's even accurate or true or not anymore.

But it sure as hell sounds one hundred percent accurate:

When Donald Trump told Republicans that his campaign had money, it was a lie. In meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump’s campaign privately admitted that they have no money and will not be able to run television ads until after the GOP convention in July.

So, let's recap, shall we:  One of Miller's biggest positives, according to the double-digit IQ mouth-breather cultists who support him, is that he's "self-funded" and therefore beholden to no one. But just in the last couple weeks, Sheldon Adelson (you know, the other casino-owning scumbag), has already pledged $100m to the cause, since his last 100m pledge -- to Newt Gingrich in 2012 -- flamed out hilariously. And now it turns out that Miller doesn't want to pull a Meg Whitman and dump his own money into this after all.

Lazy Train

Oh, for fuck's sake. Look, Drumpf-Miller-Barron (DMB) did not "destroy the interview" -- just from the first two examples described in the article, the journalists are the ones ruining it. Megyn Kelly didn't press Miller on his lying lies because she's a fucking hack who aspires to be the next Barbara Walters. And, you know, maybe the WaPo morons ought to think twice about letting Clownstick phone in next time.

DMB is thwarting the media because the media let him do it. Jesus, it seems like he phones into Face the Nation every other week or so, when he lives within spitting distance of the fucking studio. Do ya think there might be some strategery on his part in doing that, Doctor? Stop with the phone interviews; let the retards at Fox and Friends be his butt-boys, that's what they're there for.

The clown is winning the media battle because he understands the game better than they do. They will gladly abdicate their journalistic principles (if they have any to begin with) for ratings. That is their prime directive. Miller knows this, that's why he would never, and I mean never, agree to do a real one-on-one interview with a real bulldog journalist who would tune him up on his endless lies.

He knows better. They don't seem to. And time is running out. Start doing your fucking jobs already, and stop letting him call in to waste everyone's time with his goddamned lying. If he won't agree to a face-to-face interview, then do some oppo research. It's not like he hasn't spent the last four decades stinking up the joint. Just grab a shovel and choose a direction.

The Aristocrats

Watching whatever stage of grief the Republicans are in right now is entertaining, to say the least. Some have a false sense of triumphalism and unity, as if their boy's excursions into Nineties nonsense is going to help their, um, cause. Yes, Deadbeat Donald, please do keep telling us about Whitewater and Vince Foster. While you're at it, go transcribe some Mudhoney lyrics, ya fuckin' hump.

Now, "principled" Republicans and/or conservatives, to the extent that there are any left, find themselves scrambling for purchase, wondering how they can in good conscience support the bloviating, comically-coiffed ass-clown representing their supposedly grand old par-tay.

At the Movies

As a palate cleanser from all things Drumpf/Miller, let's touch on a few flicks of recent (and distant) vintage:

Jurassic World -- Solid, tight, clean direction, uses John Williams' classic score instead of the usual action movie classic-hit nonsense. I don't watch many action movies, and when I do, it's usually because it's a slow weekend afternoon and nothing else is on, and something comes up on HBO. (Stay thirsty my friends!). Also, I go into this sort of movie with low expectations -- keep the action rolling, the actors should be having fun, that sort of thing. Anyone watching an action movie that expects art is either an idiot or an asshole, probably both.

Like every other green-screen extravaganza, this is strictly standard Hero's Journey fare, and you should be able to predict the mosasaur-vs.-tyrannosaur finale an hour before it occurs, but it's all done with a fairly high degree of conviction. Chris Pratt manages to try convincingly to channel a Gary Cooper type, though you can almost hear him squinting at times, and they put Bryce Dallas Howard in enough athletic tank tops to almost make you think she's A-list hawt, though Scarlett Johansson would have thrust those bad girls right in your fucking face. I stayed awake all the way through it, so that's most of the challenge right there. Grade:  B+

99 Homes -- This is a small, under-the-radar movie about a very unsexy subject -- the foreclosures of the so-called Great Recession, and the people who profited from the misery -- but is a quite effective portrait of a specific time and community of economic peril. It all comes a bit unglued in the third act, but getting there is immensely rewarding, due in no small part to strong performances by (seriously) Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon, the latter of whom, I humbly predict, will win an Oscar within the next five to seven years. Shannon and Garfield play off each other amazingly well throughout, and while the subject of this movie is depressing, the execution of it is anything but. Grade:  A-

 The Witch -- If Terence Malick made an early-America horror movie, it would look much like this. Writer-director Robert Eggers takes a period, folkloric tale and captures its essence. Rather than a high-falutin costume drama with buckle-hats and such, Eggers utilizes epistolary dialogue from early seventeenth-century Massachusetts and handmade period clothing to establish a setting for what becomes a truly suspenseful story.

The movie stars Game of Thrones alumni Ralph Ineson (Finchy from the British Office) and Kate Dickey as the devoutly religious parents of five young children, from teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) to infant Sam. The puritanism of William (Ineson) causes the family to self-exile from their already-small village to an even more remote area bordering the then-untamed wilderness. This is where Eggers' direction shines, in the patient, lush exterior shots showing both the vastness of the family's location and the haunting closeness of it. The period dialogue can be difficult to understand at times, but ultimately lends well to the overall atmosphere of remoteness.

Anyone who's ever been in a forest, especially in the afternoon, as the setting sun dapples through the trees, slowly augmenting the coming of night and mystery, knows the vestigial feeling one gets in the gut at such a time and place. The Witch showcases that limbic instinct again and again, to great effect. It's too bad, but no surprise at all, that this movie didn't go anywhere on its release; 'murkins need either "found footage" guff or superhero mashup bullshit to get them by between their hourly infusions of fat and high-fructose corn syrup and processed sawdust. But if you have the patience (and it's only 90 minutes, but no green screens), this is a wondrously-shot small-scale tale of dread and isolation. Grade: A-

Purple Rain -- When Prince passed away last month, it was tempting to jump on the internets bandwagon and make sure you all knew what a transformative figure he was in my life, just like everyone else made sure to do. But that wouldn't have been entirely true; while I certainly regarded him as a fine guitarist and songwriter, it just didn't seem right to grab that particular wheel at that particular time.

But the wife and I have gone back and listened to several of Prince's albums since his untimely demise, and it seemed like an opportunity to introduce our daughter to what was undeniably a major shift in music and video of the Eighties. Sure enough, the "movie" part of it is absolutely a product of its time -- poofy hair, cheesy acting, half-assed cinematography, an overly personalized plotline.

And yet on watching this relic for the first time in thirty years (in my case), there's no getting around the fact that the music holds up amazingly well, not only in the concert sequences, but in the exterior shots. The motorcycle scene during Take Me With U is beautifully shot, sun shining down on the road through fall leaves as Prince takes Apollonia to the lake for her impromptu skinny-dip. Pretty much every scene with musical accompaniment is superior to the rest of it, though there's no small amount of brownie points won in having Clarence Williams III as Prince's abusive dad.

One of the major differences between the "soundtrack" album and the movie is that the title track ends the album, which is especially poignant now, while the movie closes with I Would Die 4 U and Baby I'm A Star after Purple Rain, which has a more triumphant feel. It turned out to be surprisingly rewarding to do both, to listen to the album and to watch the movie, to see the innocence and potential of what (who) was arguably one of the most influential musicians of the last generation. Grade: B+

Lulz

Oh, this is surprising. Might as well have made the headline Lying Prick Cocksucker Lies. In other news, water is wet.

The list showed that the majority of the money that had been donated at that time came from Trump's foundation or the foundations of two of his friends, businessman Carl Icahn and pharmaceutical billionaire Stewart J. Rahr.

A couple of months ago, in the context of Madeleine Albright pulling the shopworn "there's a place in hell" card regarding women who didn't support other women, I mentioned what a lowlife move that was. But that's nothing compared to someone who trades on poached valor, and then doesn't even follow through, even though by their own account they can more than easily afford to. John Miller says he's worth ten billion United States dollars in the year 2016, with "tremendous cash flow," so six million bucks oughta be couch-cushion change. Yet it's been four months and the money still has not been discursed, and may not have even been entirely collected in the first place.

There's your fucking champeen, Real Murka. Hope you're proud of yourselves.

Easy Virtue

What Strix said. One of the more confounding sub-phenomena of this benighted year so far is how "transgendered restrooms" became this hill to die on for both diehard socialcons and equally diehard pwoggies. There simply cannot, even in a nation of 320 million people, be that many individuals, be they drag queens or just casual takers of dumps, who are affected by this is any meaningful way.

More to the point, why is it this issue that becomes the cause for Springsteen, Maroon 5, the NBA, et al, to exert economic coercion over a cultural backwater like, say, North Carolina? This is not a terribly meaty ankle; why the sudden communal urge to bite it? Most of these southern shitholes are far worse when it comes to reproductive rights, environmental protection, health care -- you know, things that actually affect more than .01 percent of the population, or whatever the sub-niche is that consists of transgender and cross-dressers.

Don't get me wrong; I support the cause and all. If I'm draining the weasel at Costco and some dude in a dress walks in and uses the urinal next to me, I couldn't care less, so long as they keep to themselves, just like any other user of the public skunk-works. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like if the celebrity boycotters went after something slightly more universally applicable, and I can't help but feel that this is the sort of nonsense that SJWs are particularly adept at ginning up.

Enablers

Megyn Kelly -- who does actually seem intelligent enough to know better -- needs to cut the shit and be honest with herself at least. The reason people are "biased" against John Miller is because he's a liar, a pimp, a con-man, a mentally ill narcissistic man-child, a fucking moron who is completely unqualified for any sort of public office, much less the presidency. The reason people are biased against Fixed Noise is because the "network" itself is biased, a shameless shitshow comprised of failed Republican office-holders and -seekers, and their ass-sniffing dogsbodies. At least CNN and MSNBC make passable attempts at balance, though they mostly fail because they're just shitty journalists, not because of any political bias.

Kelly, whether she knows it or not, had at least some potential goodwill from people normally inclined to ignore her. I can't be the only one to the left of Attila the Hun to wonder, given the awful treatment Kelly received at the hands of Miller and his cult followers and surrogates, if Kelly might be motivated to make her interview with Miller a showcase in insightful, responsive reportage. There's no need to come into it with an agenda; Miller's own words are more than enough to inform such an exercise in (again) JOURNALISM.

Teachable Moment

Hopefully this stubborn kid has learned a valuable lesson that will serve him well in the real world:  there are multiple layers of faceless, mindless bureaucrats whose sole function in life is to enforce rules, without regard as to whether they make sense or not, whether they add any value or not. Accept what you are told, do it without question, show your belly and let your masters decide whether to scratch or punch that belly.

Be honest -- for 99% of you out there, no matter what you do, that is the common undercurrent of your lives, no? Do what you're told, and maybe someday a bone might be thrown your way. Probably not, but you can't take that chance. Any honest commencement speech will include some variation of that something to warn the kids about the manifestly unsafe space that awaits them. Grab your ankles and hold on for dear life.

Doubling Down

Beyond all the bluster and bullshit, the lies and the cheap spray-tan, enraged cheeto John Miller's main characteristic is his willingness -- no, his enjoyment -- of gambling. Not in the specific "bet the house on 33 black at the roulette wheel" sense, but in the more generic "fortune favors the bold" sense. Sometimes that works out for him, sometimes not.

The problem in never changing that tack is that now there are bigger things at stake if he gambles wrong, than simply stiffing his partners on another shitty casino-hotel. This sense of his trickles down to even his tweets; as the article shows, this is a calculated risk predicated on the dopey sensibilities of heedless cult following. If EgyptAir 840 turns out to be a mechanical failure, no problem; Miller's retard fanbase remains immune to his hysterical nonsense. On the other hand, if it was a terrorist incident, it becomes a prescient center-piece of Miller's jabber for the entire summer, even though Miller had no way of knowing either way when he wrote the tweet.

So as unlikely and risible as it may seem that the Screeching She-Beast of the Tundra might be on Miller's veep short-list, one has to look at the pattern and ask, why not? Seen from the perspective of two of the most sociopathic personality types -- gamblers and narcissists, of which Miller is both -- it makes a perverted sort of sense.

Conservatard critics of Obama, imbued with their own special smugness even as they continue to deride that supposed quality in their opponents, typically tag Obama with the "messiah" epithet, some sort of variation on that. The idea is to impute that Obama came into office riding atop a white horse, determined to save us from the gubmint, from each other, from ourselves, that he and only he would be capable of any of those things.

Sound like anyone we know?

Role Reversal

Salon had a mildly interesting article (linking very reluctantly because the site is a completely half-assed, over-embedded, non-loading box of turds anymore) about how The Daily Show has faded because Trevor Noah is not Jon Stewart. Well, no shit.

I've watched TDS since the very first episode, and like most longtime fans, I assumed the show would lose most of its bite without Stewart; in fact, it was starting to in his last couple years, as longtime writers, producers, and correspondents began leaving to work on other shows and projects. Stewart's departure was just the capstone to that dynamic.

Fifteen years as the political ombudsman to disaffected Gen Xers and millennials had clearly taken its toll on Stewart's psyche. Chronicling and curating the infinite hypocrisies and absurdities of American politics, and the sheer butt-fucking stupidity of those in power and those who put them there, wore him down as much as it did most of us out here in what's left of 'murka.

Get It Together

Okay, so hopefully by now it should be clear that you're never ever going to tune in here and see me engage in cheap Nader-baiting, or smugly lecturing STOOPID LEFTIES how they "owe" their vote to this or that candidate. But this sort of behavior has to stop. This is nuts.

Nobody has any illusions about how this election is going down. This is going to be a soul-sucking, mind-numbing, interminable blatherfest between a cynical corporate Republican hack, and Donald DrumpfJohn Miller.

But it's also a showdown between people who have stayed active and informed and concerned about their country, and the gaggle of ignorant maroons mindlessly supporting Drumpf-Miller. Many of Drumpf-Miller's flock have proudly attested that they had never or rarely voted in the past. And as much as one might ideally wish that everyone would show up to exercise their sacred right, we're finding out the hard way that there are in fact some folks who, if they're not going to bother to inform themselves or think logically and rationally about serious issues, we're all better off if they stay home on election day.

The Name Game

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Drumpf? I'm not kidding or doing schtick here, there is something off about this guy. Who does shit like this? Even more bizarre is Drumpf's insistence that the voice on the tape is not him, even though it sounds just like him and reads exactly like him, even though it probably wouldn't hurt his standing with his cult of morons in the least to admit it.

Even more bizarre is the possibility that Drumpf himself leaked the tape, just to get another news cycle, perhaps to distract from his refusal to release his tax returns. Whatever.

One thing that seems clear, though, and it's definitely something that Democrats need to start working:  Drumpf's main point of vulnerability is his need maintain his vainglorious, nonsensical vision of himself as a man of greatness. He's a fucking clown, a needy, whiny, thin-skinned bitch who cannot handle even a little bit of criticism, no matter how true it is. And he cannot stand to be ridiculed, even though everything about him is patently ridiculous.

So uh, you know, Drumpf thinks his dumb fucking nicknames for everyone else are soooo clever: Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, Crooked Hillary, etc., etc. The Dems floated "Dangerous Donald" in response, but fuck that noise. Every chance they get, they should refer to him as "John Miller" or "John Barron", and coyly follow up with, "Oh, sorry, I mean Donald Trump."

Drumpf's marketing technique is mostly repetition, because repetition works, especially on simpletons. So just keep repeating it, all summer long, at the convention, out on the campaign trail. Mock it, point out how funny and silly and ridiculous it is. Drumpf won't be able to stand it. His Greg Stillson moment is not a matter of if, but when, it just takes someone to push and provoke him into it.

American Horror Story: Convention

If I ever get worried that I might occasionally get too over-the-top in my insults and pointed jeremiads against various assholes, all I have to do is keep in mind that there are true freaks out there. What do you even say to someone who emails a delegate that they're praying for said delegate to get prostate cancer because they might support Cruz instead of Drumpf at the convention? What the hell is wrong with these idiots?

Bonus points to Bobo Brooks, of all people, from a March column:

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.

Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.

This week, the Politico reporters Daniel Lippman, Darren Samuelsohn and Isaac Arnsdorf fact-checked 4.6 hours of Trump speeches and press conferences. They found more than five dozen untrue statements, or one every five minutes.

This is why, while I actually agree with Drumpf's assertions about his flock being dispossessed and left behind, and sympathize with the lost dreams of said flock, it's possible to feel only so much empathy for them. They voted for the politicians that did this to them, over and over again, for decades, generations. They were fine with selling out someone else's future somewhere else, so long as they got to keep their McJobs stamping overpriced widgets.

Talladega Nights

I have less of an issue with an 11-year-old being left alone with a 9mm handgun with which to defend himself, than the fact that he's such a lousy fucking shot.

Bored of the Rings

Alien-in-a-human-suit and Canadian native Rafael Edward Cruz Junior certainly comes across as the sort of physically inept doofus who, if you threw him a basketball, would probably try to dribble it with both hands simultaneously and granny-shot his free throws over the backboard. So it's no surprise that he would blunder his cynical attempt to capitalize on Indiana's moronic fixation on the sport by referring to the goal as a ring rather than a hoop. Highlarryous, as they say in the 'hood.

But is it really any more stoopid or laughable than Dumb Old Chump using doddering rageaholic Bobby Knight as some sort of validation of his, Drumpf's, own laughable sayings and obsessions? Beyond all the half-truths, untruths, and flat-out lies, the unifying theme of Drumpf's campaign has been that Preznit Chocolate Thunder has turned our fair land into a smoldering apocalyptic hellhole.

Rando Grammo

Look, even people who are skilled with the rules and conventions of language will acknowledge that "grammar nazis" are, for the most part, insufferable twats. This does not absolve the gaggle of maroons who think they are above having to learn what are, if one is passably literate and reads or writes with any frequency, mostly simple and consistent rules. Even English, which has more irregularities than most other major Indo-European languages, has plenty of consistent rules that are easily internalized with, again, regular infusions of these things called books.

The Harder They Fall

Are the rubes finally waking up to this skeevy, soulless con man, is it possible? Certainly Cruz is no better, and is in fact worse in some ways, as he is a true ideologue. But Drumpf is proving himself by the day at this point to be comically -- no, criminally -- inept, ignorant of basic foreign or domestic policies, incapable even of selecting qualified people to advise him on such matters and competently run his campaign. He has creeps working for him, sexual and intellectual perverts like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Jeff Wells knew what that was all about.

And why should anyone expect anything different from a man who kept a collection of Hitler's speeches in his nightstand, who learned at the feet of one of the most vile human beings to infest New York politics in the last century? It's no mystery what Drumpf saw in a scumbag like Cohn:  ruthlessness, belligerence, seething contempt of everyone and everything else, in a futile attempt to project manifest insecurities.

Family Values

Not just the next time, but every time some what-about-the-children wretch crawls out from under their rock to lecture the rest of us on our louche morality, remind them that of the three main assholes who headed the last impeachment of a sitting president, two of them were cheating on their wives, and the third one sucked off teenage boys when he was a wrestling coach fifteen years prior.

I mean, seriously, fuck these people.

The Fart of the Squeal

The question is legitimately asked, though not in nearly enough media outlets:  is Drumpf or Cruz the bigger dunce/loon when it comes to foreign policy? As always, it probably depends on one's perspective. It seems like a great many people, when "picking" between the horseshit-cowshit choice of Drumpf-Cruz, lean toward Drumpf because they "know" that Cruz is nuts, while The Dunnald is just marketing to the rubes with his empty woofing.

Needless to say, I beg to differ, because while I strenuously disagree with everything the unctuous Cuban Canuck says and does, at least he is predictable. He's an asshole, but he's ideologically and even intellectually consistent. Hell, every great strategy book from The Art of War to Winning Through Intimidation preaches the sacred gospel that knowing your opponent is well over half of the battle. Cruz is intelligent, but a hack all the same. Knowing which hack moves he's likely to try tends to make it simpler to create strategies to counter him (on the incredibly unlikely chance he should accede to the high office).

Thin Skin Is In

Nothing more hilarious than an e-beef between two sorta-famous morons. On the one hand, this rapper I've never heard of needs to stop believing everything she reads in The Onion before going off on how someone needs to get gang-banged; on the other hand, it's almost pathetically charming to watch Sarah Palin act like she's the only public figure to have ever been maligned and treated rudely. Has she heard what some of the folks in her own party routinely say about the current president? Oh, that's right, as often as not, she's leading that pack.

The Party's Over, Part 3: Controlled Demolition

Once the smoke clears, it might be a good idea for the little people across the political spectrum to consider just what their expectations are out of their party machinery, and if maybe there's another way. Technology has evolved so rapidly and massively, faster than our ability to keep pace with all its capacities, that it's likely that it can facilitate a political paradigm that does not require the current system of institutionalized bribery.

The grievances from Sanders supporters and Drumpf supporters are nearly identical in many respects, and mostly concern the lack of responsiveness from their elected officials. Part of this is obviously the usual chicanery and deal-making that has left a lot of people out, sending away their jobs without adequate replacement or retraining, decimating their towns and communities. But part of it, as we've seen consistently, especially with Drumpf voters but along the political spectrum, is that the people don't know what they want, or they think they do, but have no idea how it should be made to happen.

It makes sense that the largest swath of these discontented folks would gravitate toward the "none of the above" candidate, filter through his generic, anodyne nonsense to hear the self-affirming bits they needed to hear, and perceive any skepticism with outright hostility. Again, the defining characteristic of the Drumpf voter is to see opponents not as individuals with a differing viewpoint that may or may not have some validity, but as a threat, an enemy. This is a natural consequence of following a candidate who communicates mostly in authoritarian rhetoric and boastful, self-serving lies.

The Party's Over, Part 2: Chaos and Discord

As violent incidents have increased at the Drumpf putsches, I have several times invoked the memory of Altamont, the infamous rock festival where security was provided by the Hell's Angels, with predictably disastrous results. So of course Drumpf now has a cadre of bikers promising to shut down protesters. What could possibly go wrong?

Between that development and what's already taken place, as well as the brewing confrontation at the party convention in July, the likelihood of the chaos that Loki-Littlefinger (heh) has sown thus far to bear fruit is increasing. It's looking more and more like Cruz will pull enough delegates to keep Drumpf from getting too close to the magic number of 1,237 delegates, and may even end up with a spread of 100-200 delegates, meaning a brokered convention.  You've seen the rallies -- do the Drumpfster divers seem like they're going to take that well?

But that is the ultimate intent of the trickster god:  to weasel his way into the process with empty promises and laughable rhetoric; to expose his opponents as frauds; to solidify his support into a hive-mind impermeable to reason; to throw the process into a state of unpredictability; to capitalize on the hostility.
 

The Party's Over: Creative Destruction

Media critics who are well attuned to the entertainment aspects of the never-ending political anointing process have rightly compared Drumpf to the Norse trickster god Loki. This comparison proves to be more and more apt as the season wends on. (A more contemporary metaphor might be that of Heath Ledger's Joker; as Michael Caine points out, some men just want to watch the world burn.)

This year's political Loki has thrived on sowing chaos in his chosen group. The only common cause Drumpf has with the Republican Party is the desire to keep every cent he's made, and to pretend he strived just as hard for it as every hotel-room cleaner or construction worker who's ever worked for him. In the process, Loki/Drumpf has thrown open the rank hypocrisy baked into every bit of the party, from the privileged dopes who run the machine, to the platform they continue to espouse, a platform that is responsive only to the donor class and "fambly valyews" morons.

So when Anderson Cooper exposes Loki's lack of knowledge or principle -- or even basic consistency -- on the subject of abortion, what also is exposed is the ridiculousness of that policy itself. Drumpf is correct in his initial proposal that, in the event of Roe being repealed, women should be punished, as well as in his subsequent demurral that it is the medical practitioner, rather than the woman, who should be punished.

This is a prime opportunity to scrutinize the absurdity of the pro-life proposal, of the practical ramifications, of this bizarre obsession that these people have with this procedure, which has steadily declined in frequency over the last twenty years, and is at any rate being curtailed state by state through other means. The bottom line is that their mission is not only to curtail access to certain options for reproductive health and family planning, but ultimately to exact punitive measures on the people who utilize and/or perform those measures. They tend to avoid talking about it in such terms, preferring instead to harp on the inane "sanctity of life" argument.

By fumbling around with his inept, ignorant unprincipled pose on the subject, Drumpf has inadvertently exposed that entire movement for the farce it truly is. They want to imprison doctors or women or both, they need to specify for how long and on what charge. And calling for "states' rights" doesn't fly; the citizens of Indiana have the same fundamental rights as the citizens of California.