NFL Divisional Round Predictions

Some good matchups this weekend. All times EST

Saturday's Games (1/14/17)
Seattle Seahawks (10-5-1) at Atlanta Falcons (11-5) (4:35 PM)
Spread:  ATL -6.5

The Seahawks won the regular-season matchup 26-24 on October 16th. But that was in Seattle, and this game is one of the last to take place in the soon-to-be-defunct Georgia Dome (because no municipality can resist the temptation of gulling taxpayers to destroy an "ancient" but serviceable structure, and spend a billion or so on a monument with all the current bells and whistles). Ahem.

The Falcons won five of their last six games (four of those by at least 17 points), and earned a rest last week with their #2 playoff seed. They are top five in the major offensive categories, including their league-leading average of 33.8 points per game. This has helped them make up for their lousy defense, which is in the bottom quartile in points allowed (27th), total yards allowed (25th), and passing yards allowed (28th).

Seattle should be able to exploit that defense to some degree, with all-pro TE Jimmy Graham healthy at the right time, but the Seahawks' offense is way too banged up everywhere else to maintain effectiveness. Their rushing attack has rotated through injuries all year, and their offensive line is shot (which is why RB Marshawn Lynch chose to retire rather than return to the team).

Falcons WR Julio Jones is having a career season, and he and Seahawks star CB Richard Sherman seem to genuinely hate each other. Jones and Sherman should be the key matchup here, and don't be surprised if they eventually scrap and one or both of them get tossed.

Predicted Score:  Falcons 38, Seahawks 21.

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Houston Texans (10-7) at New England Patriots (14-2) (8:15 PM)
Spread:  NE -16.0

I hate to say it, but short of the Texans' league-leading defense (1st in total yards allowed, 2nd in passing yards) snapping Tommy Tuck Rule in the first quarter, this is probably going to be a blowout. Despite losing Brady for the first four games of the season, the Patsies have been their usual selves -- systematic, grimly efficient, compiling the league's best record and the easy odds-on favorite to bring home the Lombardi Trophy for the fifth time in Brady's career.

That New England manages their high level of play with no real superstars besides Brady makes it all the more impressive/annoying. All-world TE Rob Gronkowski has been injured more often than not, and was placed on injured reserve on Dec. 4. Despite that, the Patsies are top five in points, total yards, and passing yards, and their defense is top ten in most categories. With third-string QB Jacoby Brissett subbing for Brady back in Week 3, New England hammered Houston 27-0.

The Texans seem to know that they over-achieved this year, essentially overpaying for QB Brock Osweiler and backing into the top slot in one of the worst divisions in the league, capping that string with a wild-card game against a Raiders team that was worthless without QB Derek Carr. Houston's luck is going to run out today, and they probably won't even beat the spread.

Predicted Score:  Patriots 35, Texans 9.

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Sunday's Games (1/15/17)
Green Bay Packers (11-6) at Dallas Cowboys (13-3)(4:40 PM)
Spread: Dallas -5

The Packers overcame a 5-5 start to run the table to win their division and get a wild-card home game against a Giants team whose receivers should have spent more time preparing for the game, and less time on their party yacht in Miami. The Cowboys, behind rookies QB Dak Prescott and RB Ezekiel Elliott, have dropped only three games -- two to the aforementioned Giants (by a total of four points) and a meaningless season-ender that allowed Dallas to rest their stars.

One of Dallas' victories was at Green Bay, a 30-16 smackdown on October 16th. But the Packers seem to have found their mojo at the opportune time, and QB Aaron Rodgers, even without injured #1 wideout Jordy Nelson, is an experienced playoff winner. Both teams' defenses are miserable against the pass (Green Bay is 31st in yards allowed, Dallas is 26th), but the Cowboys are first against the rush and fifth in points allowed. If the Cowboys can contain Rodgers' scrambling and improve skills, they have a pretty good shot at moving to the conference championship round.

Predicted Score: Cowboys 34, Packers 30.

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Pittsburgh Steelers (12-5) at Kansas City Chiefs (12-4) (8:20 PM)
Spread:  KC -1.0

This was originally scheduled as the early Sunday game, but game time has been moved back for this one, due to the ice storms in the Midwest. The Steelers blew up the Chefs 43-14 back on October 2nd in Pittsburgh, but Kansas City is strong at home, and their offense has found a groove with the development of TE Travis Kelce (who inexplicably has his own Bachelor-type reality show, because if there's one thing most NFL players have difficulty with, it's getting pussy) and the explosive play of rookie WR/PR/scatback Tyreek Hill, who has been shredding defenses and special teams throughout the season.

The Steelers have excellent playmakers of their own, with RB LeVeon Bell and WR Antonio Brown having outstanding seasons. Kansas City all-star DBs Marcus Peters and Eric Berry will have their hands full trying to cover Brown, and QB Ben Roethlisberger seems to be coming back from injuries slowly but surely.

Both teams have solid, upper-quartile offenses and defenses, so what this may come down to is playoff experience and quarterback play. Alex Smith has thrived under coach Andy Reid, but Roethlisberger already has two Super Bowl victories under his belt, and is fearless at launching the deep ball to Brown, who runs routes as rapidly and well as any receiver in the league. This should be a close, well-played game between two evenly-matched opponents.

Predicted Score:  Steelers 21, Chiefs 17.

Urine Big Trouble

You knew this was going to be fun, you just had no clue how much fun, right? It's wishful thinking that this might already be the beginning of the end, since Prince Tweety McTinyhands has no sense of shame or decorum to begin with, and his legions of mouth-breathers have even less. Nothing else that's come out about him over the last eighteen months did him in, why would some shady allegations of water sports in a Moscow hotel suite?

But I think Ed has it right, that when his already tepid political support bails on him, it will happen quickly. In the meantime, we can probably safely guess that about half of the allegations published in Buzzfeed are verifiable, and we can all make a game out of guessing which half.

Three (at least) salient observations leap immediately to mind on this:

1. It says a lot about what's left of our society that Tweety's dealings with Russian oligarch and bratva interests have been floating around for some time, and now that some small weight is being added to them, we mainly fixate on the pee story, which is actually the least plausible (if only for its spot-on weirdness) of the main threads.
2. I have no idea how anyone who considers themselves a serious person -- as in, a person who would claim o be knowledgeable and thoughtful about world events, history, politics, etc. -- could possibly take this fucking clown seriously. Anyone who believed Tweety when he implied that he would govern differently than he campaigned can suck it. As always, it's all props and schtick, stacks of fucking manila envelopes and browbeating reporters. A petulant seventy-year-old child, whose every utterance must be fact-checked, because he lies the way most people draw breath.
3. Every time this cocksucker or one of his scumbag surrogates whines about "fake news," someone needs to remind them that he rode the fucking birther train for five fucking years, and rolls hard with conspiracy mongers such as Alex Jones. Payback's a bitch, asshole.

One positive aspect of the whole fake news wave is that it comes down being compelling, to making a convincing pitch, precisely because Tweety has such an extensive history of utilizing bullshit and conspiracy theories to his own benefit. He's entering office with historically low approval ratings, barely a third. That means two out of every three 'murkins have momentarily set down there cheez doodles and dumbphones, looked away from Chrisley Knows Best and Judge Judy, and wondered what the fuck is up with this fucking guy. That takes some doing.

Cheatos

I still don't place a lot of stock in the idea that Russia's hacking actually swayed the election, as opposed to simply swaying the already stupid and complicit corporate media. It's unclear that they did much more than we routinely do in any number of countries, and always have.

Fuck these people anyway, with their "sour grapes" and "crybabies" comments, because we all know full well that had there been this much of a hint of Russian interference and she had won, these exact same morons would be griping and whining to anyone within earshot about how they wuz robbed. And, you know, good job by the stenographers -- 'scuse me -- reporters in not asking them such a question. Heaven forbid anyone challenges the intellectual fraud of real 'murkins.

Who wants to break it to them that in avoiding a corrupt scumbag, they voted for a corrupt scumbag, and they're still destined to die, broke, angry, and dumb as they ever were?

Our Liberal Media

Good to know that the New York Times is now finding "stories" by reading asswipe RWNJ sites like Right Wing News and Newsmax.

Here's the key excerpt from the Times article that demonstrates how thoroughly the journamalists have forgotten what their actual job is:

The question has gained momentum in the weeks since Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Trump, a Republican. It began quietly at first, then grew louder among the conservative media outlets and pundits who hold her and Mr. de Blasio in disdain.

I'll never link to them, but I invite you to go to RWN and Newsmax and see for yourself what they are: poorly written, rarely bylined, loosely attributed, never corroborated.

Put more clearly: no reputable journalist should ever cite these websites for any sort of information, knowledge, or empirical fact. They are liars, calumniators, prevaricators and provocateurs. Their aim is not to inform, it is to disinform, to agitate, to stir up shit. They do not remotely care whether Hillary Clinton might actually be planning to run for mayor in NYC; all they care about is making the usual media monkeys go "Squirrel!" and chase the phantom distraction.

I have a polite (for now) request for Amy Chozick, J. David Goodman, and every other so-called reporter who deals in this sort of bullshit non-story:

Quit your jobs, because you're fucking terrible. What you do has already harmed this country, and continues to do so. Go make sandwiches, be plumbers, write shitty novels. Anything but what you're doing now. Because did I mention that you're fucking terrible at your jobs? When you cite internet agitprop outlets as "sources" of any type, all you do is legitimize them, give them credence, give the innuendo and lies that they manufacture the very thinnest veneer of credibility. Your job is not to repeat what random internet morons are spewing, your job is to point out the veracity of what they spew, to point out that they routinely lie, that they are never objective, that they have an overt agenda, that facts do not and have never played into their content format.

Starbucks needs you, much more than we do. Make yourselves useful and get me a fucking venti dirty chai, three shots.

Seriously, I've never been a letter-to-the-editor writer or a boycott monger, but maybe it's time to start. Because fuck these people. Shame on them and their editors for pushing this nonsense as a legit story. Some fucking clown at Right Wing News pulled something out of their asshole, and didn't even have the common courtesy to brush off the peanuts and corn? Well fuck, let's publish that motherfucker.

One thing is frighteningly clear -- ol' Tweety McTinyhands and his internet minions are going to have grand fun for the next few years, making these scrivening dipshits dutifully repeat every online snipe and fnord they can conjure. Why aren't the Democrats any good at this game?

NFL Wild Card Predictions

Let's take a welcome break from the whirlwind of corruption and doom waiting on the horizon in a few short weeks, and return to our time-honored tradition of making semi-educated guesses on the outcomes of NFL playoff games. Wager responsibly. All times EST.

Saturday's Games (1/7/17)
Oakland Raiders (12-4) at Houston Texans (9-7) (4:35 PM)
Spread:  HOU -3.5

Oy. While my hard-luck Raiders have finally put together a nice winning season, you can see by the header -- having to visit a team that won three fewer games -- that something went tits up for Oakland. In their penultimate game against the worthless Indianapolis Colts on Christmas Day (naturally), QB Derek Carr caught his foot in the shitty Oakland turf as he was being sacked, thus turning and breaking Carr's fibula, and essentially ending the Raiders' playoff hopes right there.

They went on to win that game, and had already secured a playoff berth anyway, but needed to win their final game last week in Denver to get a #2 playoff seed and home-field advantage. Not only did they not win, they barely showed up in Denver, failing across the board on offense, defense, and special teams. The loss put Oakland in a 12-4 tie with the Kansas City Chiefs, who won both regular-season matches against the Raiders, and therefore the tiebreaker, dropping Oakland to a #5 wild-card playoff slot.

While it's true that the Raiders have put together their best season since their 2002 Super Bowl season, and have won (by a couple) more games this season than in the last two seasons combined, that final Denver game nonetheless exposed this team badly. Nine of their twelve victories were by eight points or less; three of those by field goals and two by one point. Most of those close games involved some degree of derping around the first half, and heroically climbing out of the hole in the fourth quarter, which makes for exciting football, but was utterly dependent on a quarterback playing at an elite level to bail them out. With backup Matt McGloin getting injured in the Colts game as well (along with him not being very good in the first place), the Raiders are forced to start Connor Cook, the Michigan State QB who Oakland picked in the fourth-round last May.

The Texans have their own problems at quarterback, wildly overpaying in the off-season for Denver backup Brock Osweiler, who stands 6'8" and set passing records at Arizona State, but so far has not been able to click in a pro offense. Houston head coach Bill O'Brien, formerly the OC and QB coach at New England, prides himself on being a QB whisperer of sorts, but maybe working with a once-in-a-generation QB like Tom Brady will fuck with your head that way. At any rate, the Texans gave up on Osweiler a few games back and went with third-year backup Tom Savage, who was just good enough to squeak the Texans past Jacksonville and Cincinnati before sustaining a concussion in the final game at Tennessee.

So the Raiders are throwing a stone rookie into the playoff flames, and the Texans are forced to go with an experienced vet who has poor field vision and footwork, which means there's going to be a lot of running. The Raiders can win this, if their defense gets their shit together and starts strong and makes plays, but that has only happened in one game this season, their November 6th home stand against Denver. In the four main defensive statistical categories (points, total yards, passing yards, rushing yards), the Raiders finish no higher than 20th, while the Texans finish no lower than 12th, and are in fact first and second in total and passing yards allowed. Raiders DE Khalil Mack is a beast, and a legit contender for Defensive Player of the Year, but the defensive backfield is a fucking mess. They need to snap up at least the cornerbacks and/or safeties in the offseason, whether in the draft or free agency. It's all going to come down to which defense makes mistakes and gives up big plays, and if last week's shitshow in Denver was any indication, they have absolutely no discipline or focus.

In other words, the Raiders are probably fucked, though it wouldn't be shocking if they played just hard enough to beat the spread. Some prognosticators have mentioned that Oakland beat Houston "at home" in the regular season, without mentioning that that game was actually played in Mexico City, but was for statistical purposes considered a "home" game for the Raiders. The only saving graces here are that Carr will be fine and fully rehabbed well before training camp, and for the first time since the first Fredo Arbusto administration, they have enough pieces in place to be contenders for next season.

Final Score:  Texans 24, Raiders 17.

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Detroit Lions (9-7) at Seattle Seahawks (10-5-1) (8:15 PM)
Spread:  SEA -8.0

Somehow, in the few years since Seattle's Legion of Boom defense crushed Peyton Manning's record-setting offensive output in Super Bowl 48, the Seahawks have shed the image of endearing, hungry underdogs, and become more like the mid-'80s 49ers -- arrogant, insufferable, bandwagoneering dickheads who don't seem to appreciate that part of their success is due to the fact that they're the only competent team in their division. And it's doubly true of their fans, who probably wouldn't have been caught dead anywhere near a Seahags game before 2004, if that.

On the other hand, the Lions' lovable loser image only got burnished, if anything, by the premature retirement of all-world wide receiver Calvin Johnson after last season. It takes a special level of mismanagement skull-fuckery to make not one (Barry Sanders) but two (Calvin Johnson) once-in-a-generation players, arguably the best at their respective positions during their careers, retire at the age of thirty, in their prime. Detroit was staring a 4-12 season in the face, and in fact did start this season 1-3. But they then peeled off six close wins over their next seven games, and got into contention.

Like their AFC counterparts in Oakland, it is the closeness of all those wins that will probably be the Lions' undoing -- only one of their nine wins was by more than a touchdown, and they dropped their last three games after QB Matthew Stafford hurt the middle finger on his throwing hand. More bad news for Detroit:  while their defense occupies the middle third of the league, the offense is struggling and over-compensating. Stafford has stepped up and had a decent season without his go-to WR, and the Lions are 11th in offensive passing yards. But they are 30th in rushing yards, which means Seattle will just set LB Bobby Wagner in blitz sets to force Stafford to throw early, into the arms of their still-powerful defensive backfield.

Seattle seems to be getting hot at the right time, they feel disrespected because no one gives a fuck about them beating up on the hapless Rams and Niners, and are bound to take it out on an overachieving Lions team. It's too bad, because I literally know Chicago Bears fans who would love to see the division rival Lions take a huge chunk out of Seattle. I don't see any way that happens, though.

Final Score:  Seahawks 34, Lions 10.

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Sunday's Games (1/8/17)
Miami Dolphins (10-6) at Pittsburgh Steelers (11-5) (1:05 PM)
Spread:  PIT -10.0

Miami is another one of those teams that's had one of those back-handed "lucky break" stories -- despite losing starting QB Ryan Tannehill a few weeks ago, rookie head coach Adam Gase has led the Dolphins into one of the few playoff berths they've had in recent years. Second-year RB Jay Ajayi has notched three 200-yard rushing games this season, including one against the Steelers, in a 30-15 victory for the Dolphins in Miami back in October.

But that was then and this is now. Experienced playoff teams understand the value of the long game, and of getting hot at the right time, and Pittsburgh is a textbook example of that principle. After dropping four straight in October and November, the Steelers won their last seven straight to capture the AFC North division and the #3 seed. Running back LeVeon Bell's 1,268 rushing yards place him right behind Ajayi's 1,272 yards, at #5 and #4 in the league respectively (Dallas RB Ezekiel Elliott led the league by more than 300 yards, finishing the season with 1,631 yards).

Miami backup QB Matt Moore is competent enough, and Ajayi is a potent weapon. But the 'Fins D sucks balls (29th in total yards, 30th in rush yards) and they're heading into Pittsburgh in January, where the forecast is 18 degrees. They're just lucky snow isn't in the forecast. Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger is banged up, but is as durable anyone in the league, and has already won the big one twice. This one may get away from the Dolphins.

Final Score:  Steelers 28, Dolphins 13.

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New York Giants (11-5) at Green Bay Packers (10-6) (4:40 PM)
Spread:  GB -4.5

If there's going to be an upset this weekend this is most likely to be the one. The Giants are low-seeded only because the Dallas Cowboys -- who lost both regular season games to the Giants -- had a better record. The Giants' MO in recent years has been to fart around the first half of the season, go maybe 3-5 or even 2-6, and then suddenly get their shit together and make it work to squeak into the playoffs.

In this matchup, that honor belongs to the Packers, who started 4-4, then got slapped down 47-25 and 42-24 by Tennessee and Washington (neither of whom made the playoffs) respectively, then closed out their final six games with victories as the (division rivals) Vikings and Lions started waning. Several of those wins actually were in dominating fashion, especially the 38-10 beatdown of the Seahawks on December 11. However, in most of those wins, the opponent had the dominant rusher and/or passer, indicating a fundamental weakness that they don't seem to have addressed.

It's just a hunch, but somehow I get the feeling that no matter what things look like on paper, Green Bay will find a way to fuck it up.

Final Score:  Giants 35, Packers, 31.

Smug Alert

Anthony Bourdain has a decent point here:

"When people are afraid and feel that their government has failed them they do things that seem completely mad and unreasonable to those of who are perhaps under less pressure," Bourdain said.

Still, Bourdain said he was empathetic to the circumstances that led to outcomes in those countries. And he faulted those same forces for Trump's win in November.

"The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we're seeing now," Bourdain told Reason.

"I've spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America," he added. "There are a hell of a lot of nice people out there, who are doing what everyone else in this world is trying to do: the best they can to get by, and take care of themselves and the people they love. When we deny them their basic humanity and legitimacy of their views, however different they may be than ours, when we mock them at every turn, and treat them with contempt, we do no one any good."

....but undermines it with his own recent stances on Clownstick, and therefore by association, his supporters:

Bourdain did not specify in the interview whether he might be interested in breaking bread with Trump, a notion he shot down in a September conversation with the Wrap. At the time, Bourdain was asked whether he might consider a private dining session with Trump if he should be elected president.

"Absolutely f--ing not," Bourdain told the Wrap. "We know him well here [in New York]. . . I would give the same answer that I would have given 10 years ago, when he was just as loathsome."

....

Bourdain has made no reservations about his disdain for Trump - or for those who choose to do business with him.

In a recent interview with Eater, Bourdain said he had "utter and complete contempt" for restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone, who announced in November he would open a sushi restaurant at Trump's hotel in Washington.

"I will never eat in his restaurant," Bourdain declared in that interview.

Someone needs to explain why it is that only "liberals" and "the left" can be "smug" and "contemptuous" and "in a bubble." There seems to be a lifetime supply of anger, vitriol, and certitude on both sides, each with their own respective media outlets. There is always some ratio of facts to emotions. Ultimately it comes down to which group tends to muster the strongest ratio, utilizing the most (and most factual) facts, as objectively as possible.

I fail to see how a reasonably objective observer can look back at the facts, and look back at what people in each group were quoted as saying and thinking and believing, again and again, and not see a huge difference, to put it mildly. These patterns and differences were quite consistent; the Clownstick supporters were incoherent in explaining their logic to a level that must be deliberate. They chose to believe lies about Hillary Clinton, just as they chose not to believe the truth about Fuckface Von Clownstick.

This is nothing new; this is how these people have always operated. They wore purple band-aids to mock a decorated veteran to show their support for two draft dodgers in 2004. This year they pushed lies and nonsense about Benghazi and emails and Obamacare. When facts and logic are literally meaningless, everything within reach is simply a vehicle for your anger. People keep acting like this is some new phenomenon, driven this time by "economic anxiety" or some such. They have always been like this. They are always going to be like this.

Does anyone out there on either side of the debate seriously believe that, had a hundred thousand rust belt morlocks voted for her and got her across the finish line, that there would be some "voice of reason" on that side of the aisle going, You know, maybe since we lost, we need to get over our self-righteous smugness and reach out to these folks and learn to talk with them? Fucking seriously? They got the fuck blown out of them in 2008, and by March 2009, six weeks after Obama's inauguration, had declared full-throated war. And they made good on that promise.

We all have to figure out how to live with each other, Bourdain is right on that count. But none of us who see this fucking clown for the clear and present danger that he is owe anyone anything. There was always the outside hope that Clownstick might possibly govern in a less antagonistic fashion than he campaigned, but the opposite is proving to be true. He's going to do to this country what Putin has done to Russia -- plunder the economy for himself and his cronies, punish his opponents in government and media, and use racists and nationalists as a sort of volunteer enforcement arm.

And Bourdain knows it. That's why he's so strident about being unwilling to "break bread" with Clownstick personally, why he pre-emptively refuses to visit the restaurant in Clownstick's hotel. It's all of a piece, you can't have it both ways. If you can't explain to these incoherent retards why you're boycotting their hero's bidness enterprises, then there is probably not a lot of common ground to be found.

Theirs is the logic of the rioter, and some of us are just boarding up our small businesses and homes, and just hoping to make it through the long dark night, knowing that there's nothing we can say to them. Seriously, I'd give money to hear exactly what Anthony Bourdain would say to someone who thinks Barack Obama shares some of the blame for 9/11, to find some mythical common ground.

Given all the deep-seated problems facing this nation and the world, and our collective refusal to do much about any of them (heaven forfend the one-percenters experience even a tiny blip in their fucking endless greed), the only sensible thing to say to your average Clownstick supporter is, ironically, the same thing to have said to Clinton supporters had she won: Be careful what you wish for.

Death Wish

So on December 23rd, we watched the Extras Christmas special series finale, which has a brief cameo from George Michael. The next day we watched the Rosemary's Baby episode of 30 Rock.

So I've spent the last several days seriously considering watching a few episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, especially if they have a Kanye West appearance.

True Lies

From the "Least Expected News of the Month But In a Weird Way It Kinda Makes Sense" file, it turns out that the Next Big Clownstick Revelation is in the hands of none other than Tom Arnold:

Last week, comedian Tom Arnold came forward with the information that he has in his possession outtakes from Celebrity Apprentice in which the show’s host, United States President-elect Donald Trump, can be seen and heard “saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children,” among other delights. Arnold has said he will not release the tapes, which he received from Apprentice producers who meant it as a joke years ago — before anyone thought the perpetrator of such comments would be the president of the United States — because he fears for his own safety and that of his family. And, according to Arnold, those same producers fear the repercussions of the tapes’ release professionally (presumably, there are strict contractual considerations).

Well today, according to The Hollywood Reporter, there are developments: In a series of tweets directed at actor Michael Rapaport (who essentially asked Arnold to step up and release the tapes), Arnold somewhat clarified his position, stating that the content of the tapes was “disgusting but not illegal.” Furthermore, he said, “smart Watergate level journalists are on top of this.” While Arnold does not clarify what that means, exactly, the implication is that a larger story, one with criminal implications, may be developing here.

[emphasis mine]
Really, what "Watergate level journalists" are there? Only a few names distinguished themselves throughout the campaign, off hand I can only think of four: David Fahrenthold, Kurt Eichenwald, Julia Ioffe, and maybe Katy Tur. In reverse order, Tur basically became a penned punching bag for Clownstick at his hate rallies, in with the rest of the media veal. She had a book planned to shine some light on her experiences tracking the Clownstick scampaign, though it's tough to see just how it could have been any worse. Ioffe got anti-Semitic death threats after writing an article gently criticizing a few things about Melania Clownstick. Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, had to suspend his Twitter account temporarily after some fine Christian folk put strobe GIFs on his feed, hoping to trigger a seizure, plus they started parody accounts of their own to troll him.

Fahrenthold keeps on trucking, but for what, to see more good work go completely ignored? The fix is in, has always been in, and for every solid reporter out there running down a real story, there are dozens of "analysts" and "commentators" and gatekeepers to ensure that either the story never sees the light of day, or gets diluted by disinformation and bullshit commentary.

So Tom Arnold has a recording of Apprentice outtakes that has El Caudillo saying the n-word, the c-word, the r-word, and more. I'm saying that said tape could be indisputable high-definition video and audio, verified by the ten most reliable sources you could dream of (or by Clownstick himself), of Clownstick using all those words in reference to, say, Oprah Winfrey or LeBron James or Barack Obama or whoever. And it won't make a goddamned bit of difference. It won't matter. He wasn't far off when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and they'd still support him. They would.

That's the real problem. That's what we're not getting. Facts, words, deeds, responsible governance, ignorance, lies -- none of it matters to these people. They don't care about their country, or the US' vital role in a dangerous world. The only thing they care about is rubbing your nose in shit, the stankier the better, for as long as possible.

The New Political Correctness

Pro-tip for all you academic types out there thinking of making a half-assed joke about whitey: if you include an image of Pepe the Frog or Hitlery in a gas chamber with Clownstick throwing the lever, it'll go over with the Breitbart rage hamsters that much better, or at least confound them while they wait for the dickless scrivener's e-pellet to hit their Skinner box. In the meantime, you can probably count the hours before another public servant in Pig Fuck, West Virginny cracks wise in an email about the simian and or male features of the First Lady. Or better yet, have an armed, explicitly anti-joooo neo-Nazi march in Whitefish, Montana. But yeah, Professor Fuckface's dumb tweet is the problem here. Right.

I hate to poach the slogan of a perfectly respectable strip-mall steakhouse chain, but when it comes to figuring out the operating principles of these whiny freaks, No Rules, Just Right fits about as well as anything else. Theirs is the logic of a four-year-old in sore need of a juice box and a nap. There is no logic or consistency to anything they do or say, they are simply addicted to the rage pellet that legitimizes to them the voices in their heads.

This is in direct alignment with the backlash against "safe spaces" and campus activism that underwrote a great deal of their assumptions and misinformation during the campaign. As Erik Loomis at LGM has posted, they're building a watch-list of professors, checking it twice and all that. We'll see if Drexel has the balls to stand up for their professor or not. I'm thinking they will, but this is the beta phase of testing this tactic; the Breitbart animals, like good marketers, will continue refining and recalibrating, honing their tactics for things like this, looking for episodes of #doubleplusunMAGA behavior to beat the mow-rons over thhir pointy heads with, while the Dummycrats keep re-litigating the election and whinging about Russians infesting their emails.

Spreading the Word

If you're able, give Jurassic Pork a helping hand this holiday season.

Season's Beatings

This week in stoooooopid:

In Phoenix, two middle-aged women in the Trump-only focus group said they wouldn’t support him for re-election if he signed away funding for Planned Parenthood. “It’s a deal-breaker,” said an earthy 58-year-old in a plaid work shirt. “It will rob women of basic fundamental rights. I’m talking about female health care, which includes abortion. Which includes birth control. I think birth control is the greatest gift that they gave for womankind.” Added a 44-year-old, if Trump attacked Planned Parenthood, “I’d be pissed off as hell.”

This leads to an obvious question: If these women think defunding Planned Parenthood is a deal-breaker, why did they vote for a candidate who promised to do exactly that? After all, in a September letter addressed to “Pro-Life Leaders,” Trump pledged to strip Planned Parenthood’s federal funding unless it stops performing abortions. But many of the people in the focus groups didn’t know he’d made this assurance, and those who did didn’t take it seriously. It seemed as if Trump’s lasciviousness, which Clinton hoped would disqualify Trump with women, actually worked in his favor. The focus group participants couldn’t imagine that Trump would enact a religious right agenda. “He’s probably paid for a few abortions himself,” said the 58-year-old in Phoenix, eliciting a roomful of laughs.

Durrr....hyuk hyuk hyuk. That shore is funny, I tell ya what. Not as funny as watching these fucktards get exactly what they voted for, but high-larry-us nonetheless. They'll need that brilliant comedic wit to sustain them in the coming months and years, as they reap the whirlwind in so many different ways.

Over the Edge

Not sure what the hell's going on over at Robb's jernt these days, but the commentary's off-base, and half of the commenters seem to have truckled over from whatever shithead white-power joo-baiting  site serves their insane purposes these days. You have to read it to believe it; these are the sorts of rubes who spout racial slurs at the workplace, whether in anger or in "jokes," and then seriously wonder why no one will hire them after they're summarily fired.

Anyhoo, Robb's contention is that the nascent (and ill-fated, let's face it) Electoral College upset tomorrow would signify the transmogrification of our Jebus' Favrit Nayshun into a banana republic.

Decent Exposure

The Rude Pundit has this one right: it's all well and good that Obama held a press conference yesterday to take a few lame rhetorical jabs at the coup-disguised-as-democratic-transition currently underway. But it will do nothing, it will change nothing.

I don't expect Obama to go nuts and scream or declare martial law or anything. But this is about the fate of the nation, quite possibly the world at large, and at the very least a presidential legacy that Obama worked very hard for. Everything he struggled for, uphill for eight years, all gone, washed away like a sandcastle under the encroaching tide. About the only one of Obama's legislative benchmarks that doesn't seem to interest Clownstick is marriage equality, but with a religious nut like Pence at his side, even that's not safe. Hell, he'd undo it just to be a dick, just because it wasn't his, a hyena killing a pup he didn't sire.

We all like the old norm of Reagan sitting in the Oval Office with Tip O'Neill over a couple tumblers of Scotch, discussing like grown-ass adults where they might reach common ground over some things. The idea was that people could agree to disagree on issues, and still acknowledge the other's humanity and basic decency. That norm is long out the window, well before the Clownstick regime came along, and only a complete fool would still be operating under that old way of thinking.

These people are fucking indecent, proudly so. It is time to address them as such, and not wait and hope that they won't be quite that bad. I'm pretty sure every victim of every serial killer held out that same false hope, right up to the moment that the killer's weapon broke skin, and they watched their lifeblood spill to the floor.

But Obama seems strangely passive, almost complacent, as if he had no agency in affecting events. He probably thinks that if he behaves himself, he can leverage that into having some sort of emeritus counsel to Clownstick and his entourage. This is a problem, and his party shares the same problem. Republicans lose an election, and they immediately get to work and start fucking things up. Democrats lose one and they start acting like a punk on the cell block, trying to figure out what will get their man off most quickly, so as to avoid a beatdown.

Well, fuck that shit. The phrase "better to die on your feet than to live on your knees" may be a cliché, but those things are true by definition, and if they really want any chance at future viability, they had all best unfuck themselves and see the storm(front) approaching. They still think this is some sort of contest of ideas that can be won with logic and reason, but we are apparently in a "post-truth" era where facts no longer have value, and so having a simple, powerful narrative and posture is much more important.

Count on this more than anything: you will know that the Dems have figured this out when their donors start pulling. This is a money game after all, and when the money dries up, the pencil-pushers get the message and change their approach. In the meantime, get ready for Chuck Schumer to assume the position and sell it all down the river, instead of doing what McConnell did from day one and just turning into a fucking doorstop. It's as if the Republicans didn't just spend the last nine months stonewalling the incumbent president's selection for the Supreme Court, just waiting out his term.

Say it again -- these people are fucking indecent, and it is time to stop pretending they can be reasoned with. They cheat and lie and steal, openly and brazenly, and the Dems fire back with their empty bullshit handjob "when they go low we go high" platitudes. Enough with that shit.

There's no shame in saying no, folks; in fact, it's in your own best interest to make that your new favorite word. Fight anything and everything, by any means necessary.

They Ask Questions

Steve asks rhetorically:

Will media dupes ever stop predicting that Trump might govern as a non-conservative?

And of course the answer is no, and of course we all know it. There will always be some professional journamalists out there who need to occupy column inches and/or time in the sainted 24-hour news cycle.

When we plaintively ask what's wrong with the media, this is really the main part of the problem -- the incessant need to fill, constantly, relentlessly, with less and less quality control. The sad and hilarious irony of it all is that the corporate media monkeys keep genuflecting faster and more furiously to the wingnuts douchebags who don't even read them anyway, who show up only to troll and lob impotent threats from the comfort of their couches. Meanwhile, they betray the people who actually do read their reporting and analyses every time they do shit like that.

All real journalism, excepting feel-good kitten-in-a-tree Bart's people type schtick, should boil down to one of two things:

1. Objective reporting of facts and events -- what was done and said, and by whom. Statements that are factually inaccurate should be pointed out; statements that have already been corrected and are still stated as before are called lies.
2. Objective opinions based on facts and evidence at hand, in order to analyze and synthesize the confluence of events and people that occur on a regular basis. There is generally some assumption or expectation of expertise, or at least a higher-than-average level of knowledge about the subject(s) being discussed.

These are modest definitional expectations, and more and more the "media" collectively fail to meet even that bar. Robert Frank's piece that Steve is responding to in the link is basically a textbook version of the "contrarian" clickbait one sees a startling prevalence of these days. Frank seems to be pinning his analysis, such as it is, on past vagaries of Clownstick seeming somewhat "liberal" on some issues (for example, not being a homo-crucifying closet-case fundie, woo-hoo!).

But Clownstick has never indicated any clear opinion on any major national policy issue, if you look back. He feints and bobs and weaves and head-fakes, but aside from wanting to machine-gun the so-called Central Park Five into a mass grave in Central Park and plop a monument to himself over it, he's never really been definitive about much of anything at all. Clownstick's defining characteristic is a sincere belief that he is smarter and better than everyone else, that he's the biggest swinging dick in the room simply because he repeats that he is over and over until the dullards start to believe it. Again, though, no policy opinions or details, on anything, certainly not on the health care system.

As Steve points out, there is absolutely no reason, based on Clownstick's recent history as a campaigner either, and certainly not with his prospective appointments so far, to even speculate that he might be planning to "innovate" the health-care system in any way that would help the most vulnerable. And since it seriously appears that Clownstick does not even read anything that isn't about him, it's entirely likely that he doesn't even know anything about what a clusterfuck of collusion the health-care system is in this country.

And since he's nothing but a cheap two-bit grifter who lives for fleecing suckers and fools, it's pretty much a slam-dunk guarantee that if someone had the time and patience to explain to him how the health-care racket works, Clownstick's only question would be how to get in on some of that for himself.

N8r B8rs -- 2016 Edition

Lolwut. Jesus H. Christ, people, as ludicrous a person and politician as Jill Stein is, she didn't cost you your sainted fucking election, Neither did Gary "Cheech" Johnson.

Nor, for that matter, did Hillary Clinton. She was a solid candidate with a good message. But there was a brutal confluence of various and nefarious factors, most of them out of the candidate's control. But yeah, maybe visiting Wisconsin even once during the general election might have helped, who knows?

I don't mean to pick on Paul Campos; I like his writing a lot. But I think the linked piece is a forerunner of what's to come, as FVC takes office and makes GWB look like FDR. There will be many bitter recriminations like this along the way, and it will not be pretty.

And so I think it's important not to jerk oneself off and fall into that same trap as the Dems did in 2004. Fucking wake up already and realize that the corporate media represent corporate interests, not the peoples'. They are always going to chase the dollar, and never worry for a second about what's "right" or "useful." They were never on your side, or his. They're on their side, and everything else is incidental. Realize that the Democratic Party itself is little more than a vestigial appendage in many states, at the state and local level, and that there's not much of a bench even at the national level.

Or you can spend the next couple electoral cycles bemoaning the hubris of protest candidates daring to contest the Holy Duopoly, and see what that gets you. How'd all those long, cold years of Thanksralphery go for you?

GIGO

Not that a recount in the Rust Belt states was ever going to do any good -- as even overturning the results in favor of HRC would have simply created more (and more serious) problems of legitimacy -- but this is a worthwhile peek into what can charitably be described as a seriously flawed process.

It's easy to see the intrinsic appeal of indulging a lawyerly tactic in order to thwart what is already turning out to be every bit as awful a person as he was a candidate. This fucking guy -- he'll never be my president, probably won't be yours either. But these people -- and worse yet, their base -- are, as we've seen over the past month, sore winners. What sort of losers do you think they'd be, especially if they think it's all been snatched away from them through legal chicanery?

And, in fact, there should be no doubt at all that even if HRC had won the Electoral College by a true landslide, as opposed to the limp-dick mediocre victory that Clownstick and Conway are lamely claiming, there would be protests in the streets, there would be harrumphing from Paul Ryan and Bitch McConnell about how they wouldn't be able to work with her, blah blah blah. These people fucking cheat as a matter of course; it should be no surprise at all that they would also, in the event of a loss, go nuts. The old adage about playing chess with a pigeon holds true with these assholes. They are not to be trusted. Ever. They love money and re-election far more than their country or its people.

Maybe if the gubmint and media spent as much time covering the tragic mechanics of the electoral system as they do worrying about who's paying for what, you might get more logical results.

Mr. Blue Sky

At its cold mathematical heart, the schism between Clownstick voters and Clownstick haters is that of the red states and the blue states, the takers and the makers, moochers and producers. So for those of us in the godless librul elite states, this could actually work out well.

Red state voters may talk a good game about small government and low taxes, but in reality they are socialist moochers.

Rather than wallowing in the hypocrisy of all this, however, Democrats should see the opportunity here — an opportunity to turn the Republican program to their selfish advantage and create the kind of society where people look out for each other and business interests are not allowed to run roughshod over workers and consumers.

After all, if Republicans cut taxes — in particular, taxes on investment income — then the biggest winners are going to be the residents of Democratic states where incomes, and thus income taxes, are significantly higher. Governors and legislatures in those states — home to roughly half of all Americans — will now have the financial headroom to raise state income and business taxes by as much as the federal government cuts them — and use the additional revenue to replace all the federal services and benefits that Republicans have vowed to cut.

....

In time, however, blue state Democrats could look forward to the satisfaction of watching Trump's voters stew in their own political juices as Red State America finally frees itself from the evil grip of global elites and big government and turns itself into a low-tax, low-wage, low health paradise where it's every man for himself.

This is what they wanted out there in Real 'murka, since they are the only True Americans and the rest of us are not. And the right thing is for them to get what they voted for -- deregulation of business and environmental practices, no minimum wage or pensions, filthy air and water. Hell, maybe those precious coal jobs will come back after all -- but they'll be $8.00/hr., no benefits, no pension, shit health care, and routine mine collapses and pollution.

In this way we Cali heathens can get back to working on nice things for our own state and citizens, rather than subsidizing a bunch of fucking whiny ingrates. Frankly, the only thing we're not completely self-sufficient on is water, and that can be resolved -- or at least improved, in the midst of a multi-year drought -- with a couple more dams and better water management. Too bad we'll never be real 'murkins.

I'm With Stupid

The exciting auditions for Celebrity Fuckface continue! Who will be crowned 'murka's reigning Fuckface?

It figures that someone just released from a mental hospital after treatment for a nervous breakdown would be good to go for playing the Clownstick inaugural bawl. They can have each other; I'm sure the Pepe the Frog acolytes are looking forward to overlong filler sets from Kanye, Kid Rock, Andrea Bocelli, and whatever goat-fucking country hacks get roped into this. Maybe they can all band together for a bro-country rendition of The Horst Wessel Song.

In the meantime, nice distraction on Drumpf's part in dodging the press conference he was supposed to have, in which he was going to clownsplain how he was going to plunder the treasury while pretending to keep his conflicts of interest under control. The motherfucker's entire existence is a conflict of interest, and he revels in knowing that everyone knows it, and there's not a goddamned thing anyone can or will do about it.

Hopefully any other do-gooder celebritards out there have learned by watching what happened to Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio, who made the pilgrimage to kiss the ring over climate change, only to have Okie oil-blower Scott Pruitt tapped to head the EPA. Keep devaluing your own currency by currying empty favor with this fucking guy, see what that gets you.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

There are precious few certainties in this life, but I can guaran-goddamn-tee y'all that I will never get tired of reading these things over the next four, eight, twenty years, however long this new dark night turns out to last.

The Kentucky voters I spoke with constantly mentioned "change" as a reason they supported [Drumpf].

"That man has a head for business," Atkins said. "He will absolutely do his best to change things."

Still, Oller acknowledged she took a leap of faith with [Drumpf].

"It was Russian roulette," Oller said of her vote. "But I felt that we needed change."

Welp, you're about to get all the change you can stand, sweet-cheeks. If there's one thing I am in 100% agreement with self-styled conservatives on, it's that people should bear the consequences and be accountable for their stupid decisions, so bon appetit, assholes.

Bonus points for the inadvertent "Russian roulette" pun. Сделать Россию Великой Снова!

Buyer's Remorse

Let the beatdown of the simpletons begin:

A woman who voted for Donald Trump is now regretting her choice after the President-elect chose Steve Mnuchin to be his Secretary of Treasury.

Teena Colebrook explained to the Associated Press that she had voted for Trump hoping he would keep his pledge to remove the elites from Washington. However, she became truly disenchanted when he chose Mnuchin, partly because it showed he’s “now backing his buddies.”

But also because Mnuchin was responsible for the loss of her home and source of income.

Mnuchin used to be an owner of OneWest, a bank formed in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-08 that acquired the assets of subprime mortgage lender IndyMac. Shortly after acquiring the loans from IndyMac, OneWest began foreclosing on thousands of them.

I am honestly wondering what in Clownstick's extensively covered history made people like Colebrook think he could be trusted to look after their interests. There is literally no point in that history where he looked out for anyone but himself, and more often than not it came at the expense of the peons.

The coal miners are finding out the hard way too, and it is hilarious. These folks are getting exactly what they begged for, good and hard, and this is only the beginning for them. The fucker's not even in office yet and it's getting snapped off in their asses.

At The Movies

Hell Or High Water -- Tightly plotted and superbly executed, this old-school crime drama evokes the classic prose of Cormac McCarthy and James Lee Burke. Ben Foster and Chris Pine play a pair of siblings robbing rural Texas banks, in order to pay off the reverse mortgage on their mother's ranch and claim the newfound oil rights. Jeff Bridges plays the Texas Ranger tracking them down before riding off into retirement. The cast is outstanding across the board, and even though you know where it's headed, the ride is bumpy and entertaining, thanks to the richly drawn characters.
Grade: A

Captain Fantastic -- A waaayyyyy off-the-grid family of six kids and a dad are forced to adjust to the "real" world when they travel to the mother's funeral. Viggo Mortensen underpins the role of dad Ben with his stubborn charm and fierce intelligence, and the kids are outstanding as well. You hate to use the hack phrase "quirky little indie" but it applies here in a good way. Writer/director Matt Ross (Gavin Belson from HBO's Silicon Valley) helms his project with care and sensitivity. Ben's clear conflict of conscience -- if he is raising his kids to be in the world but not of it, why bother versing them in mundane worldly verities such as the Bill of Rights -- is never quite explained, nor how he came to reject the world so completely, but these are minor quibbles in a terrific movie.
Grade: A-

The Infiltrator -- The true story of US Customs Agent Robert Mazur's successful undercover effort to bring down Pablo Escobar's drug network, as well as the money laundering of BCCI, is compelling enough, and with Bryan Cranston, John Leguizamo, and Diane Kruger leading the way, solidly cast. But at 127 minutes, the movie feels about twenty minutes too long, and its climactic scene, a mass bust at a fake wedding between Cranston and Kruger, rings false when the feds expose Cranston and Kruger as undercover operatives by not busting them as well. It's still pretty well done overall, but mainly reminded me of how good a Power of the Dog movie would be.
Grade: B

All Or Nothing

Okay, this bullshit meme about taking Clownstick "literally but not seriously" versus the other way around has to stop. Right. Fucking. Now. For the media's sake, and for their consumers' sake.

I'm still kicking this notion around, and will expand on it in an upcoming post, but the bottom line is that if a journalist, or anyone who is supposed to be dealing in objective facts and informed opinions, starts letting their subjects dictate the tempo and tone of actual coverage, then there is literally, seriously no fucking point in said coverage.

Of course his entire scampaign was an extended troll, and it worked, so of course he's going to keep doing it, for as long as they keep falling for it. They are devaluing their own currency, and getting spun hard in the process, to the point where many of them do not seem to know how to cover him.

There are rules to the job of president, basic rules and norms which all holders of that position must follow, if this thing is to work. Probably the most basic of those rules is that while what the president says may fall within a greater context, the minimum expectation is that he speaks for all Americans. Literally. Seriously. This is not a new expectation, and we are not changing the rules and expectations because a reality-teevee pro-wrestling hack squeaked in by his hairpiece.

In Other Fake News

Well, at least the mentally ill face some obstacles in getting dangerous weap -- oh, wait, no, they absolutely do not. (Does it even need to be said that if this asshole was black, he'd have been gunned down in the street like a rabid dog?) Guess we'll just wait around and twiddle our thumbs until the next one of these losers actually kills someone because they're too stupid and rage-choked to discern between facts and trolling. You know, like the average Drumpftard.

Coupled with the fact that Michael Flynn, the Russian-bought general selected to head the National Security Agency, and his adult son have been propagators of this "Hillary is running a pedophile ring" bullshit.

If there's one thing you need to keep in mind over the next four years, it's that all of these clowns -- Drumpf, Flynn, Kellyanne Conway, Newt, Rudy -- every single one of them hates you, hates me, hates America and its inhabitants, those who oppose their cheap lies and toxic nonsense. Oh, they talk a good game, but they never tell the truth, they're in complete thrall to the highest bidders, they engage in the rankest of hypocrisies routinely. All of those are things that this country was supposed to stand for. But times, as they say, are changin'.

Fail to the Chimp

Even Fredo Arbusto, bless his simian muzzle, wasn't this fucking stupid:

[Drumpf] had an opportunity at the start of his presidency to begin with a more or less clean slate with China, and he has now very likely frittered that away for nothing. At best, [Drumpf] has pointlessly antagonized Beijing in a way that will have lingering effects on his dealings with them for months and possibly years to come. At the very worst, his careless freelancing could produce a real crisis between China and Taiwan that could end up dragging in the U.S.

It's hard to conceive of any "stupider like a fox" reason to do something like this. Why would a brilliant bidnessman needlessly jeopardize his yuuuge bidness interests in another country, a vital trading partner? There is no percentage whatsoever -- strategically, geopolitically, financially -- in doing something like this.

This is not to say that there aren't issues that need to be worked out with the Chinese. They are building a deep-water fleet to secure their place as regional hegemon, the ultimate goal of which would probably be to control the Strait of Malacca (through which most of the world's oil travels). Additionally, they are building artificial islands near the Senkaku (aka Diaoyu) Islands, under and around which lie large deposits of oil and natural gas, in conflict with Japan. The violent thug that has taken over the Philippines is sucking up to the Chinese, which runs counter to our purported strategic interests.

Hell, it may be time to back away and concentrate on tilling our own field anyway. This century is likely going to gravitate toward the Indian Ocean nations anyway, based on demographics and yet another book our non-reader-in-thief will never read and wouldn't understand anyway.

The last time a preznit fucked the dog unnecessarily with China, a few months later 9/11 happened. Those two events are not directly connected, but if this regime got too much attention for the sheer incompetence and belligerence of its dopey figurehead, you wouldn't put it past them to cook up some false-flag event as a distraction. And it would work.

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

Only in the south could a cop get caught on video shooting an unarmed, fleeing suspect -- on a traffic stop, mind you -- in the back, plant a weapon on the corpse, and still be given the benefit of the doubt. It's not like anyone coulda predicted that or anything.

Also, too, it is now okay to execute someone in the middle of the street in a fit of road rage, as long as the killer is white and the victim is black. Any questions?

Good and Hard

Okay, for the record, I definitely feel bad for the folks who knew the stakes, voted accordingly, are going to lose their health care coverage -- and possibly, you know, their lives or their kids' lives -- because of a smattering of angry rust-belt retards.

But let's not take the bait on worrying about how many Drumpfkins are going to lose their coverage. Seriously. It's barely worth reporting, much less showing concern. Fuck them, every last one of them. Fuck their black lungs and slipped discs and groaning knees. Fuck their congested hearts and rotted colons and the limbs they lost to type-π dia-beet-us.

I don't "like" or "hate" these people, I simply don't care about them. At all. I don't care if their jobs come back. I don't care if they've lived quiet lives of desperation for too long and have just given up out of frustration. I don't care if their unemployed, thirty-year-old, five-kids-by-four-guys-in-six-years daughters are whoring themselves on Craigslist for oxy and fentanyl. They've made themselves clear, they made their choice, are being unbelievably insufferable about it, and deserve everything they're about to get.

They can live on cat food and wipe their worthless asses with their "Fuck Your Feelings" t-shirts for all I care. It has nothing to do with their race or economic status or regional accents or even political beliefs, to the extent that they have any of the latter; it has everything to do with the fact that it was more important to them to fuck over the caricatured fag libruls of their fever dreams, than to pay attention and simply not vote for the most transparent caricature of a con-man carny imaginable.

Asking for a Friend

So, uh, do you think Mitt Romney swallows?

Mommie Dearest

Even dirtbag serial killers have mothers that love them, one supposes, but the mother of sex-dungeon freak Todd Kohlhepp takes it to another level. Maybe she has to tell the rest of the world that her son is no monster, just so she can live with knowing that he is, and that she raised him. If we can't just have done with this piece of shit and shove him into a wood chipper, maybe we can just put him under permanent house arrest at her house, see how that works out.

Westworld

Apparently our favorite fake music person is in full meltdown mode lately, going on endless rants and ending shows after a few songs. This is hilarious. In addition to being a hack, Kanye has always been a thief when it comes to his fans' money. And they're stupid enough to keep giving it to him.

All We Are Saying Is Give Beast A Chance

If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. -- George Orwell, Freedom of the Park

Brief notes and errata from the blunderground:

This country clearly deserves a leader like Drumpf -- a petulant liar who thinks his prevarications and authoritarian impulses are holy writ. And hell, after a few years of AG Jefferson, I say Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Thuuhhhd, perhaps they will be. Maybe Jared Kushner and Uday and Qusay, armed with information obtained with illegal surveillance and nepotistic security clearances, will sic the corrupt FBI cells on the DFHs protesting in the streets, heckling Pence at Hamilton, refusing to dress the new queen or appear for the Kennedy Center Honors.

Recall that one of Drumpf's early stump lines was, "When I'm president, we'll all say 'Merry Christmas'." To which a reasonable free citizen can only reply, Or what, motherfucker?

Heartbreak and Resistance

It's been a long 72 hours or so for most of us. Hopefully the bruise is starting to go down a bit. It will get better. The media will not help; they have replaced their inane thumbsuckers about What Those Folks Out There In The Sticks Are Thinking with even more inane pieces about What Just Happened. Their efforts are in vain. They are merely trying to distract all of us -- and more importantly, themselves -- from the truth about their increasing irrelevance.

If there's one thing we might end up commending Drumpf for, it's that he may have exposed the entire rotten political campaign industry as the bunch of grifting, chicken-entrail-reading weasels we always thought they were. I have no idea how he knew their polling models were bullshit, since he doesn't seem to know much of anything at all, but his instincts were correct on that count.

Even the RNC's own internal polling on the morning of election day had him losing. Something's going on here, what it is ain't exactly clear. Maybe instead of more useless chucklers about the city mice venturing into the hinterlands to plumb the psyches of the country mice, someone might take a look at all that. Because it's fucking janky as all hell.

Freak Out

At this point, Clownstick is leading 244 electoral votes to 215, with a handful of states left to call. Friends 'n' neighbors, it's going to be a squeaker from hell at best, and he's likely to win. The betting markets were 80-20 for Hillary yesterday; they are 80-20 Clownstick right now. I don't know what the fuck happened in the last 24 hours, but there ya go. Feingold and Bayh already lost their Senate runs, so that's gone. It's looking pretty rough right now. She basically has to run the table on the Rust Belt states, and she's behind about 60-80k in each of them right now.

It would be a good time to repeat the last part of the penultimate paragraph of the previous post:

And if Drumpf does manage to win, then it's all over anyway, not only because of the destruction he will wreak on the very foundations of this country, but because it would mean there really are enough self-destructive morons to tear it all down, just to watch it burn.

I'm not sure what else to say. Regardless of the outcome, it might be a good time to pick up a new skill or three, do some more and different writing, figure out some monetization strategies to supplement income enough to save up some discretionary income, look for greener pastures.

100 Hours -- And At Least Four Years

After sixteen wretched months of obsessiveness, nasty insults, and bitter recriminations [and that's just in this blog! -- Ed.] it's time to sketch a more-or-less serious, cogent analysis of the choice before us. Let's see if we can get through this with a minimum of f-bombs and scatological references, shall we? Okay then.

A few things need to be stipulated right up front, by of reiterating something I have held firm (giggity) on from the very start of Clownstick's candidacy. The consistent volume and vituperation of Drumpf's supporters add no value to their man's campaign. Ordinarily you'd say this was just more evidence of the pernicious corporate media cherry-picking the most objectionable people they could find, and casting them as the typical supporter.

But even the sympathetic thumb-sucking pieces can't avoid the fact that these people are dumber than a bag of rocks. I couldn't possibly bear to read yet another insufferable limo-lib fish-out-of-water jeremiad, peppered as it is with idiots festering in a broke-ass, cancer-ridden swamp, yet stubbornly insistent on voting against themselves until the day they keel over at fifty-five or so, obese and embittered.

Career Opportunities

I hope for Jim Comey's sake he knows what he's doing, because from the cheap seats, it looks like he's lamely trying to cover his ass and pretend to be an honest broker. But what he's really doing is feeding fresh material to a conspiracy theorist, and could conceivably throw the election in doing so. Congratulations on your moral purity, asshole.

Oh, and that dipshit pervert Weiner is welcome to kindly go fuck himself already. Good job, buddy, now please do us all a favor and go away, be a plumber or sell oranges by the freeway or something. You've done quite enough damage.

But even Weiner is an order of magnitude better than that worthless cocksucker Chaffetz.

Parasite

David Fahrenthold still deserves the Pulitzer. Donald "Fuckface Von Clownstick" Drumpf is still a scummy, skinflint dirtbag who deserves to live on a fucking sidewalk and beg for change.

In the linked article, a line from one of Drumpf's "books" is excerpted:

“We’ve benefited from the American Dream and we feel the duty to give back to the community,” he wrote of his family in “The America We Deserve” in 2000. “Those who don’t are nothing more than parasites.”

Couldn't agree more, and as Fahrenthold has spent the better part of the past year painstakingly chronicling, Drumpf and his offspring have never done a goddamned thing for anyone else that didn't also -- or in many cases only -- benefit themselves and their interests.

Think about just one of many examples of this -- Drumpf literally used foundation money to pay the seven dollar fee for Fuckface Junior to join the fucking Boy Scouts. That's as bad in principle, if not in volume, as him using foundation money to buy life-size paintings of himself. Seriously, there's something wrong with a person that does this, or cashes a thirteen-cent check.

These people continue to be living, breathing, slithering proof that there really is no such thing as karma. They are liars and frauds and utterly soulless con artists, and they should be ridden into the throes of desperation and poverty at the soonest available moment.

Voterhead

Clownstick's whinging about the voting process being rigged finally came true. Looks like someone took the old "vote early and often" saying literally. Is anyone out there surprised at which candidate this felon supports? The only surprise here is that it wasn't in Florida.

For normal people, this will prove to be a fine example of how the process to ensure electoral integrity actually works, therefore minimizing the mechanical possibility of fraudulent voting. For the dipshit Drumpfkins, who are fact- and evidence-challenged, this will simply confirm their suspicions that while everyone games the system, only the good guys get caught.

Send 'em back to their holes, folks.

IOKIYAM(oron)

Just a reminder:  you can rant and tweet and fulminate your pending revolution on any and every media platform for a fucking year or so, and no one will do a goddamned thing, but if you make a lame joke in a Williamsburg bar about offing The Clownstick, the NYPD will pull your ass in for a few hours, "lose" your ID, and generally spend the evening reminding you what happens when you fuck around in a po-lice state.

Drumpf has spent the better part of the last month deliberately trying to sabotage the electoral process, and delegitimize Clinton's administration before it even starts, but the real threat is some numbnuts public-school history teacher running his mouth after one too many Blue Moons. Good to know.

And Joe Walsh can go fuck himself with Drumpf's tiny bronzed dick. No doubt the Stormfront retards cluttering up Twitter buy into Walsh's "musket" schtick, pretending it means something other than what it obviously means. The idea that "musket" is synonymous with boycotts and voting (or not voting) in protest is preposterous even for a moron deadbeat dad like Joe Walsh. His tri-corner tinfoil hat ain't getting him out of this one.

Walsh and his cohort might be surprised to find that some of us pussy libruls actually own weapons as well, and the first one of these dumb cocksuckers that decides post-election to take seriously his own micropenis-grabbing horseshit is going to discover the pleasures of an ass full of lead. I've had more than my fill of listening to these whiny assholes with their heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic. Either accept the results as they land, or get the fuck out, and we promise to do the same.

Show Business

The rumor earlier this year that the true goal of Drumpf's whole scampaign was to start his own reich-wing "news" network was just too seductive, too perfect. It didn't have to make sense, because it sounded exactly like something Clownstick would do. It's all he knows, it's the pro-wrestling reality-teevee simulacrum he understands.

That rumor still persists, and in fact apparently Drumpf's pelf-grubbing scum-in-law reached out to the "boutique" lender LionTree, only to be rebuffed. And this is why a teevee network is a no-go.

Of course, that is an entirely different matter than whether or not the rumor is true -- which itself points up the fact that Drumpf, for the thousandth time, is a lousy fucking businessman. After all, this is someone who has failed -- hard -- at selling gambling, vodka, steaks, and football. In America. How do you fail at selling any of those things in this country, much less all of them? Might as well go broke selling blowjobs.

Or outrage, this country's favorite non-pharma drug. This is another easily produced item that Americans cannot get enough of. But for a squirrel-bait cornpone caudillo like Drumpf  to even try to have enough focus to push something like a teevee network is just a bridge too far. He clearly is incapable of doing much beyond picking his nose.

Long Way Down

In its late but welcome death throes, Drumpfistan seems to have declared nuclear jihad on everything and everyone. His latest target is the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. It goes without saying (but we will anyway) that Ohio is a fairly important state in the scheme of things.

This is awesome and at the same time unsettling to watch. It is more proof on an already-high stack just from this past week, that the Drumpf scampaign is in full-on bunker mode. Candidate and fans live not only under their own set of "facts" but rules of logic. Only the polls that show them winning are accurate. The election itself is rigged and fraudulent, unless Cheeto Hitler emerges triumphant.

This is the sort of "heads I win, tails you lose" self-serving bullshit that used to lead to people being burned or drowned alive for witchery, never minding that if they were actually witches, they could get easily get out of the crude restraints. It is the logic of morons and children, people with at best a random epistemology.

Dr. T and the Women

So many takeaways from Bungle in the Jungle 2. Only one more to go, unless Clownstick, you know, pussies out. But it had everything, didn't it -- from the banana-republic threats to the silent stalking to (ultimately) Drumpf's innate need to show at every opportunity what sort of scumbag he actually is. Trotting out Bill Clinton's alleged rape victims to throw in the face of Hillary Clinton is a new low, even for Drumpf.

Hope his poised, precious daughter is proud of dear ol' Dad now -- you know, if she wasn't already proud of him creeping through beauty pageant dressing rooms like a fucking perv, or telling Howard Stern that he could refer to her as a piece of ass. I guess money buys a lot of forbearance, just like it buys a lot of plastic surgery.

With the outing of Bill Cosby as a serial rapist just prior to the 2016 campaign startup, there was always the possibility that, with Hillary as the expected Dem nom, BC's '90s antics were going to come back to haunt him. Look, from a standpoint of cheap agitprop, it really doesn't matter if Bill Clinton is a rapist, or just a philanderer with poor eyesight -- you can't preach a gospel of never questioning a rape accusation, and then trying to brush aside inconvenient accusations.

That said, I can't be bothered to give more than a fuck and a quarter at best about Juanita Broaddrick and the rest of them. They can't not realize that Drumpf is using them as props, and has already discarded them, as they are of no use to him at all. If they think they have been cheated by the justice system, then let them do what Cosby's accusers are doing -- band together, get a lawyer, and take his ass to court.

What Drumpf has been doing all along of course -- emotionally, politically, etc. -- is gaslighting his followers in particular, and the country in general. He makes shit up, denies he said it minutes later, accuses his accusers of having ulterior motives. It is the worst sort of emotional manipulation, far worse than any political candidate at any level in our lifetimes, and it is a clear indicator of how he would function in elected office if enough of us were stupid or spiteful enough to give him the opportunity.

At the very least, he's a pigfucker who despises women. That much is abundantly clear. But the Gooper pols who are shamelessly invoking all their female relatives as excuses to distance himself from the pussy-grabber are just as bad, maybe worse. They are just fine with disempowering women, making their medical decisions for them, making them take a fucking Greyhound bus 500 miles to find the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic because they don't have one in their own state anymore. But they're oh-so-offended by a hot-mic circle-jerk in the back of Billy Bush's Bangbus. Hey, fuck you. No one's buying your little "shocked" act.

Drumpf's implosion seems imminent, and more than justified. Frankly, I hope this rotten motherfucker and his entire shitbird family end up on the fucking sidewalk giving handjobs for crack. Every goddamned one of them is a conniving, money-grubbing, soulless sack of shit. But what we really have to watch out for is how is more, erm, energetic followers handle their hero's impending doom.

But that's okay, and entirely expected. Most of them can be distracted by Black Friday deals and discounts on cardboard containers of salted, deep-fried fat. In the meantime, let's bury this fucking prick.

Midnight Rambler

Sleep became more elusive as he got older, a jumble of half-remembered dreams and nightmares punctuated by regular trips to the pisser. Every ninety minutes or so, it seemed like, frequently more often than that. Thoughts were fleeting, and usually careened into the next one without warning.

Bladder must be the size of a fucking dime, he thought. They don't warn you about it. They tell you about the prostate, and making that pilgrimage to Dr. Jellyfinger. But they don't warn you about the plodding regularity of having to piss in Morse code all the fucking time.

Getting up several times a night changed the way he slept. He was a heavy sleeper as a kid, burrowed deep into the gamma-wave movies, waking with only vague but real impressions -- fear, lust, power, violence, success. As he matured and became more accustomed to the many privileges life had in store for him, he slept less and less. The parties never stopped, and even though he never indulged in the booze and drugs, he was always at the center of the action. Keeping score was his drug of choice, and he used money and women and bullshit to move the point counter.

He Can't Help Himself

The hilarity, she continues. No surprise that it doesn't take a Howard Stern to set Drumpf on "full douchebag," even preznitential cuz Billy Bush can bring it out of him. Within months of his marriage to his Slovenian mail-order bride, Drumpf was driving hard for the hoop on Nancy O'Dell. Like, he took her furniture shopping and everything.

And just when Paul Ryan was finally coming around to Drumpf. And now the RNC muckety-mucks are no doubt convening and conspiring, trying to figure out how to dump Gump, make Pence the front-runner, and tack on -- oh, I don't know, let's say Chachi or Screech or some other cartoon character. So long as we keep in mind that Pence treats women even worse than Drumpf or any other frat boy idiot -- he did, after all support and sign a bill requiring burial or cremation for fetuses that are aborted or miscarried.

Of course the diehard rubes will remain unswayed. He talks about women like they talk about women. Hell, I've talked about women disrespectfully -- you know, when I was 22 and lived on Jack Daniel's and the next woman I happened to meet. Never said the "grab 'em by the pussy" line, though. That's just weird and stupid, even for a drunken 22-year-old. But Drumpf was almost 60 at the time of the tape, just married for a third time, and with four children, three of them grown.

But even the diehards have to be wondering now. This is really not about how he treats or talks about women, as abysmal as that is. This is about judgment and common sense. What sort of a dumbfuck, especially one so obsessed with PR, says this kind of shit in a segment where a cameraman is present. Only a complete moron doesn't assume that the camera is always on, that the mic is always hot.

He couldn't resist the chance to show off for a presidential cousin/nephew, because he never can resist such things. He thinks he is BMOC, and as such is always compelled to play the role. And everyone knows that a real stud just walks up to dames, pulls them aside, gives them a kiss and grabs their pussy. Because that's what "stars" do. Seriously, is there anything this guy isn't completely inept at?

There's your fuckin' hero, your savior, you inbred flyover country dipshits. How do you like him?

This just got fun. Getcha popcorn. By next week the slogan might be changed to Two in the Pink, One in the Stink.

Agony and Irony

Howard Stern has always thrived on being a disruptive prick, so I'm a bit skeptical of this analysis of his undoing of Drumpf over the years of their mutual opportunism, but it would be a nice irony if true. Regardless, this is a nice pull quote that sums up Clownstick's life nicely:

At last, [Drumpf] emerges in the Stern tapes as a kind of humorless George Hamilton figure—a lecherous has-been measuring his march to the grave in New York Post mentions.

That's basically all the guy has done for the past thirty years ago, suck up PR space and attach himself, barnacle-like, to the hull of America's Flying Dutchman public life. This is the secret to Drumpf's success and staying power -- his minute attention span, boastful ignorance, and empty phrases mirror perfectly those traits in his audience. The more passionate the cult follower, the greater the statistical probability that they, like he, actually have little or nothing to offer, but are simply too clueless to know it.

A Friendly Reminder

While the media bozos and overpaid "analysts" offer their various interpretations of who "won" Tuesday's veep debate, there is only one takeaway that you should deem important -- while Drumpf is a cheap, transparent oaf and con-man who is merely pretending to be whatever it is he thinks people want him to be so that they'll vote for him, Mike Pence is the real deal.

The only thing Pence is pretending about is his support for Drumpf. And you can bet the evangelicals are now carefully calibrating their narrative from "Gawd gave us Drumpf" to "Gawd gave us Drumpf to deliver Pence." And Pence is a perfect vessel for them -- smarmy, hypocritical, oppressive to all Others.

The best way to defeat them is to set up any number of grifts to fleece them out of their money, so they have less to contribute to the next psychopath who tries to curry their favor. It may be time to get serious about coming up with a merch line.

Going Native

The WaPo seems to have cornered the market on these "get to know the Drumpfkins" pseudo-anthropological expeditions into Pennsyltucky and such like, to properly limn the narrative of the angry rube. Friday's profile of a clearly deranged Drumpfkin has ruffled some righteous feathers, and at the very least, I would say that the writer did much better work in her profile last year of racist murderer Dylann Stormfront Roof's circle of friends. But this is mostly due to the strictly fish-in-a-barrel nature of Melanie Austin's story, which you could say with a high degree of certainty will not end well.

And of course the trend continues today with an exhaustive study of the denizens of Middletown, Ohio. It never ends, as there are countless towns like this across the country that have been left behind in whatever economic recovery the United States -- as opposed to merely the inner cadre of wealthy and powerful people who actually run it -- has experienced, and they are all populated by angry, bewildered crackers who all appear to have bottomless wells of outrage, but zero will to actually do anything about their sorry lot in life.

After reading enough of these things, you can't help but wonder if they're cherry-picked, or if that's basically all there is to pick from when talking to Drumpfkins. They are startling in their near-perfect consistency, again expressing volubly their anger and bewilderment at how things have gone for them, but having no ideas about what they themselves can do, as adults in a free country who are responsible for their own volition.

Prickrolled

Every time these goobers get gulled, it puts a song in my heart. Every. Fucking. Time. I can't think of a more deserving group.

Taking a Yuuuge Drumpf

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Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Catching up from a nice long weekend away at the coast, it cannot go unmentioned how bizarrely, incredibly stoopid Drumpf really is. This Alicia Machado thing is unreal.

Let's concede, just for the sake of argument, that Machado is and has done everything her detractors claim she has done -- helped a gangster boyfriend getaway from an attempted murder; threatened a judge; banged a housemate on a Mexican reality show while dating a baseball player; had a kid by a hitter from the Sinaloa cartel; done a few pornos. Let's say it's all true and verifiable, that Alicia Machado is something less than (you'll forgive the pun) a model citizen.

Even so, at last Monday's debate, Hillary Clinton nailed Drumpf on any number of issues of real substance -- his non-payment of taxes; his lack of knowledge about the Iran deal; his imaginary ISIS plan; his unbridled joy in fucking over small businesses. So instead of responding at all, much less substantively, to any of those charges, Drumpf comes unglued and spends the entire week rationalizing why he was right in fat-shaming some pageant dingbat that everyone had forgotten about twenty years ago.

Seriously, what's wrong with this guy?