News Cycle Filler

Flipping through the wasteland for something to watch on a Sunday morning before the football starts, I did catch a split-second of dead-eyed homunculus Stephen "Stop calling me Maurice!" Miller on CNN, and jumped away as fast as the remote would allow. The mistake Jake Tapper made was having Miller on in the first place, because creating base-stoking fodder was not just an opportunistic tactic for Miller, it was the whole reason for him to go on CNN in the first place.

I like Tapper, and he seems to be genuinely trying to do a good job and be an effective journamalist, but like all of them, he's operating in a hole. The endless, insatiable need to create and churn content 24-7-365 puts newsrooms in the position of being content providers, rather than reporters. From the perspective of Tapper and CNN, the best possible outcome of having a toad like Miller come on to lie and propagandize is to elicit an inappropriate response of some sort. It's not like Miller is going to say, Oh yeah, Michael Wolff was right on the money -- everyone in the White House is enabling a fucking retard!

There is some truth to the meme of "gotcha" journalism; clearly many of them who give air time to lying shitheads like Miller, or sit there in the "briefing" room to be hectored and lied to by Baghdad Barb, are trying to capture some incendiary quote or statement that they can then point to and say See? See?!

Does it really need to be pointed out that that sort of thing has no effect any more? There's been something like that every fucking day for the past couple years, and it hasn't brought these people down. Our last best hope (and it seems to be a valid one) is that Mueller has all these bastards by the short hairs.

But considering where we're at, it's just as possible that Mueller does have a ton of key evidence and indictments, and it still might not make a difference. These people have no trouble telling two-thirds of the nation to go fuck themselves, and they'll do whatever it takes to suppress the vote.

Frankly, considering CNN honcho Jeff Zucker is the dipshit who gave Fuckface Von Clownstick a public platform for his fake-tycoon bubble in the first place (when Zucker ran NBC), they're lucky we all haven't boycotted them already. Voting is still necessary, but the fact is that your most potent power is in your wallet, because all any of these people really care about is money.

The Old Man and the C-Word

The hilarity (and the end of this shitshow) is just beginning, and Michael Wolff's book, while not exactly breaking any new ground, may prove to be a cultural catalyst nonetheless. Yes, it preaches to the expected choir; no, the base-tards aren't going to read it or have a change of heart.

But as ludicrous as it may seem, there are some people out there who just couldn't stand Hillary Clinton and tuned out the obvious problems with Clownstick just enough to hold their noses. Those folks will either come back across to atone for their idiocy, or just sit it out in shame.

And the Gooper congress-critters circling the wagons should know that it will all be for naught, that they will not be remembered well. Bob Corker and Miz Lindsey and the rest of the gang might end up with a few extra ducats in their pockets, but it will be blood money, and they and we know it.

The story of how Wolff got his scoops is as hilarious as it is frightening to contemplate the sheer ineptitude that enabled it. Basically Wolff had a press pass and just hung around, sat in on conversations and meetings, talked to people, because the White House staff is so inept and disorganized that they figured that if the boss hadn't explicitly said no to Wolff, he must have said yes. For all those folks who told themselves well, he'll run it like a business, this is the exact textbook example we responded with:  yes, he'll run it like one of his businesses, pick any number of failed ones.

The idea that a journo could glean all of these caustic comments and assessments of the occupant of the Oval Office from his own staff is the real story of all this. One name you haven't heard from in recent weeks is John Kelly, whose supposed rigor and discipline were presumed to tame the rabid hyena Kelly had been designated to oversee.

How's that going for you, General Kelly? How do you sell out the well-being of the country you supposedly love and revere, for the poop-tweet amusement of a senile, doddering huckster who is declining by the day at this point? Clownstick has always been this way, and surrounds himself with like-minded scumbags. So I get how he functions, or how spokes-weasels like Baghdad Barb get by. Criminals and grifters make a sick sort of sense.

But John Kelly was supposed to be above that -- competent, honest, disciplined. Turns out he's none of those things. He's as bad as the rest of them, just more conspicuous by his absence, as apparently Kelly was one of the few in the house to not blab freely in front of a fucking reporter.

This is the sort of thing that will dovetail nicely with Mueller's pending indictments, and what is sure to be a knuckle-fuck State of the Union speech in a couple of weeks. Getcha popcorn, the fun is just starting.

NFL Wild Card Predictions

It's been a strange year for pro football, in some part due to Clownigula stoking his freak-show base. More than that, though, there are elements in the game itself, as well as its participants, that are starting to accumulate on the consciences of fans:  the violence and criminality of some of the star players; the CTE and other physical tolls taken on the players; the season-ending injuries to new stars such as DeShaun Watson and Carson Wentz; the crummy ref calls that always seem to favor the Patsies; the idiotic cracking down on touchdown celebrations; and yes, the stupid polarization of the fans over an issue that affects no one.

And the fucking commercials -- Jesus Hamster Christ, you can only watch so many goddamned insurance and fast food and truck commercials in a fucking lifetime, crammed ass-over-teakettle into a three-hour window, over and over and over again till you're ready to eat a Desert Eagle. It's just not worth it anymore, to an increasing degree.

Some of it is just market saturation and corporate overkill, but in general, the league and the sport itself seem to be on the cusp of a long decline. Will Leitch covered a lot of this in a terrific article around Thanksgiving, but the broad stroke is that we're watching young men damage themselves irreparably, and whether enough fans feel guilty enough about that to watch less or not at all, the bottom line is that far fewer kids are playing youth football already. Wait and see how that dilutes the overall talent level by the time they're of age to play pro sports, if they haven't turned it into flag football before then.

All that said, this past week has had some potentially interesting and cool news for the NFL. The Patsies might lose Belichick to the Giants over the Jimmy Garoppolo trade. Jon Gruden is finally coming back to the Raiders for a 10-year/$100M contract, and maybe a piece of the team. I genuinely look forward to the Patsies being terrible and the Raiders finally winning a Super Bowl. But I also realize that there won't be many more seasons where football will still be fun to watch. The returns seem to be diminishing at a faster rate.

But for the time being, the pigskin prognostications are still fun to do, so let's kick off the next few weekends of random guesses (all times PST):

(10/6) (1:30 PM) Tennessee at Kansas City (-8.5):  Neither of these teams will go very far in the playoffs, so it's hard to invest too much time in stat-mining. The basic premise is that the Chefs are tough at home and DeMarco Murray is injured. Both QBs have been playing reasonably well this season, nothing special, and Kansas City's secondary is banged up, so Marcus Mariota should be able to pile up some passing yards. The Titans should beat the spread, but that's about it.

Final Score:  Chiefs 27, Titans 21.

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(5:15 PM) Atlanta at Los Angeles Rams (-6):  The return of football to LA strikes me as a positive, for some reason. Sure, the Rams' and Chargers' owners are bastards, but they're all bastards. It's in the league charter as a condition of membership. Maybe the only owner who's not a total shit is Oakland's Mark Davis, who dresses like an eight-year-old and is moving the team to Vegas.

At any rate, the Rams have experienced a nice turnaround this year, and are fun to watch. Jared Goff appears comfortable with the offense now, and Todd Gurley racked up 2,093 total yards from scrimmage and 19 TDs, so it's understandable that Rams fans are having visions of Marshall Faulk. The drastic improvement in Goff and Gurley can at least in part be attributed to the free-agency signing of left tackle Andrew Whitworth, a Pro Bowl mauler from the Bengals whose absence was certainly noticed in Cincinnati.

After blowing a 28-3 lead in the second half of the Super Bowl, the Falcons shook off the hangover and managed to finish 10-6, which was still only good enough for third in the punishing NFC South division. QB Matt Ryan is having a bit of an off year (for him), but is still one of the top passers in the league, and the running back tandem of Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman are solid if unspectacular, combining for 2,109 total yards and 16 TDs. It's not going to be enough to get past the Rams' pounding defense.

Final Score:  Rams 37, Falcons 24.

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(10/7) (10:00 AM) Buffalo at Jacksonville (-8.5):  The resurgent Jaguars, like the Rams and Eagles in the NFC, are shaking up the usual collection of teams that make the postseason. For that matter, so are the Bills, a one-time perennial playoff team that is making the first postseason appearance in 17 years. But where the Bills essentially backed into their playoff spot, Jacksonville actually looks improved, with oft-maligned QB Blake Bortles connecting with his receivers much more consistently and seeming to find a rhythm.

The Jaguars beat up on Baltimore and Pittsburgh early in the season, but dropped their final two games against the 49ers and Titans, resting some of their starters for the playoffs. (The Rams did the same thing in their season finale against the Niners.) Sometimes that works well, but with young teams needing consistency and momentum, sometimes it throws them off. However, Jacksonville went 6-2 at home and has the league's best pass defense, while Buffalo has struggled all year offensively, so this should go the Jaguars' way.

Final Score:  Jaguars 31, Buffalo 13.

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(1:40 PM) Carolina at New Orleans (-7):  Both of these teams finished atop the NFC South with 11-5 records, but since New Orleans won both regular-season matchups, they claim the division crown and hence home field advantage for this game. After starting the season with back-to-back losses against the Vikings and Patriots, the Saints rediscovered their offense and went on a tear. Rookie sensation Alvin Kamara forms a potent rushing tandem with Mark Ingram; each back accounted for over 1,500 total yards and a dozen touchdowns. QB Drew Brees was his usual efficient self, posting 4,334 passing yards, and a respectable 23-8 TD-INT ration.

The Panthers, for their part, have gotten it done with a less-powerful offense, with most of their victories being within a touchdown. Their performance last week in Atlanta, with a critical playoff seeding on the line, does not bode well for them -- QB Cam Newton was held to 180 passing yards and threw 3 interceptions in a 22-10 loss. As mentioned, the Saints already beat the Panthers twice, by a total of 31 points, and there's not really an indication that that's going to change.

Final Score:  Saints 31, Panthers 20.

Schmuckenfreude

So we're all having some fun with the "revelations" (let's face it, no real surprises) from Michael Wolff's new book. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. This actually explains to some extent the rage-tweeting of the first couple days of the new year, despite spending ten days golfing at his seaside shithole. He's up to his fat, diapered ass in alligators, and he knows it, and they might frog-march his son and son-in-law in the bargain.

I sincerely hope that Von Clownstick has many years ahead of him, as the inexorable slide into dementia and clogged arteries accelerates, leaving him with nothing but his imagined memories of greatness, more or less oblivious to the sheer contempt of most of the planet, and the determined efforts of his litter of weasels to flense whatever bits of financial integrity his grift might actually possess.

Again, no surprises at all in the link, but what continues to be so striking about this and other exhaustive profiles is what a fucking crybaby he is and has always been. Seriously, just a whiny old man who does nothing at all but complain about everyone's refusal to grant him god status. He really is an emotionally (and intellectually, for that matter) retarded little cunt, spending his mornings rage-tweeting what he watched on Fox and Fiends, spending his evenings eating cheeseburgers in bed and endlessly raging on the phone to his "friends" about the unfairness of it all.

Imagine how insufferable he'd be if he'd ever had to earn an honest dollar in his life.

If there's one thing this nation should have learned in retrospect, it's that after the Civil War ended, the Union was far too kind and forgiving of the confederate states. The failure to go completely scorched-earth on those fuckers, and completely level everything they had into the ground, allowed their "lost cause" bullshit to fester and flourish, and here we are 150 years later, finally getting around to taking down some of the statues and monuments these knuckle-draggers erected to their traitor slaver forebears.

As brutal as the Allies' finishing blows on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were, they were remarkably effective. We tore them a new one, picked them up, dusted them off, helped them rebuild while trying to vaccinate them from the nationalist diseases that had taken root, and it's only now, eighty years later, that there are nationalist rumblings in either nation.

All of which is to say that, as the emperor leans into his ongoing social-media decompensation and his legal troubles begin to mount, and the Republicans have some real career decisions to make in the coming weeks and months, it is important that the Democrats have their shit in order. They should size up their opponents and figure out who can be worked with, and who the hard-asses are who are going down with the leaky ship, and act accordingly

We can all look back at the campaign follies and the "hoocoodanode" stuff and still acknowledge that for some addled few, it is technically possible that someone could have voted for Clownstick genuinely thinking or hoping that some good might come of it. They would have to have been extremely selective about their news consumption, but let's say for the sake of argument that up to a certain point, it was technically possible.

That point has long passed. It is no longer possible to claim any sort of "good faith" or "she was awful too" excuse or argument. The facts and evidence are overwhelming, and all of it comes from things he and his henchmen have said or done. They've done this completely to themselves; the Democrats do get some measure of respect for being patient enough to just let a deeply stupid and arrogant opponent do what anyone with half a functioning brain could have seen coming years ago.

Seriously -- and I have said this before -- if you had asked me about Fuckface Von Clownstick ten or fifteen or twenty or thirty years ago, back when he was known by another name but was still the same dipshit blowhard, I would have said the same thing. My loathing for him comes honestly -- it has absolutely nothing to do with his political affiliation, or even him getting into politics at all. He has always been a deeply stupid, comically inept character, a third-rate bullshit artist that "real" 'murkins useta pride themselves on being able to spot a mile away.

But what's done is done, and they did it, their spite and ignorance allowed this to happen. This cannot be "reconciled" by anything from the Democrat or liberal side of the fence; there is nothing for those groups to atone for. There can only be a reckoning, in which the teabagger pols and their moron constituents either get honest with themselves and with us, and get with the program, or get the fuck off the playing field.

Scorched earth for Clownstick and his minions is the only way to get this right. Every member of his family and his entourage and his administration needs to be completely unemployable after this is all reckoned with. The family name needs to be synonymous with dog shit, and Bannon, the Huckabees, the Conways, the generals, and the rest of the gang need to be frozen out of decent society. Let them be reduced to stroking each other on some 3:00 AM ninth-circle Fixed Noise panel show, and supplementing their meager incomes by selling oranges at a Jersey Turnpike off-ramp. Let Kellyanne Conway and Baghdad Barb (aka Huckabee Junior) spend the rest of their lives awkwardly looking away from the reproachful gazes of their children, once they're of an age to appreciate and understand just what their mothers did in the service of a truly vile human being.

They are all culpable in whatever transpires going forward. They've earned life sentences of having to earn an honest living, and having to face a nation that will never forget or forgive what they've done.

Resolution / Le Déluge

When you take a moment to consider the mundane and rather arbitrary reasons we start the new calendar on January 1st, the idea of a "fresh start" to things seems more symbolic than anything. But we are conditioned to see it that way nonetheless, because more than anything, humans are good at adapting to circumstances, which means we search for and find ways to adjust and improve. The holiday break (assuming you get one) and the rolling over of the annual odometer present opportunities to make those adjustments with fresh resolve.

Whether you believe in them or not, whether you follow through with them or not, every resolution is intended to commit you to change, improve, overcome. I like the idea of making resolutions, though I rarely have the discipline to follow through completely with them.

Here is an idea for a new year resolution we should all be able to agree on -- yes, even your Clownstick-loving meathead uncle who ruined Thanksgiving with his latest drunken tirade:  Expect more -- from your political leaders, from your corporate insect overlords and the media appendages they operate, from the individuals who are content to sell you a shoddy product. In fact, expecting more is underselling the idea. Demand more and better; insist on more and better.

If you own an iPhone and are looking forward to next costly iteration because you've been hopelessly branded, take a moment and tell the cult that you're not ponying up for any more of their bullshit until they stop hiding billions of profit dollars in Ireland. Why should you pay your fucking taxes, only so that the people who can afford it most pay the least, every goddamned year?

If you subscribe to the Post or the Times, take a second and let them know that you are done with their Cletus safaris, and that the next one will be the last straw for you -- you won't even give them the click for the article, just a click to unsubscribe from their endless bullshit.

And if you consider yourself a "liberal" or a "Democrat" or simply aligned against the swirling void currently taking the country toward a Thelma & Louise ending, you need to demand more from your own politicians, the people you plan on voting for later this year (and probably for the rest of your life) to have any hope of avoiding that T&L fate. Because while there are some notable exceptions, as a collective political entity, the Democratic Party has been surprisingly ineffective at conveying some sort of plausible alternative to Bone Spurs McHairpiece's Willy Wonka-esque scheme to skull-fuck every American with a net worth of less than $1M, while pretending to give them all ponies and sunshine.

This should not be that difficult; these assholes are nothing if not brazenly upfront about how stupid and arrogant they really are. It should be a simple matter to come up with a few handy loglines that convey a better, brighter message, and a few friendly, effective, new faces to repeat those loglines until it replaces the maga crap they've had barfed in their laps for two years.

The problem is that the Democratic Party -- again, as an organizational entity -- is deeply committed not only to upholding the status quo, but returning to it. They would like nothing better than to go back to the good old days of mid-2015, before the oompa-loompa descended down his ridiculous fool's-gold escalator and started ranting about Meskins.

And I'm sorry, friends 'n' neighbors, but there is no going back directly to that. Too much has transpired; too many "norms" and "rules" we all took for granted have been traduced, perhaps irretrievably. If the Democrats think they can field a status ante candidate who will bring a spork to the Clownstick tommy-gun fight and win, they are on some industrial-strength glue. If they think that winning back the fentanyl 'n' jebus addled Cletus vote is the path to a comeback, they are as stupid as their mortal enemies think they are.

I remember the day after the 2016 election, going into work, trying to focus on the business of the day -- which given the nature of what I do, has a certain degree of daily unpredictability baked into it. I recall the weird buzz in the air, a nervous energy. You might assume the cliché of social services workers, but you would be very wrong. There's a diverse cross-section of folks throughout -- liberal, moderate, deeply conservative. I couldn't tell you the precise ratio of each, but I would bet decent money that it is highly correlative to the general population, or maybe a touch more conservative, counterintuitively.

But I recall going into the office that morning, seeing the glum stare of one of my office mates -- pretty much identical to me demographically, middle-aged married white male with a college degree, and knowing that we were both (like many other people in the building) disconsolate about what seemed to be an incomprehensible result, a supposed slam-dunk that somehow bounced back out from the hoop without going through.

After some early-morning pre-caffeinated niceties, I basically riffed something that I think is at the core of that election, more so than most others at the national level:  either the country got turned into something that we no longer recognize, or it was like this all along, and we just didn't realize it.

This is still true, you know. All the same people are still out there, waiting for the next round. On either side, some will be spurred into action again, or for the first time, or demoralized into heading back for the couch. The good news is that it can cut the other way. The pendulum swings, always, inexorably. It seems to be swinging more and more quickly the last few cycles.

So we all have to decide what we want from these entities, and then demand it. One without the other is just a bunch of [mimes jerkoff motion]. I think there's a decent chance that Clownstick does not make it through his first term, or that he is at least supplanted by a Democratic challenger in 2020; however, either scenario will be for naught if the Democrats persist in going back to what was, instead of understanding what is.

A (reasonably) healthy body politic needs at least two functioning parties. Right now, we don't have even one. The Democrats try, god bless 'em, and poll after poll indicates that their central ideas are in sync with the sentiments of a clear majority of the populace. Yet they fail, again and again, in successfully conveying that alignment of ideas to the electorate. And instead of heading out and talking to the people who would vote for them about the things that would motivate them to vote, they shovel money to some Beltway hacks that run SWOT analyses for each other and never leave their offices to find out what actual people think.

The worst thing about that dynamic is that, every time the "strategy" fails, the Democrats invariably decide that it failed because they didn't execute it well enough. It never occurs to them that genuflecting to idiots who despise them and will never vote for them is a bad strategy to begin with. They could take the cash they're shoveling to rodents like Mark Penn and use it to get voters registered and motivated, and actually win. Imagine that.

No, seriously, you're going to have to imagine that for yourself, because the Democratic Party and its geriatric leaders and organizations are apparently incapable of imagining it for themselves. All you have to do is take a look at the recent special elections in Virginia and Alabama, and who turned out to push those elections to the Democrats, and then how Ralph Northam and Doug Jones are already soft-shoeing the idea that a change took place and is necessary. Way to dance with them that brung ya, guys.

Now, the Republican Party has lost its collective mind, and its strategy has been to motivate the most deeply stupid and insane contingents of the electorate. But hey, it works. Again, don't ever kid yourself about who's really out there in this country. Most people are more or less decent, but there's a broad spectrum of attitudes and actions in play there. And some people are just bastards at heart, period.

The solution is not to reach out to the bastards and make it palatable somehow to jump off their burning ship. Let them go under, or they'll learn to swim. You cannot simultaneously believe in the ineffable truth of evolution -- survival of the fittest and most adaptable -- and keep expending valuable effort in trying to prop up jabbering idiots and closet racists, people who would die off if nature were allowed to take its proper course.

Anyway, the real point (and I do have one) is that, if we take it as a given that the predicted "blue tsunami" comes through this year in the midterms, the Democratic Party needs to understand the urgent need to adapt as well.

Fuckface Von Clownstick may be the most transparent grifter in most of our lifetimes (though Don King, Pat Robertson, and Newt Gingrich certainly give him a waddle for someone else's money), but he was right about at least one thing -- the "economic recovery" from the worst recession in eighty years did not benefit most Americans, and things did indeed need to be shaken up (just not by a rabid chimp). At best, the recovery brought some people back up to where they were before the shit-storm hit and the bankers took what was theirs. But just as many never recovered at all. We can rightly sneer at the cheap mediot excuse of "economic anxiety," but death by despair is a real thing.

The fact of the matter is that we have a lot of elaborate mechanical systems of financialization whose sole function is to ensure that rich people get richer and everyone else stays right where they're at -- if they're lucky. Ideally, there would be a political party that worked directly against those nefarious efforts, and if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. The fact is that no such party will coalesce or act, unless there is a movement to compel such a set of actions.

That's where you and me and everyone else, and our resolution, come into play. This is not about you going to the gym a few days a week for the rest of January, then one or two days a week next month, and by the end of March you're merely intending to go. This is really about what the rest of our lives will be like, and what our kids' and grandkids' lives will be like, if we accept our collective lot to scramble for their fucking crumbs in perpetual indentured servitude, or if we decide to fight back, with our votes and our wallets.

Tumbrels and guillotines would be great, and I am all for that, but the fact is that change can occur without anyone getting physically harmed in the least. All that is needed is for everyone to pay attention, and to step up and act where they can and must. But to do that, there needs to be a sense of urgency (resolve) imparted to politicians and decision-makers that a new course of action is necessary, that a return to before and a sigh of relief won't cut it.

Orange Is the New Asshole

Maybe it's just me, but I won't be at all surprised when it turns out that "Sheriff" Clarke has a snuff porn collection, or a basement full of buttfucked hitchhikers, or he runs a human trafficking ring. There's just something off about the guy, and it's not just the eighty-seven pieces of flair he festoons himself with, in order to virtue signal to the snowflake magats out there. He's not afraid to make the tough decisions, like letting prisoners die of thirst! You sensitive librul pussies will just never understand!

No, it's the sheer glee with which Clarke approaches his institutionally-backed sadism. Someone shakes his head at him reproachfully on an airplane, Clarke is happy to abuse his power and have the guy taken in and pushed around on landing. Dan Black should probably consider himself lucky Clarke didn't have him body-cavity-searched and put on a terror watch/no-fly list. That's really how petty a human being Clarke is. If he has any sons, I can guarantee you that they hate him, and are just waiting patiently for him to be sucked into a jet engine.

Like the fake billionaire Clarke rhetorically fellates every chance he gets, Clarke is a bully at heart, a thug, a creepy asshole, a scumbag who projects all of his sins and hypocrisies onto people who don't have access to the same levels of brute power. He's exactly the kind of person who should never have been allowed to be in law enforcement in the first place, but too often are welcomed into the system with open arms, to do damage until they finally bust up the wrong person.

They're supposed to have psych batteries these days to keep pigfuckers like Clarke away from dangerous toys, but as we see periodically, the dipshits and assholes manage to sneak in from time to time. It's all about what we're able to do about them, and holding them accountable for their actions.

Perhaps most tragically, if you read the letter that was sent to Clarke, it is entirely untrue that "no evidence" was found to support Dan Black's claim. So either Clarke can't read, or like his role model, he is entirely comfortable with LYING.

And despite Clarke's plaintive whining about the eeeevil librul media "bullying" him with their fake news and such, of course it is Clarke himself who has exhibited a longstanding pattern of bullying and extreme sensitivity. Again, all Black did was confirm that Clarke was who Black thought he was, shake his head quietly, say "no" when Clarke asked him if he had a problem, and then moved on. It was Clarke who chose to escalate a simple five-second encounter, because like all bullies, he's a pussy who can't stand it that many people think he's a fucking asshole.

Yet instead of changing his behavior just a touch, Clarke chose to affirm that perception (again, exactly like his idol). Life is all about choices, and Clarke's choice was to abuse his office to push a taxpayer around, just to show he could. Any time someone with that sort of personality disorder is given a position of responsibility, it is practically a guarantee that sooner or later, someone will get hurt.

Are we starting to see a pattern here, a trend? Like I keep saying, assholes keep misbehaving because everyone else decides it's just not worth it to confront them. That might get you out of a particular situation unscathed, but I promise you, for individuals with this flavor of low-level sociopathy, it only encourages them to continue such behavior. After all, why wouldn't they? There is literally no reason not to.

Let's make a collective resolution for the coming year to not let assholes get away with their bullshit anymore. It's what got us into this mess in the first place. Shut them down, all of them, by whatever means are available.

Zen and the Art of Court Stenography; Or, Schmidt Happens

Here's a fun weekend tale of three Twitter threads:  the ambitious Vichy Times journo who tried to pass off an idle, meaningless conversation as an interview; his hack colleague reflexively defending his hackery because, as I said, she too is a hack; and someone who actually knows what journalism is supposed to mean, used to mean in some circles.

The Times' strategery for communicating with this venal, dismal, overgrown infant essentially boils down to just get him talking and he'll reveal himself. Are you fucking kidding? What new thing could this tedious asshole possibly "reveal" about himself that would be of any use? How is it of greater (or any) value for a Very Serious Journamalist to faithfully record his lies and not only not bother to even lightly challenge any of them, but to give verbal assent to some of the worst of the spew?

Snark and insults aside, there really seems to be some dispute among supposedly professional reporters as to what their job actually entails. Heidi Moore lays these duties out methodically in the third link above, so I won't belabor it here; take two minutes and go read her thread. But this is the same sort of crap as the Cletus safari articles -- the responses are overwhelmingly negative, and nothing changes. The journos get defensive and pissy and miss the points and critiques entirely, and then go right back to what they were doing.

We are in the midst of a slow collapse of major institutions we were previously reliant on. The various news corporations are already morally compromised by their respective owners' various fiduciary needs for cordial relationships with gubmint entities. Their inability to update their historical revenue model sufficiently has translated in no small part into counting access as their primary currency. It is more important to them to be seen as available and willing to print a spew of self-serving lies, than to contest even just the most obvious of those lies and false assertions, y'know, during the interview.

Again though, this was not an interview, because interviews have questions and responses and narrative paths inscribed by the give-and-take between the two interlocutors. This was none of those things; this was someone who tells chicks he's a reporter for the New York Times, being used as a patsy by a lifelong professional liar and his servile toady. After saying he would be heading back to work the day after Christmas, the emperor promptly went back to working on his golf game for the rest of the week. Mike Schmidt happened to be a convenient way to keep his name in the news, and all it cost him was a half-hour of regurgitating his usual rally jabber.

The other major institution in slow-motion implosion is the political system, pretty much the entire thing if we keep going along like this. One political party has lost its fucking mind -- its members have decided to sell out the country for a tax cut for billionaires, and its constituents sold out their country for free, just for the feeling of pissing off librul caricatures. The other party tries vainly to figure out how they fucked the proverbial dog so badly, and find their collective spine, as well as conjure up someone younger than retirement age to rally around for the next election cycle.

Now, with the political bastards, all you have to do is follow the proverbial money. That at least is a rationale that makes some sense. They all have to raise a ton of money every day just to run for office, just to keep their seats. It sucks, but there is some logic behind it, however bent.

Ordinarily, you would want to ascribe that motive to the Vichy mediots as well. But it doesn't make sense at all -- the commenters hate this shit at literally a 95+% rate, and are not shy about saying so. And it's not like the Clownstick fantards and the Cletus demographic from the safaris are ever reading the Times or the Post.

So what in the hell is the motive behind this nonsense, for the reporters, the editors, the publishers? In what universe does it make any sense to keep pissing off your own strongest supporters with shoddy, cynical work? No one is saying they can never run out to Pig's Knuckle to take the tempacher at the local grange hall, but there's not even the pretense of balance, the attempt to round up a few people who did not vote for this monster, and see what they think after six months or a year of this daily idiocy.

To be sure, there are still some genuine nuggets of value, the investigative stories that pop up. They can and should keep doing as many of those as possible. Good investigative pieces will always have lasting value. But they are playing a weird game with Mister Man, afraid to upset him. And I can't for the life of me figure out why that is. If he gets pissed and throws them out, that's the story.

He and his minions give nothing of value. They should stop talking to him if he's not going to tell them anything useful. They should stop attending the "press conferences" if Huckabee Junior is just going to lie to them. Who needs it? We already know they're pathological liars; there is no point in hanging around waiting to hear more and dumber lies.

It's not just that those pieces are dumb and useless, they are destructive -- they undermine credibility and trust in the media outlets themselves, because we already know he's a liar who is somehow immune from any and all accountability for his words and actions, so there is no point in reiterating that.

I still hold out some measure of hope for the supposed blue tsunami next year, but if it doesn't come through, you can be almost certain that much if not most of the blame can be put on these limpdick purveyors of state-sanctioned bafflegab, who let themselves get turned out by a senile cheeto-colored old man.

This Can't Possibly Be Legal

This is probably the only time I'll ever link to the emperor's website, but I promise you there's a reason -- this ridiculous "poll" that takes you to a donation page without showing you the results (of course). Chime in and tell these scumbags to go fuck themselves. The fucking balls on these animals.

Three Things

Okay, so it is Christmas after all, and here are a few good items:

1. Video of tiger cub "startling" its mother (can't find it on YouTube to link properly, well worth the effort to click). So cool.
2. Christmas post from Edroso. Really good stuff.
3. The best Christmas song ever, hands down.

Whatever you celebrate, make it a good one.

Grift of the Magi

Justice might be done, given sufficient time -- but the problem is that we're dealing with creatures who have no loyalty to this country or its people, and are utterly devoid of shame. They got their big payout, screwing the rubes with the usual happy horseshit, and now the emperor is getting pissy, and stepping up the assault on all these institutions of law we've taken for granted for so long.

So what are we going to do about it? The good news is that it looks like a blue wave coming in the midterms; the bad news is that they will do everything to cheat their way out of it, from stealing citizens' franchise from them, to simply tossing ballot boxes into the nearest body of water.

And we're all to blame, in some respect -- Emperor Snowflake, complaisant congress-critters, feckless political opposition, a shitty media, and all of us, including you 'n' me, folks. We didn't take the 'tard insurgency seriously until it was far too late.

The damage they've done in two-and-a-half years (going back to the start of Snowflake's campaign) may never be undone -- to the highest office in the land, to how people were previously expected at least to conduct themselves in a respectable fashion, to repeated media affirmations of epistemic closure and toxic idiocy, to a continued and accelerating inability of political opponents to at least have a commonly shared well of facts whence opinions are drawn.

We've allowed it to happen and we've done it to ourselves, by becoming decadent -- greedy, insular, stupid, lazy, and weak. Too many people have decided to (as Taibbi once memorably put it) live the intellectual lives of farm animals, and the instant virality of our social comms web enables the dumb and the cruel and the toxic to share equal footing -- or even better footing, given our collective predisposition to seek out crap for entertainment -- with competence and honesty.

And we've allowed it in our political choices, as "Republicans" and "conservatives" now simply pick the wingiest of nuts, whatever they think will rub the durned libruls' noses in shit, and "Democrats" and "liberals" are bullied or cowed into picking dickless incrementalists and pelf-grubbing technocrats, as some sort of slow-leaking bulwark against the fanaticism on the other side. Very few of the people in Congress -- on either side -- actually belong there.

This has all happened before, and it has never ended well. The obvious one to read is Gibbon, but if you haven't quite got the time for that, read Michael Psellos' Chronographia, which is not only much shorter, but was written contemporaneously with the events it describes. The problem is the same:  it takes a decadent citizenry to support a decadent emperor and decadent senators. Understanding that the emperor is a symptom and not the disease clarifies the situation -- merely getting rid of the tumor does not mean the cancer has been extricated.

This is why compromise cannot be sought, not if we wish to keep what's left of our rapidly disintegrating country. Too many people are content to believe lies; they're like ancient Sicilian widows with a rosary, clicking each bead one by one as they recite the steps of the Clownstick catechism. There is no getting through to the Branch Clownstickians, they are in it to the bitter end.

Fortunately, there is still a majority in this country that sees things for what they are, but we need to all be on the same page regarding how to wage this battle. Again, forget the cultists and their dotard leader; they will either come around on their own or go down with him. Be more demanding of "Democratic" and "liberal" and "moderate" politicians. Remind Doug Jones and Ralph Northam who really got them there in their upset victories. Be more demanding of corporations. Remind AT&T that their support of the emperor and his works will cost them, every time (see "reminding your politicians").

Be more demanding of the supposedly liberal mainstream media. Tell them to shitcan the endless horserace coverage. Tell them to knock it off with the fucktarded Cletus safaris or you'll drop your subscription. Tell their advertisers you'll stop buying their products.

Half of Puerto Rico is celebrating Christmas in the dark, three months after Hurricane Maria (and we'll probably never know how many people died from the storm and its aftereffects). Alabama just elected its first Democratic senator in twenty-five years. Yet the supposedly liberal Washington Post instead saw fit to head to some dipshit village in Fuckknuckle, Tennessee to stoke the War(t) on Christmas lie.

The battle extends beyond your sworn enemies, to the people who simply pretend to be your friends in order to screw you out of your vote and your money. Season's Beatings, motherfuckers!

The Wart On Christmas

When Fuckface Von Clownstick proclaims that no president has done as much as he has in such a short time, he has a point:  in less than a year, Von Clownstick has managed to ruin football, the internet, and Christmas. As always, the liberal media gets credit for an assist:

“It offends me,” [some random dipshit] continued, “to see at the stores, where they just do ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Seasons Greetings.’ It should be ‘Merry Christmas.’ Put Christ back into Christmas. That’s what it’s supposed to be. . . . I just wish we would all get on the same page.”

Trump tapped into this sentiment on the campaign trail when he promised that if he was elected president, everyone would say “Merry Christmas” again — never mind that most Americans never stopped.

....

“We can’t say ‘Christmas,’ because there’s too many Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus, and it offends them,” said Naomi DePriest, a property manager in her mid-50s whose husband farms, over a lunch of fried catfish and ribs at Hens and Hogs. “I think they should keep Christ in Christmas, which is what they said originally, and to heck with anybody that don’t like it. Anybody that’s Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, let them do what they want to do, but don’t criticize those that want to keep Christ in Christmas.”

I've gone fifty circuits now on this overburdened blue-green pear, orbiting our yellow ball of fire, and I read way more (and specifically way more political jabber) than any sane person ought to, and I have never -- like not even once -- heard or read of a non-christian or even an atheist complaining about any distinction or preference between "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" or whatthefuckever people choose to say.

Yes, you occasionally have your ACLU types striving valiantly (and usually in futility) to remove nativity scenes from publicly owned sites, but that's about the extent of it. You want to talk about insufferable fucking snowflakes, these jagoffs are the worst. They are demented in their delusions of persecution. The only time anyone has ever been told what to say during the holiday season has been as a matter of a perhaps more inclusive, if ultimately misguided, corporate policy. Don't like it? Then boycott the company, quit your job, whatever it takes, snowflake. Anything less would make Fentanyl Baby Jebus cry.

It's at least somewhat heartening to know that in the age of modern medical miracles, we have finally achieved the ability to perform brain transplants. Unfortunately, these rubes have chosen to exchange their brains for root vegetables. Ruta-bay-ee-a-ga, ruta-bay-ee-a-ga!

But again, the real problem here is not the angry rubes per se, it's that a national newspaper feels the urge to trudge out to some abandoned shithole where no one lives in the first place, and dutifully stenograph the deep thoughts of these dopey losers. I don't give a fuck what they think about anything, especially not Christmas, and their imagined persecution complex. They can spend the rest of their lives festering bitterly in their broke-ass hick town, wondering why they're being forced at gunpoint to bake cakes for faggots and memorize Family Guy scripts.

I don't care what morons are worried about, and no matter how many times the media-industrial complex humps my naked leg, I will never care. They pollute the world with their idiot nonsense, and the last thing the world needs is more insufferable retards. Unless, of course, their so-called revolution can be monetized.

What a truly liberal media would do is remind them -- remind us all -- that Christmas is really a holiday celebrating an anchor baby whose homeless mama had a bullshit story about her sex life. And they might talk to an actual liberal once in a great while, instead of repeatedly going out of their way to statistically insignificant places, to pretend that the demented ravings of fist-shaking codgers have any truth or utility to them.

All We Want for Christmas is a Level Playing Field

The next time some dipshit conservabot, be it online troll or angry drunk uncle, pulls that "what about George Soros" bullshit on you, they deserve two responses:

1. A fervent wish that they get cancer in an extremely painful and sensitive area of the body.
2. What about George Soros? Seriously, what about him?

It's one of the more asinine articles of faith among the cultards that Soros (who's a wink-wink-nudge-nudge J-O-O, y'know) underwrites every act or article of librul perfidy that rankles their tender buttholes. Every protest, every op-ed -- hell, every vote against Dear Leader is taken as gospel proof of Soros' nefarious, far-reaching ways.

As with most of the plaints from these simpering simpletons, it's either total projection or complete ignorance. The fascist wingnut welfare system has flourished for at least half a century, and has been in full bloom at least since Saint Reagan (PBUH) doddered his way through the office, setting a precedent for the current sundowner.

There is no truly liberal counterpart to Faux News or to the welter of wingnut rags (National Review; Weekly Standard; ad nauseam), not when you take into account the respective ownership, audience, influence, and operating procedures. Your typical "liberal" "lamestream" news outlet spends a certain amount of time quivering in dickless equivocation, a futile attempt to pre-emptively placate the critics who simply find something else to critique.

And there is simply no responsible publishing outlet who would bother with loss-leader screeds from the likes of Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham or Dinesh D'Souza. It's not just because they're performative liars, as a deliberate career choice. It's because they're a bad business investment -- no intelligent person actually reads their jabber. That stuff is there merely to provide the veneer of legitimacy for the losers on the various Faux panel shows to impart to the suckers watching them.

The wingnut outlets spend no time at all on such equivocation. They are quite open about their agenda, and are not in thrall to such outmoded concepts as objectivity and probity and contextual analysis. It is pure Skinner-box hamster-smacking-a-metal-plate-to-get-the-daily-outrage-pellet agitprop. To the extent that there is even an acknowledgement of the quiet funding of the Koch brothers or the Mellons or Scaifes or what-have-you, it is only as a supposed equalizer to the nefarious pelf from the Soros types.

Except there really aren't any Soros types to speak of. You really don't have any deep-pocket true-blue libruls who bother with it on that level. Even back in the day when Ted Turner owned and operated CNN, he delegated most of the daily ops and opinion pieces, and did not interfere on any level approaching how Rupert Murdoch has always run his rape-and-golden-parachutes network.

I keep seeing this stupid Tom Steyer commercial about getting some sort of movement going to impeach Fuckface Von Clownstick. Great, except that doesn't happen without a serious electoral landslide for the Dems, and that doesn't happen without changing some minds out there in Real 'murka. If Steyer wants to help out, maybe he should fund a few House and state legislature candidates or a media outlet, maybe some agitprop books to incite the faithful.

An actual liberal propaganda machine would make hay out of -- just for an easy starter -- this useless asshole, and there are plenty more like him. The problem is that all rich people, regardless of the political badge they flash when they need to, swim in the same pool, and it's a pool that keeps everyone else out. So the putatively liberal ones will only exert so much effort, while the Kochsuckers are tireless -- and their efforts have finally paid off bigly.

The Dude Is Happy

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Endless Cycle

For as long as I can recall, the cycle plays out and repeats:  A Democratic president is elected. He is smart, earnest, wants to (at least appears to want to) help the little guy. He cleans up the mess left by his Republican predecessor, balances the budget, embraces the future, works collaboratively with the rest of the world.

Then a sufficient number of paint-chip-eating goobers augment their diet with daily inhalations of rubber cement, and vote for the most preposterous, transparent Republican dipshit they can find. Someone who exaggerates their worst impulses, who vocalizes their limbic tribal fears.

Frankly, I've spent the last few months learning to enjoy the ongoing clusterfuck. I want to see the goobers get everything they voted for, good and hard, even as I sincerely wish that the people who didn't vote for this bullshit had other options. But if the tax cut goes through, then everyone has a choice whether to observe the effects of it honestly, and a choice of whether to learn from it.

And as always, by "learn from it" I mean taking specific actions to counter those efforts and results. Protests and marches and phone calls are nice, but they only get you so far. Everyone is Washington is owned by some rich asshole or corporation, and if you hit them where it hurts, they'll listen. Protests don't cost 'em a dime, but boycotts hit them where they live.

Bob Corker just voted for a tax break for himself, after his usual tiresome mime show about what a "deficit hawk" he is. Let's call him for what he is:  a goddamned liar, and a particularly shameless one at that. But it's important to note where he will make that money, on his real estate investments. So, what are those real estate holdings, and can they be protested or boycotted? Hit that weaselly motherfucker square in his thieving gut. You might as well; you're paying for it regardless.

And the actual vote itself, the action you take at the ballot box. Show up. Take five minutes on election day and be there -- or better yet, take fifteen minutes and register to vote by mail, and bypass the lines and ID checks altogether. Trust me, it'll be the best move you ever made.

Just an example:  we heard for weeks non-stop about the apocalyptic consequences of the Alabama special election last week, yet at the end of the day, about 40% of eligible voters actually showed up. Turnout was down last year as well, when the choices could not have been any more stark. You know why angry old racist crackers keep winning and putting their retard candidates in office? Because they fucking well show up.

There's no shortcut or off switch on this thing, folks. Elections are not Super Bowls, where everyone takes some time off to relax after the time expires on the game. The game never ends, because the wealthy and the powerful never stop looking for ways to steal more money from poor people. Does that sound like work? Good, because it is work.

But it's also work to live a financial life of being permanently forced to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place, especially when it turns out, over and over again, that it's all so a bunch of spoiled white assholes can push a law (which none of them bothered to read) through that will give them all tax breaks, as well as allow hard-working aristobrats like Paris Hilton and the Walton heirs to keep more of the money they never lifted a finger to earn.

Never kid yourself about the cold, hard truth -- these pelf-grubbing assholes don't care about you, whether you live or die, succeed or fail, thrive or wither away. Your life, your family, your community are nothing to them. You are another species, you're livestock. It would be easy to say they hate you, but the fact is that hate would take some effort, and they don't want to expend any effort on the peons, beyond the absolute bare minimum.

What's always amazing is just how many members of the livestock class are more than happy -- eager -- to vote for the slaughterhouse and the butcher, every goddamned time. It's really something to watch. They even buy into the idea that a massive tax giveaway will actually result in lots of good jobs, as opposed to what tax giveaways always result in -- corporate bonuses and shareholder profits. We always joke about how Democrats are like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football, but the Dems got nothing on these fucking rubes, seeing everything through their fentanyl 'n' jebus goggles.

Whether that's the kind of country we want or not, it's the one we have now, and the symptoms and excesses continue to accelerate and accumulate. The falcon stopped listening to the falconer a long time ago. The flood is coming. Get a boat, grab onto something, learn to swim, or be swept away.

And The Horse He Rode In On

Doug Jones outspent Roah Moah 10:1, and got serious help drawing just enough black voters to get him across the finish line, but goddamn if he didn't just pull of the upset of the year. Congrats, Alabama, you did the right thing, seriously.

More strangely, exit polls tracking Clownstick approval ratings came out dead even, 48-48, in a state he won by nearly 28 points just a year ago. This is not a small thing:  over the weekend, I happened across a Politico article (I know, I know). Along the right sidebar was an ad imploring me to vote for Roah Moah -- however, the photo was not of Moah but of one HRH Fuckface Von Clownstick.

The subtext to this election was that it would be a referendum on Clownstick in one of his strongest states. Maybe not so much; they'll never get tired of the antics and insult-comic distractions, but they might get tired of their hospitals getting closed, their access to health care being steadily diminished, and their hero's complete inability to do much of anything beyond renting out hockey rinks in safe states and peddling the same tired-ass schtick. Build that wall! Lock her up! Cool story, bro. You got both houses of Congress and still can't get shit done, so how's that been workin' out for y'all?

Turns out it's pretty tough to troll librul snowflakes and slurp their tears if you're, y'know, dead. Not to get overly optimistic (after all, the turnout for this thing was projected to be somewhere between 25-30%), but this could turn out to be a harbinger of things to come electorally for the party that tried to sell its soul, only to find out it wasn't worth anything to begin with.

The Witch Hunt Claims Another Scalp

Well, this is fun -- it's rare that I find myself in agreement with Rod Dreher, but when he's right, he's right. That the New Yorker dumps one if their better reporters, Ryan Lizza, over allegations from a single, unnamed accuser, is a bad sign. We are heading into some nasty waters with this me-too trend, where every man will get an opportunity be Harvey Weinstein for at least a few minutes, just long enough to lose his livelihood.

Oh, who are we kidding? Only liberal and Democrat males have anything to worry about; the Republican party and its propaganda arm are more than happy to employ the most thuggish of sexual harassers and gropers. Hell, what Roger Ailes did to the women at Fox was essentially rape, but with financial and professional coercion rather than physical force. He got a $40 million golden parachute.

But again, only one side will police themselves; as always, the first resort of the true liberal is to unilaterally disarm, no evidence required and the accuser can remain anonymous. The reason is because they are as concerned with virtue signaling as they are with doing anything constructive.

I don't give half a shit about overcooked hacks like Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, or Mark Halperin. They have been part of a movement of careerist hacks that has corroded what remains of actual journalism in this country. They are starfuckers. The profession is better off without them.

But Lizza is a real reporter, who investigates and writes real stories about real issues that affect real people. If people should know about why Lizza got fired, then they should know the specifics. There is a spectrum of offenses when we say "sexual misconduct," and there is a difference between Harvey Weinstein and Al Franken. And I'm betting there's a difference between Lauer and Lizza.

Regardless, it won't be much longer before it won't matter whether charges can be substantiated or not -- it will simply be part of damage control to fire people first and investigate later. And if it turns out that it was bullshit, well, them's the breaks.

Yet Another Cletus Safari, Alabama Dingbats Edition

These people just never fucking learn:  the day before a hugely contentious Senate election, perhaps simply to prove that it's not just old angry white wimmins who love them some Roah (I say, Roah) Moah, Cosmo decides to give us all some "insight" into what the future iterations (one of them, I shit you not, is a Moah campaign intern) are cogimatatin'. Well, there's five minutes we'll never get back.

I honestly have no idea what purpose these stupid pieces are intended to serve, but let's note for the record that there does not appear to be any Cosmo article presenting an opposing point of view -- say, even one (1) person of any gender explificatin' to those of us dumb enough to waste time on these things, why they cannot vote for Roah Moah, and are in fact voting for Doug Jones.

Seriously, is there anyone out there who actually cares what these dipshits are thinking, why they do what they do, their excuses for the way they vote? It doesn't matter what they say -- their Christianity is the angel topping a Christmas tree, and their self-professed morals and values are merely the tinsel and lights to get you to look. It's a costume, a pose. It is meaningless.

They will say whatever they think is necessary to rationalize what they know inside to be a wretched choice. And their state will pay for it, as aerospace and tech companies will be the first to start divesting. Good.

We need a better media, one that doesn't keep legitimizing these jabbering retards by taking their pulses every few weeks. Listen close, assholes:  the majority of this country voted against Fuckface Von Clownstick, and his works, and people like Roah Moah. Maybe you should consider talking to a few of them once in a great while, if only to provide the veneer of "balance."

Tweet Hole Alabama

The weather forecast for Tuesday's Senate election looks favorable for Roy Moore -- it's supposed to dip into the teens. -- joke on the internets

Despite the supposed plaints from random Alabamans whining about "outsiders" tellin' 'em how ta vote, the hard fact is that this is all up to them -- every last bit of it. Electing a piece of shit like Roy Moore will have consequences, and not just because he's the sort of creep that got banned from a mall because he was cruising high-schoolers.

Moore was an incompetent jurist who was removed from his bench twice, for being a Christian Sharia whackjob. He's a fanatical anti-Muslim bigot and homophobe, and recently told a black questioner at a rally that slavery warn't all bad, 'cause there was more fambly valyews then.

(Except for, you know, the slave families that were broken up all the time -- parents watching their children be sold away and vice versa, husbands and wives sold separately, etc.)

So let's be honest about exactly what you're supporting here, Alabama. You can couch it in terms of wanting to support the agenda of another incompetent serial sexual harasser, or getting another SCOTUS justice, or "preserving" "tradition" and "values" -- though, look at the means you're pursuing to justify those ends.

Look, it's pretty simple. If you're tired of blue-state elitists perceiving you as cousin-fucking hillbillies, which choice makes more sense:  defiantly voting for a caricature of a cracker bigot and affirming those perceptions, or sensibly voting for a moderate, pro-gun prosecutor who put child-murdering Klansmen in prison?

Grow the fuck up. Do the right thing. Stop voting by temper tantrum, and start reading and thinking for yourselves, instead of what your orange grifter king and his flying Fixed Noise monkeys bullshit you with.

Because frankly, it wouldn't take a whole lot to make it hurt. Enough letters to Mercedes-Benz and they move their plant to a state that wants to live in this century; enough threats of a boycott to CBS and they stop broadcasting Crimson Tide games. You want to return to the 1950s and tell the rest of the nation to go fuck ourselves, we can certainly return that favor. And as much as you may resent the supposed smug elitism of your detractors, electing a crank like Moore will only confirm those assertions.

I would like to be proven wrong. I would love nothing more than to wake up Wednesday morning, and see that Doug Jones has squeaked into the US Senate. It would be worth it to apologize for making unkind assumptions. But again, the choice is up to you, Alabama, not the rest of us. Vote for something besides he hates the same people I hate, for once in your miserable lives.

Or don't. Keep riding the Chump Train and see what that gets you -- higher taxes and no health care, so that your cult leader and his billionaire butt-buddies can keep living high on the hog at your expense. Because the fact is that, despite that stupid county map the dotard keeps waving about (probably sleeps with it, and has a small hole cut into it so he can fuck it once in a while), the most productive parts of this country by far voted for her.

So you can grow up and join the 21st century, or you can flip off us elitist book-readers and stick with the fentanyl 'n' jebus strategy that's been working out so well. Either way, good luck.

Head Count

I've mentioned this several times before, but of course no one listens to me:  every time the pustulent fucktard steps out to do one of his dipshit rallies, the very first thing our intrepid librul media need to do is publish the capacity of the venue and the actual attendance. I don't know why this is so fucking difficult. Every major venue has a fire marshal overseeing the events taking place there, and they get a head count.

It's not rocket science, but apparently it is. None of the national write-ups caught it; at best they do their lame "thousands" estimates, because they have no idea. "Thousands" tells us nothing; that could mean two thousand or twenty thousand or fifty thousand.

In this case, only the Pensacola local media sort of had a reasonable (though still insufficient) estimate:

Thousands of people filled the 12,000-seat Pensacola Bay Center on Friday night for [Fuckhead]'s "Make America Great Again" rally as hundreds were left waiting in line to get in as the doors were closed.

There's that word again, but at least you know the full capacity of the venue. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the Pensacola Bay Center's capacity:

The Bay Center has a capacity of 8,150 for hockey games, and as much as 10,000 for non-hockey events.

Why is this stuff important? Because it drives him nuts, and he can't stand feeling, um, short-changed. It's especially important when a journo steps on his dick retweeting a photo from before the rally, showing empty seats.

Also -- and pay attention here, journos and wannabes, because this is the crux of the biscuit -- that number is a salient fact. When you are talking about someone who bullshits and exaggerates everything, literally everything, it is a solid fact that you can muster in this eternal, pointless quest to point out when lying liars are lying. At the very least, it shows that you're trying.

You would think that it would be of particular importance that a Snopes article clarifying that particular instance would (again) mention the name of the venue and the capacity, and the relative ratio of capacity to actual attendance, rather than an idiotic parsing of what "packed to the rafters" means.

And Dave Weigel? Don't apologize to that turd. Ever. Especially over the veracity of a tweet. Throw it back in his face with full pot-calling-kettle-black force. For fuck's sake, grow a pair already.

[Update 12/9/17 11:27PM PDT:  Dave Weigel is certainly sharp enough to know that no good deed goes unpunished, but sure as shit, even though Weigel deleted his erroneous tweet within twenty minutes, the emperor is still calling for Weigel to be fired. If Weigel has any spine, he'll retweet the scores of the emperor's own tweets that are pure, unadulterated bullshit (or, in the polite parlance of the journo, "factually erroneous") and throw it right back in his face.

Not to mention how routinely his favorite "news" organs, Breitbart and Fox, don't even bother with "facts" and just shit out whatever makes their trained-seal audience bark the loudest. For fuck's sake, the asshole got in the ring with several years' worth of birther nonsense.

I'm telling you right now, either these media monkeys start standing up for themselves, like the day before yesterday, and punch back, or they're going to be out of jobs anyway. Simple choice, folks -- die on your feet or live on your knees, or get forced out by bullshit and you'll have a new career asking folks if they'd like fries with that.]

Advanced Calvinball

The rules of Calvinball are as simple as they are impossible to codify:  no two games of Calvinball are alike; the rules change from game to game; whoever has the ball makes the rules. It's an apt metaphor for many things in life, particularly our political process, which appears daily to be more and more beyond retrieval.

I'm not too concerned with the abrupt way in which Rep. John Conyers was shoved out the door, except that it comes in the heat of the current sex-harassment witch-hunt environment. There are many other reasons Conyers should go, in addition to him being a creep. For one, he's 88 years old, yet another reminder that our federal body of governance needs to set at least modest retirement benchmarks.

Conyers' civil-rights record is respectable, but at this point he's just another pervert gerontocrat who thinks he's permanently entitled to his congressional seat, and all the perks that come with it. His first instinct upon departure was to endorse his son, who has no political experience and was involved in a domestic violence complaint earlier this year, to succeed him.

Conyers has held his seat for fifty years. He must know or have met at some point at least one (1) person who isn't related to him or beholden to him, who is qualified to succeed him. But his natural impulse is to perpetuate the dynasty. That tells you everything you need to know.

More concerning is the quickness in which Al Franken's fellow Dems have turned on him. To be sure, Franken has done himself no favors with his behavior, just the parts he's admitted to and been dumb enough to be photographed doing. However, Franken also immediately called for an ethics investigation into his own conduct, not exactly the go-to move for a true predator.

And as a point of pure practical utility, this is more of the usual bringing-a-spork-to-a-gunfight mentality that underpins everything the Democrats do. The Republicans are about ready to send a child molester to the fucking Senate, not to mention their fearless "leader," a serial adulterer who bragged in one of his ghost-written turd-swipers about fucking other men's wives, and in more recent years, was caught boasting on tape about his prowess at grabbing pussy. And then there's Scott DesJarlais. A real media would hounded that scumbag into eating his Smith & Wesson five years ago.

The Republicans strung this out masterfully, first shaming Democrats into getting rid of whatever cash Harvey Weinstein sent their way, then in making false equivalences between Franken playing grab-ass with middle-aged women and Roy Moore chasing teenage poon in his thirties.

It's not hard to see the practical ramifications of pushing Franken out, right here and now. MN governor Mark Dayton can appoint another Democrat, and that person will have close to a year to prepare to run for a full term. But that's really the only benefit for them. They will not get karma points or moral high ground for taking that supposed high road.

See, while the Democrats are playing their usual-brand of charisma-free rudderless politics-as-usual, the Republicans are playing a more advanced, intense version of Calvinball. It has two basic rules:

1. The rules are whatever we say they are, when we say it, subject to change without notice.
2. Go fuck yourself.

Mewling criticisms from effete media weasels mean even less than the same from their Democratic colleagues. They do not care, and they want to certain that everyone understands that. They protect their perverts without fail, and they will never apologize for it. They understand intrinsically that voters respond most viscerally to someone -- right or wrong, that cannot be over-emphasized -- with balls, much more than on policy specifics, or being "honest," or any of that horseshit.

The most powerful voting criterion right now is "he/she hates the same people/things I hate," followed closely by "he/she doesn't take any shit." Obviously these are the abiding principles of the Republican party as it currently stands, but I would suggest that the Democrats could use at least a small dose of that, just a quick bump to get them moving forward again.

Because you can't vote for people who you neither respect nor fear, and right now, all most people -- Democratic voters included -- see is a circular firing squad that thinks their virtue-signaling actually means anything. We'll see how much it means once the Republicans and Russians perfect how to weaponize the Dems' instinct to always believe every accuser before any real information is known or verified.