Girth of a Nation

I wanted to like the Roseanne reboot, I suppose; at the very least, I resolved not to let it be a political decision, which appears to be something of a feat for many folks these days. But let's not kid ourselves -- the show's namesake has gone out of her way the last few years to be (or at least make effort to appear to be) a repellent troll.

As her bumptious political opinions have pinballed around the dial throughout her tumultuous public life, one thing has remained consistent for Roseanne the person:  she seems to place an inordinate value in being tough to pigeonhole or defend. This would be worthy of note if only she'd ever had an opinion on any subject that was worth repeating or endorsing. But her main goal has always been simply to be a pain in the ass. Like her ricockulous orange golem idol, she can't stand to be ignored. Unlike Preznit Tide Pod Challenge, she doesn't care if you like her or not.

But again, I don't want to be one of those Zhdanovite douchebags, stress-testing every note of every song and every line of every show for absolute alignment with my own view of the world and its sorry inhabitants. Ultimately, either the show is funny, or it isn't.

And the show is funny....until it isn't. There are a lot of nice little moments, and some decent laughs. John Goodman fits right back into the Dan Conner (easily the best character on the show, then and now) role like a comfortable shoe. The original kids are all back, as is Laurie Metcalf. They all fall right back into familiar rhythms.

But the first two episodes, which aired back-to-back last week, submerge the viewer in tone and smarm and reverse PC winks. It's likely that the writers were going for an Archie vs. Meathead dynamic between Roseanne and Jackie, but Michael Stivic was actually allowed to make a point once in a while. Jackie is simply a hopped-up caricature of every conservatard twitbag's laundry list of imaginary grievances:  shrill, smug, self-righteous, pedantic. It gets old quickly.

Roseanne, on the other hand, is never ever wrong about anything, just ask her. She defends her choice of a moronic grifter with a vague grumble about "jobs" and brooks no further disagreement. We'll see how that all goes with the jobs and the health care booming along as they are in that part of the country. The bottom line is that it becomes difficult to separate a show from its politics when the show is so blatantly political at every turn.

One of the plots in the second episode encapsulates the dilemma of the show pretty well:  younger daughter Darlene (Sara Gilbert, who is producing the reboot) has moved back home with her teen daughter and tween son, the latter of whom is, as the kids say in the 'hood, "gender fluid." Ultimately the grandparents' initial discomfort with a ten-year-old boy wearing unisex clothes and nail polish gives way to the predictable trope of fierce family protection.

All well and good, except this is precisely the same demographic that, in real life, could not stop braying about the looming danger of transgender bathrooms and such like. The lack of empathy in the real people the Conners are meant to represent is palpable, and the feeling that they (Roseanne and Dan) would have jeered at the same kid if he were in a news item at a school is inescapable. That's how they are -- they didn't give a fuck about heroin addicts, until it hit their trailer park. And they didn't give a fuck about jobs until theirs went to China and India and Mexico.

The preening arrogance of these people -- the real white working class and their teevee avatars -- is just exhausting. They seem to think that their diet of deep-fried twinkies and Bachelor offshoots confers some sort of "realness" upon them, that they are somehow more genuinely American than someone who (hurr!) reads hard-cover books and pays attention to actual news. That's really the worst out of all of it, you know, that they really seem to believe such bullshit.

Mostly though, the show is just old Thunderbird in a new-ish box. Underpinning the entire operation is this endless, constant, overweening grievance. It's the conservative reactionary version of that dreaded word, entitlement. To listen to these jabbering maroons, you'd never guess that their guy won, that they have a majority in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, that every thing their dotard has been criticized for has been well-earned. Seriously, these are the sorest fucking winners ever.

It is not the pussy-hat crowd's fault that the doddering grifter keeps shooting himself in the clown shoes every week, nor is it their fault that it turns out that -- surprise! -- all of his promises were predictably empty, that the widget-stamping jobs aren't coming back to BFE, and in fact his tiny-dick-waving stunts with the Chinese are threatening a trade war that will specifically target these salt-of-the-earth rubes.

For several years running, we've been entreatied to "listen" to a cohort of hostile, incoherent jokers who can't muster any facts, and blame everyone else for their manifest failures in life. There is never any countervailing voice, never anyone in the supposedly liberal media, and certainly nobody on the "conservative" side, who ever bothers to even suggest, Hey, more people voted for the other person, wonder if we might listen to them just once? I've gotta listen to them, over and over and fucking over again, but god forbid they'd ever come around to listen to me. Well, fuck that shit, as my great-grandmother used to tell her Sunday school class.

I don't know why that is, and I give up asking. All I know is that I've seen and heard enough plaints from these fools in real life, and I don't need a thinly fictionalized version of their nonsense to drive the point home. They'll never be happy, because they'll never get an even break, and they're never going to be honest with themselves about why that is. So why bother?

There was a time when Roseanne was ground-breaking in many respects, and downright hilarious much of the time. Now it just comes off as preachy and predictable, every bit as smug and spiteful and ill-informed as the loony lefties it lampoons.

But at least that should serve as an object lesson for any would-be liberals. Roseanne does deserve credit for telling her story her way -- loud, brash, aggressive, fuck you if you don't like it. If there are any real liberals (in entertainment or government or news) left, maybe they should consider doing the same thing for once, instead of meekly waiting around for Cadet Bonespurs to send us into a recession and nuke Tehran as a distraction. Waiting for Mueller and/or November is not a strategy.

In the meantime, instead of bothering with the nattering narcissism of the Oracle of the White Workin' Class (when she's not farming macadamia nuts in Hawaii), do yourself a favor and check out The President Show's special. Kathy Griffin's portrayal of soulless homunculus Kellyanne Con-way steals what was a pretty solid show all the way around.

Suggested Line of Questioning

John Bolton, he of the hilarious facial hair and questionable sex history, really is the worst of the worst -- vainglorious, full of shit about every-goddamned-thing, the stereotypical fake-tough armchair warrior. So he's perfect for this steaming choad of an administration.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the ultimate outcome of Bolton's selection, if only because Bolton has always been such a toxic presence, such an abysmal boss whose subordinates fucking loathe his very existence, that it will take him most of the spring and summer to "clean house" of people who might dare to disagree with his rush to sacrifice other people for his own bullshit principles. And all during that time Bolton's even more toxic boss will be doing and saying any number of stupid things, further alienating and demoralizing the margins of his own base, while further motivating the determination of opponents to push these motherless fucks into the outhouse of history, where they belong.

It seems like a roughly 99% certainty that Bolton was selected entirely because it would piss off the usual caricatured libtard snowflakes, as well as anyone with a triple-digit IQ. But as they are finding out the hard way, that's not really how you govern a country, because you can't get much of anything done. Good for everyone else, but good luck making a case that the only thing you've been successful at so far is monetizing all your Cabinet posts.

One thing that Fuckface Von Clownstick can lay claim to is a dogged repetition in his stump rhetoric. He says the same things over and over and over again, braying like a sunburnt mule about the same handful of imaginary grievances and positions. One issue he has been consistent about is his (false) claim about opposing the Iraq War, how it was a disaster, how his unique genius made him so prescient he just knew better than all those generals and smart-guy planners.

Well, as most of us know, one of those smart-guy planners was John Bolton, who still makes no bones about his feelings on the rightness and necessity of that war, the rest of the world be damned, the rest of that war's own architects be damned. Journalists can and should ask Bolton at the next opportunity about that, and ask him to elaborate. Bolton's a gaping asshole and a strategic moron, but he can think and speak extemporaneously.

Obviously there are any number of legitimate reasons to ask a new National Security Advisor to elaborate on his continued support for the unmitigated disaster of that war. So they need to do just that, and then they need to turn right around and ask Clownstick (if he's available), or one of his simpering dogsbodies about this vital inconsistency.

For once, take these jabbering idiots at their word -- if the emperor so fervently believes that the Iraq War was one of the biggest mistakes the US has ever made, then why for fuck's sake has he made one of that war's most ardent cheerleaders his national security adviser? It's a serious question that needs to be asked. This asshole wants war with Iran and North Korea, and is not above doing so pre-emptively. It's easy to learn nothing from the previous mistake, when you have no skin in the game.

Because our media entities are mostly crap, they will not bother with such important questions, besotted as they are with the more salacious details of the Stormy Daniels case (ignoring, of course, the most interesting detail by far -- that Clownstick's NDAs read like poorly transcribed Nolo templates, and he has his staff [illegally; they work for us, not him] sign NDAs as well, thus potentially opening the floodgates for tell-all books that will make Fire and Fury look like My Pet Goat). But someone needs to ask, and soon. Stop transcribing shameless lies, and start forcing these assholes to answer some real questions.

It's a Start

It appears that Laura Ingraham's endless supply of snide comments has finally gotten her ass in a wringer. It couldn't happen to a more deserving person, and it's hilarious to watch how quickly she took to groveling soon as she realized her bullshit was finally going to cost her money.

Which is really all that's important to any of these useless idiots, Alex Jones and such like. Never forget that at the end of the day, it's all a fucking scam. The only thing these cock-smokers sincerely believe in is getting paid. Everything else is just filler between ads for catheters and pills and ambulance chasers "helping" you with your legal claims for mesothelioma or displaced vaginal mesh.

And what David Hogg initiated with his tweet is remarkable in its simplicity and effectiveness. Again, these young people are reminding us all that we don't have to take their shit -- really, we never did need to take their shit. He's reminding this smug smartass that it's not a joke, that his friends were murdered and for people like Ingraham and Loesch and the rest of the Jugend to crack wise about it is not going to fly anymore. Somebody had to do it.

The MSM are collectively cowed by "tradition" and "process" and "expectations" and "norms," while faithfully stenographing the comings and goings of an administration that is completely unencumbered by those things. They'll keep showing up to the "press briefings" for Baghdad Barb's daily sack o' lies, right up to the bitter end, whining in mock horror every time she, y'know, fucking lies about everything. Great. That and eight bucks will get me a nice artisanal mochachino.

It's vital to remember that, like her cult hero, Laura Ingraham is merely a symptom, not the disease. Considering she labors in the typhoid factory, she's little more than a voluntary carrier, spreading the pandemic around as much as possible, blowing her nose into the sandwiches and soups she sells to unwitting customers.

Like Facebook users, Fox viewers are not the customers -- they are the product. These tiresome fist-shaking codgers cling bitterly to the vestiges of life long after the thrill of living is gone, as their bodies and minds betray them full-tilt. Many of them have already collected more from Social Security than they paid in, and will tell you right away that they are entitled to all of it and more, even if they spend the next twenty years marinating in their own filth and decrepitude, watching lifelong losers like Geraldo Rivera spew lies at them non-stop.

So Ingraham sucks, but let's not forget Tucker Carlson, let's not forget that fatheaded turd Hannity, who actually has some sort of informal advisory role with one F. Von Clownstick, aka King Shit of Turd Hill.

Imagine that for a hard second -- it is well-known fact that a person unjustly thrust into perhaps the most important job on the planet spends his mornings poop-transcribing Fox and Friends on his Twitter account, then has dinner with Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro (who makes Ingraham look like Oprah Winfrey in comparison) on a regular basis. He solicits advice and counsel from these weasels.

Seriously, 'murka:  your domestic and foreign policy is literally being affected by Steve Doocy, who doesn't have three brain cells to rub together. We can all duly note, in the classic style of Yakov Smirnoff, that in Russia the leader controls state teevee -- but here in America, it's the other way around.

There's always the argument that "free speech" is being coercively squelched by reactive boycotts like this. But people like Jones and Hannity and Ingraham are impervious to the rigors of normal debate and argument. They are not interested in mustering facts or exchanging ideas. Upton Sinclair would recognize this nonsense for exactly what it is, people whose careers depend on them pissing and shitting into the well of public discourse.

Ordinarily you might say they are heedless or reckless in their disregard for what they're doing, and what effects their lies have on people and events, but you would be very wrong. They know exactly what they're doing. It's in their job description.

All of which means that maybe it's time to go after the big guns -- the Murdochs and their vile media empire. Maybe it's time to boycott the regular Fox network as well; I'm tired of football and Family Guy anyway. Truly, the old man is the worst sort of scum, and his sons are about as much of a "moderating influence" as Clownstick's awful brood. I wish them all long lives -- as poor, broke, miserable bastards. It would be nice at least once in this lifetime to see privileged scumbags held accountable for what they've done.

The Kids Are Alright

Maybe instead of getting annoyed with Sanctimonium Santorum trolling high school students with his sage "take CPR in case aderanged shooter drops in with an AR-15" advice, maybe we should ask CNN why they keep having in on to spout nonsense. The fact that he was once a You Ass Senator only means that Pennsyltuckians have a knuckle-dragger contingent like every other state in the union.

Look, this is an industry, and CNN has no problem selling the nutritional equivalent of deep-fried twinkies, under the usual guise of "let's hear both sides." Again, when the issue is how can we stop or at least reduce the frequency of school shootings?, recommending CPR classes and posting five-gallon buckets at strategic locations is not a fucking "side," it's inexcusably stupid and borderline deranged.

So you might say to yourself, "Self, I wonder why the supposedly librul lamestream media keep having liars and morons peddle nonsense and cheap invective? I wonder why the nation's leading newspapers keep making bi-weekly pilgrimages out to talk to handfuls of fist-shaking codgers in dilapidated diners in decrepit towns?"

The mediots are dedicated first and foremost to peddling clickbait, things that will infuriate all the usual people and get them squawking. They are marketing a product, just as surely as Frito-Lay or Smirnoff or Applebee's or Tampax is marketing a product.

It is our collective decision whether we wish to consume the media product -- and more importantly, the products of their sponsors -- or not. It's also our decision whether or not we wish to take note that the person who runs CNN is the same person who ran NBC when Fuckface Von Clownstick had his stupid fake-tycoon celebritard fuckfest, and if that's all just a big coincidence.

The Parkland students have managed a formidable accomplishment, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people in hundreds of cities around the world, with just a month to organize things, with the right-wing propaganda machine and its various scumbags and dogsbodies [paid crisis actors!] focused squarely on them. Obviously the ultimate outcome of the marches remains to be seen, but the students have already demonstrated one very important principle that everyone can take note of:  you don't have to take shit from these people. At all.

These young people have had hideous, hateful nonsense hurled at them, in social media and on the teevee and probably in their local communities, death threats and invective from people they don't know, and therefore have no idea if they're "real" or just outrage trolling. And they've shrugged it off completely, refusing to acknowledge the assholes, calling out politicians at every level.

There are really only two ways to make the vile scumbags pay attention:  the ballot box and the wallet. And people can and should use both of those things, and not be afraid to dig deep. The Parkland students were effective in that arena as well, without really even trying; once the NRA rushed to show just how monstrous they truly are, it didn't take long for their corporate sponsors to distance themselves.

So who are the sponsors of the CNN show that had that dipshit Santorum on to burble his abusive nonsense? Maybe they need a friendly reminder about where their advertising dollars ultimately come from. That's what got that fuckhead O'Reilly banished to podcasting out of the den in his empty house. The gun-humpers have no compunction about pissing all over the First Amendment in order to "protect" their fevered vision of the Second Amendment. Maybe it's time to show that everyone can play that game.

Or, to dig a bit deeper, remember who produced the aforementioned fake-tycoon celebritard fuckfest? I've said it before and I'll say it again:  social media and reality teevee have wrecked this country, and the foremost purveyor of the latter form of televised diarrhea is that limey turd Mark Burnett, who also produces Survivor, which seems like it oughta be years past its sell-by date even for the inert gastropods who still watch that dreck (in between Bachelor marathons and intravenous mayonnaise feedings).

So who sponsors Survivor, and can they (and CBS, of course) be leaned on? Personally, I can't boycott something I've never watched, but they don't know that. This is what it's come to, because this is what they've insisted on. It's long past time now to give it back with both barrels. And we've all just been given a crash course in how to do that.

Rube Awakening

"One never knows how loyalty is born." -- Bert Cooper, Mad Men

Conor Lamb's recent victory in the PA-18 special election not only exposes very real fault lines in the crumbling Gooper claque, but also serves to bring some of the apostate rubes back home. Like all Cletus Safari articles, nothing more than anecdata can ever be churned by talking to a half-dozen people in a town whose name you've already forgotten by the end of the piece.

Still, the comments all point at the same thing:  they've grown tired of the shitshow, exhausted by the daily antics of ineptitude. The guy's a toxic asshole who can't get anything done. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is reflected in my own anecdata, talking recently with a couple of Clownstick-supporting friends who, while still supporting him, separately offered the exact same qualifier:  I wish he wouldn't tweet so much.

It's difficult to top that complete lack of awareness, and I said so, made sure to remind each of these people of that fact:  This is who he is, what he is. This is how he's always been. Lying about everything on his Twitter account is literally what got him into this. He's never not been a bullshitter. He lies about everything, no matter how small or inconsequential. Politics has nothing to do with it. He's a diseased soul.

Two things yesterday hammered those very points home.

• Using the legal system to harass stripper/porn star Stormy Daniels. Apparently there is a clause in the non-disclosure agreement that Daniels signed and David Dennison Fuckface Von Clownstick didn't, stipulating that each breach incurs a fine of $1M. Most sentient humans with at least some knowledge of the legal system agree that the amount is laughably unenforceable in an agreement that paid only $130K total in the first place, and wasn't signed by one of the agreeing parties.
• Firing Andrew McCabe, less than forty-eight hours before McCabe would have retired anyway. Whether or not McCabe gets some or all of his pension and benefits, the fact is that Clownstick sent his paid perjurer Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Thuhd to do the dirty work yesterday specifically to fuck McCabe out of what he had earned in his civil-service career.

This is the cruel, petty, vindictive side of Clownstick that again, fucking everyone warned the morons about. I know I call everyone I don't like an asshole, but this guy is a fucking asshole. If he had been born poor he would have been the neighborhood creep that spent his teens torturing stray cats, before moving on to hunting humans.

McCabe will land on his feet regardless; as one might assume (unless you're a doddering narcissistic moron), he kept notes of all their interactions, will probably see his inevitable book advance double or triple what it would have been otherwise, and is most assuredly on his way to Mueller's office Monday morning. He's not an idiot, and now he's been motivated by the world's worst boss.

Beyond the anecdotal down-punching, the immersion in the impotent god-emperor's temper tantrums and incoherent volatility, the fan club has to be seeing the catastrophic decisions affecting the bigger picture. He shitcanned Tex Drillerson while Drillerson was literally on the shitcan; he's pushing H.R. Haldeman Pufnstuf out the door, possibly for John Bolton, or some other swamp thing that'll make us wish for Bolton. Think of that:  by the time this abortion of an administration is eighteen months along, it will be on at least its third National Security Director, its second Secretary of State, probably its third FBI Director. And at least three other high-level positions are looking to be shuffled around, and possibly filled by dipshits from Fixed Noise.

And let's not forget who the dotard appointed as his economic advisor:  a cokehead with a history degree and a long track record of not knowing what the fuck he's talking about when it comes to the economy. The economy is actually doing relatively well [fake numbers!] for now, and two-thirds of the country still despises this motherfucker. But we're already overdue for a recession, and even the diehards might take some issue when Captain Eight-Ball fucks the dog and that extra twenty bucks in their paychecks goes away, along with the rest of their paychecks.

Then again, the economy won't much matter once we're tangled in North Korea, Syria, and Iran simultaneously, because Group Sex McPornstache wants to flex nuts for Cadet Bonespurs.

What struck me about the Pennsyltucky voters from the Times article was this common thread of "let's try something new," without bothering to even minimally vet that new something. Well, now they know, and at least some of them are willing to change their minds, and maybe even remember next time that stoves are hot, and that when someone tells you who they are, maybe you should believe them.

I think (though I'm not always certain) that I've come to accept that I will always be mystified by how otherwise intelligent, sensible people got gulled by this transparent snake-oil dipshit. I mean, we've all become accustomed to the screaming goobers with their Fuck Your Feelings t-shirts, barking slogans like trained seals at the Two Minutes of Hate rallies.

But there are some supporters (really!) who have good jobs and careers and skills and college degrees. They run their own businesses. Some of these folks are book smart and street smart, the kind of people who can hit a used-car lot and come out with a solid deal, not get rooked on the undercoating by Jerry Lundegaard.

And yet they fell for....this fucking clown, a serial failure who has to call the New York Post pretending to be someone else, to brag about how great he is in the sack, to shame his first wife and impress his mistress. These are people who care about "character" in their politicians, and they went for someone who, if nothing else, is entirely forthright about his completely amoral character and utter lack of business ethics.

This will never fail to baffle me. I feel like I'm missing some enormous financial opportunity, in not finding a way to scam them further. I get why they can't admit they fucked up, but how did they fall for it in the first place? It's like one of those internet-romance-finance scams, where some lonely divorcee sends a ricockulous amount of money to some guy with a nice photo and a smooth rap.

You read about these things and say, who are these fucking people? There's a similar pathology at play with the Clownstick dupes. They know they fucked up but can't admit it, even to themselves. So they keep doubling down and making excuses, until they run out of both.

At any rate, it seems to be finally starting to sink in with some of them, that he really is a barstool drunk -- inept, mouthy, right about every fucking thing even after being proven wrong every time. And he's an obnoxious asshole and a tiresome crybaby on top of all that.

It should speak volumes that they flooded the zone with Clownstick and his vile children, poured over $10M dollars into a race for a congressional district that won't even exist nine months from now. It should raise the antenna of Republican operatives and strategists that in Clownstick's me-me-me rally, illegally talking himself up for 2020 when he was supposed to be stumping for Rick Saccone, that neither he nor the teevee ads bothered talking about the tax cuts.

There's something in the air, and they can smell it, and they know it's not the smell of victory. We're about to see if the Democrats can actually learn something from all this.

Both Sides Now

I don't really have much to offer on the subject of MSM concern trolling of "liberals" and "leftists" as those definitions even still exist as we might have understood them ten or twenty years ago, because whether it's coming out of James Bennet's troll farm or from the soi-disant conservative end, the results are the same, and you shall know their sloppy thinking by their works. Their crapulence should be self-evident enough that you don't need some random numbskull such as yours truly to connect the dots.

But the opening example from the above-linked AmCon essay deserves attention:

Earlier this March, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors David Hogg and Cameron Kasky appeared on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Kasky used the opportunity to respond to those like NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch who he feels have used the activists’ young age as an excuse to say they don’t know what they are talking about. Kasky boldly declared: “We’ve been locked in a classroom. We have seen our friends text their parents goodbye. We are the experts. We know exactly what we’re talking about. How dare you tell us we don’t know?” Having endured a horrific and traumatizing experience, it’s understandable that Kasky would answer critics with emotion.

The bigger problem is that such emotional arguments have become the norm in our society. As Charles C.W. Cooke recently argued in National Review, it is wrong and belittling to dismiss Hogg and the other activists from Parkland simply because they are young, just as it is wrong to say that they should be immune from criticism on account of their age. If these students want to chime in on a national debate, it is their right to speak their minds and enter the scrum. Accordingly, their ideas should be criticized and praised under the same criteria as anyone else’s. In that spirit, it is rather difficult to accept Kasky’s claim to expertise solely by his being present at the scene of a horrific crime.

This is disingenuous enough to give a bad name to concern trolling, which is saying something. Let's break down the operational phrase "NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch," shall we? The NRA lobbies on behalf of gun manufacturers, not gun owners. It's a crucial difference between customer and product -- gun owners are the product that the NRA brings to their customers, by pushing booga-booga nonsense about so-and-so coming to take your arsenal, which you totally need in case you have to fight off the eeevil gubmint you claim to revere. Something like that; it becomes increasingly difficult to parse their self-contradictory jabber.

Anyhoo, Dana Loesch is the (urp!) spokesmodel peddling said paranoid jabber to old white men who buy into such guff, and regard her as eye candy. Loesch regards herself as eye candy as well, as she has also tried to pitch a sitcom idea for herself to star in as a "hot young mom." Um, okay. Can't believe they passed on that one.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that not only is Dana Loesch delusional, she is a carny peddling gun paranoia to Dale Gribble burger-militia types between "jobs" out in BFE. Loesch's thinly veiled threats of armed insurrection may give the Cletii a chub, but the main thing is that she is making nakedly emotional appeals to the rubes she's selling to the gun manufacturers.

You see, it turns out that orange is not the new black after all -- since Fuckface Von Clownstick slithered into orifice, gun sales have tumbled, and Remington has filed for bankruptcy. The reasons have a cultural component, but it's mostly just math -- most people purchasing a gun these days already have one, or ten, or fifty, and so are not incentivized to buy more without something tickling their prostateparanoia gland. Enter Dana Loesch. [giggity]

So this glib chuckler walking past Loesch's role in all this really is not only inexcusable, it's the crux of the biscuit in this here argument. True, Cameron Kasky's role as victim/bystander in a tragic mass murder does not automatically confer upon him the role of "expert" in determining Second Amendment policy. His arguments can and should be scrutinized and contested where they might be flawed, just like anyone else.

But Dana Loesch is no expert either. She's a paid shill for a group that by its own inflated estimation accounts for maybe 5 million people, which is not peanuts, but is also a drop in a bucket of 320 million citizens. The NRA wraps themselves in the fucking flag and claims to represent all Americans, when in fact they represent weapons manufacturers, and count (probably falsely at that) a thin sliver of Americans as paid members. It's actually a pretty impressive racket when you think about it.

I'm not sure what the ultimate intent or endgame of the Parkland survivors will be; it's possible they don't even know for sure yet. They're probably still in "mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore" mode, and they should be. So far what they've done is impressive, and I hope they are able to accomplish more. Even if I end up disagreeing with the specifics of this or that policy proposal, I respect the fact that they've organized and mobilized and made it clear that they're not taking shit from any of these scumbags. Because that is exactly what Loesch and Wayne LaPierre and all the politicians they rent really are. Their gun fetish and the money it brings in are much more important to them than the safety of schoolchildren, every time.

We should be disgusted that not only is this the only nation on the planet that has these events occur, much less with regularity, but also that when they happen, there is always a claque of paid actors (such as Loesch, whom you can be sure does not work pro bono) who will scuttle out of the woodwork and claim that the survivors are paid actors.

Forget the false equivalences and the harrumphed pronunciamentos about arguing from emotion instead of reason: the real problem here is that when these tragedies occur, equal time and footing is given to horrible people, who are not yoked to any moral compass, who have no sense of shame or common decency, who are comfortable arguing from bad faith, peddling lies and hypocrisy.

And then you have the professional commentariat trotting out with their same tired-ass chin-stroking both-sider template. We'll see how creative they get when Loesch's calls for armed rebellion turn into bouts of domestic terrorism, because that's really the demographic she's been stoking all along, trying to gin up gun sales in a down market.

Let's cut the shit here, folks: what we've been watching here is a bunch of high-schoolers taking on one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the country, as well as all of those rented political weasels. There's no fucking equal footing here; no one is paying any of these kids to stick their necks out on this, but every single one of the talking heads pitted against them is paid quite well, count on it.

Fuck those people, every last one of them. At this point, I don't care if gun-control advocates do start wanting full confiscation, as improbable as that might be, as impossible as it would be to carry out. Because no matter which party is power anymore, I want to see these motherfuckers lose, every time, from here on out. If they order a hot pastrami sandwich from a deli, I want them to get shit on a shingle.

Enough is enough. This nation has been held hostage by a handful of fetishists for far too long, and they need either to accept some very reasonable and modest checks on their "inalienable right," or we need to start revisiting the whole concept. The other 315 million people who are not NRA members do not owe that 1.56% sliver a goddamned thing.

Yes Man

The NY Times' op-ed page is a big bowl of boiled ass these days, but once in a while they cook up an article that breaks out some useful info and details. If half of what's here is true -- and there's no reason not to believe it's 100% accurate -- we are in deep shit.

There's no way to overstate how much the US strategic position in Asia has been abruptly diminished by these fucking morons running the show now. This is much bigger than two fat guys with fucked-up haircuts battling over who has the coolest comb. The world is already headed toward a period of dominance centered around the Indian Ocean. The morons are simply accelerating that trend with alarming quickness.

This is what happens when you start your tenure as [fart] chief executive by gutting your entire foreign service apparatus, through a potent combination of spite, ignorance, mendacity, and negligence. When I've referred to Clownstick as a "barstool drunk," the sort of nasty idiot who thinks he knows everything and provides no evidence at all to back it up, this is Exhibit A. Clownstick has jabbered on and on and fucking on about how much they are shorting us on the security invoice, as if the US military was just a bunch of mall cops hired out to contain the shenanigans in the galleria food court.

It literally does not occur to the dotard that we have logical reasons for carrying more of the burden in NATO and the UN, that the greater outlay buys us far more credibility in calling the shots and providing direction. There are reasons we stay in Germany at greater expense to us, as well as Japan and South Korea. All of those countries would just as soon we packed up and went home, even as they grudgingly recognize that in the end, we do serve as a bulwark against Russian and Chinese hegemony. And the fact is, humanity is just at that point where there is going to be a hegemon regardless, so it might as well be the Americans.

But none of these things have any meaning to someone whose every thought and move and impulse is purely transactional, on a level that a crack-whore kneeling in an alley for her fifteenth blowjob of the day doesn't operate at. All the dotard sees when he looks at a map is how many more venues he can slap that worthless name of his on. He couldn't care less if he steps on the toes of allies he may need for something else in the future, or if he fucks up generations of established international diplomacy norms that have kept billions of people safe, however imperfectly.

These things were already in motion regardless, as we are now nearly four generations removed from the post-WW2 arrangements. Japan in particular has seen a resurgence of right-wing militarism and nationalism; the current generation clearly no longer has any use for the terms of surrender acceded to by their great-grandparents. Germany, like the rest of Western Europe, have already had enough of Mister Man's bullshit, and are trying to figure out a way to deal with the bear without our guns parked in their backyard. They seem to figure that they can trade and finance their way into some sort of arrangement, and given that Russia faces a serious succession crisis whenever the 65-year-old Putin retires or dies, they may be right.

All of it points to the same thing:  the other powers under our longstanding security umbrella have been growing restive, and were in the process of testing the waters anyway. Obama was reflexively conservative (in the old-school sense) about flexing US military power, and his over-reliance on soft power set the stage for the current volatility in the MENA region, and no doubt emboldened China and Japan at the very least to start charting their own courses.

The dotard's approach to North Korea, as detailed in the Times article, will eventually serve as a template of this group's disastrous approach to international diplomacy. It's one thing for him to bluster about ignoring Democrats and liberals on the foreign policy front, but this guy is undermining his own team, and it's a shortchanged team to begin with.

Think about it:  their big diplomatic feint with the Norks was to send his knockoff-handbag-peddling brandbot daughter to the fucking Olympics to stare them down. There is no official presence in the diplomatic corps for this part of the world, no ambassador to South Korea, no Undersecretary of State for the region, a shortage of qualified interpreters and translators in the foreign service.

Considering the various consequences and ramifications, and the singularly inept track record of the moron and his gang of dopes and fools, there's too many ways for them to fuck this up royally -- even if Kim and Clownstick never actually meet -- and only a couple ways to get it right.

Fucking Traitors

Remember these names. They hate their own country, and sold it down the river. We'll see how they split and spend their thirty pieces of silver.

But keep their names in mind, because some of them may try to slither away from what they've done. They might read the tea leaves and "retire" early, though many of them are in safe districts and/or are longtime incumbents. They might even get voted out in November, at which point some of them will try to come back in some form or other, most likely as lobbyists of some sort, since scum merely change form as needed.

That's when you write the companies that employ them, the teevee networks that give them guest spots, the newspapers and magazines that grant them op-ed space, and fucking boycott them as well. This cannot go on anymore; these motherless fucks must be held accountable for what they've done, and the only thing they really listen to is financial ruin.

It's shameful that these things -- they are no longer human, afaic -- have freely chosen to do what they've done. But it's downright baffling and pathetic that they've chosen to do so for someone so clearly unworthy of such devotion, because Fuckface Von Clownstick would throw each and every one of them into a wood chipper, if he thought it would make another half-empty airport hangar of losers and goons chant along with him.

This was clearly a desperation gambit on the part of these puling weasels, and from the looks of every one of their Twitter feeds, it's going to backfire bigly on them. Every single post on most of the pages is absolutely livid. This bullshit will not stand. These fuckers need to be put on the street, and their corrupt, treasonous party needs to be put down for good.

At the Movies

We're only reviewing one movie this time around, but it's a long review, and you should take the spoiler warning seriously.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

(***spoilers***)

This one presents a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, you have a Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) project with a top-notch cast, and solid performances throughout; on the other hand, the whole thing is wrapped in a tendentious Swiss-cheese plot that gets more annoying the closer you think about it.

By now, even if you haven't seen the movie you probably know the broader strokes -- a mother puts up billboards outside her small town, asking why her daughter's rape/murder from a year ago remains unsolved, and the town (especially the police force) turns against her. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

Tooth and Consequences

It would be easy to work up any number of hard-hitting riffs about this busted-grill asshole trying with all his meager might to intimidate a niche lefty bookstore located in -- wait for it -- Berkeley, but life is increasingly short, and there are always better things to do. People are freaking out about this dope, and they really shouldn't, because he's about as threatening as a fart in a hurricane.

I am, however, small enough to freely admit that you don't need to be Ace Ventura to observe that this snaggle-toothed dipshit is not, to put it mildly, one of life's heavy winners, and that that fact brings me joy. This is the prototype of every tiresome Cletus safari article that's been foisted on us thus far -- broke-ass loser in a broke-ass town, trying desperately to find someone else to blame their troubles on. Who's keeping an eye on the meth lab while Goober is sliming up Durant Avenue with his jabbering nonsense?

I warned well before the election and probably since then, that the genuine magat cultists (as opposed to the mere professional opportunists, your finance-weasel types and such like) would be sore winners just as much as they'd be sore losers if Hitlery had won. This is proof of that very thing, if your Facebook feed hasn't convinced you yet. You'd never guess from listening to this mouthful-of-dice knock-off-lid halfwit and his nutty sidekick (what books, exactly, has anyone been burning?) that their side won.

I've lived my entire life in Cali, and been in Northern Cali since 1974. I know every area of this state, and the people in each area. So believe me when I tell you that there's no fucking way these bozos live within fifty miles of Berkeley.

So you do the methmath:  these assholes -- again, their god-emperor won and has majorities in Congress and the Supreme Court -- drove probably close to an hour each way into the city to harass an indie bookstore. Do they think they will convince anyone, change any minds? Do they think that their tiny group of moron-rabble-rousers will intimidate a business into closing its doors?

I mean, I'm skeptical as a matter of principle as to the efficacy of street protests to being with. But it's impossible to discern what the goal is here. What do they intend to accomplish, or even dream they might accomplish? Outside of maybe Barbara Lee or a local supervisor or two, there is no politician at any level that is going to make any effort whatsoever to represent the concerns of Revolution Books and its customers. Hell, by definition the "revolutionaries" have committed themselves to working outside and away from the system as much as possible; there is no upside for any "establishment" politician to expend any political capital looking out for a handful of Antifa types.

So this much is true, in the most literal sense possible:  every second the insane clown posse spends, driving to the store and cluttering up the sidewalk for however long and schlepping back home, is a complete waste of time. It can have no possible net political outcome for their lost cause. At most, it might incite a couple of like-minded losers to waste some of their time moseying down to the lose-in. Okely-dokely then. Good luck with that.

I would like to think there is indeed a demographic force-ten storm brewing; if so, it will happen in spite of, rather than because of the Democratic Party, an entity in need nearly as much as the Republicans of a controlled demolition. Both parties are like decrepit Vegas hotels at this point, built on blood money and in business only to fleece customers and grease palms. The Republicans are traitors and enablers, but in the face of treason the Democratic leadership is as feckless and gutless as ever. They can all go straight to hell.

I'm going to use a lot of quotes here because people need to really think about what they want each word to mean:  If "we" "want" "our" "country" "back", it will have to be reclaimed at a true grass-roots level. Whatever is left of this nation will have to be wrested from the greedy, insatiable maw of the corporate scumbags who own and operate both parties.

But the fact is that regardless of the outcome in November, the true cultists like these losers on the sidewalk will be back in some form, unless gingivitis or the die-uh-beet-us does 'em in while they fester out in Opioid Flats. Because that's what Gomer and his empty tough-guy threats are really all about -- the impotent rage of someone who failed utterly at the business of life and knows it, and who needs to constantly find windmills to tilt at in order to distract him from an existence of abject failure.

Social Justice Worriers

A thorough post-mortem analysis of the 2016 election will include the inevitable effects of reactionary sentiments, especially against putatively "progressive" causes that made the rounds in that year and the couple years preceding it. Some of this reactionarism certainly had its roots in racism, as the folks in the Black Lives Matter movement (insofar as it even qualifies as such) can attest.

Some of the working-class frustrations, whether real or cynically exploited by the Koch-Mercer-Murdoch axis of evil, had at least a strata of truth. Imagine someone out in the 'murka's vaunted heartland, town decimated by outsourcing, smart kids left and dumb ones stayed and impregnated each other, no prospects, no future, just the steady drip of generational dilapidation, punctuated by the occasional limp parade through town on the veterans' holidays, to remind of lost greatness and vigor. They've put up with this shit for some years, and are now watching those people riot, disrespect cops, and such like.

Now throw on immigrants collecting social services and squeezing out anchor babies, campus smart-asses jabbering about intersectional micro-grievances, and transvestites demanding restroom privileges, and Democratic politicians paying far more attention to such things than even mentioning (much less actually visiting and witnessing firsthand) the decaying Mayberries across the country. You can see where those folks might conclude that Something Had To Be Done, even if you completely disagree (as you should) that their chosen electoral action had any basis in operational reality.

In other words, people across the political spectrum can and should be able to see where people in many areas in the US might feel like their lives and communities are well and truly fucked, and their fat-cat pols are non-responsive. And yet they still should be able to see that electing a fake billionaire who apparently got a heart transplant from George Wallace might not be the solution to that set of problems.

It is perhaps the mark of a society that is collectively doing better than it thinks it is, when a sufficient number of people have the luxury to complain about micro-aggressions and triggering and the other inane jargon terms of the intersectional grievance claque. However, the corollary to that might be that you could say the same thing about a society that has the luxury of complaining about those complainers, especially when there are far worse challenges staring us all in the face.

There are the obvious big-picture transgressions:

• the piss-colored rosacea golem squatting in the people's house, profiteering illegally with impunity, sending his dipshit progeny to conduct sensitive high-level negotiations that hold countless lives in the balance;
• the steadily mounting evidence that a hostile foreign nation affected a US presidential election with the complicity of the victor and his campaign staff;
• a stolen SCOTUS seat;
• the Republican Party's rapid devolution into a proto-fascist enabling regime;
• the Democratic Party's typically dickless response -- these fuckers stole a Supreme Court seat and the election, and the only thing you assholes grandstand about is the so-called Dreamers?;
• the various cabinet ministers whose respective missions amount to killing off the agencies they have been appointed to oversee;
• the sizable minority that still supports such nonsense, directly counter to their own rational self-interest and that of the country they self-righteously claim to revere.

It is no exaggeration to say that it may take another full generation to come back from these things. Any and all of them are so much worse than whatever esoteric jabber some humanities major is concocting in their Wednesday empowerment group.

I've been rereading some of what I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the election, and one thing from then that certainly holds up is that the defiling of the Oval Office with the likes of Fuckface Von Clownstick really is the political equivalent of 9/11, in that it has literally changed how everyone, regardless of political persuasion, thinks and perceives pretty much everything in that arena.

The mainstream media have mostly relegated themselves to covering the daily follies and outrages, sputtering in impotent perplexity that he keeps getting away with it. But they still show up dutifully to be lied to by Baghdad Barb, who makes no effort to conceal her contempt for them. And rightly so -- they have forgotten what their real mission is, and so the majority show up like pathetic dogs, waiting to get their heads kicked in by their abusive owner. It's painful to watch. Everything changed, but they have not.

What does all this have to do with the SJW types? Not much, really, except to point out that most reasonable people can agree that the bumptious PC nonsense spewing forth from the campus crusaders is frustrating at best, but mostly eye-rolling and obnoxious. The paucity of critical thinking, the herd mentality of political correctness, the reflexive squelching of opposing views, all contribute to a stifled orthodoxy that, as most people outside academia can tell you, will be beaten out of them by the real world almost the instant they hit the street. Anybody working an honest job does not have time to parse the nuances of intersectionality.

No, the real world has much worse issues, many of which have been thrown in sharp relief by recent events. The Parkland school shooting in Florida is a prime example. It is a mundane, now routine observation that the US is the only nation on the planet where this sort of thing happens, much less happens on a frequent basis that we have all become accustomed to.

What compounds this gruesome calculus is that we are now also the only nation where the survivors of such events are routinely attacked, mocked, lied about, threatened. It was awful enough when that fat fuck Alex Jones disseminated the idea that the parents of the second-graders murdered in their classroom at Sandy Hook were "crisis actors," people brought forth to perpetuate a tragedy that never happened, in order to engage in the fruitless, endless quest for even modest gun control.

Now we are picking on teenagers who have had the temerity to stand up for themselves and speak their minds. About the mildest reproach I have seen toward these kids is the notion that since a handful of kids roughly the same age have gained some YouTube notoriety doing the "Tide Pod Challenge," that entire generation is therefore disqualified from even opining on the complexities of law-abidin' gun fetishists.

I would suggest that for the past several years, this whole goddamned nation has been participating in an ongoing Tide Pod Challenge, ever since the day that ridiculous asshole came down the escalator and tossed his piss-colored wig into the ring.

The Parkland survivors, most of them still (barely) too young to vote (but you can be assured that they will), provide some measure of hope beyond the gun control debate itself. They are proving first and foremost that we don't have to take shit from the right-wing nutjobs and their hired scum. They are demonstrating the hypocrisy of the bloodthirsty NRA and its shills, especially the loathsome Dana Loesch.

The NRA does not represent gun owners, it represents gun manufacturers, and Dana Loesch is a paid spokes-tool. This is something I have pointed out in one-on-one conversations with my gun-owning NRA friends -- they think they are customers, but they are the product. The NRA is basically a gigantic mailing list, a market for the NRA's true customers -- that is, the manufacturers -- since most guns are now purchased by people who already own guns. This is a very powerful statistic that underpins the entire problem, despite all the distracting rhetoric about "culture" and whatnot.

It should not be a terrible thing for a group of crime victims -- kids who watched their friends and classmates and teachers get murdered by a psychotic ex-classmate with an AR-15 -- to collectively observe that it should be at least somewhat challenging for such a person to have access to a military-grade weapon. In a country where schools are notoriously underfunded and teachers underpaid, it is retarded to insist that the best solution is to invest money into turning schools into fortified citadels, and teachers into trained killers.

But most of all, the hypocrisy of paid assholes such as Loesch excoriating victims as somehow insincere or financially goaded into the stance they've taken, well, that should be completely unacceptable. But in three short years, this orange animal and his dirtbag failsons and the paid cockroaches who enable and support him, they have turned this country on its collective head, practically eliminated our ability to process disgust and outrage at things that used to require very little time to arrive at that destination.

When and if the US climbs out of the abyss we have collectively thrust ourselves into, there will be a great many things that will need to be repaired. Almost certainly, the first thing that will need to be done is to formulate a highly specific set of protocols prohibiting the chief executive, and their family and staff, from personally enriching themselves through their elected office. A blind trust will be truly blind, not a wink and a nod to the aforementioned failsons minding daddy's grift machine while he pretends to be in charge. You can't just send your knockoff-handbag-peddling daughter to a geopolitical flashpoint to conduct highly sensitive strategic negotiations regarding a country with which we are still technically at war, because you're too fucking lazy to appoint a proper ambassador to the region.

But more intangibly, and hence more difficult to reclaim, will be our capacity for cynicism, and the ability to translate that into action. The sheer mendacity of every one of these fucking people is exhausting. This is beyond mere policy disagreements -- they are vile humans, every last one of them, and they have taken up actively against the interest of their own country. They are nothing short of traitors, and one hopes futilely that some sort of justice will eventually find some or most of them.

In the meantime, maybe we focus on that which is in front of us and actually threatens us all. Again, the campus crybabies will find out soon enough just how little use the real world has for their grievances of privilege. There are too many academic types on the opposing ideological side who have a vested interest in stoking those differences, otherwise they'd have nothing to write about, and then might be forced to ply an honest trade.

But we have kids dying, adults bullying the survivors, a claque of scummy oligarchs undermining the fundaments of the republic, and media monkeys who can't find their own assholes in a dark room with both hands an a flashlight. It is now more important than ever for us all to keep our eyes on the ball.

Year Zero

"If everyone always knows what they're doing and acts in a perfectly rational way, how did most of world history happen?" -- M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge, p. 108

So at the one-year mark since the investiture of one F. Von Clownstick, perhaps a brief recap is in order.

Foreign Policy

• Cozied up to nearly every scumbag butcher this misbegotten planet has to offer.
• The main tyrants Clownstick hasn't snuggled with -- Kim Jong Un and the Iranian mullahs -- he seems to be trying to start wars with.
• Alienated most of our Western European allies, both with his obnoxious buffoonery and trying to shake them down for NATO dues, as if they were delinquent Maga Lardo members. This deficit of friends should quickly be filled by the nascent fascist regimes taking hold in Poland, Hungary, et al. They love him -- birds of a feather and all.
• Endless squawking about "fixing" NAFTA, without proposing any actual ideas, nor the realization that Canada and Mexico are two of our biggest trading partners, and are pursuing greener pastures in the broader world that Mister Man wisely decided to flip off.

The most dangerous feature of the current foreign policy as it stands is that it shows no capacity for even medium-range thinking, much less long-range. There is no ten or twenty years down the road for these people, no realization that this is going to be an Asian century, that the center of power is in the long process of shifting, and that their bumptious nonsense is accelerating that process. So much winning, so much maga.

Domestic Policy
Hell, do we really even need to bother enumerating the list? It all boils down to two major tactics:

• Appoint Cabinet secretaries who are expressly there to dismantle and/or monetize the department they've been put in charge of. Betsy DeVos is there to turn the entire education system into a profit center, while killing the teachers' union once and for all. Ryan Zinke is there to ensure that the extraction industry can work their magic in every nation park, from sea to oil-slicked sea. Ben Carson is there to pretend that no one gave him a hand when he was being brought up in public housing.
• Telling those people to go fuck themselves.

And remember, none of this would have been possible without the media and their fucking Cletus safaris, their need for clickbait and their slavish insistence on both-siding every goddamned thing, even when there really isn't another side. Bokay? Jeffrey Dahmer did not have a "side," at least not one that deserved to be aired as a mere "opinions differ" comparison.

The Russian word "grozny" has been famously mistranslated in referring to that country's most notorious historical tyrant. The word does not mean "terrible" in the sense of wreaking terror and violence; it is closer to "awesome" in the sense of inspiring awe (rather than greatness).

In that spirit, I have to say that this administration has really impressed me so far. For more than thirty years, Fuckface Von Clownstick was synonymous with "failed blowhard" in my mind, a ridiculous person saying ridiculous things, and our ridiculous mediots always there to give him a platform to spout his nonsense. But he truly is dumber than I had thought, even more of an asshole than I had supposed. And that's impressive, because again, I had felt that way about this clown for decades, well before he cast his piss-colored cotton candy weave into the political arena.

And it's impressive to see someone so willing to "lead" by appealing solely to his ~30% cult of personality (or lack of personality). If you thought Dick Cheney was a supreme asshole for his practice of taking a microscopic victory and assuming a 100% mandate, you can rightly chastise yourself for having a failure of imagination.

It can always get worse; all it takes is someone completely unencumbered by anything resembling a moral compass, and an entire political party to enable him, because they know they can control him. After all, they both have the same central teleological faith that the best thing is to make other people pay for your high-on-the-hog lifestyle, all while lecturing the peons about personal responsibility.

I never saw his stupid show, so all I knew about it was the stupid catch-phrase, which of course made it incredibly ironic that there were sentient beings out there who figured that their best chance for more and better jobs was a fake tycoon who never paid his bills, and was most famous for firing people. A sucker born every minute? Please. There are hundreds of suckers born every minute, and they all happily vote against their own interest every goddamned time.

But let's talk about that a bit, the fact that the major economic indicators are "good" in the usual, conventional assessment right now. The Dow is over 26,000 and unemployment is hovering at about 4.1%. GDP was just over 3% for Q2 and Q3 adjustments.

Obviously, for one, these are lagging indicators, especially GDP and unemployment. The Dow, however, is a poor rule of thumb to use for assessing or forecasting economic stability or future health. In fact, not only does the Dow reading not benefit the majority of people who have no stocks, but its volatility as of late is beginning to smell a lot like the Bitcoin bubble. It is entirely due to the billionaire class licking its collective chops at the prospect of massive tax cuts, which of course everyone else will pay for in a myriad of ways.

The Republican Party is the party of the "bust out" economic policy, the party of racking up debt and breaking programs, so that they can then claim that the programs are broken and defund them accordingly. Sell off the parts and pocket the proceeds. That's what made hectomillionaires out of animals like Clownstick and Willard "Mitt" Romney.

There is a shutdown because Mitch McConnell and John Kelly want a shutdown. Schumer was actually ready to compromise with the orange turd, even giving him money for that fucking wall that Mexico was supposedly going to pay for (and that, of course, we don't need in the first place). But the Republitard "leadership," sensing that the brewing "blue tsunami" might actually be real, understand that their best gambit to mitigate that damage is to try to fool enough people into thinking that a shutdown is due solely to Dummycrat intransigence.

Think about that for a second:  the Republicans want the shutdown. Clownstick just wants to "make a deal," and by now it should be apparent to even the die-hards that he makes deals like old people (such as himself) fuck. This doddering old fool couldn't sell one-cent water to people dying of thirst.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this clusterfuck of an administration so far is how well it's revealed people and institutions and things for what they really are. Now, it's easy to pick on the Cletus class and their economic anxieties, but the fact is that there are economic issues that they are and should be concerned with. Sure, there's an unmistakable vein of racism and sexism baked into their bullshit, but still they, like their idol Clownstick, are simply symptoms not the disease.

The disease is chronic and increasing wealth and income disparity, worldwide and here in the good ol' USA. One percent of the people in this country own forty percent of the assets. Eight individuals, six of them American, own as much as half of the entire human race. The six Walton heirs, all whom merely married or were born into their great luck, and did not lift a finger to build their own wealth, are worth $160 billion as of last count, and that will of course go up with the tax cuts.

Six people, one hundred and sixty billion dollars. None of them worked for a dime of it. Tell me more about this meritocracy of personal responsibility. Tell me what Barack Obama did to alleviate it, what Hillary Clinton would have done to help. The bottom 90% of the population carry 73% of the debt. Remember, no matter who you are, no matter what you do for a living, and no matter how you incurred your debt, your debt is always by definition someone else's equity. This is the key element to the whole problem.

The surest way to reduce this criminal disparity is to institute some sort of debt jubilee. People who are not stuck paying usury for their whole existence on this planet have more money to -- get this -- put into the actual economy, as opposed to the shadow economy of shylocks and paper collectors who produce nothing but desperation and compound debt.

Debt relief, even partial relief, for the peons would do untold good for hundreds of millions of people, without severely impacting the folks who already have more money than they could spend in a dozen lifetimes. It wouldn't even require higher taxes; you could even peg it to yet another tax cut if need be.

But they don't want that. All the distractions -- the bullying of immigrants, the constant shameless lying, the dopey nicknames, the paid-off porn stars, the countless boorish idiocies of these people and their figurehead -- they are merely there to distract from what this really is:  the endgame of a thirty-year war the top .01% have been waging on the rest of us. They won, by the way; anyone who hasn't figured that out yet is never going to. They own the means of disseminating information -- and more importantly, disinformation. They saw those rural suckers coming up the dirt road.

So yeah, the Cletuses suck balls, no doubt about it. And their propensity to be gulled into cutting their own throats over and over again is instrumental in the one-percenters' continued dominance. That's not politics, that's math -- the fortunate few cannot keep winning without the assistance of the proles and their imaginary grievances.

But these motherfuckers are the real problem, these pampered cyborgs with their bleach and botox and collagen and real fur. Anyone who would pay a hundred grand or two hundred grand a year to hang out at a tacky golf club with other tacky swells clearly did not work hard enough for that money, or they'd have more fucking respect for it.

I don't know what the fuck those assholes are smiling at; those are the faces of people who are condemned to accumulate and never be satisfied. They may have had all the fat sucked out of their asses and spare tires and put into their lips and cheeks, but their souls are morbidly obese. They already have more than enough for themselves, for their kids and grandkids, but their life's pursuit is more, more, more. And it comes out of everyone else's hides.

The saddest, sickest part about it is the rubes who, when they finally come to realize that they elected Charlie Sheen, minus the drugs, talent, and intelligence, they'll vote for him again, simply because he hates the same people they do. They'll go to their graves -- that much sooner thanks to their electoral choices -- not getting it, not even wanting it.

NFL Conference Championship Predictions

2-2 last week again. Count on 50% accuracy (at best) this time around as well; the fun is in guessing which half. Both games are on Sunday 1/21, times PST. [Note:  In the original post on Friday, I called the AFC game for the Fackin' Patsies, but after thinking about it for a day, decided the Jagwires could take this, and changed the pick on Saturday (1/20), well before game time.]

AFC Championship Game -- 12:15 PM
Jacksonville Jaguars (12-6) at New England Patriots (14-3)(-7.5):  Once again, I'll always root for whoever's going up against Belichick's Death Star, and not just because Belichick and Kraft are friends with Fuckface Von Clownstick (though that certainly doesn't help). But in this case, the Jaguars are one of those teams I tend to root for when the Raiders are sucking wind. So I'd definitely like to see the Jags pull this one off and make it to their first Super Bowl, and based on their performance last week in Pittsburgh (as opposed to their performance the weekend before at home against the Bills), they might have a decent shot.

The two keys to the Jaguars' success have been their outstanding pass defense (2nd in points and yards allowed), and QB Blake Bortles' improved efficiency under new OC Nathaniel Hackett. While his stats are not earth-shattering by any means (3,687 passing yards, 21 TD, 13 INT), his completion percentage (60.2) and interception percentage (2.5) are career bests. (Bortles will also be a free agent after this season, which means he's playing for a $100M contract, whether it's in Jacksonville or somewhere else. Expect a bidding war with Miami, Arizona, and the LA Chargers if Philip Rivers retires.) Rookie RB Leonard Fournette is already the best runner the team has had since Fred Taylor or Maurice Jones-Drew, putting up 1,040 rushing yards and 9 rushing TDs in 13 games in the regular season, and tacking on another 109 yards and 3 TDs against a top-10 Steelers defense in the divisional playoff round.

Despite what for the Patsies would be considered something of a subpar season (two of their three regular-season losses were at home; four of their wins were by less than a touchdown), the fact is that the team does nothing but execute, and generally without a surplus of star players. Brady completed two-thirds of his pass attempts and had a 4:1 TD:INT ratio, using Gronk and a rotation of select castoffs. Free-agent speedster Brandin Cooks is the only real deep threat for Brady to work with. And yet, in their last three games (against the Bills, Jets, and last week's divisional win over the Titans), they've outscored their opponents by a total of 98-36.

As much as I like to hate on the Patsies, the fact is that they get it done with strategy and execution. And this might be where, believe it or not, Jacksonville can get the upper hand. Turns out that not only is Jacksonville (+10) ahead of New England (+6) in the all-important turnover ratio stat, but even the actual takeaway-giveaway numbers (33-23 Jags; 18-12 Pats) indicate how much more opportunistic the Jaguars' defense has been. It's also a function of how much the Patsies have settled in as a time-of-possession team later in the season.

So that's all there is to it for the Jacksonville Jaguars to get to the Super Bowl:  create turnovers, don't make offensive mistakes, and grind the clock. These are all things they've actually been pretty good at this season. They have one of the best pairs of cornerbacks in the league with Jalen Ramsey and A.J. Bouye. It actually isn't too difficult to envision a scenario where the Jaguars get ahead early like they did in Pittsburgh, and hold out just enough in the end to eke out a shootout win. The reality of it is more likely to be the Patsies being just one step ahead the whole game and heading to their umpteenth Super Bowl. I'm only half-kidding when I say they have the luck of the devil, and the refs on their side.

But the hell with it -- let's take the underdog.

Final Score:  Jaguars 41, Patsies 38.

NFC Championship Game -- 3:45 PM
Minnesota Vikings (14-3)(-3) at Philadelphia Eagles (14-3):  I'm not going to claim to be a full-on NFL historian, nor would I even know how to go about searching for such a statistic, but this has to be the only or one of the very few times in playoff history where teams that were seeded 1-2 face off in the conference finals with backup quarterbacks starting for both teams. Both QBs (Case Keenum for the Vikings; Nick Foles for the Eagles) have been respectable, helped greatly by strong defenses and solid running games.

The Vikings head into Philly after a highlight-reel finish against the Saints, with New Orleans leading 24-23 and Keenum hitting WR Stefon Diggs on a desperation 4th-and-5 lob with :09 remaining, just hoping to get within field goal range, but Diggs hauling it in for a touchdown to end the game. However, it never should have gotten that close in the first place, with Minnesota running up a 17-0 halftime lead, and the Vikings' offense collapsing in the second half. One of the Saints' comeback TDs was thanks to a wildly errant throw from Keenum from his own red zone, a slow rainbow falling straight into the arms of Saints DB Marcus Williams. (Then again, it was Williams who missed an opportunity to tackle Diggs on the final play and secure the win.)

While Foles is a decent backup, the fact is that the Eagles have been struggling on offense the last few games. Put it this way:  in Week 16, while they were still trying to finalize their playoff seeding and secure home-filed advantage, Philly did everything they could to give the game to the hapless Raiders, who were simply too incompetent to take it. The Eagles' final regular-season game was a 6-0 laugher loss against the Cowboys, who also had nothing to play for. Even last week's 15-10 win over Atlanta had as much to do with the Falcons' shortcomings as the Eagles' strengths.

This will probably be a low-to-mid-scoring affair, and it wouldn't be surprising to see something along the lines of 7-3 at halftime, with maybe some late scores. But the Vikings are just better enough to where they should be playing in their first Super Bowl in forty years, and become the first team to play in the big game in their home stadium.

Final Score:  Vikings 20, Eagles 9.

[Update 2/4/18 12:30 PM PST:  I'm less annoyed about going 0-2 on the conference championship games, than at the prospect of yet another Patsies Super Bowl. But again, as much as I like to hate on Hoodie and Tommy, the fact is they strategize and execute better than other teams. The Jaguars had it in the bag, and let it slip away. It's as if the Patsies haven't done that shit a million times before. All you have to do is watch the film and plan accordingly. That's all they do.

Anyway, Philly's defense turns out to be pretty damned good, but they are impacted by injuries at this point, so Nick Foles will have to step up the offense. If Chris Long can get in there and harass Brady enough, the Iggles  have a fighting chance, but as recent history shows, even when you have a boot on their neck, the Patsies (with a little help from the refs) have a knack for coming back. Rooting for Philly, but realistically it's probably another notch in the belt for Fuckface Von Clownstick's favorite team.

Final Score:  Patsies 27, Eagles 24.]

Show Business

"Pastor" Mark Burns is a thief, a liar, a sellout, a snake-oil spiritualist. So why have him on your "news" program for anything in the first place, except to stoke some bullshit political kayfabe? You don't need a genius or a psychic to know that, since it takes a liar to defend a liar, that whoever they get on to "defend" Clownstick's "side" in any given issue is going to -- wait for it -- LIE.

So what (and I'm asking this rhetorically of the journo class) is the point of it? Why have Mark Burns or Kellyanne Conway or any of those idiots on for anything in the first place? Seriously, why bother? Most of the viewers of these shows know what such people will say before they even say it. Obviously, it's all just an exercise for the "interviewer" to indulge in some variation of choreographed sanctimony. It would have been marginally more entertaining if Reid had smacked Burns in the back of his fool head with a folding chair.

This "shithole" thing in particular is dumb and uninteresting anyway, precisely because these mediots refuse to focus on the one part about it that is interesting:  it is clear by his words and phrasing that Emperor Snowflake literally has no idea why people emigrate to other countries. None. Which is especially strange since his own mother was an immigrant. It is a function of his fundamental personality flaw -- he cannot conceive of a human being who is not driven by the twin demons of endless accumulation and self-aggrandizement. To him, those traits are the very point of existence, the essence of life. How could anyone not want to be a well-known grifter who uses other people's money to prop up an illusion of genuine wealth?

The mediots have spent countless collective hours and column inches constructing elaborate arguments detailing the emperor's ongoing cognitive decline, as tracked by his increasing bouts of naughty words and intemperate behavior. And it's partly true -- he does appear to be in the process of (to be polite about it) a severe attenuation of mental acuity.

But the pieces were in place long ago. He was an idiot and a bigot to begin with. He has never not been an emotional retard, devoid of basic human empathy. He does not care about anyone but himself, and will say anything to get what he wants. He sees and processes and responds to every issue through that lens.

It is a pathology, and for three decades now, every media outlet from Oprah to Howard Stern has given this dipshit windbag a soapbox to bloviate from. And now that he's bamboozled the rubes into putting him in charge, the same (or same type of) mediots get his surrogates on their interchangeable shows to spin their wheels and shuck the same jive.

The one thing Joy Reid, Mark Burns, and Fuckface Von Clownstick all have in common is that they each have a vested interest in keeping the "conversation" about Clownstick going ad infinitum. And for all that, they never seem to get around to what's been staring everyone in the face the entire time -- senile or not, he was a corroded soul to begin with, long before he entered the political arena.

Emergency Preparedness

I guess we should all just consider ourselves lucky that Fatboy was playing golf (surprise, I know) when the false alarm was sounded, otherwise we might have had thermonuclear war declared via Twitter tantrum. Really builds confidence in the system.

NFL Divisional Playoff Predictions

2-2 last week, the Titans' upset of the Chefs being a nice surprise. As always, wager responsibly.

Saturday 1/13 1:40 PM Atlanta Falcons (11-6) (-2.5) at Philadelphia Eagles (13-3):  This should be a good game between two pretty evenly matched teams. Both the Falcons and the Eagles feature solid, well-balanced offenses paired with aggressive, stingy defenses (both defenses finished top-10 in most major defensive categories). Though the Eagles were a better team with Carson Wentz starting at QB, Nick Foles is a solid veteran, and probably the best backup in the league. After watching them travel cross-country to dismantle the Rams' number-one offense, though, Atlanta seems to have momentum. Unless it's a full-on blizzard, I'd take the Falcons and the points.

Final Score:  Falcons 27, Eagles 17.

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5:15 PM Tennessee Titans (10-7) at New England Patriots (13-3) (-13.5):  Second only to watching Emperor Snowflake get frog-marched out of the White House to spend twenty more years in Leavenworth before dying poor, broke, and alone, nothing would give me more pleasure than to watch Little Tommy Tuck Rule and his Facking Patsies get their shit pushed in by any other team, every goddamned time. Unfortunately, they have the luck of the devil and the refs in their pocket. The Titans do have excellent offensive and defensive lines, and they did just knock out the Chefs in Peckerhead Arrowhead Stadium, but unless they can pressure Tuck Rule enough to make some mistakes early on, and then hold on for the inevitable fourth-quarter comeback, it's probably going to be ugly.

Final Score:  Patsies 34, Titans 20.

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Sunday 1/14 10:00 AM Jacksonville Jaguars (11-6) at Pittsburgh Steelers (13-3) (-7):  I don't hate the Steelers quite as much as the Patsies, but this is another one where I have a clear favorite. But given their lackluster performance last week at home against the hapless Bills, the Jaguars probably don't have much of a prayer in Pittsburgh, although the Steelers turned the ball over five times in a 30-9 loss in Pittsburgh on October 8th. All-world WR Antonio Brown is recuperating from a partially torn calf muscle and an illness, so if Jacksonville is going to have any chance in this, it's going to be with their top-rated pass defense shutting Brown and the other Steelers receivers down.

Final Score:  Steelers 31, Jaguars 13.

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1:40 PM New Orleans Saints (12-5) at Minnesota Vikings (13-3) (-5):  The Vikings have done more with less than any team in the NFL this year, and it has paid off well for them. After season-ending injuries to top RB pick Dalvin Cook, and QBs Sam Bradford and Teddy Bridgewater, journeyman QB Case Keenum stepped into the proverbial "game manager" role and led Minnesota to a 13-3 record. Keenum's 3,547 passing yards and 22-7 TD-INT ratio are career highs for him, but the Vikes' real strength is their defense, which was #1 in the league for points allowed (15.8 ppg). The Saints are much improved from last year, especially on defense, and rookie back Alvin Kamara is an exciting, dynamic player who should win Offensive Rookie of the Year. These teams met in Week 1 in Minnesota, and the Vikings won 29-19. The outcome this time will probably be much the same, though the Saints might beat the spread.

Final Score:  Vikings 24, Saints 20.

Hole Hearted

It would be somewhat hypocritical for yours truly to get too bent about the emperor referring to certain countries as shitholes. I've certainly pulled no punches about such an assessment, and have in fact used that word to refer to third world countries, or violent Islamic despotisms where basic human rights are scoffed at. That's not an evaluation of the individuals living in those countries, nor their suitability to emigrate to these here Yew-nighted States, merely an impolite observation of the condition of the government, the society, the economy, the levels of basic services, etc.

So yes, Haiti is a shithole, as is North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, and the Congo, and on and on. So are many parts of the US:  the opioid belt; large chunks of the NASCAR states; the swaths of washed-up towns festering out in the hinterland with delusions of revanchism and the lost glory of Granpappy's hallowed widget-stamping job that went to Malaysia during the Reagan years.

It is not necessarily a value judgment of the inhabitants, nor an assertion of moral superiority over them. Unlike the emperor, I don't hate the humans, I feel bad for their situation (except when they bring it on themselves). It is simply a blanket observation of an area that is arguably not only much worse off than other areas, but substantially worse off than it should be, if said area had its collective shit together. It is also a correlative observation that many or most of such areas have the common thread of overpopulation compounding the overall poverty rate. In other words, they could simply cut their birth rate in half and improve their lot within a generation, doing absolutely nothing else to move in the right direction.

Americans of white European heritage take things for granted (duh). They tend to forget that the countries their own ancestors left were not good places to be -- they were shitholes as well. That's why they left, y'know? Scotland was not a paradise when the emperor's mommy got out of there a hundred years ago. Many parts of Germany were ravaged by famine and wars of national confederation around the time the emperor's paternal grandfather left. The Pilgrims didn't come here because they were doing well back in England. I know my ancestors left Ireland and Wales and Poland because they needed to get the hell out of those places at the time. There are books about this sort of stuff. This is not rocket science.

So while the squirrel mediots fixate on the "vulgarity" of the word, they seem to be ignoring the much more important issue, the proverbial elephant in the room -- the man seems literally to not understand why people emigrate, why they would leave their homes, families, communities, the only places they've ever known in their harsh lives, to come to a country where they don't know anyone, don't understand the language. It doesn't even occur to him, the concept that someone from a poor, violent country would be more likely to want to leave home than someone from a prosperous, stable country.

People take those risks because the opportunities are worth it to them, because all they have is hope that things can get better. People who were doctors and lawyers in their homelands come here to drive taxis and taco trucks and run convenience stores, because they think of the USA as a place where someone can work hard and get ahead. Life is a series of offsets and tradeoffs, unless you're a spoiled dipshit who has always gotten everything you want.

Seriously. What kind of a moron does not get the basic concept that Norwegians no longer move to America because the average Norwegian has a better quality of life than the average American? Well, it turns out it's the kind of moron that's been given the keys to the country, and has chosen to drive it to the nearest cliff, gas pedal stomped to the floor. It's the kind of moron that talks derisively of other nations as shitholes, while doing his level best to turn this country into a shithole as well.

I felt that tonight's Netflix premiere of David Letterman's new interview show would be a nice break from the daily nonsense, as the featured guest of course was PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA (PBUH). I miss both Letterman and Obama tremendously, all the more so for the current collective maelstrom we find ourselves in, and it was rewarding to see these two chat in an intimate setting, their mutual affection obvious to all.

It was somewhat disappointing but not at all surprising that Obama and Letterman studiously avoided any direct mentions of the emperor or his abortion of an administration. The interview was punctuated with a couple of segments of Letterman walking the Edmund Pettus Bridge with John Lewis, and much discussion of the importance of the civil rights movement to Obama's development as a person and a politician.

It turned out to be better for not mentioning that bastard and his works, because what you focused on with Obama and Letterman is how both men function as normal human beings who speak with enormous affection for their families and children, who go out into the world and experience it, who actually do things for other humans without expecting money and adulation in return. Both men are funny and sharp and kind and self-deprecating. This accumulated steadily into a wondrous contrast with what we've been immersed in, a claque of scummy cultists utterly obsessed with lying and cruelty and greed.

By the end, my wife was in tears, just thinking about what we've lost in the longest year of most of our lives, and what more will come before we pull out of it (if we ever really do). This toxic man and his toxic cult followers have poisoned the water table of our collective consciousness, and we're all waiting on Robert Mueller because no one else has the stones or ability to do or say anything meaningful about it. And the longer we all wait, the more of an effect the fumes have on all of our brains.

Perhaps most potently and subtly, the Obama interview was a reminder of a time, in the dim and distant past, when the President of the United States did not act like a jabbering drunk on a fucking barstool every goddamned day of the week.

Age Against the Machine

In which a senile, doddering fucktard decides to impress his role model. Arpaio would probably fellate Von Clownstick in the White House Rose Garden in front of a full network camera crew, without even being asked. This ancient shitbird (eighty-six this June, y'all!) is powered by spite and corruption. Maybe he was just waiting for Foster Brooks to get pushed out at Breitshart.

Arpaio will get humiliated, or Arizona gets exposed as the Alabammy of the Southwest. Either way, 'murka wins!

The Government We Deserve

Because this is the country that made useless doorstops like the Kardashian sisters wealthy and famous, it is a virtual certainty that there's somebody out there -- hell, probably several million somebodies -- taking the idea of an Oprah Winfrey political candidacy seriously. It makes sense that the media dogs would chase their tails on this for a couple days, because as always, they have airspace to fill.

But the idea that a significant number of people would take such a thing seriously, or welcome it, is nothing more not less than a sign that those folks have given up -- on what a sane idea of a political system is and should encompass, on whether managing the world's largest economy and most powerful military force is a serious undertaking. Then again, letting Fuckface Von Clownstick run, much less win, is surely a sign of those things, but encouraging a billowy dilettante is just doubling down on all that.

That's not to say I wouldn't vote for her, if that was the choice. I would go out in my back field and dig up a river rock, and vote for that rock before I'd vote for Clownstick for any office. He'd fuck up dog-catcher. That should be abundantly clear by now.

I suppose there are many fine things about Oprah -- from all indications, she is generous and kind, and no doubt her charitable contributions and foundations hold up much better than Clownstick's little tax-evasion scams that barely make the effort of concealing their self-dealing and money-grubbing. And she is truly self-made. I find her incessant branding overweening and annoying, but there's no doubt that she came from poverty and bootstrapped herself into a position of real wealth and power, something Clownstick can claim but no one will ever believe (like every other claim he makes).

But Oprah is also responsible for inflicting on us Doctors Phil, Oz, and Jenny McCarthy. Someone who falls for this level of ongoing quackery has some issues. However, unlike Clownstick, she (and most normal human beings) at least understands what she is good at and not good at, and can delegate and let other people manage and have input over that latter category.

She's not going to run anyway, so no one out there should get too worried or get their hopes up too much. It's not going to happen. What almost certainly will happen is that Oprah will have a role in publicly vetting whatever roster of candidates eventually comes out of the Democrats' little shop of errors, and will pick on to put some money behind. Unlike these dopey vanity projects like Tom Steyer is running, Oprah understands that the money is better spent on candidates than petitions.

So if Kirsten Gillibrand is smart (and she is), she's already reaching out behind the scenes to Oprah, and getting on that train. Because the one thing Oprah has more of than money is cultural influence, one that transcends to some extent the weird class-race divide that's been stoked the last few years.