Our Liberal Media

So glad the intrepid press monkeys didn't get caught up in this Real Housewives of Wrestlemania showboating bullshit. The Republicons flat-out stole this SCOTUS selection, and are going to use it on a 49-year-old junior Scalia, ensuring his presence for the next three decades or so. But hey, let's focus on how professional the presentation was.

And the Dummycrats will most likely put on a half-assed song and dance before narrowly letting Gorsuch sail through without a filibuster, in the vain hope of "keeping their powder dry" or some such. They think if they give a little now, they'll have more to gain at some mythical point down the road. They do not understand that even without Clownstick, they are negotiating with people who have the scruples of a serial child killer. Republicans said "fuck you" to everything and anything Obama did for six years, and paid no political price for it at all. The Democrats are more concerned with being collegial and professional and coloring in the lines. We'll see what that gets them.

In the meantime, really looking forward to the next exciting episode of 'murka's Next Fuckface. Should be a fun season!

The Lives of Others

The murder of Emmett Till was perhaps the most public of the countless blemishes on the American southern postwar apartheid regime. Some "good" did come from the atrocity -- for starters, Till's murder and the subsequent acquittal of his killers catalyzed the civil rights movement, and inspired To Kill a Mockingbird. It helped begin the dismantling of said apartheid regime, at least in the official sense. Southerners could drawl their "proud" plaints all they wanted, but nothing could undo the contempt they saw in the eyes of the rest of the country and the world.

The "revelation" that the woman at the center of the murder, whom Till made the fatal mistake of flirting with, was lying the whole time, should surprise no one. But in small additional twist of karmic fate, it turns out that Carolyn Bryant Donham's life was, according to writer Timothy Tyson, "ruined" as well.

I'll confess to being just small enough of a person to be gratified, heartened by that fact. Till's murder, it turns out, ruined the lives of his killers, Roy Bryant (Carolyn's husband) and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, the latter of whom was quite open about his glee in putting Till "in his place." Bryant and Milam had their shops boycotted until they had to close, and were basically run out of town, moved to Texas, their notoriety following them, and had difficulty finding gainful employment for the rest of their miserable lives. Both men died in their early sixties of cancer, hopefully in unspeakable pain.

Ordinarily I'd have wished that fate on Carolyn Bryant Donham as well, but it is just as gratifying to know that she's had to live with it all these years. It's still not enough, and one would like to see something more closely resembling actual remorse, rather than mere regret. (Incidentally, Tyson is something of a chump for waiting ten fucking years to drop this bit of information in the first place.)

Donham's lies had impact on the lives of countless others:  her initial lie got a kid murdered, beaten so hard one of his eyes popped out his head; her subsequent lie in court got Emmett Till's murderers off the hook. That willful evasion of justice triggered a massive, painful national upheaval, one which got countless other people beaten and killed. All for the institutionalized refusal to recognize that, as our esteemed founding fathers once wrote, tongues perhaps in their cheeks, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

It's amazing to think of how recent that murder was, a mere three generations ago, most of the principals now rotting in hell, but still relatively fresh in the collective psyche, which turns its soil more slowly, patiently. The people who insist that their stupid confederate flag has a "different" meaning should be forced to read the detailed account of Emmett Till's murder, and others like it that were commonplace throughout the south for a full century after the war supposedly ended. Countless other scumbags got away clean with evil deeds, just as awful as Till's murder.

The Union was way too nice to the traitorous insurrectionist slave states after the war -- every plantation owner should have been shot immediately, and the property redistributed among the people who had been forced under pain of death and torture to work it for free. It would have saved a hundred years of misery for millions of people.

I hope the last sixty years have held nothing but pain and sorrow for Carolyn Donham. I hope she has had regular nightmares featuring Emmett Till's face, pulped beyond recognition just a few weeks after his fifteenth birthday, because of her lies. I hope she lives to be 120, of sound mind, cognizant right up to her final breath of what she did, unable to escape its full weight. But as with most people who are capable of such actions in the first place, it's much more likely that she forgave herself long ago, feels that she paid the price, even though it was she all along who chose to pay it.

Downward Spiral

Not even a week in, and Clownstick is already off the fucking chain. As always, don't just read the whole thing, but read it aloud, the better to savor every bit of stumbling bafflegab. This is the sort of thing they should have famous actors pair off and do parodic script-reads of.

Notice how Clownstick manages to get through the whole thing without really answering any of Muir's questions, while simultaneously chastising Muir, as a representative of the "media" -- that is, the media entities which actually make something of an honest effort to report verbatim what the man says, and how that lines up with objective, empirically verifiable reality.

It's good to see that the scriveners have finally seen what we all saw well over a year ago, and have adjusted their game plan. Too bad it won't really matter; as inept as these fuckers are, they are unencumbered by having to give a shit about that, or really much of anything else. A West Wing full of shit-throwing monkeys can eventually create, if not Shakespeare, any number of executive orders and ricockulous appointments.

But, you know, Hitlery used an off-grid email account and an unsecured Blackberry, as opposed to Mike Flynn's unsecured server at the Pentagon, and Clownstick's own Galaxy S3 (for fuck's sake, even my family all have S5's), which is wide-open for all sorts of hackery during Mister Man's masturbatory 3:00 AM rage-tweet sessions.

You know the old joke about elderly men ejaculating powdered milk or dust? What do you bet that Fuckface sprays either Cheeto dust or Tang?

Alternative Facts

It's good to see that even Chunk Toad is finally finding a pair and challenging lying hack Kellyanne Conway on her lying lies, and the transparently hacky way she peddles those lying lies.

Did I mention that Conway is a GODDAMNED LIAR? Every breath, every utterance, every word is at best a dodge, an omission, an evasion, but mostly just a flat-out fucking LIE. New WH press hack Baghdad Sean Spicer did not present "alternative facts," he LIED about the number of people who attended the inauguration. He presented numbers and statements that he -- and all of us -- know aren't true. That is what most sentient humans of all political persuasions agree is a LIE.

Conway's Orwellian attempt to frame this as some sort of "some folks say that 2+2=5" muddlement of fact and spin is nothing short of an epistemic perversion. What's (mildly) interesting is that Conway has been doing this since she took over as Clownstick's Twitter-sitter, but only now, when it's way too late to affect the electoral outcome, does any given media monkey finally call her on her bullshit. (Or hell, even bother to point out that less than a year ago, she was a vocal anti-Clownstick pundit on CNN, lobbing many of the same charges against her hero that Hillary Clinton did in the general election. So what changed, other than the size of Conway's paycheck? Did Drumpf suddenly stop being a skeevy, perverted grifter?)

I would ask a next-level question of said media monkeys:  why have Kellyanne Conway on your show at all? Let's deconstruct that a bit -- what is the purpose of your Sunday morning fart-fest? I mean, we all know they are merely vehicles in which politicians and reporters talk to each other, in the guise of talking to the peons, but let's face it -- most people don't watch these things, if they've got any sense. They know better.

But at the very least, the people who host these damned things have to tell themselves that their efforts serve some sort of meaningful purpose. So I ask again:  what sort of meaningful purpose -- from the host's skewed point of view -- is served by having someone on who lies so freely and easily? We all know that most people in the political arena prevaricate to some degree, with some level of self-serving rhetoric. But Conway's purpose is nothing but spin. There is no informative value to be had from anything she says. So why have her on at all? It's a waste of everyone's time, including hers. Only someone lacking two brain cells to rub together would buy what she's selling, and those maroons do not watch these shows. So really, what's the point?

Maybe the hosts could ask themselves that next time, and not debase whatever remains of their journamalistic integrimatude with this nonsense. The corporate press got rolled by these fucking people, and the surest path to reclaiming at least a veneer of respectability is to just stop booking them. Hold out for a month or two, let Conway or one of her staffers come begging them, and then set a very simple condition:  if you lie and I catch you, that's all we're going to talk about for the rest of the segment, or until you admit it. Otherwise, go write a fucking op-ed piece for the Moonie Times.

In the meantime, Conway and the rest of the professional Drumpfkins are waaayyyyy too high on their own supply, a bizarre combination of inept and cocky, arrogant and stupid. The most frustrating and baffling thing about them is how much they seem to need to lie, especially about things ordinary people wouldn't care all that much about. A normal person would look at those comparison photos from the inauguration and either shrug it off and change the subject, or just not engage it at all.

The yuge support crowds were cleverly disguised as bleachers.

But they couldn't, because they can't. He can't let anything go, so they can't let anything go. They would rather litigate Spicer's and Drumpf's easily debunked figures. They would rather shut down the National Park Service's Twitter account because of a couple of embarrassing photos, as if anything can be memory-holed anymore. We all have a copy, motherfuckers. We all saw what happened. There will be more to come.

And better yet, we all know that this shit gets under his thin skin, which is the real key to disrupting this beast. The more you keep him distracted and whining, the more you prevent him from swinging anyone over to the dark side, and in the meantime, at least some of the rubes will start figuring out that a fake billionaire appointing real billionaires to run the country simply means a quick and brutal skull-fucking of the poor and vulnerable -- which these days is the vast majority of people.

Also, too.

Something for Nothing

Say this for Tweety McFuckstick, or whatever we're calling him today -- he knows how to find women who are just as soulless and grifty as he is. If Marla Maples' "child support" is finally ending, and she's accustomed feels entitled to a certain lifestyle, then maybe she oughta follow the conservatard dogma and fucking well earn it. Maybe it's time to dust off the ol' kneepads and find another wealthy pole to smoke.

I fucking despise people like this, who have never done an honest day's work in their lives, yet insist that everybody owes them something. Even people who have to work hard for every cent they have are expected to kowtow to this woman's desires. Comparing a free hairdo to an actress wearing a designer gown is not even apples-to-oranges. If Jennifer Lawrence wears a Vera Wang (giggity) gown to an award show, it's because Jennifer Lawrence actually does something, where Marla Maples was simply the bridge wife between Hair Fuhrer's two Iron Curtain mail-order brides.

She's a nobody, a person whose name is barely recognizable because of whom she was married to. Other than that, what does she do, what has she done in the twenty years since leaving the tower? She spent a brief time last summer dangling the false promise of having blockbuster revelations up her sleeve, until either she or the press monkeys checked with her lawyers and realized that her continued ability to live on Clownstick's dime was entirely contingent upon the NDA everyone signs when they do any business with him.

The balls on these fucking people. She clearly made the most of her time at Mister Man's knee.

 

Fake Boss

And the hits keep coming. They can't even be bothered to get an actual cake. The sword is a nice touch as well. One day in and these fucktards are already impossible to parody.

NFL Championship Game Predictions

NFC Championship Game
Green Bay Packers (12-6) at Atlanta Falcons (12-5) (3:05 PM EST)
Spread: ATL -5.5

In the wild card and division rounds, my semi-educated guesses prognostications were 3-1 each time, getting pretty close on most of the final scores as well. On both weekends, it was the upstart Packers who thwarted my guesswork. This is where that all ends.

Green Bay lost in Atlanta in a 33-32 squeaker, way back in Week 8 (10/30). But injuries have taken their toll since then, mostly on Green Bay. The Packers have no running game to speak of (20th in average rushing yards per game), and their defensive backfield is in tatters (31st in passing yards allowed). They barely hung on to beat the Cowboys despite building a 21-3 lead early on, and leading 28-13 in the fourth quarter. Rodgers has done a hell of a job getting the team this far, but he's battling the flu (spread was 3.5 at the beginning of the week), and can't do everything by himself. The Falcons are going to close out the Georgia Dome with their first trip to the Super Bowl in nearly twenty years.

Predicted Score: Falcons 41, Packers 24.

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AFC Championship Game
Pittsburgh Steelers (13-5) at New England Patriots (15-2) (6:40 PM EST)
Spread: NE -6

I don't care for either of these teams, so let's just start this by saying that I hope the Patsies lose by five touchdowns, and then the Steelers get blown out in the Super Bowl by whichever NFC team makes it. But assessing the likely outcome of this game is a much different matter.

The Steelers looked inept and inefficient in derping their way to six field goals and no touchdowns, beating the Chiefs 18-16 at Arrowhead. But the flip side of that is that Chefs' DC Bob Sutton is an underrated strategist whose schemes and personnel led the league in generating turnovers, and did a hell of a job on their red-zone defense, keeping the so-called Killer Bees (Ben Roethlisberger, LeVeon Bell, and Antonio Brown) out of the end zone.

New England visited Pittsburgh in Week 7 (10/23) and came out with a 27-16 victory, but Roethlisberger was recuperating from knee surgery and did not play in that game.

Throughout the regular season, New England's o-line did a decent job of keeping Brady upright, but in the first half of last week's divisional round game against Houston, the Texans' pass rush exposed some holes, knocked down Brady eight times and forced him to throw two interceptions (he had thrown only 2 INT all season). The Steelers have one of the most disruptive linebacking crews with James Harrison, Ryan Shazier, and Bud Dupree, all of them fast, vicious hitters who will keep Brady on his heels throughout. But the FACKIN' PATSIES always seem to find a way.

Predicted Score: Patriots 37, Steelers 27.

Lolwut, Piers Morgan Edition

I mean, I'm no expert on sexuality or masculinity or such like, but I've always just assumed that once Piers Morgan gets behind closed doors, he puts on women's clothes and spends hours in front of a full-length mirror talking about what a "fancy girl" he is. Feminists didn't take his masculinity so much as nature did when he was still in his mama's womb.

 

Buttercup King

Flipping the tiresome Drumpfkin anti-PC trope of "snowflakes" and "buttercups" on its poorly-coiffed head, the Tangelo Emperor unloads his inaugural butt-hurt on a hapless audience of -- get this -- CIA operatives:

WASHINGTON – President [Tweety McTinyhands'] speech Saturday at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency turned into the latest battle in, as he put it, his "running war with the media." He had two central complaints: that the media misrepresented the size of the crowd at his inauguration and that it was incorrectly reported a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. was removed from the Oval Office. A look at those assertions:

[McTINYHANDS]: "I made a speech. I looked out. The field was — it looked like a million, a million and a half people."

The president went on to say that one network "said we drew 250,000 people. Now that's not bad. But it's a lie." He then claimed that were 250,000 right by the stage and the "rest of the, you know, 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed."

"So we caught them," said [McTinyhands]. "And we caught them in a beauty. And I think they're going to pay a big price."

THE FACTS: [McTinyhands] is wrong. Photos of the National Mall from his inauguration make clear that the crowd did not extend to the Washington Monument. Large swaths of empty space are visible on the Mall.

Thin crowds and partially empty bleachers also dotted the inaugural parade route. Hotels across the District of Columbia reported vacancies, a rarity for an event as large as a presidential inauguration.

God, what a pathetic sack of shit this guy is. Some people will feel the need to humor him and engage this nonsense, and say Oh no, sir, we counted a bazillion people out there! More people than actually reside in the US! All the illegals and half of Canada and Mexico were there, because you're just that fucking awesome!

Of course, most Americans would love to get fifteen seconds with him to say Don't you get it? Nobody likes you! Only your halfwit cult followers and professional sycophants would want to be seen with you. Everyone who doesn't rely on you for a paycheck, or hasn't lost their oxy-addled mind, hates you. The rest of the world detests you, fears you the way they fear a dementia patient rolling their Caddy through a farmers' market, thinks our country has turned into a ludicrous joke. You haven't even been in office for forty-eight hours and you've already disgraced it. More people showed up in a number of cities across the country to protest you and your brain-dead bullshit, than showed up yesterday to support you. Do the honorable thing and fucking resign already. Everyone knows you're going to step on your dick, sooner rather than later, because you're both arrogant and stupid. You know you're going to do it. Just do us all a favor and go back to your fucking tower, and stay there.

But no. We're going to get one of these per day, on average, including his vacations (and you know full well this fucking guy is going to make Fredo Arbusto look like a workaholic). One down, 1,460 to go.

The Investiture of Fuckface Von Clownstick

Was there anyone who seriously thought that Tweety would change from blustery campaign asshole to someone more presimadentiamable? Probably, but that's why they're called suckers.

Clownstick's inaugural benediction was indeed a piece of dark, Lovecraftian doggerel for the depths of R'lyeh, a tone poem for the Elder Gods, painting a lurid story of a flaming hellscape in the middle of a Thunderdome, and only Batman can save us from ourselves. Seriously, what kind of thumb-sucking dipshit believes this nonsense?

Of course, we've all heard exactly what kind of dipshit, the same kind that lives in these wiped-out shithole counties that have been busted out by opioids and heroin. We'll see how long it takes before these rubes come out of their comas and realize that Batman doesn't really give a fuck about them. Nor does he really exist, because life is not a fucking played-out comic-book movie franchise.

And really, what is Batman's deal, anyway? Consider:  Bruce Wayne is a single billionaire who is expertly trained in martial arts and wants to fight the bad guys in his crime-riddled city. So does he join the police force? Does he buy them some new equipment? Does he maybe create a fund for them to finance more staff on the force? No, he dresses up like a bat and goes vigilante. Probably hasn't paid his fucking taxes for twenty years either.

It is interesting and heartening so far to see some form of resistance to this idiot nutcase, but we'll see if it holds. The Democrats and the corporate media each seem to be finally getting the message that these people are not fucking around, that the animosity is real, it's not schtick, and they either fight back like they mean it or find new jobs.

Or learn to speak Russian.

May Bury

The anthropological perambulations continue apace:

If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. If only his city and the rest of America could return to the 1950s again.

“Now it’s about secular progressivism, not the values you get out of this book,” such as honesty and hard work, said Rowe, 72, jabbing his finger at the leather Bible on his office desk.

Ah, yes, the values, like genocide, slavery, subjugation, God and Satan using a man's life and family as a wager. Look, the Bible has many fine ideas in it, but they make up maybe 10% of the entire doorstop. Very rarely do you ever hear any of these god-bothering simps reciting the Beatitudes or even the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule, or conveying how those bedrock values inform their political decisions, and the natural repercussions of those decisions.

Obamacare was certainly flawed, but after eight years of yammering about it and dozens of symbolic votes to repeal it, the ruling party has nothing -- not even bullet points of an outline of a plan. Which means that they're either going to leave it alone or replace it with something even worse. Like, say, nothing at all. How you like them apples, Goober?

There's something ineffably sad and pathetic about towns like these, constantly trying to recapture a fictional past -- in this case, quite literally a fictional past. Many of the "Mayberry" buildings in Mount Airy are mocked-up replicas, constructed to buttress a dying tourist gag meant to preserve the ersatz legacy of a teevee show that went off the air in 1968, and whose eponymous star left town and never returned. This empty nostalgia is killing the nation, slowly but surely, especially when it's the usual bullshit about how great it was when those people knew their place and wore their pants properly.

These meatheads whine about Obama sending their jobs to Mexico, while they champion a race-baiting goon who brags about all the stuff he makes, yet he makes nothing in 'murka. They should not be too surprised to find that they've been sold yet another bill of goods, this time by someone most people saw coming up the road a long time ago.

Our Liberal Media

Oh good, it's been a few hours since a putatively "centrist" or "liberal" publication has written something unbelievably stupid. Then again, the New Republic didn't really "write" it so much as repost it from Open Mike Allen's new Axios website, which appears to still be under construction.

I mean, for fuck's sake. Neither one of these "articles" features so much as a single fresh thought or insight; instead they both (again, since one is simply a poor rehash of the other) show the absolute laziest both-sides-do-it clichés. Open Mike Allen has engaged in the worst sort of lazy journamalistic fart-knockery, and then the New Republic -- which, I hear, was something of a respectable publication at some point in the time-space continuum -- has uncritically stenographed Allen's ludicrous assertions.

NFL Divisional Round Predictions

Some good matchups this weekend. All times EST

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

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

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

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

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

Predicted Score:  Falcons 38, Seahawks 21.

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

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

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

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

Predicted Score:  Patriots 35, Texans 9.

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

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

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

Predicted Score: Cowboys 34, Packers 30.

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

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

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

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

Predicted Score:  Steelers 21, Chiefs 17.

Urine Big Trouble

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

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

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

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

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

Cheatos

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

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

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

Our Liberal Media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFL Wild Card Predictions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Score:  Texans 24, Raiders 17.

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

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

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

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

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

Final Score:  Seahawks 34, Lions 10.

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

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

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

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

Final Score:  Steelers 28, Dolphins 13.

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

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

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

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

Final Score:  Giants 35, Packers, 31.

Smug Alert

Anthony Bourdain has a decent point here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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