Orange Is the New Asshole

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Can't Possibly Be Legal

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

Three Things

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

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

Whatever you celebrate, make it a good one.

Grift of the Magi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wart On Christmas

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

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

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

....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All We Want for Christmas is a Level Playing Field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dude Is Happy

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Endless Cycle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And The Horse He Rode In On

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

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

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

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

The Witch Hunt Claims Another Scalp

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet Another Cletus Safari, Alabama Dingbats Edition

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

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

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

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

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

Tweet Hole Alabama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Head Count

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advanced Calvinball

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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