Carnival of (Ass) Souls

There's never any point in bothering with the now bi-weekly hate rallies Hair Fucktard needs to soothe his fragile ego, but the Tampa Bay Times has a wondrous collection of photos from the rally earlier tonight. Fewer than ten thousand addled rubes (in the middle of the nation's third-most populous state, mind you; Florida estimated just under 21 million people as of a year ago) bothered to waddle into the State Fairgrounds in Tampa to listen to the kajillionth sing-along to Knockin' On Fuckhead's Door.

There's only so many times you can sing the same song, dance the same dance, scream the same primal lizard-brain scream. Unless you're a complete vegetable. Then it never gets old; every day is like a new day, with the slate of previous days magically wiped clean.

Bathtub moonshine will do that to you, folks. That's just science.

I dunno, look through the photos and decide for yourself. Most of these people look barely tethered to reality. Either they're beswagged closet-cases secretly wishing to suckle the imperial mini-cheeto, or they're ambitiously down-scale polo-shirted moob wranglers who haven't seen their own mini-cheetos in some time.

Our librul media fail us -- and themselves -- when they give these dopey events the usual soft-focus "objective" treatment. Because it's all completely decontextualized. You generally have to do some digging just to get a sense of the attendance and the capacity of the venue, when those numbers should be available pretty easily, especially to local media, who can talk to the fire marshal.

So it ends up looking like a large, passionate crowd, which it surely is. But these sort are not the average Clownstick supporter that you work with or know personally. These are hardcore cultists, and they behave as such. There is no variation to their hive-mind schtick, state to county to holler to shithole opioid town. These are the political equivalent of Juggalos, there as much for the "event" and for the "fuck you libs" frisson, that magical pwnage they enjoy while they're hunting for another job or watching a grandparent die from the awesome health-care system His Travesty replaced Obummerscare with.

But look back through those photos and be honest. You wouldn't hire any of these gastropods to move river rocks across your driveway, much less employ them for any sort of skilled labor. Maybe a few of the faggier cosplay maroons show just enough initiative and creativity to make you momentarily believe that they can guide their finger out of their nose just long enough to eat a funnel cake and whack off to a cardboard cutout of their idol. But the rest of them would get lost in a phone booth (remember those?).

Anyway, the media. I'm sure Jim Acosta thinks he means well, and I'll bet real money he thinks his "work" has some sort of positive impact on the political landscape. But I'd politely (I know, right?) suggest that maybe Acosta and his cohorts might have that positive impact if they, I dunno, tried to impart a sense of balance to their coverage. For example, how do Hillary Clinton voters -- the majority of voters, let's recall -- feel about their vote? We'll probably never know, since our intrepid mediots never seem to get their lazy asses out the haunted diners of Bumfuck, Arkansas, to find out, to bring a balanced perspective. They'd rather show up to the rallies and the press conferences, where literally every word is a fucking LIE, and dutifully transcribe the nonsense.

Acosta's the worst about this -- after standing in the rally pen getting abuse hurled at him from the gaping assholes in thrall to their oompa-loompa wampeter, he'll stick around and try to talk to him and take selfies with them. They fucking hate you, pal. Stop kidding yourself. Not one of them will change their mind -- about you or him. But whatever you do, don't go out and talk to someone who doesn't support this lying turd and his team of traitors. I mean, why break your golden streak of faithful stenography?

It's probably wishful thinking in the end, but for now this human centipede of an administration does seem to be circling the drain. But it's in spite of, rather than because of, the efforts and expertise of the media in general.

There are definitely exceptions -- Natasha Bertrand and David Fahrenthold continue to do fine work, and there are certainly others. But the corporate networks have pretty much given up doing anything useful, and even the New York Times has set new lows in culpability and uselessness, largely thanks to Maga Haberman's lazy access journamalism, which undermines and befouls the entire operation with its complicity.

That's not to say that the Times hasn't had its moments. Remember less than two weeks ago, when the Times' David Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg dropped this little nugget?

WASHINGTON — Two weeks before his inauguration, [Fuckface Von Clownstick] was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.

The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.

Mr. [Clownstick] sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. [Clownstick] has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.

The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. [Clownstick] regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear than this week.

It would be understandable if you didn't recall that article, even though it appeared on July 18th, right after the Helsinki debacle, where Shit-for-Brains exposed his toadying to Putin for the entire world. Amazingly and inexcusably, the article received no follow-up coverage (at least that I saw) on any major network or newspaper.

For the first couple days, it made a bit of sense to suppose that since the article relied on information obtained from what would have had to have been a classified intel source, that maybe other news orgs figured they would have to vet it past the usual three-letter agencies before running with it. But no one even tried. The story caused a big stink the night it dropped, and hasn't been seen since. It should be huge, because it proves he knew, and has lied verbally and in writing literally hundreds of times.

No wonder the cultists feel confident. Their propaganda outlets are disciplined and on point, and couldn't possibly care any fucking less about whether their "reportage" is encumbered with facts or accuracy or such like. No one has the balls to call them for what they are, and report on them as such. We've sunk to the point where clowns are given footing as legitimate interlocutors, with their dopey tee-shirts and ball caps and branded tard-swag. If we don't show up and send them back where they belong in 98 days, we deserve exactly what we get.

Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun

Someone in the librul media needs to step forward and explain for the class why they persist in having that soulless turd Ghouliani on their supposedly informational shows. It's further proof that the shows, and the people on them, are really just talking to each other, rather than trying to impart useful information to the home audience.

Forget the fundamental truth that a decent society would have tarred and feathered this cocksucker and walked him into the ocean a long time ago. He's a lying scumbag and an unrepentant pigfucker. Whatever his dogsbody role for this cancerous anal fissure of an administration, no competent media presence should allow a piece of shit like Ghouliani to defile their studio.

It's a mindless, hopelessly cynical exercise:  you know he's lying, we know he's lying, and you know that we know that he's lying, and so on. So there's really no point in having people like Ghouliani or Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer on. Unless our point is really just to try to sell you cheeseburgers and tampons, while you're sitting there complaining about the perfidy of it all. The perfidy is the point. It's something to keep you riled up for your daily outrage pellet in the Skinner box of your life, and it's a friendly reminder of how powerless you really are.

It's too bad they don't teach basic concepts such as "responsibility" and "shame" at j-school.

In other news, the Vichy Times continues its role as useless handmaidens to these monsters. Fuck every last person involved in this shit. They might as well be working for him. Boycott them all.

Look What You Made Me Do

One of the great things about everyone having a video camera in their back pocket, and a willingness to whip it out (giggity) at a moment's notice, is that the scum of the earth no longer have that plausible he-said-she-said deniability their parents and grandparents relied on when caught doing or saying something awful. They are exposed for what they are.

Obviously, sometimes social media hive-mind gets carried away and transforms relative molehills into Kanchenjunga. And sometimes they're spot on.

Maybe I'm old-school, as the kids say with their dank memes, but I come from a time and place when most white people knew better than to follow a black guy home for the express purpose of sitting in his driveway and calling him the n-word over and over. Frankly, Charles Lovett deserves a goddamned medal for not walking over and yanking Jeff Whitman out of his work van, and knocking everyone of his fucking teeth down his throat.

Unless one is irretrievably insufferable in their absolute wokeness, most of us can agree that sometimes people say things in the heat of the moment that they regret, whether immediately afterward or when they've had time to cool down and/or sober up. But that's the standard line between an average fool and a true racist -- the fool is smart enough to make sure everyone understands that they are truly apologetic.

Notice that nowhere in the linked article does Jeff Whitman flat-out say that he's sorry, that he wishes he hadn't done what he did. The closest he can muster is to characterize it as an "awful mistake" and that he doesn't quite know how it happened. That's because he's not sorry about it at all -- he's simply sorry that it got caught on video and distributed on the internets. Which, you know, maybe Whitman should have known is a thing.

There's no reason to believe Whitman's self-serving bullshit about his mother and daughter being threatened. All racists are by definition liars, especially to themselves, but also anyone dumb enough to stay within auditory range of their bullshit. Anonymous broad-based "fuck your family, asshole" tweets do not count as actual threats.

As for Whitman losing his livelihood? Good. Actions have consequences, asshole. Look, even if you set aside the racism for a second (bear with me), you can't go around acting like an asshole in a company vehicle, and expect people not to notice.

I'm a bit of a road-rager at times myself, but a lot better than I used to be when I was younger and dumber. It's infuriating when people endanger you by yanking in front of you, swerving into your lane, tailgating, etc. You want to be able to tell assholes that they are assholes sometimes. So occasionally the magic finger flies.

But that's in my car, and even then extremely rarely; the last time that happened was four or five years ago. I drive a work vehicle between towns and sites at least once or twice a week, so I encounter morons on the road all the time. And as tempting as it might be to let them know what I really think, I let it go. Why? Because it might get back to my boss, and I could get suspended or fired.

And here we're just talking about the impulsive, split-second jab of the ol' freeway finger, not following someone to their home and yelling racial slurs at them for three minutes.

So fuck Jeff Whitman. Nowhere in his mewling plaints about how "despondent" he is over the "intensity" of everyone's "hate" for him is any actual contrition. Again, he's just sorry he got caught. He could do any number of things, starting with reaching out to Charles Lovett and making some actual gesture of sincere regret (since, you know, Whitman knows where Lovett lives).

But he doesn't, and won't, do anything at all. Because he's not really sorry. I would bet money he's an unrepentant Clownstick supporter; he thought that part of the package was going to be able to put those people back in their place, remind them that they're not really as equal as the last guy made them think they were.

We never do find out what exactly was the nature of the driving offense (though it may be in the initial coverage of the story), but you can bet that had Charles Lovett been white, Jeff Whitman would not have followed him home and hollered racial epithets at him. He probably wouldn't have even followed him home. (I mean, you hope he wouldn't have followed him home.) At worst, he might have flipped Lovett off and went on about his way, and forgotten about the whole thing ten minutes later.

And he wouldn't have to wonder why people are boycotting him out of business.

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Ed Burmila (for Gin & Tacos, but you already know that) has a pretty solid write-up in The Nation about the GOP Congress' utter lack of anything resembling a legislative agenda. Which is, as we all know, their job.

Or is it? As Ed correctly points out, the course they've charted since Saint Newton of Gingrich, some twenty-five years anon, has pointed directly toward....well, nothing. A void. Legislative nihilism, as it were. Not an effort to self-destruct, but a concerted resolve to do as little as possible.

Whatever their job quals or CVs may state, that is the operative criterion now -- to await instructions from the Koch Bros types that actually own and operate this country, and make jabbering mouth noises about the "morality" of this or that bullshit issue in the meantime. Making effective legislature that might actually help some humans who can't afford to donate? Not fucking possible!

And it's all consistently couched in a hoary (if modernized, to keep pace with tech jargon) rhetoric of pwnage and making snowflakes cry. This is something the Democrats can and must learn from Republicans -- get the strategy down, then layer it with the bullshit emotional appeals. If a Democrat can figure out how to make sweet-ass love to an inert, helpless flag, and then eat a whole apple pie in twelve minutes at a county fair, they can write their own ticket. The maroons will flock to them.

But it's most compelling that the Repubs have been able to get away with not actually being for anything in a very long time. They only stand in opposition to things. Sometimes it's bullshit "cultural" issues like black people rioting in cities because they're tired of their kids being shot like dogs for the high crime of pulling a cell phone. Sometimes it's having a black guy as president.

And sometimes it's issues such as a longstanding opposition to Roe v. Wade, which is inextricably linked to a desire to control women's sex lives. Now they're the proverbial dumb dog that finally caught the car they'd been chasing forever. How's that work out for them? Now they have to conjure excuses to the rubes who take that shit seriously. Bad dog!

Seriously, it's just about impossible to know what to say to people about this stuff anymore. Either you see it or you don't; either it pisses you off or it doesn't; either you're going to wake up off your dead ass or you won't. We'll find out in 105 days and counting.

Fair Game

Folks, if you're on the hunt for intellectual dishonesty and shameless hackery, look no further than this sanctimonious asshole. Here's a choice excerpt:

In the meantime, the view of the mainstream media seems to be that there needs to be more harsh coverage aimed at the family members of Trump administration officials.

For instance, there’s Darla Shine, a self-declared “happy housewife” living on New York’s Long Island. Just two weeks ago, Mrs. Shine—it seems okay to refer to her as “Mrs.,” given her declared celebration of married domesticity—was minding her own business, blogging about such topics as “canning at home,” “lasagna gardening,” and “tips for grilling,” and penning paeans to children, family, God, and country.

Then, on July 6, Mrs. Shine’s privacy evaporated. Mediaite did a big writeup on her, quoting her conservative and/or politically incorrect views on topics ranging from Barack Obama to autism.

That second paragraph does a lot of heavy lifting, but let's do a quick rundown. First is the none-too-subtle implication that until the big bad libtard media decided to doxx her, poor ol' Darla Shine was jes' a simple country gal, gardening and making lasagna and pleasuring her husband -- in a very Christian way, of course, which means no swallowing unless it's his birthday.

You would never guess that she had been a producer at Fixed Noise, until she banged her way into the exec suite and cashed in her chips to go raise rugrats on Lawn Guyland. You would never guess that she's spent a good chunk of that time trying various methods of monetizing her mommy bliss, spreading the word to day-drinking housewives who need a little motivation between polishing off the Chablis and fingering themselves to Dr. Oz reruns. You'd never guess she's had a years-long lady-boner for the standard ofay-cracka "musings," mostly variations on the classic theme of how come they can use that word, but we can't?

She's led a public existence for quite some time, doing years of social-media gardening -- carefully watering and fertilizing the ambulatory rutabagas who spend countless hours listening to closet cases like Melonhead Hannity and Fuckface Carlson regale them with lurid booga-booga tales of ISIS and MS-13 super-predator hybrids, menacing the elderly at the Piggly Wiggly in Bumfuck, Arkansas. You can't now suddenly immunize her from scrutiny.

Not that it matters -- let's face it, bigotry and vaxxism are job qualifications with their crowd. The only thing missing is a JPG on her hard drive of Obama photo-shopped as a loincloth-wearing spearchucker.

This asshole even glosses over Bill Shine's tenure as an unapologetic hatchet-man to a workplace rapist who not only got away with his crimes but was paid a fat $40M in the process from his agitprop nutwork. A decent society would have tarred and feathered a turd like Bill Shine years ago; instead, he's "rewarded" with a high-profile position in this ongoing shitshow, the treasonous embarrassment in DC.

Even without their dismal track records, anyone wanting to step onboard this sewage raft needs their fucking brain checked. But the idea that the Shines are just nice people done wrong is not just a flat-out lie, it should be completely intolerable for anyone to try float that shit past a competent editor.

Whatever puling standards "conservatives" once professed to have are clearly gone, like the brain cells of their sundowning clown-lord.

Helsinki Syndrome

Even before the treasonous, openly collusive press conference this morning, the thing that should not be in office went on record just hours prior referring to the EU as a foe, to our closest allies as foes. That makes sense, since he's been treating them as foes.

He thinks NATO is one his fleabag "resorts," where he sticks members for exorbitant rates to eat shitty meat loaf and watch him drive his golf cart on the fairways. He thinks a trade deficit means Europe "took" money from us, because he doesn't know what trade deficits are or mean.

The tide cannot truly turn until all of our aggrieved friends and allies -- Canada, Britain, Germany, France -- quit complaining about what an asshole he is, and simply stand up to him. Push back, tell him to go fuck himself.

Because Generalissimo Babyfingers is a proud graduate of the Ike Turner School of Management, that's really all he knows, this dynamic of smacking up a bitch, and then half-heartedly "apologizing":  Baby, why you make me hit you like that? Just imagine how emotionally stunted the people who have stayed in his employ must be, in order to do so. He is a toxic soul, and such things are contagious and pervasive. The tap water in the Org building probably tastes like tear-stained despair. And lead, sprinkled with asbestos particulates.

We got a mulligan with our allies and friends after the Fredo Arbusto regime, though poor Obama's staff has admitted that for much of 2009, they did have to mount something of a charm offensive with primary allies, reassuring them that the last guys were an anomaly. It doesn't take much imagination to visualize their reluctance this time around to come around to such overtures, assuming we're even able to weed these motherfuckers back out of office and into the gutter whence they sprung.

The retaliatory tariffs are a good start as far as responses go, and we'll see how the effects start targeting the stubborn rubes in Schmucklandia. That's only fair, after all; you made your beds, folks, now go die in them. It's about as close to targeting his actual voters for adverse effects, rather than collective punishment, as you're likely to find.

Anyway. There are no two ways about this, no other options to be had. Forget the Golden Rule, especially when it comes to this guy; the principle one should have in mind instead is people will treat you how you let them treat you. He treats you like shit, because you haven't given him any reason not to.

They have schoolyard bullies in Europe and Canada, don't they? Of course they do; assholes are universal, even when they have funny accents and eat weird things. And the rules for dealing with such people are also universal.

Our erstwhile allies and friends have to reach the same conclusion that our own voters must reach:  this asshole will continue to fuck with you until you fight back. You don't have to take his shit. "Norms" and "rules" of "diplomacy" have been tossed; stop continuing with the charade that they are still in effect. This is a street fight, a barroom brawl.

And this cannot be repeated often enough, either, fella 'murkins:  make a list of shows and advertisers, generate a 150-word form letter, and do a single mass bcc send telling all these companies what you're boycotting and why. Everything with the name "Fox" on it, not just the "news" channel. Everything with Mark Burnett's or Harvey Levin's or Piers Morgan's grubby, jism-stained fingers on it. I'm sure you can think of others. The only loyalty any of these scumbags have is to the almighty buck, so make them care.

Fucking Traitors

One of the very rare times we'll refer to it by its actual name -- Trump is a fucking traitor. Full stop. He is actively undermining the well-being of this nation, every day in every way. He has bullied our friends and sucked up to the worst monsters to be found in this vale of perpetual sorrows.

And now, with today's off-the-chain, unabashed gargling of Putin's balls, he's done everyone a huge fucking favor, because now everyone has to decide where they're at on this. It can no longer be denied, written off, talked around, or otherwise evaded. It is no longer a difference of opinion or interpretation, not that it ever was.

I don't know or care if there's a pee tape -- in fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there isn't. It doesn't matter. It's an open secret that he's been laundering bratva cash for at least a decade, and the Russians probably got into him earlier in the game.

It's why he won't release his tax returns, even though he promised he would. It's why he won't meet with Mueller, and talks shit about him constantly, ever more frantically, even though he insisted he'd "100%" meet with him. Innocent people have nothing to hide.

So people either understand him for exactly what he's been all along, or they have chosen not to. And for those folks in the latter category, whether they're sanctimonious enablers like Jeff Flake, or your asshole uncle "sharing" whatever bullshit Facebook meme just came his way. your best action is what you'd do if you were accosted by $cientologists or Hare Krishnas -- walk away. Ignore them, or at least recognize that there is absolutely no point in engaging them or arguing with them about politics.

If you see a strange person coming out of your house, chances are they're robbing your house. Just because they then subsequently offer to help you select a security system should not be reassuring. Either you see what's right in front of you and act accordingly, or you chose a baroque, completely ludicrous set of explanations and excuses, this Rube Goldberg machine of nonsense designed to distract you from what you just saw, and keep seeing.

The Director of National Intelligence, handpicked by Fuckface Von Clownstick his own orange self, is a lifelong, traditional, rock-ribbed Midwestern conservative, a former two-term Senator, back when that title was more likely to connote respect and skill. Before the people's representative houses got infested with sanctimonious hypocrites like Scott DesJarlais, window-licking retards like Louie Gohmert, or out-and-out traitors like Paul Ryan and Bitch McConnell.

It's simple:  Dan Coats, former US Senator and current DNI, says with confidence and knowledge that Russia interfered in our electoral process, and continues to do so. The person whose primary responsibility, whose solemnly-sworn oath, is to protect the Republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic, chose out loud to believe the hostile nation headed by a murderous dictator, over his own handpicked director of intelligence. There can no longer be any doubt about where things stand.

Let's stop mincing words:  Vladimir Putin is a murderer. Dissenters and nosy journalists get poisoned, shot, or defenestrated. He shot down a passenger jet, and invaded a neighboring country. Most recently, he has used a banned Soviet-era nerve agent to attack a dissenter in the homeland of our oldest and closest ally.

Russia is our 30th-largest trading partner, and maybe the 15th-largest economy. There is no economic or strategic reason to embrace them to this degree, and reward all their bad behavior. But they have him by the balls on the money laundering, and even without that, he'd do it anyway, he'd take their side every time for free.

That's what a lot of folks might not get about this fucking mutt, this traitor. Russia didn't really need any leverage at all, because he admires Putin, is envious of the absolute control Putin has, wants to be seen as ruthless the way Putin is ruthless, able to dispense of dissenters like so many gnats. It's that simple.

It's why he's had good things to say about Erdogan, Xi, even a third-rate thug like Rodrigo Duterte, who in a decent society would end strung up by his heels at a traffic light, his genitals stuffed into his mouth. It's why he slobbered like a Saint Bernard all over Kim Jong Un, a third-generation monster who victimizes his people and literally murdered his brother in another country, just to send a message. He wishes he could do those things.

The scary part is that there are people in this country who also wish that he could do those things. Not many, not yet. Mostly the jabbering mooks who waddle to the rallies, a comparatively small but still statistically significant cadre of individuals, not "deplorables" but irredeemables, because there's really nothing you can say to them. They're around the bend.

There's a good chance today will be forgotten within the next week or so, because we have become that kind of society now. One political party is shoved into a corner and disempowered, and apparently not riled enough to flood the Sunday follies zone and just start hammering talking points, the way the other party does. And it cannot be overstated how much that other party has collectively betrayed their country, and any principles they might have pretended to have.

He flat-out fucking said at an international summit that he believes a murderous dictator more than he believes his own intelligence director. That can't be repeated often enough.

So if you do find yourself in the position of talking politics with someone who still supports this traitor, just narrow it down to one question:  what exactly would it take for you to change your mind about this asshole? Seriously, if all things he's done and said haven't swayed you, what would do the trick? Another 9/11? A full-throttle economic collapse?

Or maybe there's nothing at all, he could eat a live baby and fuck a goat and shoot an old lady in Times Square, and they'd still be hanging on his tiny wang. In which case, once again, you know where to stand with uncanny precision, and can now act accordingly. Knowing where their true loyalties lie, and that in fact they have none, is oddly empowering if nothing else. Now you don't have to wonder.

Heckle and Boycott

It's always good news when soulless cocksucker and borderline traitor Bitch McConnell is run out of a restaurant. But I look forward to the day when useless enablers like Jeremy Peters face the same treatment.

I don't give a flaming fuck if Doucheowitz' friends never speak to him again; they should have gotten the memo on the kind of human being he was after he defended Claus Von Bulow and O.J. Simpson. An elderly, doddering snake is still a snake, as one can tell just by looking at the Orange White House these days (to point at yet another person undeserving of any public defense, whom Doucheowitz nevertheless still needs to plant his sanctimonious lawyer flag on).

But this Peters asshole, and bullshit journos like him -- they're the real fucking problem. As Scott Lemieux points out in the LGM link, there is building evidence that one of the finance co-chairs of the RNC funneled a bribe from Fuckface Von Clownstick his own fat self to a Playmate that he had knocked up and paid her off to get an abortion -- after he got into office.

Shera Bechard just went into court a few days ago to file suit against convicted felon (and again, one of the RNC finance co-chairs, along with serial work rapist Steve Wynn and fake lawyer Michael Cohen) Elliott Broidy and, for some weird reason, Michael Avenatti. Broidy stopped making the $200k installment payments to Bechard for her silence, instigating the lawsuit for breach of agreement. Obviously, this has much huger implications.

But Jeremy Peters is intent on putting on his Librul Tone Police hat, and answering a question literally no one was asking:  how's that deathless skin flute Alan Doucheowitz doing, after being uninvited from the Martha's Vineyard shindigs?

Keep up the good work, asshole. Maybe there'll be an opening at Fixed Noise for you.

The smarmy, pointless meme of "this is how he got elected" always aims at libruls whose tone gets a bit uppity. But you wanna know how he really got elected? Shit journos wasting everyone's time on shit stories. Alan Doucheowitz is fucking turd who should have retired long ago, but he has a book to pimp so he's climbing up everyone's ass because no one wants to listen to his self-serving, disingenuous bullshit anymore. And numbskulls like Peters are right there to play stenographer, every goddamned time.

Moar Civility for the Tone Police

Heh, I thought I was bad.

The Differences

Any nation that takes seriously its government's role as being truly representative of a majority of its inhabitants should keep some important differences in mind:

• Between nationalism and patriotism.
• Between cunning and intelligence.
• Between cruelty and strength.
• Between "America First" and "America Alone".

The premise and promise and principle of self-governance is -- get this -- that citizens are supposed to be high-functioning enough to, you know, govern themselves, to vet for qualified candidates to elect to represent the needs of the people. Silly, right?

Built into all that is the responsibility to pay attention constantly, and be engaged as much and as often as possible. It's not just about sitting through an endless stream of attack ads, and landing on the last ad you saw, or the candidate with the best hair or smile or stage patter, and then trudging off to the voting booth to flip a coin.

One of the greatest of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who like Alexander Hamilton did as much as anyone to build the foundation of the country without ever attaining high office, famously said that we had a republic, if we could keep it. Bear in mind that right now, six Republican senators are celebrating the birth of their county by sucking up to Putin in Russia. Bear that in mind and act accordingly.

Happy Independence Day to my fella 'murkins. May this be the last one we have with the current fucktards in charge.

Rising Son

Another "fiction" piece, a bit longer than the last. As before, there may be some upcoming edits. Please leave feedback in the comments, good or bad.

The Marshal waited until his private jet had left the Malaysian air space to order his meal. It was not the Ilyushin he was accustomed to flying in, on the rare occasions he did fly, but a Boeing 747 -- albeit an older unit -- that the Chinese had lent him, one that they had used to ferry their own leaders in. It was one of those little things that made the Marshal smile to himself, and quite a few of those little things had occurred over the last twenty-four hours in Singapore.

He appreciated that this Boeing had a small kitchen near the front, and requested his personal chef to prepare him a prime rib, medium rare, with sides of potatoes and vegetables, and a bottle of blended Australian cab. There would be much to discuss with the generals once they arrived back in Pyongyang, but for now, he needed to think to himself, have a nice meal and a drink, perhaps watch a movie. There was a small library of Chinese, American, and European DVDs onboard, and a decent-sized screen. His advisers were seated further back, to give him time to reflect. Much had happened quickly, and things were in motion.