These Contradictions Aren't Going to Heighten Themselves

I get it that the Democrats suck, I really do get that. I remember going to a Harlem Globetrotters game with my grandfather, when I  was about eleven or twelve years old, and finding myself feeling sorry after a while for the Washington Generals. That is a fair summation of what it's like to be a Democratic voter.

At the very least, one should hope for a truly liberal party, or even a liberal reactionary party, the way the Republicans are now a conservative reactionary party, rather than merely a conservative one. Right now we have a clowder of lukewarm social-justice cats, who yowl at each other with great volume and vigor, but scatter when they hear Farmer Jones undoing the latch to release the hounds.

I wouldn't take this purity-pony threat too seriously; in fact, right now is the right time to lob such a threat, eighteen months out in the perpetual campaign season. Not that it matters whether such threats are made two years or two weeks before the election, unless they're made by people with money. Never forget that all this is nothing more nor less than a money game, and so the second enough big donors start wanting to do something about climate change, then you'll hear about it from all of the yowling cats at the same time.

Again, both parties deserve and need to be razed to the ground, and rebuilt on new lots. They are both fucking terrible. Chuck Schumer needs to retire about five years ago, and while Nancy Pelosi is a better politician than Schumer, her slow-walking of impeachment is a real problem. You're the Speaker of the House; if you can't at least get the majority of your own majority on board with your constitutional duty, then what are any of us doing here? Why should I vote for you again, so you can send more toothless subpoenae and letters?

At the same time, if Carli Pierson and her representational contingent want one or more years of Donald Trump, in an electoral fit of pique, then have at it, lady. Maybe she thinks she's immune in New York, from the prion disease afflicting flyover country. But like the old joke about Pennsylvania being Philly and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between, so New York State is really just NYC and Westchester and Albany, surrounded by that same Alabama-man type. You think you're not at risk of a life sentence in prison for having a miscarriage, you give Trump another five or ten years and see how that works out.

It's amazing how quickly the dystopian fantasy of The Handmaid's Tale has started to arrive in certain benighted pockets. It's real, it's happening, and you're almost certainly replacing three SCOTUS justices (Ginsburg, Breyer, and Thomas) in the next presidential term. See how well Sotomayor and Kagan are able to fend off the constant attacks on women's rights, voting rights, workers' rights, and yes, environmental policy, with a 2-7 minority, with five of those reactionary, regressive seven guaranteed to be there for the next thirty years or so.

Pierson's column really illustrates the Democrats' problem writ large, this incessant focus on the presidency above all else. The fact is, assuming they can retain the House next year, the Democrats would be infinitely better off just winning the Senate back, and grabbing just a handful of governor seats and state legislatures. Trump would then be retaining an impotent throne; he would get nothing done, and his appointments would be heavily scrutinized. He can go give his boyfriend Kim Jong Un all the DMZ handjobs he wants, but his actual ability to cause real damage will he heavily curtailed.

If the Democratic Party had any fucking clue at all, they would be figuring out a way to get rid of McConnell and Graham, and poach whatever vulnerable Senate seats they can next year. Winning the presidency back will mean nothing if those two traitors (yes, that is exactly what they are, actively subverting the interests of their country) are still in office. It may take $100 million to root those two ticks out of the dog's hide, but it will be money well-spent.

I realize that that's not as sexy or exciting as the high-stakes poker game Pierson and her ilk think they're playing, but they're way out of their depth, and their energies would be much better deployed in finding real Democratic candidates running state-level campaigns in problematic states, and giving them some publicity. Telling everyone eighteen months out that you'd rather burn it all down than vote for Old Man Biden or that meanie Kamala Harris is just showing your hand before all the cards have been turned.

The Poodle Bites

I seriously don't know how Jeff Flake can walk past a mirror without wanting to punch it as hard as he can, knowing as he must that he is nothing more than a blowhard and a fraud, a pontificating douchebag who talks big but actually says and does nothing. I guarantee you that every time Flake turns his back, his kids make the universal eye-roll jerkoff motion.

History will not remember you kindly, Senator. You failed your country when you could have done something, and you damned well know it. Keep that in the forefront of your mind for the rest of your life, which no doubt will be long and pointless.

The Negotiator

I spent the past week in sunny Calistoga, touring various local spots of interest, and generally avoiding all but the most peripheral "news" coverage. Funny how walking several miles a day (without looking at a damned phone the entire time) and visiting wineries and local small museums and such will clear your head like nothing else.

And yet, now that I spent some part of the weekend "catching up" as it were, acquainting myself with this week's round of interchangeable nonsense, the thing I keep coming back to is how dreadful our corporate media is. I mean it. They really suck bloated rhino balls. This Iran debacle is just the latest example.

By now, everyone knows the arsonist-firefighter dynamic of Shithead's "negotiating style":  create a problem where there wasn't one, puff up and act like the tough guy you know he really never was, pretend that a crisis has been averted thanks to his steady statesmanship, move on to find something else to fuck up. I mean we just went through this earlier this year with Venezuela, and people seem already to have forgotten.

Then, of course, there's North Korea. Can't wait for the homoerotic mash notes from Maduro, or the Iranian mullahs, for this jabbering dupe to start crowing about, like something was accomplished.

But what's pathetic is how corporate media dipshits like George Stephanopoulos and Chunk Toad persist in their delusional questioning of this fucking monster, as if he has anything legitimate to say or point to, on anything aside from racking up another trillion dollars of debt to give billionaires another tax cut. That's it, that's all he's done. Any temporary economic stimulus we might be experiencing from that will come to an end at some point, sooner rather than later.

This Twitter thread from Rita Konaev --  get this, someone with actual knowledge and expertise in a difficult area, so manifestly unqualified for the claque of simpering toadies and chickenhawks currently "advising" Grampa Walnuts -- captures the Iran situation nicely. As with North Korea and Venezuela and Syria before, we have been counting on Trump's manifest stupidity, impulsive behavior, and sheer incompetence to muddle through these foreign policy crises that he creates and then pretends to resolve. We're depending on this doddering asshole's insecurities, his bone-deep mommy and daddy issues, to keep us out of yet another war.

But that can also backfire. It is entirely possible for Trump to blunder his way into a real shooting war with Iran. His psychotic butt-buddies in Saudi Arabia and Israel would love nothing better. So far it's Russia and China who have been the voice of reason in this, and that alone should be a real cause for concern.

(Speaking of Russia and China, and backtracking to North Korea for a moment, it went practically unnoticed but within the past few weeks, Putin and Xi have each met separately with Kim Jong Un to reaffirm their mutual friendships with North Korea, and they have met with each other to essentially affirm a strategic alliance against us. And why not? We have revealed ourselves twice in less than twenty years to be superficial, short-sighted, and bugfuck stupid and crazy when it comes to selecting chief executives. Even if we manage to shed ourselves of Trump -- and even McConnell and Graham, and take back the Senate and all that -- there is no getting around the fact that forty percent of this country hates the majority, wants the confederacy back, and would round up everyone darker than them in a heartbeat.)

I think the odds are somewhat against us ending up in an actual shooting war with Iran. But if we do, it will be at the behest of the Saudis and Israelis. It should be clear by now that they own his fat ass.

Gaslight Freeze Peach

You may have heard that last week was the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day. It is no small irony that this occasion of epic sacrifice committed by brave men in the pursuit of defeating fascism should be commemorated by a phony-tough coward who has never sacrificed anything besides other people's money. True to (lack of) character, Trump spent most of his time shit-posting and yammering about domestic politics in a foreign country, which used to be a thing you shouldn't do.

To add insult to injury, because that is her only marketable skill, Laura Ingraham made her own heroic effort to convince, in true Orwellian fashion, that what they saw with their eyes and heard with their ears, from their golden idol no less, was in fact not true. Sound confusing? It really isn't.

You see, Ingraham was in Paris for D-Day, as she had an "interview" with the failure-in-thief, who then held up the start of the commemoration for fifteen minutes or so while Ingraham fellated him to completion (which, as we have stated many times before, is simply an audible puff of cheeto dust). Trump even acknowledged in the interview that he was happy to delay the ceremony because he likes Ingraham (because, again, no man turns down a good blowjob -- or even a bad one, really).

So on that night's broadcast, by which time it had gotten out that the ceremony had been delayed for this bullshit, Ingraham made a point of insisting -- right after the interview had aired, with Trump declaring otherwise -- that the interview had not delayed the ceremony, that that was just another perfidious lie thrown mercilessly against this good christian man.

To which the entire nation shrugged at both sides of the argument and collectively muttered whatever. Because that's all we do anymore.

I have been suggesting quite a lot these past months that the best thing we can all do, besides venting impotently on the internets and vowing to trudge to the polls next year and hope the machines have power cords, is boycott these fuckers. So I decided to take note of all the commercials that aired during that evening's episode of Ingraham's show (which, trust me, is an entirely different thing than watching the show), and make a list (grouped chronologically by intermission break):

Fisher Investments
Spin the Wheel (upcoming Fox game show, produced by Justin Timberlake and hosted by Dax Shepard)
Joint Flex (arthritis pain relief crème/gel)
Queen Sugar (new show on Oprah Winfrey Network)
South Beach Diet
Fox and Friends Concert Series (sponsored by Sandals)
Talcum Cancer Legal Helpline (same ambulance chasers that run those ads about class-action suits for mesothelioma and hernia mesh problems and such)

USAA Insurance
Ripley's Believe It Or Not (new show on Travel Channel, hosted by Bruce Campbell)
Zantac (antacid)
My Pillow
Stairlift

Fox MLB All-Star Game
LifeLock/Norton
Dupixent (injectable dermatitis/eczema medication)

Salonpas (pain relief patch)
*Ripley's
*South Beach Diet
Fox News Channel/Bret Baier
Saatva (another one of those mattress companies, like you can't just go to a fucking mattress store in any town)
Monsanto Roundup Legal Hotline
AT&T

Fox Sports 1/US Open Golf
*Joint Flex
My Pillow Mattress Topper
Liberator Catheter
Fox Nation

(* denotes repeat ad)

I mean, go ahead and sharpen your wallets, folks, but what really jumps out of that list is how few name companies there are in that list, and how much of it is in-house cross-promotion, which means the network is helping shoulder the burden of subsidizing this fucking dingbat. It's a collection of the usual late-night infomercial crap one would expect. Might as well have had a Chia Pet or Nugenix ad.

The only real surprise was the South Beach Diet ad running twice. I don't think Laura's audience of angry, arthritic codgers have any intention of liquid-dieting themselves to fitness. They are already leaning into their eventual fates, wondering only which Lucky Strike or western bacon cheeseburger will be the one that finally keels them over, to the joy of their exhausted, demoralized children and grandchildren.

Still, it would be great if what few legit advertisers there are could be collectively discouraged from sponsoring what can only be objectively said to be the ongoing gaslighting of this nation of gullible dupes. Again, Ingraham ran the clip of Trump bragging that he held up the ceremony for her -- even though the ceremony was actually delayed because Emmanuel Macron was running late -- before Ingraham herself came on to insist that Trump had not held up the ceremony. Okay, then why did he volunteer that he did, and did so deliberately?

---

There has been in recent months a surge in "free speech" opinion-mongering, the idea that if, say, some YouTube dipshit gets "demonetized" -- not deplatformed or suspended but simply loses his ad income for "his" page on the YouTube platform owned by Google -- that there's some sort of "chilling effect" to be concerned with.

I believe I covered this topic pretty thoroughly several months ago, and I wouldn't change a word. On the one hand, I don't know if it was necessary to suspend Steven Crowder's ad income, apparently for using the phrase "lispy queer" to taunt a gay journalist. But for one, Crowder has also apparently encouraged his audience to harass the journalist, and for another, Google has no obligation to continue paying Crowder to be an obnoxious asshole.

I really don't get what's so hard to understand about this. This blog you're reading, right here, right now, is owned and operated by Google. If they decide that some of my content is objectionable -- and let's face it, over the course of fifteen years, I've certainly posted plenty of material that a wide variety of people would find objectionable -- they have the right to suspend or kill the blog. I wouldn't be happy about it, and I'd at least appreciate a week's heads-up so I could set up a private site and migrate the content over, but the bottom line is that they own it.

Now, if I sold ad space on here (which I did briefly several years ago), it would be even more problematic. When you get into ad agreements with a platform, you're essentially endorsing a blanket agreement that the platform has with the companies that advertise on the platform. In other words, YouTube and Google have a responsibility to any advertisers that might get steered to Steven Crowder's YouTube page, that their products aren't going to be used to promote someone who might indulge in speech that would alienate large swaths of customers.

This has never been about free speech. It has always been about money.

From what little I have encountered of Crowder's material, it seems not so much like the ravings of a hate-addled madman, more like the usual bumptious nonsense of a garden-variety internet provocateur. He sets up card tables with a "contentious" phrase, challenging passersby to change his mind, as it were.

Here's his latest "challenge":

Jesus. Has he never watched a clip of one of Hitler's speeches, or Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation, David Duke, George Wallace? Of course, that's not the point of Crowder's gaslighting; the point is to muddy the waters by insisting that no one ever got hurt by someone shouting faggot or wetback or whatever. Which is an easy thing to say when you're an ofay white asshole who's too young to remember when those words where the last thing some people hurt before an attacker's fist or foot met their face.

So Crowder's really just an idiot, and perhaps Google is getting a bit gun-shy around this issue -- but again, it's their platform and they can do as they see fit, and they have an additional, probably legal, obligation to the companies who advertise to protect those companies' investments, and not stick them on a channel that might get boycotted because the proprietor is nitwit.

What's stopping Steven Crowder from starting his own website, taking his million viewers or whatever over there, posting his vlog and selling ad space to whoever he wants, saying whatever he wants? What's to stop Milo Yiannopoulos or Alex Jones or any of these other weepy snowflakes from going forth and doing likewise? Hell, what's to stop them from banding together, pitching to Robert Mercer or Steve Bannon or one the Koch Brothers' useless failsons, and starting a "conservative" YouTube or Twitter?

It's interesting how these idiots -- who to a person will be only too happy to lecture you about makers and takers, and how those people think they can sneak in here and get a free ride on someone else's dime -- seem to actively avoid the thing they so vociferously insist on for everyone else -- getting a real fucking job.

Autopsy

they all assumed it would happen with a bomb
a rocket of molten radioactive flame
quick and easy and violent like a video game
instead it was the steady drip of poison
   in the veins
      in the brain
the media monkeys kept the score
national suicide prevented civil war

they bought you for pennies on someone else's dollar
before you realized what they had known all along
   you were for sale
      the system rigged to fail
and you wondered whether Princess A got along with Princess B
   one seems nice
      the other catty
the royal expert on the morning news seems chatty
living carefree lives on the backs of the poor
practically begging for civil war

give a billionaire a break and he'll love you
throw a penny to a beggar and you're Mussolini
at least the rich guy will consider you
when he needs someone to wash his Lamborghini

i drove through the old town square
   to see what was left
the boards were peeled and fading
   the trees bereft
dots in portfolios
absentee landlords with inherited pride
passive engineers of collective suicide

capital mobility produced national fluidity
loyalty is a commodity like anything else
the merchant princes board their yachts
   with coke and plastic whores
      tax abatements by the score
         every soul a weeping sore
while national suicide prevents civil war

Punching Back

It seems that many progressives and liberals and such are uncomfortable with the prospect of Joe Biden's candidacy, and with good reason. The main problem is he's way too old; I persist in my delusion that people, no matter their profession, need to retire by seventy or so, certainly by seventy-five. This goes for SCOTUS justices as well. The idea that the well-being of the republic may well literally hang on the health of a frail octogenarian cancer patient should be completely unacceptable. This is no way to run a railroad, folks.

But for many, the problem is more in how Creepy Uncle Joe relates to wimmins:  the grabbing, the rubbing, the hair-sniffing, the tone-deaf remarks. Fair enough. I would ask each and every one of them if they would vote for 1992 Bill Clinton now, a quarter-century later, if he were just now emerging on the scene with the baggage he had back then, but knowing that he would accomplish the things he did while he was in office. Clinton's baggage with women, back in 1992, was at least as bad as Biden's is now, but he did manage to get a few things done, right?

So, in all seriousness, you might want to use ol' Slick Willie as an example and ask yourself if it's all worth it. Not that it matters, since even if the Dems do manage to unseat Trump next year, it will mean nothing if they can't dump McConnell and Graham as well. They will make the Mueller investigation look like a walk in the park for the next Democratic president.

One thing Biden has that few of the others have -- but they're learning! -- is that he doesn't take any shit from Agent Orange. He can talk some trash. For the record:  any candidate that pre-emptively starts in with that "high road" shit has lost my vote already. Bokay? Not having it anymore. I'm tired of listening to this bloated wad of spray-tanned lunchmeat shit all over everything I believe in. I want someone who's going to call a lie a lie, and who isn't going to take shit from that unqualified moron. If that's too much to ask, then go run for Lions Club chapter president or something, and save us all the trouble. I want someone who's going to bounce this motherless fuck all over the ring.

So while I don't want Biden to win the nom, I definitely hope he stays in until the end of 2019 at least. He can draw some blood on Trump, he's not going to just meekly take shit from that asshole and murmur some dopey nonsense about not stooping to his level or whatever. Fuck that noise. Get in and fight. If the situation is as urgent as you keep saying it is, then act with a real sense of urgency.

Pete Buttigieg has shown the truth of this over the last week, taking advantage of the Memorial Day weekend to jab at the fat, cowardly draft dodger. and you know what? Trump didn't respond at all. When was the last time you saw that happen? The fucking guy gets bent over everything. Trump hasn't said shit about Mayor Pete since his initial "Alfred E. Neuman" insult, to which Buttigieg promptly responded, I don't know who that is, old man, because I was born after the fucking Civil War. Boom!

The clichés about bullies are generally true -- their behavior is a manifestation of their deep-rooted insecurities, mostly daddy-didn't-love-me-boo-fucking-hoo issues, and instead of doing the right thing and jumping off the nearest bridge or eating a Sig Sauer, they find smaller, weaker individuals and terrorize them with their projected insecurities.

It's been a repeated standby that everything Trump accuses his opponents of, all the stupid nicknames, are projections of his own behavior, his own insecurities. So hit him on those things, work those kidneys mercilessly. He can dish it out, but can't take it, so give it back to him in double doses. It's not like he doesn't give you material every day to work with. Why is this so hard to understand?

The only reason Trump ever got as far as he did, both before and after he entered the political arena, is because no one stood up to him. Think about it. For example, everyone rightly complains about how he ripped off contractors and small businesses. And yet, for some reason, he kept being able to find more contractors and small businesses to work on his roach-infested fleabag properties. He has teams of lawyers who kept him from having to pay those businesses what he owed them. Fine. Who are those lawyers, what are the names of the firms, so that they can be properly shamed in public and boycotted for their complicity.

Trump's real Achilles heel is his record as a "businessman," and he cannot stand to be mocked and ridiculed. He can't stand being laughed at. Beat on him for his catastrophic, shitty record. Make jokes about lousy steaks and failed casinos and horse-piss vodka and the football league he ruined single-(and small-) handedly. He will crack. He can't help himself. All of his self-esteem is wrapped up in the lies he tells himself daily. Strip him of it, and he will unravel.

Trump keeps hammering on the evils of illegal immigration. Great. Maybe one of these interchangeable dumbasses who think they have a shot at the Democratic nomination should step up and take one for the team thusly:

Trump talks a good game about how dangerous and terrible illegal immigration is for America. When he sends ICE to one of his golf courses, I'll believe him. Who does he think is changing the sheets, washing the dishes, vacuuming the floors, mowing the lawns? When he sends ICE to the meat processing plants, the dairy farms, the hotels and restaurants and orchards and construction sites across the country, then we can take him seriously. Until then, it's just more hot air and empty talk, which is all you ever get out of him.

No one has the balls to just step up and say what needs to be said about Trump and his lies, and the weirdest thing about it is that the first person to do it in such stark, uncivil terms would be an instant rock star. One ignored facet of the media coverage of the electorate is the assumption that because Trump was the quintessential anger-bang vote, that all the anger must be on that side.

I can assure them that this is not the case. My fondest wish is that if we are able to consign Trump and the Republicon Partei to the dustbin of history, that we can send the corporate media in right after them. Because they did this as well.