Let Us Praise the Voters in This Midterm: Don't Fuck with People's Right to Be Apathetic

There's a simple rule that you need to follow if you want to do evil, cruel, or even just illegal shit as any kind of leader: make sure you take care of the lives of regular people so they don't notice. Because, see, for the most part, Americans just want to be left the fuck alone and allowed to live their lives, and they'll put up with a load of fuckery in order to be able to do that. Unless it's happening in their backyard (like in Minneapolis), your regular, everyday American, across races, across education lines, across ages, is gonna be okay with whatever, if they're even clued in. But when you fuck up and do something that makes those Americans pay attention, then there is hell to pay in spades. 

See, my theory on the absolute ass-reaming the GOP received on Tuesday in the midterm elections where Democrats won back the House and Senate by margins no one expected, along with governorships, legislatures, and more, is very simple. Yes, absolutely, affordability and inflation were big issues, the biggest by some measures, for voters. And that might have been enough for a decent enough night. But what tilted it into a five-alarm confuckgration was gas prices. There's shit you can absorb and compartmentalize, like your Netflix goes up or the price of Monster Energy Drinks. The accretion of a few percentage here and there is going to be noticeable, sure, but maybe not enough to shake you out of complacency (unless it's 2024 and your social media is a nonstop hate stream against the cost of eggs). 

But then there's gas and diesel. Those prices are in your face all the time. You're driving, biking, walking, taking the bus down the road, you're gonna see the gas and diesel prices at every goddamn station. If you fill it up, you're gonna see a big jump in how much you pay. That's a hit all at once. You fuckin' notice when it costs ten, twenty bucks more to fill your tank. 

I think that led to a thought process that went something like, "Wait. I think I was promised prices would come down. I was told again and again that Trump and Republicans would make life easier. What's up with this shit now? And if they fucked up that, what else are they fucking up?" And that's the moment  when those voters who just wanted to stay in their bubbles looked up for five fucking seconds and realized just how fucked everything has gotten. Like they saw the corruption and the bullshit monuments and the Iran War and everything else on top of the ICE savagery, and they thought, "Oh, shit." It's like walking out of the Trump cave and looking around and realizing, "Wait, the world isn't just shadows projected on a wall by an idiot with dementia? Goddamnit." Once they break the spell that someone can live their lives uninterrupted by their vile depravity, then authoritarians fall. 

Don't fuck with people's right to not give a fuck, and Trump's idiotic tariffs and completely self-owning war in Iran couldn't help but make people give a fuck. And while he was dicking over the American voters, he was outright raping the GOP. That's right. The party of rapists and rapist-enablers finally got raped on Tuesday. You let a rapist get away with it, you give the rapist power, you ignore his expansive criminality, hell, you help make it happen, none of that means the rapist won't rape you when he decides he wants to. Trump couldn't have cared less about Republican election chances and he certainly didn't seek their consent on any of his heinous actions and policies.  It was all about him, from the delusional cruelty to immigrant groups he didn't like to picking absolute fucking loser candidates in places like Texas and South Carolina. He didn't care or didn't know that those moves were turning off voters by the millions. 

Many groups of voters, especially young white males, veered to Trump in 2024 after voting for Biden in 2020, and then, this year, switched back. That's some whiplash, and it's both encouraging and frightening because it means they could be just as fickle in 2028. However, two other significant voting blocs helped completely decimate (to use a phrase Trump used about Iran but, in this case, is actually true) Republicans.

When I kept saying that the Louisiana Senate race was shockingly in play, I was very specifically referencing how fucking pissed off Black voters were about the redistricting fuckery that the GOP engaged in (and Democrats attempted to match). Because of the Callais decision by Trump's accomplices on the Supreme Court, which allowed Louisiana to get rid of one majority Black district and tore up what was left of the Voting Rights Act, Black voters were righteously and justifiably pissed off because, apparently, it became undeniable that making America great again meant rolling back the clock on civil rights, something that families of Black voters and some voters themselves fought and died to secure. In Louisiana, Democrat Jamie Davis didn't win, but he came within 1.8% of Republican Julia Letlow. A little investment of cash and time by the national party, and who knows what could happen moving forward.

As for the Latino vote, some fears existed that Trump would send ICE to polling stations to intimidate and harass Latino-Americans who were voting. Instead of scaring anyone away (and it didn't happen except in isolated cases), that potential bullshit on top of the brutal, horrendous attack on immigrants by ICE thugs energized and pissed off Latino voters, who, like Black voters, showed up in huge numbers to vote for Democrats, shifting back from any gains that Trump and the GOP made with that demographic in 2024. Seriously, Trump murdered any chance of Latino gains with Republicans for a generation with the ICE invasion of cities.

In general, Republicans just pissed off voters continuously, from Vivek Ramaswamy's horrendous ad accusing Amy Acton of lying, even about being raped, to Trump not shutting the fuck up about his goddamn ballroom and helipad. And whoever said they should make Twitch streamer Hasan Piker into a big issue should be whipped out of DC. The GOP freaks had nothing to run on, and they tried to pretend they were some kind of last line of defense against things that no one saw as a threat.

There will be more to say about what Democrats should do with the majorities they now have. But take a lesson from voters. Americans across the demographic spectrum understood that they had one very specific power, and they used it. Because that's what you do with power: use it to make lives better. Or at least make it so you can go back to being left the fuck alone.

Note: As long as I'm doing this, lemme push it a little further. All you need to do is ask some AI bot "Why are gas prices so high?" and then the algorithm will adjust to feed you a dose of reality on your social media. Click on one Meidas Touch post on Instagram and then you'll be inundated with progressive feeds (unless you're on Twixter, which probably just circles the fascist wagons and browbeats you into submission - I don't know - I don't go to that garbage dump anymore).

Vote Because the GOP Is Enabling a Rapist

Every time the New York Times or Politico or even Fox "news" tries to fluff some flaccid minor issue into a fully-erect controversy, I think, "The president is a rapist and that's something that should be talked about every goddamn day." Indeed, as Donald Trump and complicit Republicans pretend that the totally legal dirty trick of putting someone with the same name as GOP Senator Dan Sullivan on the ballot in Alaska is like an electoral crisis that demands judicial intervention, perhaps up to criminal and civil penalties against Democratic candidate (and frontrunner) Mary Peltola, the media is more or less ignoring a report put out by House Democrats detailing more rape allegations against Trump. And I might be a naif in legal matters, but I'm gonna say that supporting an alleged rapist as president is far more important than whether or not Alaskans are too stupid to figure out there can be more than one Dan Sullivan. 

There are a million fucking reasons to vote for Democrats and/or to vote against Republicans, from the Iran War to ICE's brutal rampage to Trump's wanton, extravagant corruption to the disgusting racism of Trump and many candidates to the failure to address Americans' deep anxiety about health care and income and affordability to the future-murdering refusal to do anything to mitigate the destructive march of the climate crisis to the attack on reality with election lies and immigrant lies and economic lies to the harm caused by the diminishment of science, like vaccines, in favor discredited bullshit to the abandonment of Ukraine in favor of Russia, which is a criminal enterprise disguised as a country to the shitting on our allies with threats and bullying to the baffling waste of funds and time on nonsense like ballrooms and monuments and marble and fake gold shit. I could go on.  You could go on. 

Every step of the way, Republicans in the House and Senate have either actively and enthusiastically voted for all of this or they have enabled it through inaction or vociferous support. The same goes for the rape allegations against Trump, and it's one giant reason to vote out Republicans. We have been living with a president who is a rapist, likely a child rapist, and it's time to fucking do something about that. Your vote for the Democratic candidates is one way to start to hold these rapist-loving bastards to account.

This past Monday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released a report that detailed aspects of the rape and sexual abuse allegations against Trump and his relationship with serial child rapist Jeffrey Epstein that haven't been public or haven't been put into a coherent narrative by a congressional committee. It's filled with disturbing details, like Trump's rape of Beatrice Keul, a Miss Switzerland who was in New York to compete in a beauty pageant owned by Trump. The rape occurred in the Plaza Hotel in November 1993; a month later, Trump married his second wife, Marla Maples, at the Plaza. Jeffrey Epstein was there for the pageant and for the wedding. 

Obviously, the details of the allegations are fucked-up. But the report is not merely a recitation of horrors and of lies (like that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, which...nope). Many of the victims made statements to the FBI, and falsely accusing someone of a crime is itself a crime. If they were lying, they were doing it with the threat of prosecution hanging over their heads. This is not to mention the possibility of lawsuits from Trump, who is the suingest asshole in the world.

To back up the allegations, the report gives us information like this about one survivor, who went by "Jane Doe 1" since she was 14 at the time: "As made apparent when viewed in the version made available to Members of Congress, but not to the public, Jane Doe 1 was viewed as a credible witness by DOJ investigators and prosecutors, and she was one of four women to testify against Ghislaine Maxwell during her criminal trial under the pseudonym  'Jane.' Jane’s testimony was devastating for Maxwell’s defense." Epstein had introduced her to Trump at Mar-a-Lago (which ought to be called "Meet-a-Pedo" from now on) with "This is a good one, huh?" to which Trump said, "Yes." 

Just think about that: This victim, who was raped or watched others being raped at several Epstein properties, was seen as having strong enough testimony that it could be used in court. 

Another woman, under the pseudonym of "Katie Johnson," sued Trump in 2016 for rape and sexual abuse. She dropped her lawsuit and has gone silent, but she had reported what happened to her by Trump and Epstein to the FBI. Other documents involving complaints to the FBI had been withheld by the Department of Justice in its release of the DOJ-selected Epstein files. Members of Congress had access, and that's why their content is discussed. 

There's more, so much more, in the 53-page report, yet you're not going to hear about any of it or about the fact that Republicans didn't want this to come out. You're gonna hear about the Alaska non-scandal or the tiff between insufferable loser Haley Stevens and rising star Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan or every tiny mistake by a Democrat blown up into a full-on breaking newsgasm. But you're not gonna hear more than something in passing, almost like, "By the way, Trump was accused of more rape. I know. Yawn, right?" instead of a five-alarm fucking blare that the president has been credibly accused of rape and assault by over a dozen women.

Why is it hidden by the corporate media? Perhaps because of the complicity of the billionaire owners of media companies? Perhaps once a media outlet goes down that road, it's all or nothing. If you start reporting that the president is a rapist, then you gotta follow that to its logical end: that president being removed from office and sent to prison.

A fuckton of voters do care about this. They care about the Epstein files. They care that the president is a rapist. They care that Republicans will never do anything about it. And if they give Democrats the keys to Congress, those Democrats better be ready to tear down the rapist-in-chief. As for you, dear voter, your decision is either to side with rapist-lovers or vote them out. You know what you need to do.

Vote Because It's Your One Chance to Make Some Billionaires Sad

My father fucking hated rich people. I mean, he despised the hell out of them as a group for simply existing. Some of this was born of his hardscrabble upbringing on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1950s. He went from struggling working-class kid to lower middle-class family man by the time he died at age 46, with some stops along the way to solidly middle class and to food stamps-needing poverty. But it wasn't simple resentment. He didn't aspire to be rich. He aspired to not have to worry all the time about money, a far more humble dream. Rich people were pricks, see, because of their material indulgences and their seeming freedom from consequences for their actions. He took great joy whenever a rich person suffered some fall from grace. Seriously, few things made him happier than seeing a rich man sad. This midterm election would thrill him.

If you look at a list of the 10 biggest individual/family donors to political campaigns this year, it's pretty fucking clear who the billionaires, as a whole, support. There is exactly one, George Soros, who gives primarily (or exclusively) to Democrats. The other nine give primarily (or exclusively) to Republicans, including sad, ranting pestilence Elon Musk, movie villains the Winklevi, and legit nutzoid cockscab Paul Singer, along with assorted investors, shipping magnates, and other assmites. They all desperately want the GOP to keep the majority in at least the Senate because they can slap down the House's subpoenas and investigations. But if the entire Congress is Democratic, then some shit is more likely to go through the fan and actually land on these pampered and powdered pussies. It's easier to defund Starlink contracts if you have both houses.

Early voting has gotten and is getting and will be getting under way across the country, and if you need to motivate someone to fucking vote, for fuck's sake, and vote for Democrats, then tell them that this is a rare chance to make some billionaires sad. I mean, really, how many chances do you, average Joe or Jane or  Jordan (to include a nonbinary name), get in this life to do something that might cause Elon Musk to cry? They are precious few, and not buying a Tesla isn't really one of them. This is like walking onto a yacht and kicking Jeff Bezos in the nuts. "Yeah, even rich balls can feel pain," you might yell.

Musk is going to end up dumping around a half-billion dollars into this election, if his current donation rate holds, to try to buy his way out of congressional oversight. The sad part is that this amount of money doesn't affect his wealth at all. He'll have made it back by the end of November, probably more. The sadder part is that our post-Citizens United campaign cash orgy has gotten so out of hand that the safe words have been abandoned and the billionaires are just fucking democracy to death with fistfuls of cash and laughing that no one is doing a goddamn thing to stop them. 

But what Musk can't buy is your ability to walk into a voting booth or a little voting cubby and click the machine or mark your ballot for Democrats. Even if he gave you a thousand bucks before you went to polls or filled in your mail-in ballot, you can still do what you want once it's you and a list of candidates. Musk can't stop what I hope is coming if Democrats get investigative power. Hell, Musk himself has even "joked" that if Democrats look into how he dicked over the world with his DOGE bullshit, including the mass murder of millions through his actions, he'd go to prison. 

It's not just Musk. All of those crypto dicks and AI douches, who are going in big for Republicans, would be looking at the potential (and, goddamn, they better not fuck it up) for genuine oversight from a Congress that actually acts like a co-equal branch of the fucking government and not Trump's ass wipe dispenser, cleaning him up after he shits all over himself and everyone else. All those clips of "Ruben Gallego Destroys Some Asshole at a Hearing" are functionally meaningless beyond making you feel good. However, if Gallego is part of a Democratic-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has the power to genuinely fuck up the shit of, say, Open AI's Sam Altman, who simply declined to go to a recent hearing. 

Maybe I'm just my father's son, but, goddamn, I wanna ruin the days of some rich fucks who think they're untouchable. Maybe they'll prove to be. Maybe Democrats are so corrupted by their billionaires' funds that they'll choke on taking a few down. But if you wanna at least try to put the ultra-wealthy on notice that their days of being above or beyond the law are over, you gotta be willing to make them cry. And with one simple action, you can can make that happen. Get out there and do it. You'll feel really good about yourself if we succeed. 

Ongoing Bullshit About Statues of Christopher Columbus, Genocidal Maniac

Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac and con artist who didn't know where the fuck he was going when he set out on the Atlantic Ocean to find passage to China. His calculations on his journey were so wrong that Portugal told him to go fuck himself with his yardarm. Motherfucker thought until the end of his greedy, murderous, enslaving life that he had found a passage to Asia. It's not even clear that he was Italian, despite the pathetic idiots who cling to that identity; various sources say he was Portuguese and Polish or maybe Catalan and Jewish. It's pretty telling that none of these groups are trying very hard to claim him, like "No, we're good, you keep that prick." (Note: I am Italian. Fuck Columbus.)

Starting a few years ago, a number of people decided that maybe it was some fucking bullshit to have statues everywhere that honored someone who encouraged and even rewarded the slaughter and mutilation and rape and enslavement of indigenous people. So dozens of them were torn down, removed, or moved to less prominent locations, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. Bringing attention to racial injustices and bullshit tributes spread from Black people to other groups. When you hear people criticize "wokeness" (or "Woke 1," god help us), they forget that almost all of it was a valuable reassessment of how we have built a society around racism and racist symbolism. So suck all our dicks, Columbus statues.

Now that the country as a whole has shifted from approving of wokeness to now being against any of the progressive connotations of the term, and now that we're run by a cabal of dickheads who would gladly go back to forcing slaves to dig for gold for them under threat of a behanding, all of a sudden, people want their fucking Columbus statues back. 

Just as you'd expect, a statue of Columbus now sits on whatever remains of the White House grounds. President Donald Trump, who always loves when he can honor a fellow rapist, has been cheering on Columbus like he's a crazed woman who wants to marry an imprisoned serial killer. In March of this year, a replica of a statue that had been tossed into the Inner Harbor in Baltimore in 2020 was plopped in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building like a pile of shit in human form. 

Trump has for years gone all-in on sucking Columbus's dick and, by extension, the dicks of Italian-American leaders who embarrass the rest of us with their worship of both. Apparently, "the radical left communists hate Columbus and they want to abolish Columbus Day. They're still trying very hard," Trump blurbled. He claimed that he's "resurrecting Columbus," like he's Jesus with Lazarus or some shit, and he called Columbus a "hero," which is like calling Ted Bundy "an expert in sorority rooming management."

In that same speech this past week, Trump demanded that the city of Columbus, Ohio, restore the statue of their namesake that had been taken down in 2020. Then, Mayor Andrew Ginther, who is still mayor now, said that it represented "patriarchy, oppression and divisiveness" and something better should be put in its place. A recent community group report said the statue, which is in storage, should be displayed in a "community facility" with proper historical context that doesn't involve lying about what a son of a bitch he was. 

The movement to restore Columbus is taking place elsewhere in the country. In Chicago, an Italian-American committee is trying to get three statues, including one in Grant Park, put back, even reaching out to Trump for help, which probably means Trump naming some random activist citizens so his idiot hordes can inundate them with doxxing and death threats. There's an ongoing battle over a statue in Syracuse, NY; that one should have been removed two years ago, but constant litigation has kept it in the center of town. The removed statue in Wilmington, Delaware, may end up returning when a move to prevent that failed at the City Council. Bridgeport, Connecticut, debated whether to put the statue back up and it looks like it will be restored. You get the idea: little battles everywhere a statue was taken down.

There's something so sad about a nation that can't give up its myths even when it's shown that the myths are bullshit, the heroes are pedophiles, and we can very much have a say here in how the Columbus clusterfuck of atrocities tale is told. It's of a piece of Trump and the nutzoid GOP's war on anything that would make white people look bad. Making people believe lies about Columbus rather than teaching them the truth about Jim Crow or migrant workers or the genocide of indigenous people is just easier than telling them the truth. "DEI" means just that: stop lying about the awful shit from our past and in our present.

One last note: the Columbus statue in Baltimore was in that city's Little Italy. In May, on the pedestal that remains, liberated from the colonizing madman that once stood there, an activist named Duane "Shorty" Davis placed a toilet. One local legislator got all upset because the local police said they weren't bothering to investigate, which seems exactly right. All the statues of Columbus should be reshaped into shitters that we can all use, especially on Indigenous Peoples' Day. 

The Cornell Rape Case from 2016 Shows How Not Much Happens Even If It's Handled Better Than Jane Doe's

The Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper at Cornell University, published an article on February 1, 2016, that said, "A female student reported she was sexually assaulted at approximately 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, after the perpetrator led her to a bedroom." The assault occurred at the Psi Upsilon fraternity house in the early morning of January 31, when "a white male, approximately 170 pounds, around 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a medium complexion and wavy dark brown or black collar-length hair" attacked the female student. As for what happened, he lured the woman to his room, and "he then locked the door, pushed the woman against the door and tried to have sexual intercourse with her twice from behind. He is also accused of forcing the woman to have oral sex with him and pushing her onto the bed where he allegedly sexually abused her with his fingers, records show."

A Deputy Chief of the Cornell University Police Department said that "Reports like this are relatively rare in our community because sex offenses are significantly under-reported." Unlike the 2024 horrific gang rape of Jane Doe, the CUPD's referral to local law enforcement in Ithaca and Tompkins County was acted on. A warrant was issued for an arrest. Still, Tompkins County DA Gwen Wilkinson blamed "underage drinking" for rapes and sexual assaults. 

The fraternity was given a temporary suspension from any activities while this was an ongoing investigation.

By the end of the first week of February, 21 year-old Wolfgang Ballinger turned himself in to face the felony charges: "attempted rape, criminal sexual assault, and sex abuse." Ballinger was the president of the Psi Upsilon chapter at Cornell where the rape took place. (Note: I'm using "rape" because forced oral sex and penetration with fingers are rape in the way any normal human understands the word, even if legal definitions vary.) 

Ballinger's father ran the very popular music venue Webster Hall in New York City where Wolfgang worked bar. Every woman is feeling how chilling that thought is: this guy in charge of your drinks.  Because Ballinger came from money, which inevitably means lawyers throwing everything at the prosecutor to derail the case, he wasn't formally indicted until July 2016 and only for one charge, first degree sexual abuse. 

In April 2017, Ballinger took a deal where he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of "forcible touching." In 2017, current DA Matthew Van Houten had taken over from Wilkinson, and he said that the victim "is wholeheartedly in support of this resolution." She did not want to have to go through the trauma of a trial. 

At the sentencing hearing, the woman made a statement, and you should read the excerpts in articles here and here for how the rape affected her and her family. This part really got me: "The day I went to the hospital for my rape kit, I had to first wait for another woman to finish being seen. When the nurse finally arrived at my room, she looked at me with sad, sunken eyes. ‘On average, 1 in 10 rapes are reported. That means 20 girls were likely assaulted last night because two of you went to the police today.’ I just looked back at her quietly. I didn’t feel lucky to be one of the women with the courage to come forward, I only felt grief. I am standing here today for the 18 other women that wanted to deal with their assault on their own terms.”

And this: "No matter how much money or status he has, it doesn’t let him take what he likes without consequence. Because there will be consequences. I will not stop. You cannot break me." 

Ballinger had already been expelled from Cornell, although he had started taking classes at NYU and Hunter College in NYC. He was sentenced to six years probation and given a fine, the strictest sentence allowed for the misdemeanor. His probation conditions included needing to stay away from children, relatives excepted, and a prohibition "from entering establishments where alcohol is sold 'for on-premise consumption.'" Oh, but he had an exception for his job at Webster Hall. He could still serve drinks to women there. Now, he's a "hospitality professional" who managed a hotel.

As for Psi Upsilon, the fraternity had its recognition by Cornell revoked for a 3-year period because of this case, other incident reports (including fights where racist words were flying at non-white students), and violating the interim suspension by having a party during it. And then, after an appeal, the Vice President for Student and Campus Life reduced it to 1.5 years. In an unexpected turn, the Board of Governors for the national Psi Upsilon body closed the Cornell house completely in September 2017 after a racist incident.

There you go. That's what happened when an on-campus rape allegation followed the proper process. It's pathetic, sure, but it's something, and that something is sadly reflective of the outcome of rape cases across the country. 

But here's the thing: Cornell knew what was going on at its fraternities and still let them continue. It knew how bad things were. It knew to the point that in December 2022, the Student Assembly issued a resolution "Condemning Greek Life" at the university. Among its assertions, "Cornell has a known rape culture where victims are silenced and perpetrators are often never held accountable for their actions" and "24% of undergraduate women who experienced nonconsensual sexual contact reported the most serious incident occurred at a fraternity chapter house or annex." It also mentions the 2016 case. 

The resolution didn't directly call for an end to fraternities at Cornell, but that's what should happen there and everywhere.

Trump Blames Biden for Things Biden Had Nothing to Do With

We know that President Donald "Wipe me, Natalie" Trump and his entire syphilitic administration love to blame every possible negative thing on President Joe Biden. Every blemish in DC, every policy that they don't like, every statistic that doesn't go their way, every hike in prices, every fucking thing. Hell, I'm sure Trump blames Biden for the fact that Melania would rather masturbate with a fake gold cherub than touch her husband. Any chance any of them get, they fucking blame Biden, despite the fact that, to my knowledge, Biden hasn't been anywhere near the levers of power for nearly 20 months. 

Of course, often, shit has nothing to do with Biden or is an exaggeration. Today, in fact, Trump said, "Oil is less expensive now than it was under the Biden administration." And, sure, if you measure by 2022 prices, it is lower. It went up to around $116 a barrel due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and now it's at, roughly, $95. But when Trump took over from Biden, it was down to $75 a barrel, and by my awesome ability to do basic math, I can state with certainty that $75 is lower than $95. 

On Thursday, September 17,  Trump had one of his Dinner with the Rich Yokels events where he invited heads of hunting and fishing organizations and corporations to watch him sign some executive orders making life easier for them and shittier for the environment. One of the EOs was about a couple of things that irritate some fishing businesses: a NOAA rule that ordered a speed of "no more than 10 knots applying to all vessels 65 ft (19.8 m) or greater in overall length in certain locations and at certain times of the year along the east coast of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard" in order to protect migrating whales, and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which was designed to prevent overfishing and other issues that can harm that industry and the oceans. Fun fact: The Stevens is Ted Stevens, the longtime and now-dead Republican senator from Alaska. 

Here's how Trump described what he was doing: "The Biden administration tried to bludgeon the boating and maritime industry with a ridiculous boating speed limit of no more than 10 miles per hour" and "This order also expands fishing seasons and fishing quotas, undoing another Biden disaster." Wow, that Joe Biden really loves sea life. 

Except facts will fuck your shit up and here are the facts: That rule on the speed limit? That was finalized and put into effect in 2008 when the president was, in fact, George W. Bush. The Magnuson-Stevens Act on fishing limits was initially passed in 1976, when Gerald Ford was president, and renewed in 2006, when, yeah, it was Bush. I mean, sure, Biden was a senator and the vote was unanimous, so there's a slight connection. By the way, both houses of Congress were under Republican control in '06. 

The Biden administration had nothing to do with either thing. But that doesn't stop Trump from fucking that glory hole with the name "Biden" above it in black sharpie again and again. He doesn't even care if there's a mouth on the other side. He doesn't care if he gets splinters. He'll keep fucking it until his dick falls off.

Trump made it sound like he was changing everything on these two issues immediately. "You can go slightly faster than 10 miles an hour, like 120 miles an hour if you're crazy," he assured the fishing industry people, "but you can go as fast as you want. We have that order. It's all signed, sealed and delivered." Except, of course, that's not what the EO even did.  It "does not repeal or suspend the existing vessel speed rule. The current 10-knot limit remains in effect for most vessels 65 feet or longer in designated Seasonal Management Areas along the East Coast." In both cases, it simply directs relevant agencies to look into changing things. It's not a done deal. It might well turn out to be. But you cannot "go as fast as you want." 

Trump doesn't even understand what the hell he's signing. He's said as much earlier in the ceremony, when he signed the other EO. That one actually was undoing Biden policy, "a nationwide ban on the use of lead shotgun ammo for waterfowl hunting because of the material’s known toxicity for waterfowl and other bird species," according to noted anti-hunting rag Field & Stream magazine. But Trump had no idea what the hell that means, and that's coming from him:

"This order also protects the use of affordable, traditional... Well, this is pretty good. I never knew this was a problem, Doug. You're going to have to educate me, but you put it in, lead ammunition. Is ammunition... Lead ammunition was a problem, huh? Is it better than other ammunition, I assume, huh? That's pretty good. I don't know what the hell that means but I know one thing. You wanted it. You wanted it. And I'm here for you."

In other words, Trump hadn't seen or heard of the executive order before putting his name on it. He didn't give a single, solitary fuck. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked for it and Trump didn't even care what it was. Not even one single moment of curiosity about the effects of lead ammo. It gave him an excuse to attack Biden on gun rights, and that's all he wanted to do.

And then, swear to fuck, he went on to tell the goddamn story about whether he'd rather get eaten by a shark or electrocuted underwater in a sinking electric boat again. At this point, I'll take the fucking shark.

A Totally Real Memo (Wink!) from the Department of Defe...War

A. From the Office of the Secretary of WAR, MOTHERFUCKERS!:

In accordance with Secretary of WAR, MOTHERFUCKERS! Pete "Peter" Hegseth's memo from this summer where the Secretary [note: Can we get that changed? Makes me sound like a chick- PH] informed our brave men (and women, for now) in uniform that no one is allowed to "be a pussy," and on wise, medically-sound guidance from Secretary of "Health" and "Human" Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is one of the good Moslems, we will begin testing all male service members at age 30 and over to ensure that the service member's level of the hormone testosterone (T) is acceptable. 

Testing procedures:
1. Groups of male service members will sleep in designated barracks the night before testing.

2. In the morning, Secretary Hegseth will go around to each bunk prior to service members waking and check to see if each member has an erection. If a service member does not have a full erection, Secretary Hegseth will engage with the service member's penis to bring it to full erection while an assistant times the length of time it takes to achieve full tumescence. Note: Secretary Hegseth requests that, if you wake up during this part of the test, you should continue to pretend you are asleep. AT NO TIME MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH SECRETARY HEGSETH. 

3. In groups of three or four, male service members will be brought into a room and asked to masturbate to ejaculation into a provided cup. Secretary Hegseth will be seated in a chair to watch each service member masturbate to ensure proper ejaculation occurs. The Secretary requests that service members only wear a white t-shirt and athletic socks as they enter the room. The Secretary will ask questions about the libidos and sexual activity of service members while they masturbate. Masturbation duration will be timed, with notes made if it take too long or too little time. As with the previous part of the test, DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH SECRETARY HEGSETH. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. 

4. Secretary Hegseth will personally test each semen sample by tasting it. He will be able to tell if the semen contains the correct minimum amount of testosterone by comparing it to the taste of his own semen, which he will provide for himself. Service members must stand at attention right after they have completed ejaculation while the Secretary tastes their semen and comments on various attributes he perceives. Even if Secretary Hegseth asks a direct question, DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH HIM. THE SECRETARY PERCEIVES ALL EYE CONTACT AS A THREAT AND MAY ACT ACCORDINGLY. 

5. Service members whose T is low will be forced to take regular injections of it in order to improve the service member's masculinity. If a service member refuses to receive the injections, they will be deemed "transgender" and forced to leave military service. 

6. Service members whose T is normal will be put back into regular duties.

7. Service members whose T level is above that of Secretary Hegseth's will be assigned to strip nude and oil wrestle the Secretary so he can prove that "You're not so tough." During these nude oil wrestling matches, DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH SECRETARY HEGSETH. HE CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENCE THAT WILL FOLLOW. THE SECRETARY MAY BE INTOXICATED AND HAS NO IMPULSE CONTROL EVEN ON GOOD DAYS.

8. If a service member defeats Secretary Hegseth at oil wrestling, that service member and his family will be deported. Probably to Liberia.