On Immigration, Embrace What They Hate, Democrats

My political theory is simple: most people are fucking idiots. They have the attention span of sugar-filled toddlers given free rein in a wrecked Toys R Us who, after they are done screaming for a while, fall asleep on the pile of moldy dolls they stacked up. They don't care if their rampage hurts them or anyone else as long as they get to rampage, and when they wake up from their naps, they are ready for the next rampage.

The job of politicians is to harness that disruptive energy and focus it on issues that matter. The problem, of course, is who is doing the harnessing and what are their issues. See, one way to read the rise and inevitable fall of Donald Trump is that he injected himself into the US electoral bloodstream and it was a jolt of newness for many voters (yeah, I know, we all knew who he was and what a piece of shit he has always been, but remember: most people are fucking idiots), and idiot voters who had backed Barack Obama's Hope and Change were tired of needing to give a shit about other people and loved being told they could be shitty again. See, the problem is that newness only lasts for so long and you have to evolve and offer something new again. Trump has not done that. He repeats the same shit endlessly, his grievances have never shifted, and his execution of his ideas has been utter garbage.

On the other end of the spectrum on this idea is the fast rise of progressive Democratic candidates in places where they haven't previously made in-roads. You know this is new because some candidates endorsed by traditional, moderate Democrats are losing primaries. Not all, and certainly the establishment hasn't lost all its influence, but there's a real thirst out there for those who are talking about populist ideas in ways that are not trying to appeal to some mythical Republican who wants to walk away from Trump and his MAGA cretin army. 

In other words, voters are craving someone to show them a different way to see the world, perhaps even a better way to see it. That's why the payoff is so slim when Democrats give credence to Republican madness on issues like immigration, LGBTQ rights, education, and, well, pretty much everything. You don't have to hand it to the GOP. You don't have to pretend that they have a point when they pretty fucking clearly do not. 

So there is a plain opening here for Democrats who speak about immigration not through a lens of deportation and criminality but by concentrating on the good of immigrants to the country, the necessity of continued population expansion, and the foundational American aspect of a constant influx of people from around the world. After 10 years of Trump's savagery about and towards immigrants and anyone who supports them, with all the energy that it takes to constantly hate and desire to punish them, it's a fucking relief to hear that you don't have to keep hating, that you can, in fact, accept and even love the vast majority of immigrants who just want to make their lives and thus all of our lives better. There's a huge swath of the population that's begging for that message, unmitigated by nods to "enforcement" of border laws and how many people have been deported, offering a counternarrative to the parade of grotesque crimes committed by migrants, as if no white people commit them, too. 

The same could be said for other issues, like the treatment of transgender kids and adults. That's why it's so disappointing when, say, Texas Senate nominee James "Hot Women Like Compassionate Dudes" Talarico said in an interview that he agrees that children should not get gender reassignment surgery. You know how many kids under 18 get that operation on their genitals? Virtually none, and it's usually for medical necessity. The number receiving top surgery is extraordinarily low, too.  There is no reason to say anything other than "I trust parents and doctors" when asked "Do you support trans mutilization of children?" or whatever President Fucko says. 

But let me focus here on immigration. I'm in the UK right now, and parts of the country are losing their fucking minds over an immigrant from Sudan attacking a white man in Belfast with a knife, on top of an earlier crime from December where a young white man was stabbed to death by a Sikh man, both born in the UK. The killer in that case was sentence to life in prison on June 1. Racist fucknuts, led by the worst pieces of shit like Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, and his hate buddy, Tommy Robinson, have been calling for violence against immigrants and non-whites, and shit got real in Belfast where homes and cars were burned down and people had to flee for their lives. Other outbreaks of bullshit happened in Scotland and elsewhere. They were smaller incidents, but thank fuck the World Cup is starting so that these assholes can focus their savagery away from families and onto the teams of other countries. By the way, there were over 500 violent knife crimes in the last year in NI, but no one had a race riot when Seamus shanked Liam over a broken shillelagh or whatever the fuck they do there. 

And while it's good to hear condemnation coming from Labour politicians and others, it's frankly galling that Prime Minister Keir Starmer and most of the party has spent the better part of two years trying to out-asshole the right on immigration into the UK. The same goes for Democrats in the US who still think bragging about how many people were deported under President Obama is a strategy to convince voters who are totally cool with concentration camps to vote for Dems. In case you don't remember, most Democrats were actually pissed about Obama's mass deportations back in the 2010s.

This isn't that fucking complicated. Democrats don't have to make "border security" the top item in their discussion of immigration policy because no matter what, the GOP is going to say they want open borders. Instead, make the case that immigration is who we are. Make it so that immigrants are celebrated, even if they came here and stayed without going through the absolutely insane immigration system we have. Not to solely focus on Talarico, but on this count, he's got one of the more immigrant-positive sets of policies. 

By offering this alternative to the bullshit the right keeps forcing on Americans, Democrats can say that we all get to chill the fuck out. Goddamn, don't you want to chill out over people who are your neighbors and co-workers and the people who works really friggin' hard? 

What's happening in the UK right now is what the racist dickscabs who work for the Trump administration and run Congress and ejaculate hate all over Twitter/X want to happen in the US. Hell, it's the policy of ICE to do everything short of burn down the homes of undocumented migrants. 

But voters love it when you offer an easier path. Shit, just tell them that the taxes paid by the undocumented will help save Social Security. Greed is always the greatest motivator.

Getting My Mind Around Trump's IRS Deal (Part 2: Lemme Tell You About Real Weaponization)

When the White House announced that a deal had been reached between the Internal Revenue Service and noted rapist of children and adults Donald Trump over Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the agency for a leak of his tax returns by a now-convicted IRS contractor, the layers of fuckery were thick. The idea of the deal is madness: a $1.8 billion...sorry, a $1.776 billion slush fund with no oversight beyond a Trump-approved committee is going to dole out cash to anyone Trump says was a "victim" of "lawfare" and "weaponization" of...fuck, I don't know, Congress? The justice system?...including, potentially, the deranged cretins who tried to overthrow the government and murder members of Congress and Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. 

I can't get my head around the idea that the president sued his own government and then came up with a deal that, for a moment, got the case dismissed and closed because everyone at the IRS and Justice Department knew that no judge or jury on earth would see this as anything other than a giant asshole being as assholish as humanly possible. 

But let's take a second and talk about this whole idea of "lawfare" and "weaponization." After all, it is an "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that's supposed to come out of the deal. And Trump and Republican spoogebags run around saying "weaponization" as another of their shorthand words and phrases that are meaningless unless you're up to your tits in MAGA bullshit, like "transgender for everyone." To them, the arrest and prosecution of people like the J6ers or cold sore aficionado Steve Bannon or anyone else Trump pardoned is something that demands reparations. Said a Justice Department official, "It is no secret that many were victims of the weaponization of the past administration...This type of lawfare should never occur again, under any administration."

Except you can bet that Leticia James or Kilmar Abrego Garcia or E. Jean Carroll or anyone being held without charge or trial in an ICE concentration camp won't get any claims approved by the Trump-humpers on this committee that will pretend to control the fund.

You wanna know what real "lawfare and weaponization" looks like? Oh, sweet children of America, let me take you back to the 1990s for another lesson in how Republicans have been motherfuckers busily fucking mothers for decades. See, when Bill Clinton was elected president, defeating an incumbent Republican and bringing the Reagan/Bush era of destroying the government to an end (I know Reagan's dickishness seems quaint compared to Trump's, but every conflagration starts with a flame), Republicans lost their goddamn minds and decided to make it their mission to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. And one way they did that was by congressional investigations and by berating Clinton into getting a special counsel appointed. 

Without going into all the details, which you can read about ad nauseam, the burgeoning right-wing media, driven at the time by talk radio, and the Republican takeover of Congress in the 1994 midterms led to a period where every time Bill or Hillary Clinton or anyone in their orbit farted too loudly, some goddamned congressional committee would have hearings or odious taint sniffer Ken Starr would expand his investigation. They would subpoena every staffer or appointee even tangentially involved in Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater, and anything else, and they would question them under oath. That meant these low-paid employees would need to hire lawyers so they didn't accidentally fuck themselves over, and it caused deep financial hardship and, in some cases, bankruptcy. 

And here's the thing: Republicans fucking well knew that's what they were doing. They fucking well knew they were destroying careers and families and lives over utter bullshit. No one was convicted of any crimes in connection to any of these "scandals" except for a couple of the Clintons' business partners in the failed real estate deal in Arkansas that was (no, really, kids, look it up) the reason the Whitewater investigation happened. You understand that? Republicans deliberately ruined people because they wanted to hurt the Clintons and it was all for nothing. 

That's some fucking lawfare. That's motherfucking weaponization. That's who Republicans are and always have been. And Trump is doing the exact same thing by siccing the Justice Department on anyone who ever crossed him or anyone who might try to stop him from fucking the nation or the world up even worse. 

Compare those Clinton staffers to the J6ers, who were tried and convicted of serious shit. No one who worked in the White House travel office in the 1990s beat a cop with a flagpole. Hell, let's update that and say that no one sitting at Delaney Hall in Newark on a hunger strike against maggoty food and abuse ever did that either. None of them cheered on an insurrection or allowed foreign infiltration of the highest levels of our government (looking at you, Michael Flynn). The idea that anyone who Trump might bless with millions of dollars deserves anything is repulsive, repugnant, reprehensible, and Republican. They are the weapons in weaponization.

Of course, there's also a pretty good chance that Trump just says he's the biggest victim and awards himself most or all the money because he's a greedy, aggrieved cuntmite. It is, as many have noted, the most corrupt thing any president has ever done, on top of the previously discussed elimination of any current audits of himself or anyone or anything close to him. And smarmy fuckworm and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has aided and abetted this criminality and deserves every punishment that should come his way in some hoped-for future.

Fortunately, even some Senate Republicans are queasy about the fund and want to find a way to stop it. And the federal judge who closed the case, responding to documents filed by 35 former judges in a giant "What the fucking fuck is this shit?" effort, has put a stay on any movement to make the slush fund real and is reopening the case she had closed because, indeed, "What the fucking fuck is this shit?"

It's something everyone in the country should be asking all the time.

Getting My Head Around Trump's IRS Settlement (Part 1)

If you spend a decent chunk of your precious life closely following and chronicling the often egregious fuckery of American politicians, you get used to a certain level of madness and stomach-turning betrayals of Everything We Stand For. You stare dead-eyed monsters in the face and call them out for being vicious, vile vacuums of humanity. You dare to load your mind with the myriad ways that decent and indecent people end up fucking everyone over. Shit that would surprise others is just another day for you. "Oh, we were lied into another war? Sounds like us."

Lemme put it this way: you might have heard about ballmaxxing and been shocked by it, as in "Holy fuck, you mean there's a thing where men inject fluid into their nutsack to make it look huge?" Yeah, that's weird. And it was weird back in 2009 when I wrote about the practice then called "scrotal infusion" and said that it's an apt metaphor for the Bush administration. I'm not gonna explain. Click and read, motherfuckers, click and read. So, really, my response to the current ballmaxxing discourse is a muted sigh.

Now, if you told me that there's something called "bombballing" where men decide to surgically fill their scrotums with small explosives and try to fuck intensely so one of them blows up because they'll cum so hard it makes them shit themselves, then I'd likely have more of a "Whoa. Ouch. What the fucking fuck?" reaction.  

What I'm trying to say here is that so much of what is done by President Donald Trump, who answers the question "What if an overgrown Oompa-Loompa, but on bath salts?", enrages me, but it's not breaking my brain because mostly I think, "Of course. It's Donald fucking Trump. What did you expect? Grace and dignity?" But this motherfucking IRS "settlement" (in that it's not a "settlement" because no court anywhere would ever sign off on this corrupt garbage) is bombballing to me. 

Start with the unfathomably indecent addendum, where Trump, his family, their companies, and anyone or anything tangentially related to those ("without limitation") are given a free ticket on any federal tax crimes they've done because the United States is "FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, appeals, or requests for any relief, including injunctive relief, monetary relief, damages, examinations or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney's fees, expenses, and/or interest, whether presently known or unknown, that - as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement - have been or could have been asserted by Defendants [the IRS]."

Look at that shit, force fucked into existence by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is so devoid of a soul that the Devil didn't even bother to buy it. What blows my mind here is the idea that any crimes already committed by Trump, by Eric, by fucking Jared, by Barron's friends cannot be investigated, audited, or prosecuted by the IRS forever. That's telling the law to go fuck itself sideways with a chainsaw. That's taking the Constitution, wiping your ass with it, and using it to set a pile of American flags on fire so you can cook some bald eagles. It's the kind of deal that supervillains dream of and then laugh about because it's utterly impossible for it to be real. But that's how fucked our government is right now. That's the deal that it made with itself for no reason other than Donald fucking Trump wanted it.

It's the ultimate expression of the Trump grievance machine, where everyone is out to get him and his shitty family, where he's merely an innocent victim of "lawfare" and "weaponization" of the law, terms that are completely devoid of meaning when Trump himself sued CBS for editing an interview in a way he didn't like and sues everyone all the time for the merest slight. He's a sue-happy bitch, and some judge should slap the shit out of him and his attorneys for filing frivolous lawsuits. 

Gonna stop here for today. I'll do more this week on the monetary side of things, which is really about who has free speech in this devolved nation. But this is beyond any scandal we've ever seen. And any elected official who is okay with it needs to be whipped into the political hinterlands. 

(Note: An earlier version of this said that it included future crimes, which someone with actual legal expertise told me was wrong. I'm still stuck on the idea that anything that may "arise out of...Lawfare and/or Weaponization" is included, and that's where I thought it absolved the bastards of all tax shenanigans from here to eternity. And, frankly, if this idiotic addendum stands and some criming should happen, I'm betting Blanche or another dickbag lawyer might try to weasel out of it using this. But I could be totally wrong, so, yeah, I corrected.)

A Poem for Memorial Day

"Asking for a Friend" by Abby E. Murray

Is there a way to tell

the commander’s wife

you’re a pacifist

and it’s possible

to trust your spouse

but mourn his work

because the death

he’s delivered

through the cracks

of thatched rooftops

is more than a fracture

beneath his skin

and the flag is a reminder

and gravel is a reminder

and pins and ribbons

and coins and the smell

of diesel and buildings

without doors are a reminder

and you won’t secure

the gold battalion crest

over your left breast

no matter how many

times she tells you

it’s like a sweetheart pin

and the last thing

you want when

your father is found

dead in his duplex

is an email asking when

she can drop off

some meatballs in sauce

and you can’t stop

swaddling your brain

in yesterday’s Times

to see what city has fallen

as if they topple

rather than burn

and you refuse to stop

reading and doubting

until no one makes sense

and every deployment

is a Talking Heads song

and every morning

is an invitation to dance

in a pill bottle

and you’re not interested

in keeping busy

and you don’t want

more group texts

and you don’t want

your daughter learning

to shoot a rifle

with the other kids

who aim at a silhouette

of someone’s son

tied to a haystack

and you don’t want

to host a dress swap

before the gala

and you don’t want

a souvenir photo

with the bald eagle

and every time

the commander says

let’s thank our ladies

you want to toss the table

champagne flutes and all

and watch all the favors

you’ve done to prompt

his gratitude go flying

because you’ve tried to say

war is necessary

but the words are like

spiders in the shower

they have every right

to be there and yet

you are crawling up

the side of yourself

trying to get clean

without howling

and you don’t want

to call them our boys

and you don’t want

to be called household 6 

or a rock or a pillar

and the only commanders

you trust are the ones

who seem pained

by the movement

of their own bones

given to them

by their mothers

freely and without

any mental reservation

and it’s against your beliefs

to say things are fine

when the satellites

click and blink above us

unwilling to share

which target needs water

and which needs bread

and if anyone knows

a way to say this

without provoking

the commander’s wife

to roll a wide stone

over your spouse

and his career

let’s meet soon

I’ll buy you a beer

(Murray is the editor of Collateral, a journal that publishes works about "the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone.")

In Foreign Policy, Trump Learns That White Doesn't Make Right

Racists try really fucking hard to mask their ignorance and fear with all kinds of bullshit ways of saying racist things and enacting racist policies (when in a position to do that). Because when all you've got is "white makes right," you've gotta fill it out with all kinds of utterly dull comments about the superiority of the Greeks or Romans or other Europeans (not you, Albanians, and they're a little dicey on Spaniards. Oh,  and the less said about Jews, the better), and then you just sound pathetic because white people have been as savage and stupid and destructive as any group of humans. Just because you've got Shakespeare doesn't mean you don't have a penchant for slaughtering each other over stupid shit or because you've got insane leaders.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that Donald Trump is sold to racists as some kind of pinnacle of the innate superiority of whiteness, and it's kind of hilarious that he's so fucking dumb and so fucking blind to his own flaws that he just keeps punching himself under his gut in his tiny ballsack every single time he attempts to assert his illusionary white superiority over non-white leadership in other countries. 

The thing about Trump and all the idiots, greedy pricks, and hangers-on who enable him is that they think that their whiteness is a superpower when, really, it's their tragic flaw. 

What we've seen in the last several months is a display about the inevitable doom of whiteness in the modern world. Defense Secretary and someone with resting "I'm gonna roofie a chick" face Pete Hegseth fired experienced leadership in the military and also fired any white man who thought that non-white men and women in general shouldn't be fired or denied promotions just because they're not white men. Fuck you for being an ally, General.

These stupid shits didn't realize that diversity, equity, and inclusion isn't about elevating people who don't deserve it. It's about making sure that you don't avoid hiring qualified people because of your own unconscious biases or conscious bigotry. DEI is just a shorthand way of saying, "Hey, you white douche, don't be a fucking asshole." But, of course, Hegseth is only a fucking asshole. It's the only aspect of his personality that still exists. 

Of course, Hegseth's fuckery (and inexperience) affected the war with Iran. Add to that the State Department getting DOGEd in the ass by Elon Musk and his brigade of pasty incels, who culled the joint of diplomats with expertise in Near and Middle East affairs. Yeah, who needed those pinheads?

What Trump and Hegseth thought was that Iran would just crumble under a US/Israel bombardment and be done within days. They really had the colonial mindset about the East (Near, Middle, Far) that has fucked over the white West repeatedly, from Vietnam to Afghanistan (for the USSR and, to an extent, the US) to Iraq and a thousand other examples. It's the shit that Edward Said wrote about, the white rapists' view of the East as, essentially, an easily fuckable woman. And no matter how many times the East cuts the nuts off a rapist, the next rapist goes back thinking they're totally gonna overpower a country this time. That's easier to attempt when you've gotten rid of everyone around you who says, "This is a terrible fucking idea and you're gonna end up with your sack removed."

So, yeah, Trump might, as he's threatened again, commit genocide in Iran, but that just shows how weak he is and what absolute nonsense this belief in the superiority of whiteness is. Jesus, they thought they could send Jared "Bitch Eyes" Kushner to negotiate peace and that Iran would bow down. What these dumb motherfuckers have learned is that other countries have actually competent leaders who have an understanding of what makes their enemies weak. In the case of Iran, you have religious zealots who will mass slaughter their own people and who gave in once on its nuclear ambitions with the JCPOA, only to see our troglodyte president rip up the deal. You'd have to be an irrational idiot to believe anything Trump says has any permanence, and the Iranian leadership may be irrational, but they're not idiots. The war is a rank failure, and Trump has dicked over the entire globe, except for Russia and, frankly, Iran, and Iran knows it.

That same stench of filled diaper and pit sweat failure hangs over Trump's shambolic bumblefuck in China. He thought he could charm and cajole Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Xi played Trump like an erhu, getting himself and China elevated to an equal superpower in the world economy. Trump spent his time acting like a bumpkin child, embarrassingly overpraising both China and Xi, prostrating himself by hinting that he'd bail on Taiwan and prostituting US corporations like a louche pimp with a syphilitic line-up. Again, Trump was dealing with a leader who, despite being an absolute monster in many ways, lives in the real world, with investment in alternate energy and high functioning infrastructure (at least in the cities). Xi even shit on the US to Trump's stupid face, and Trump just grinned like the moron that he is. 

There's your avatar of white racial superiority, completely steamrolled by non-white leaders. Non-Western nations won't bow down; the racists were completely fucking wrong. And unless you are determined to completely eliminate those countries and people, then your racist ass needs to accept that this is the world we live in. We can be part of it, with immigration and free trade and maybe a bit of humility, or we'll be told to go fuck ourselves out of existence.

Trump Sets His Idiot Hordes on Justices Gorsuch and Barrett Over Birthright Citizenship

Over on Truth Toilet, President Donald Trump, who should be put in a room with a bear, a lion, a shark, and a squirrel and then asked if he can tell the difference, posted a long attack on the Supreme Court. Or, really, on two justices he appointed, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. He starts, "I 'Love' Justice Neil Gorsuch! He’s a really smart and good man, but he voted against me, and our Country, on Tariffs, a devastating move. How do I reconcile this? So bad, and hurtful to our Country. I have, likewise, always liked and respected Amy Coney Barrett, but the same thing with her. They were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly!" 

Trump has no concept of how government functions. He didn't give a fuck that there are agencies and departments (like Justice) that are supposed to be able act independently from the president, only adhering to the law and the Constitution that they, you know, like him, took a vow to uphold. He has never given a fuck that he doesn't own the government and all its buildings, that he's the employee of the citizens of the United States and not our CEO. So he decided to contort it all in his image. He has force-fucked all the areas of the executive branch repeatedly until they have simply collapsed and just lets him have his way with them. And even though the Supreme Court and other courts have given him wide latitude to commit crimes without any kind of consequences, it's not enough. Time to rape the Judicial Branch because it won't just lay back all the time and take it.

In one of the truly fucked up things Trump has said, not just this weekend (although it's tempting to time limit it) but in his entire cursed presidency, he continued his Truth Toilet dump about Gorsuch and Barrett, "They have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to 'almost' the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court." Take that fuckery in and let it marinate for a couple of moments. The president of the United States is demanding that judges he appoint do his bidding. In other words, fuck the law, fuck the Constitution, fuck any oaths, fuck ethics, fuck it all. Trump is the country and the country is Trump and there is no in-between. 

What becomes clear as the post goes on is that Trump has been given a heads up that Gorsuch and Barrett are voting against him in the case of Trump v. Barbara. That's the birthright citizenship case, which asks if Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship violates the 14th Amendment, which it clearly does and it's stupid we're even talking about it but four justices are cocks about it. So it looks like Trump knows he's gonna lose.

I'm not making this up about Trump knowing. He says it: "I choose people to help our Country, not to hurt it, and now, based on what I witnessed recently by being the first President in History to attend a Supreme Court session (Which fact was not even recognized or acknowledged, out of respect for the position of President, by the Court — Something which did not go unnoticed by the Fake News Media!), they will be ruling against us on Birthright Citizenship, making us the only Country in the World that practices this unsustainable, unsafe, and incredibly costly DISASTER. I don’t want loyalty, but I do want and expect it for our Country." Putting aside the lie that he keeps repeating about the number of countries that have birthright citizenship (it's 33, which I've been led to believe is more than zero), how do you state that so plainly unless you were told what the decision would be? 

Because no decision is set until it's released, what else is clear is that Trump is trying to intimidate Gorsuch and Barrett into changing their votes on the case by being so personal in his hurt and so specific in his attacks. He is setting his idiot hordes on them for death threats and doxxing and other bullshit. Trump only knows rape and gangsterism. It's how he's lived his whole life. If he can't fuck it or make money from it, then he will punish it. So now the two justices must suffer unless they wise up. He knows that it just takes a word from him and the hordes will swarm them.

(Quick aside, if it's just Gorsuch and Barrett among the conservatives who support the plain text of the 14th Amendment, that's so unbelievably fucked that it's kind of stomach-churning that the entire Constitution is hanging on by a 5-4 fraying thread.)

Also, it seems like Trump was butthurt that the justices didn't pause their hearing on the case to recognize that he was in the courtroom. Motherfucker, the president isn't the boss of the Supreme Court. I know that the legislative branch controlled by the GOP has decided that it's just there to be a cum dump for Trump. But the branches are allegedly coequal. One is not in charge of the other. Sonia Sotomayor didn't walk into the Oval Office, slap Putin's dick out of Trump's mouth, and demand he pay attention to her. 

The post finishes with "Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day, but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!! Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide. A negative ruling on Birthright Citizenship, on top of the recent Supreme Court Tariff catastrophe, is not Economically sustainable for the United States of America!" Let us pause to consider a grown man, a senior citizen, the president, no less, punctuating something with three exclamation points like an enraged tween who didn't get Olivia Rodrigo tickets. More importantly, somehow, for over a century, the country was functioning just fine without his arbitrary tariffs and with birthright citizenship. But, fuck, let's just pretend it was all a giant shitstorm prior to the brilliant Donald Trump recognizing that what we really needed was to raise prices on everything and decimate the working class. 

Trump's weekend rants are usually deserving of eyerolls. But he's working the refs here, and underlying everything is always a threat. Let's not be naive and think that this is anything else.

(Note: I left out the part where Trump once again goes through all the ways he claims he won a "landslide" in 2024. He did not. Not even close. He counts the number of counties he won. Land is not people. Land doesn't vote.)

(Note 2: I don't play the game of whether or not Trump wrote this. I don't give a fuck who tapped it into the Toilet. It's under his name. That's all that matters.)

The Conservative Supreme Court Majority Stops Pretending It's Not Racist and Republicans Gladly Follow Suit

Last week, the New York Times (motto: "The people eating at red state diners are fucking sick of us") reported on the failure of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to find cases of discrimination against white men. Oh, they're trying to find 'em because that's what the racists in White House are demanding. Based on nothing more than aggrieved dickheads in the manosphere and other fact-free sources, the EEOC back in December said it was shifting to a "conservative view" of what racism is, meaning that it's white people, especially men, who are the victims. So they put out the call for whiny white twatmites to file cases with the agency, and, well, "staff in several districts said they were struggling to find complaints with merit. And they said they were pressed by their superiors to look for reasons to keep those cases alive, even when evidence was weak."

Lemme bottom line it: there is virtually no demonstrable discrimination against white men in the workplace (or anywhere else) unless you assert that the act of hiring non-white people and women is discrimination. The attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs is a sham, especially since DEI programs help everyone (like white men with disabilities, for instance). And they are not illegal, despite what the Trump administration keeps saying as if it can force-fuck the idea into being.

But it's an item of faith on the right (and has been for decades) that traditional civil rights enforcement is all about harming white people. Or, if you see yourself as a more enlightened racist asshole, you might say, "It was once necessary, but it's not anymore because racism is over." Of course, you'd have to ignore the fact that Black Americans earn 36% less than white Americans, and that this disparity holds true across jobs at all levels. Oh, and the Black unemployment rate is nearly double the white one. I mean, fuck, just look at the Trump Administration and you can see the bleaching of the national identity. Any time there's a cabinet meeting, it's like a Klan rally. Add in how law enforcement and the courts treat non-white people, and, well, you gotta lie pretty hard to say racism is dead.

This flawed thinking is behind the Supreme Court's fucked but inevitable decision in Callais v. Louisiana, which ripped the guts out of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act "which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation." The decision invalidated a congressional district map that gave Louisiana two majority Black districts after a federal court decision told the state in 2024 that it had to create the map with the 2 districts or the court would make do it for the state. After putting the case on hold in 2024, the savage conservative majority on the Supreme Court took it on for the sole purpose of killing the VRA. In a heavy legalese decision, Justice Samuel "YouTube right-wingers made me even crazier" Alito said, in essence, a map that considers race is racist so you can stop considering race and just make maps that have majority white people since they elect Republicans and that's totally not racist. In other words, the majority's decision is racist bullshit. 

Never to be outdone on racism, Justice Clarence "No one hates Black people more than me" Thomas said in a concurrence that while Alito pretended that he wasn't killing Section 2, he would have double-tapped it.

So Louisiana, a state that is one-third Black and has six seats in the House of Representatives (see how math works?), will now redraw the map for November's election to completely eliminate the two majority Black districts. The only way to do that is to carve up New Orleans, a city that is 55% Black, and the only reason you wouldn't have a New Orleans district is to prevent a Black person (who will likely be a Democrat) from being elected. The same goes for Baton Rouge, another majority Black city. Rational division of the state would give its two most populous cities a district each. But Republicans aren't looking to draw maps fairly. They are going to carve up those cities and Shreveport (third largest, also majority Black) and combine them with white suburbs and rural parishes and deliberately dilute the color out of them. And the Supreme Court will not call that "racist."

And lemme tell you: Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is a motherfucker of insatiable appetites. He will fuck mothers as often and as viciously as he can, and he's cheered on by the shit show at the fuck factory that is the Louisiana legislature. So, yeah, fuck early voting that has already gotten under way in all other races. Landry is declaring a state of emergency (no, really), calling back the legislature to redo the map, and suspending voting for the primaries for congressional seats to get it done, even though a couple hundred thousand absentee ballots have gone out, including to troops overseas, and, Jesus fuck, what a clusterfuck just to be racist as quickly and intensely as possible. Other red states are likely going to join in, and lawsuits are sprouting like weeds, as they should be, to choke this effort out.

This is the country the racists want, where we're always scrambling to make shit more racist. And the racists are in charge, and they are aggrieved like toddlers who were just told they can't have their fifth cookie. It's never enough. You'd think the fact that all these white people got elected and run the courts and everything would prove that some kind of racism against whites isn't actually real. But reality always fucks things up for them even as they fuck up reality.

Random Observations on Another Weird Attempted "Assassination"

1. The quotation marks around "assassination" in the title are not because I believe in any of the conspiracy bullshit about the attempt by Cole Tomas Allen to kill someone at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night. It's comforting to think that our enemies are so competent that they can stage shootings with ease any time they think it might bolster Donald Trump's low approval ratings. But always remember: the more people needed for a conspiracy means the less likely a conspiracy is real. No, the reason for implying it was a so-called assassination attempt is because Allen never got anywhere near close enough to actually attempt to kill Trump or a member of his administration. Even Trump said this. Allen made it to the metal detectors near the stairs leading to the Hilton ballroom. Besides, we live in the goddamn United States. We're never far away from someone shooting a gun. It's what we are debased enough to call "freedom."

2. However, if I were inclined towards conspiracies, it sure as fuck seems like the real reason would be to get Trump's goddamn golden ballroom/Hitler bunker built. Probably that's more "never let a crisis go to waste" than anything else. But, still, it's fucking weird how the quickly coordinated reaction on the right was that the violence meant that courts and historical preservation groups and Democrats and, well, most of the general public should back the fuck off and let the ballroom be finished. Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Republican scumfucker from Montana, said he's introducing legislation to approve the ballroom construction. They are fucking shameless. 

2a. What's the point here in saying that events like this should take place in the fortress ballroom? The WHCD is not a White House-sponsored thing. Trump was a guest of the association running the dinner. The implication is that Trump will rent out the ballroom like the White House is another one of his shitty hotels (and there's no doubt that he'd keep at least a taste of that money, if not the whole thing). The entire effort, the unrelenting push for and hype about the ballroom, is not simply unseemly. It's shady. It's skeevy. It's got grift and graft written all over it, and, you know, we're at war in a sinking economy and how the fuck is this even a thing.

2b. And fuck John Fetterman again and forever for jumping on the ballroom bandwagon. 

2c. Trump keeps saying that presidents have been wanting a giant-ass ballroom for "150 years." I don't recall any president in my lifetime mentioning it at all. Was Chester Arthur hot for one? Or Grover Cleveland, non-consecutively? And Teddy Roosevelt did whatever the fuck he wanted to the White House. If he wanted a ballroom, he'd have had one fucking well built.

2d. Maybe someone could spend a few minutes talking about how gun control would make the president and everyone else safer. Maybe spare a thought or two for all the people fucking shot and killed in mass shootings recently. Maybe think about how to make life easier for kids at schools so they don't have to worry about getting slaughtered in their classrooms. Maybe stop to consider how, in a country flooded with guns, this shit was inevitable.

3. The shooter's "manifesto" (if by "manifesto," you mean, "a friendly letter that is weirdly well thought-out") was pretty fucking clear about what he thought of Trump. He said, "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." And of the attendees at the dinner, "[M]ost people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit." I'm not handing it to Allen or excusing his violence, but I will say that a fuck of a lot of people really and truly believe this about Trump (me included). And by the Department of Justice refusing to release the Epstein files, by refusing to name anyone else involved, by never investigating the allegations against Trump, then it's pretty easy and logical to reach the conclusion that something is being hidden. This isn't conspiracy thinking. There's tons of evidence, with witnesses and victims who have gone on the record, under oath, to law enforcement and Congress. Again, I'm not supporting violence, but, again, in a country filled to the tits with guns and people who think, not without cause, that the president is a pedophile? It's frankly surprising that there isn't more violence trying to get the answers. 

4. I'm not saying everyone who attended deserved to think they were going to die. (I'm not saying no one deserved to think that, either.) Save for the White House press pool, which is there to write about events as news, if you went to the dinner, you were taking part in a complete whitewashing of Trump's disdain for you, and, after Allen was captured, you were laughing with the targets of the shooter, taking selfies for your Instas, making dramatic TikToks about your trauma. You were giving aid and comfort to the people who want you imprisoned if you dare to speak against them. If you believe in signs that maybe you should do things differently in the future, dear, sweet, profit-driven, craven media whores and your corporate pimps, this would be it. God, don't fucking take a mulligan and try to do the dinner again.

4a. And fuck off if you're saying that Democrats and progressive media figures should "turn down the rhetoric" against Trump or whatever the fuck. Clarence Thomas recently gave a speech where he implied that progressives should be killed or kicked out of the country. Stephen Miller regularly rails against Americans who oppose the administration, calling them "traitors" and implying they need to be executed. Trump and his cabal of crypto cons and cockscabs are murdering people without trial, imprisoning families for months for no reason, trying to strip Americans of citizenship, murdering protesters, and threatening genocide. It's impossible to reach that level of actual violence with rhetoric. 

4b. Man, that was a shitty mentalist.

5. As Will Bunch wrote, this is our country now. We are so numb to gun violence that we roll our eyes at someone even getting somewhat close to being able to make an assassination attempt. We are numb to the constant barrage of hatefulness. We are so bereft of anything approaching a unifying leader that the media is willing to treat Trump with kid gloves if he pretends for a few minutes to not be an inflamed asshole. In the two days prior to last night's events, Trump made racist attacks on Hakeem Jeffries and Candace Owen, reposted calls for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to be arrested, celebrated committing more war crimes, and that's just to start. We don't have to pretend that a motherfucker isn't a motherfucker just because someone wanted to kill him.