Oh, good people of Left Blogsylvania and the Prog Twitterverse and all the liberal socials, at the end of every long December, this here little corner of the internets looks back on the fucked up year not through longform, naval-gazing hot takes and not through endless lists of infobits. No, around these parts, we write haiku. Over the last decade plus, a thousand or so of you have submitted and had them either summarily rejected by me or forever ennobled in these filthy pages.
So that time is upon us once again. Submit your haiku about events in goddamned 2018 to "rudepundit(at)yahoo(dot)com." I am the sole arbiter of all things haiku here, and my judgment is susceptible to various impairments both legal and not.
I'm a stickler for the form: one line of 5 syllables, one line of 7 syllables, and one line of 5 syllables, in that order. They can be as filthy, funny, or fucked-up as you like. You can be serious, silly, or sanctimonious. Titled or untitled. The best ones get published on here over the next few days, so lemme know what name you want on it (in case your boss or mate or Mom sees it) and where you're from. Like "Cockknocker from Shitheel, AK" or "Linda from San Francisco" or something.
Here are few to get your brain juices a-flowing:
Brett Kavanaugh whined
That women dare judge the judge.
Squee toasted with beer.
An orange monster
Lashing out at brain phantoms
Is our president
Prison will be tough
For a supple little boy
Like Jared Kushner.
That was so simple. Join in the fun. Send 'em on in, and I'll post a bunch, along with more of my own. Let's all kick the darkness of 2018 until it bleeds daylight.
12/26/2018
Things That Eased the Pain in 2018
Goddamn, this year felt like a decade. Between the unending chaotic fuckery of Donald Trump and the polluted stream of information that is constantly flowing through our brains via our various screens, we are reaching a point of saturation where the sweet kiss of an asteroid would be a relief. Barring something that quick and cataclysmic (as opposed to the creeping cataclysm of climate change), we have needed our fixes of peace, things that can jack right into the pleasure center and tell us, "Spend some time in this other world for a little while."
So, in 2018, here are some of the things that made it all just a bit more tolerable:
1. Live comedy was a motherfuckin' salve. When I saw Marc Maron at the Beacon Theatre last month, his full-blown return to political comedy led to one of the funniest riffs on the hypocrisy of the Christian right that I've ever heard. It was so savage and crude and cathartic that I thought I'd pass out from laughing. Yes, John Mulaney's "horse in a hospital" bit was amazing, but Maron's starts with Mike Pence contemplating sucking cock and then it gets absurdly filthy.
For a sheer, bludgeoning rush of stand-up power, the tight ten that Robert Kelly did one night at the Comedy Cellar in April couldn't be beat, and Lynne Koplitz (who, full disclosure, is an old friend), on the same bill, unleashed a torrent of hilarious self-deprecation that ultimately was about how the culture around her judges middle-aged women. Some sublime shit there.
2. Continuing with the live stuff, big and small, Beck's big, visually impressive show at Madison Square Garden in July was a total grown-up dance party. On a smaller scale, Mitski's impassioned, artsy performance at Brooklyn Steel earlier this month was a powerful reminder of how you can feel music in your bones. Courtney Barnett's rain-soaked summer concert at Prospect Park was a raw display of guitar god shredding. And I finally got to see Foo Fighters, who have embraced all the cheesy rock cliches and come out with an awesome blast of a show, powered by Dave Grohl's obvious delight in being there, playing for us. For bliss upon bliss, listening to a group of Cajun musicians jam together while drinking beer and eating boudin at the Bayou Teche Brewery in Arnaudville, Louisiana, was about as fine a way to laze away an afternoon as I could conceive.
3. The albums that I've listened to endlessly this year are Historian by Lucy Dacus, which is a journey into heartache that moves from gorgeous hushes to gut-punching wails; and Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae, a friggin' masterclass in the history of modern black music, like most every Prince record was. Speaking of journeys, Alejandro Escovedo's The Crossing took the immigrant experience and the American experience and merged them into a gorgeous and brutal concept album. I could go on and on with all the great music released this year, like Father John Misty's God's Favorite Customer, his best album since his first; Kacey Musgraves's Golden Hour, her best album since her first; not to mention the new ones by Parquet Courts, Let's Eat Grandma, Noname, and the Decemberists, as well as the aforementioned Mitski, Beck, and Courtney Barnett.
4. I'm a theatre geek for plays (not much of a musical guy), and this year I got to fulfill a bit of a dream in seeing a live production of Amadeus, which was done with an onstage orchestra that moved in and out of scenes in an epic, huge, marvelous performance at the National Theatre in London. Also in London, the Bridge Theatre put on a vital, energized modern-dress Julius Caesar with David Morrissey as Mark Antony and Michelle Fairley as Cassius, where the we in the audience were the raging crowd in Rome, shoved and manipulated by Caesar's soldiers, forced into hiding during war.
In New York, the bracing and expansive production of Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman (which came from London) brought together the violence of myths and the violence of history and its effects on one Irish family. Two productions at the tiny Soho Rep were hypertheatrical examinations of race in a United States that can't get past its past: Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, about two scarred sisters on a journey to kill their father, and Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury, about a middle-class black family that literally turned the audience into the show. I also loved Yerma, in a massive staging at the Park Armory, and Hurricane Party, a balls-to-the-wall old fashioned theatre throwdown with sex, drugs, and violence.
5. TV? Fuck, where to start? The Americans had one of the best last seasons and finales of any show ever. Homecoming was a great mystery inside a mind fuck, with a performance by Julia Roberts that made you say, "Whoa, I forgot that she's this fucking good." If you're not watching The Good Place, you're just an idiot. Same with Bojack Horseman and Better Call Saul. Atlanta was so great that it essentially created its own genre. The Terror was a genuinely frightening, genuinely moving historical horror show. GLOW, Maniac, and Barry all took their plots and characters in exciting, novel directions. And my favorite new show this year was Killing Eve, with its two immediately indelible leading characters and more great plot twists than Agatha Christie on a bender.
6. And, hell, just go see or download or on-demand or stream: Sorry to Bother You, Eighth Grade, Mission Impossible: Fallout, BlacKkKlansman, Revenge, A Quiet Place, and Isle of Dogs. And if you haven't seen Black Panther, the fuck is wrong with you? (I'd put Hereditary and First Reformed in here, but they are both just traumatizing, so they don't exactly ease any pain.)
7. Finally, a couple of podcasts (other than Serial and In the Dark, which this season are just essential listening): One of the funniest damn things I've heard this year is Done Disappeared, a satire of true-crime podcasts that had its second season. Its host, John David Booter, is blissfully unaware of his ego running amok, and his ridiculous cases (like solving a crime that had already been solved) are immensely entertaining. And, finally, the second season of Limetown dropped. The first season is still one of the best fictional podcasts I've heard, and the second takes a couple of episodes to get back to the character studies of people tortured by the ability to read minds that made it so great, but when it does, it becomes as dark and compelling as a great mystery novel.
You know what I didn't do much of this year? Read books. It's like the relentless need to stay on top of the news overwhelmed my instinct to read for pleasure. A fuckin' shame I hope to rectify in the new year. (Although The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay was a great, discomfiting novel about a family that must decide if the world really is about to end.)
I want to be able to take in all this shit without the lingering anxiety that pervades everything now. I want us all to be feel free to get our rocks off without wondering if it's all in vain. But, at the very least, this bread, these circuses allowed me to put myself in other spaces in my own very cluttered head.
So, in 2018, here are some of the things that made it all just a bit more tolerable:
1. Live comedy was a motherfuckin' salve. When I saw Marc Maron at the Beacon Theatre last month, his full-blown return to political comedy led to one of the funniest riffs on the hypocrisy of the Christian right that I've ever heard. It was so savage and crude and cathartic that I thought I'd pass out from laughing. Yes, John Mulaney's "horse in a hospital" bit was amazing, but Maron's starts with Mike Pence contemplating sucking cock and then it gets absurdly filthy.
For a sheer, bludgeoning rush of stand-up power, the tight ten that Robert Kelly did one night at the Comedy Cellar in April couldn't be beat, and Lynne Koplitz (who, full disclosure, is an old friend), on the same bill, unleashed a torrent of hilarious self-deprecation that ultimately was about how the culture around her judges middle-aged women. Some sublime shit there.
2. Continuing with the live stuff, big and small, Beck's big, visually impressive show at Madison Square Garden in July was a total grown-up dance party. On a smaller scale, Mitski's impassioned, artsy performance at Brooklyn Steel earlier this month was a powerful reminder of how you can feel music in your bones. Courtney Barnett's rain-soaked summer concert at Prospect Park was a raw display of guitar god shredding. And I finally got to see Foo Fighters, who have embraced all the cheesy rock cliches and come out with an awesome blast of a show, powered by Dave Grohl's obvious delight in being there, playing for us. For bliss upon bliss, listening to a group of Cajun musicians jam together while drinking beer and eating boudin at the Bayou Teche Brewery in Arnaudville, Louisiana, was about as fine a way to laze away an afternoon as I could conceive.
3. The albums that I've listened to endlessly this year are Historian by Lucy Dacus, which is a journey into heartache that moves from gorgeous hushes to gut-punching wails; and Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae, a friggin' masterclass in the history of modern black music, like most every Prince record was. Speaking of journeys, Alejandro Escovedo's The Crossing took the immigrant experience and the American experience and merged them into a gorgeous and brutal concept album. I could go on and on with all the great music released this year, like Father John Misty's God's Favorite Customer, his best album since his first; Kacey Musgraves's Golden Hour, her best album since her first; not to mention the new ones by Parquet Courts, Let's Eat Grandma, Noname, and the Decemberists, as well as the aforementioned Mitski, Beck, and Courtney Barnett.
4. I'm a theatre geek for plays (not much of a musical guy), and this year I got to fulfill a bit of a dream in seeing a live production of Amadeus, which was done with an onstage orchestra that moved in and out of scenes in an epic, huge, marvelous performance at the National Theatre in London. Also in London, the Bridge Theatre put on a vital, energized modern-dress Julius Caesar with David Morrissey as Mark Antony and Michelle Fairley as Cassius, where the we in the audience were the raging crowd in Rome, shoved and manipulated by Caesar's soldiers, forced into hiding during war.
In New York, the bracing and expansive production of Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman (which came from London) brought together the violence of myths and the violence of history and its effects on one Irish family. Two productions at the tiny Soho Rep were hypertheatrical examinations of race in a United States that can't get past its past: Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, about two scarred sisters on a journey to kill their father, and Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury, about a middle-class black family that literally turned the audience into the show. I also loved Yerma, in a massive staging at the Park Armory, and Hurricane Party, a balls-to-the-wall old fashioned theatre throwdown with sex, drugs, and violence.
5. TV? Fuck, where to start? The Americans had one of the best last seasons and finales of any show ever. Homecoming was a great mystery inside a mind fuck, with a performance by Julia Roberts that made you say, "Whoa, I forgot that she's this fucking good." If you're not watching The Good Place, you're just an idiot. Same with Bojack Horseman and Better Call Saul. Atlanta was so great that it essentially created its own genre. The Terror was a genuinely frightening, genuinely moving historical horror show. GLOW, Maniac, and Barry all took their plots and characters in exciting, novel directions. And my favorite new show this year was Killing Eve, with its two immediately indelible leading characters and more great plot twists than Agatha Christie on a bender.
6. And, hell, just go see or download or on-demand or stream: Sorry to Bother You, Eighth Grade, Mission Impossible: Fallout, BlacKkKlansman, Revenge, A Quiet Place, and Isle of Dogs. And if you haven't seen Black Panther, the fuck is wrong with you? (I'd put Hereditary and First Reformed in here, but they are both just traumatizing, so they don't exactly ease any pain.)
7. Finally, a couple of podcasts (other than Serial and In the Dark, which this season are just essential listening): One of the funniest damn things I've heard this year is Done Disappeared, a satire of true-crime podcasts that had its second season. Its host, John David Booter, is blissfully unaware of his ego running amok, and his ridiculous cases (like solving a crime that had already been solved) are immensely entertaining. And, finally, the second season of Limetown dropped. The first season is still one of the best fictional podcasts I've heard, and the second takes a couple of episodes to get back to the character studies of people tortured by the ability to read minds that made it so great, but when it does, it becomes as dark and compelling as a great mystery novel.
You know what I didn't do much of this year? Read books. It's like the relentless need to stay on top of the news overwhelmed my instinct to read for pleasure. A fuckin' shame I hope to rectify in the new year. (Although The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay was a great, discomfiting novel about a family that must decide if the world really is about to end.)
I want to be able to take in all this shit without the lingering anxiety that pervades everything now. I want us all to be feel free to get our rocks off without wondering if it's all in vain. But, at the very least, this bread, these circuses allowed me to put myself in other spaces in my own very cluttered head.
12/24/2018
Christmas Nativities 2018: Horror Mice Will Steal Your Soul
Like movies about suicidal snowmen and tortured ghosts and pole-frozen tongues, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Beloved reruns are good for the soul. My favorites to trot out this week are the Invader Zim Christmas episode and Olive the Other Reindeer. Even here, in Left Blogsylvania, we can indulge in revisiting old posts.
Before Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, I posted this Christmas blast back in 2004, updated yearly with new bits of freakishness (some links might not work anymore, but they were or are all real and are not meant to be ironic):
Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.
Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.
For the holiday, here's a few of the Rude Pundit's favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:
That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.
Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things the Rude Pundit's ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.
Every year, I think, "I wonder if there's an even weirder nativity set that I can find" and every year I come across something where I think, "Yeah, that's friggin' crazy shit, man." Here, it's the snow people nativity, with a snow angel, a snow Joseph, a snow Mary, and horrible half-snow, half-flesh sheep chimera. Did Snow Mary give birth to Snow Baby Jesus? Or did they all just make Snow Baby Jesus out of snow?
You know how gnomes used to be just those creepy little bitches you put out on your lawn and forgot about? Well, now they can apparently give birth to the Gnome God's child, who will, no doubt, be crucified on a cute little cross one day for the sins of all gnomes. Oh, so many sins.
What I love about the cardinal nativity is that they're morbidly obese birds, every one of them. In fact, Baby Jesus cardinal looks like he's a tubby little bastard who's stuck in his nest/cradle. Also, all of them look kind of pissed off about the whole event.
That goddamn nightmare fuel isn't a lab experiment gone horrible awry. It's a bunch of white mice with eyes so wide they look like someone laced some cheese with meth and let the little bastards go crazy. It's gonna be horrible when baby Jesus mouse gets crucified in trap.
This is not to mention the Chickentivity, the Moosetivity, the Barntivity, the Native American Nativity, and the various Beartivities, all available unironically for your Christmas consumption.
And, finally, the baby nativity:
You might think, "Oh, that's adorable. What's so wrong with it?" To which I can only inform you that the implication of it is that a baby Mary shoved a baby Jesus out of her baby vagina.
And to all a good night.
Oh, wait. What's that you say? You think that last one was kind of a weak one to end on? Well, then, fuck you. Here's the Day of the Dead nativity:
Yeah, they're all screaming in horror and pain. Essentially, that's Christmas in the time of Trump.
Oh, wait. What's that? Those aren't that bad after all we've suffered? Then how about these terrifying motherfuckers:
Or maybe that's just how we'll all look after climate change has its way with us. Merry Christmas, baby.
(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Dogtivity, the Boyd's Bears Nativity, and the Rubber Duck...oh, fuck, you get the idea.)
Before Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, I posted this Christmas blast back in 2004, updated yearly with new bits of freakishness (some links might not work anymore, but they were or are all real and are not meant to be ironic):
Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.
Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.
For the holiday, here's a few of the Rude Pundit's favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:
That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.
Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things the Rude Pundit's ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.
You know how gnomes used to be just those creepy little bitches you put out on your lawn and forgot about? Well, now they can apparently give birth to the Gnome God's child, who will, no doubt, be crucified on a cute little cross one day for the sins of all gnomes. Oh, so many sins.
That goddamn nightmare fuel isn't a lab experiment gone horrible awry. It's a bunch of white mice with eyes so wide they look like someone laced some cheese with meth and let the little bastards go crazy. It's gonna be horrible when baby Jesus mouse gets crucified in trap.
And, finally, the baby nativity:
You might think, "Oh, that's adorable. What's so wrong with it?" To which I can only inform you that the implication of it is that a baby Mary shoved a baby Jesus out of her baby vagina.
And to all a good night.
Oh, wait. What's that you say? You think that last one was kind of a weak one to end on? Well, then, fuck you. Here's the Day of the Dead nativity:
Yeah, they're all screaming in horror and pain. Essentially, that's Christmas in the time of Trump.
Oh, wait. What's that? Those aren't that bad after all we've suffered? Then how about these terrifying motherfuckers:
Or maybe that's just how we'll all look after climate change has its way with us. Merry Christmas, baby.
(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Dogtivity, the Boyd's Bears Nativity, and the Rubber Duck...oh, fuck, you get the idea.)
12/20/2018
Mattis's "Go Fuck Yourself, Donald" Resignation Letter
Soon-to-be-ex-Secretary of Defense James Mattis finally decided that the spontaneous withdrawal of troops from Syria was a turd too far and that he had finally reached his limit of the shit he would eat working for Donald Trump. Mattis had been gobbling Trump's shit for over two years and vomiting up something closer to a sane foreign policy. If nothing else, despite being Trump's loyal janitor, cleaning up the messes that Trump made with each idiotic tweet, each trashy treachery, each foolish twist in the world order, Mattis kept U.S. soldiers from being sent in large numbers to another stupid war fought by stupid leaders. For that reason alone, we should understand why he stayed on as long as he did.
I'm not gonna delve into Mattis's problematic legacy. There are many reasons to say, "Fuck that guy." But we do need to pause and take in his delicious resignation letter, as clear a "Go fuck yourself, Donald Trump" as you're gonna get from a cabinet member on their way out. Mattis knows where the United States stands in the world, where it oughta stand, and where the fuck Trump is leading both this country and its allies. He's fucking pissed.
First off, Mattis was never one to participate in the circle jerk of praise for Trump whenever other cabinet members were forced to awkwardly declare loyalty to the idiot king. So it's not surprising that he doesn't fluff or even thank Trump beyond saying, "I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform." Otherwise, you know, Trump can shove it up his orange asshole.
The focus of the letter is how very fucking wrong Trump is about, well, everything. "While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world," Mattis writes, "we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies." You'd think not shitting on your allies would be sort of the basic thing that any leader would do, but not our president, who is too busy shoving toy soldiers into his nose to care.
Mattis praises NATO (which he had no small role in keeping the U.S. part of), and he calls out China and Russia for trying to piss in the peace punch. They "want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model." His advice is simple: "That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense." And he means our fuckin' allies.
Then comes the shiv: "My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues."
"Yeah, motherfucker," he's saying, "I've walked the motherfucking walk. What the fuck have you done besides steal from suckers, fuck around on your wives, kiss Putin's ass, and lust after your daughter?" Goddamn, how Mattis must have punched himself in the balls every time Trump said he knew better than the generals, that no one understands NATO or North Korea or, fuck, anything better than him.
In the letter, Mattis continues, "We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances." You're either with your allies or you're with their (and our) enemies. Trump's a fucking traitor, and Mattis knows it. It's really that simple.
Look, you know that the only reason Trump wanted Mattis is because someone, probably Jared, told him that Mattis's nickname was "Mad Dog." Trump probably thought he was getting some savage murder-monster who would sit around with Trump and giggle as they bombed shitholes out of existence, jacking each other off to video feeds of starving Yemenis getting turned into a red mist by drone missiles, eating Big Macs while hearing about the torture of detainees.
Instead, he got the opposite: a thoughtful soldier who acutally gave a fuck about the future. In the context of Trump's cabinet of thieves, whores, ghouls, and Ben Carson, Mattis was a shining damn beacon of sanity. If we were heading towards the cliff before, we just hit the gas.
Of course, another way we're going to judge Mattis is by what he does once he's free next year. If he goes silent and refuses to step up to stop the mad president, then he is complicit in whatever happens next.
(Note: I was gonna write about Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's pussy fart of a farewell address, but fuck that guy forever.)
I'm not gonna delve into Mattis's problematic legacy. There are many reasons to say, "Fuck that guy." But we do need to pause and take in his delicious resignation letter, as clear a "Go fuck yourself, Donald Trump" as you're gonna get from a cabinet member on their way out. Mattis knows where the United States stands in the world, where it oughta stand, and where the fuck Trump is leading both this country and its allies. He's fucking pissed.
First off, Mattis was never one to participate in the circle jerk of praise for Trump whenever other cabinet members were forced to awkwardly declare loyalty to the idiot king. So it's not surprising that he doesn't fluff or even thank Trump beyond saying, "I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform." Otherwise, you know, Trump can shove it up his orange asshole.
The focus of the letter is how very fucking wrong Trump is about, well, everything. "While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world," Mattis writes, "we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies." You'd think not shitting on your allies would be sort of the basic thing that any leader would do, but not our president, who is too busy shoving toy soldiers into his nose to care.
Mattis praises NATO (which he had no small role in keeping the U.S. part of), and he calls out China and Russia for trying to piss in the peace punch. They "want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model." His advice is simple: "That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense." And he means our fuckin' allies.
Then comes the shiv: "My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues."
"Yeah, motherfucker," he's saying, "I've walked the motherfucking walk. What the fuck have you done besides steal from suckers, fuck around on your wives, kiss Putin's ass, and lust after your daughter?" Goddamn, how Mattis must have punched himself in the balls every time Trump said he knew better than the generals, that no one understands NATO or North Korea or, fuck, anything better than him.
In the letter, Mattis continues, "We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances." You're either with your allies or you're with their (and our) enemies. Trump's a fucking traitor, and Mattis knows it. It's really that simple.
Look, you know that the only reason Trump wanted Mattis is because someone, probably Jared, told him that Mattis's nickname was "Mad Dog." Trump probably thought he was getting some savage murder-monster who would sit around with Trump and giggle as they bombed shitholes out of existence, jacking each other off to video feeds of starving Yemenis getting turned into a red mist by drone missiles, eating Big Macs while hearing about the torture of detainees.
Instead, he got the opposite: a thoughtful soldier who acutally gave a fuck about the future. In the context of Trump's cabinet of thieves, whores, ghouls, and Ben Carson, Mattis was a shining damn beacon of sanity. If we were heading towards the cliff before, we just hit the gas.
Of course, another way we're going to judge Mattis is by what he does once he's free next year. If he goes silent and refuses to step up to stop the mad president, then he is complicit in whatever happens next.
(Note: I was gonna write about Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's pussy fart of a farewell address, but fuck that guy forever.)
12/19/2018
Why We Are Monsters If We Don't Give Them Asylum
A gut-wrenching report in the Wall Street Journal today details the horrific violence, including torture and murder, suffered by women at the hands of men in Central America, particularly in the countries from which come the migrants trying to get asylum in the United States. That we have an administration that wants to punish these legitimate refugees facing death in their home lands is simply monstrous. You cannot call yourself the "richest" or "greatest" anything if you can turn away people fleeing from rape and murder.
In El Salvador, for instance, the death rate for women "is more than six times that of the U.S., with Honduras and Guatemala close behind." And while the murder rate is even higher for men who are involved in gang wars involving, yes, MS-13 (which is far, far, far more dangerous in other countries than here), women, especially young women and adolescent girls, are victimized by domestic partners and husbands (sadly, an enormous issue in the United States) and by male gang members, which essentially treat them as property.
This is going to get dark as hell.
"'When you have a woman, she becomes property for you, and only for you, no one else,' said Wilfredo Cabrera, who is 24 and recently left a gang. The safe houses the gangs use to store weaponry, cash, and contraband are also used to imprison girls, some as young as 12 and 13. Gang rape is not uncommon." One woman was kept in the basement of a safe house and regularly raped.
Women who refuse the advances of a gang member have their entire families threatened with death. And it gets worse: "Whereas men are often shot to death, women are killed with particular viciousness, according to a 2015 Salvadoran government study on femicides that noted how some victims had been tortured, had fingers cut off, been raped, tied up or burned."
One case detailed in the article by Juan Forero is that of Andrea Guzman, a 17 year-old in El Salvador who rebuffed the advances of a gang leader. He ended up sending seven gang members to tie up her family and kidnap Andrea. She was then shot in the head. Her family has a photo of her corpse, lying in a field, on a phone. It's at the top of the article. It's heartbreaking.
Andrea's father said, "It is better not to have a daughter here...I should have left the country with my children."
And who could deny that that would have been a wise choice? What parent wouldn't think that for the safety of their kids? Who would not have made a journey on foot, if necessary, to save the life of their daughter? Would you listen if you were told you needed to stay in your country in hopes things will get better there? Yes, there has been some progress in getting the justice system to arrest and convict the killers in their countries, but it is slow, and, certainly, it would be a long time before reforms reached the small farming village where Andrea Guzman lived.
Today, in the U.S., Judge Emmet Sullivan struck down the Trump administration's savage, hateful policy of limiting asylum claims, including those for women and families trying to escape domestic or gang violence. It guts disgraced gnome Jeff Sessions' policy that "generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum." Those families, those women do not have a "credible fear" of violence that would allow them to try to escape to the United States. How terrible a human being do you have to be to believe that? Sadly, we have a government filled with those terrible humans.
Sullivan, who was also busy this week kicking Michael Flynn's ass, wrote that Sessions (and, by extension, Trump) "unlawfully and arbitrarily imposed a heightened standard to their credible fear determinations" and that the policies "are arbitrary, capricious, and in violation of the immigration laws."
"Plaintiffs credibly alleged at their credible fear determinations that they feared rape, pervasive domestic violence, beatings, shootings, and death in their countries of origin," Sullivan wrote. One of the plaintiffs in the case that challenged the policy had seen her brother killed and her son maimed by a "politically-connected family" who also threatened to kill her. If that's not a credible enough fear for you to at least have a hearing, you're the monster.
And, because we are led by the worst people, of course, Sullivan's decision will be appealed.
In El Salvador, for instance, the death rate for women "is more than six times that of the U.S., with Honduras and Guatemala close behind." And while the murder rate is even higher for men who are involved in gang wars involving, yes, MS-13 (which is far, far, far more dangerous in other countries than here), women, especially young women and adolescent girls, are victimized by domestic partners and husbands (sadly, an enormous issue in the United States) and by male gang members, which essentially treat them as property.
This is going to get dark as hell.
"'When you have a woman, she becomes property for you, and only for you, no one else,' said Wilfredo Cabrera, who is 24 and recently left a gang. The safe houses the gangs use to store weaponry, cash, and contraband are also used to imprison girls, some as young as 12 and 13. Gang rape is not uncommon." One woman was kept in the basement of a safe house and regularly raped.
Women who refuse the advances of a gang member have their entire families threatened with death. And it gets worse: "Whereas men are often shot to death, women are killed with particular viciousness, according to a 2015 Salvadoran government study on femicides that noted how some victims had been tortured, had fingers cut off, been raped, tied up or burned."
One case detailed in the article by Juan Forero is that of Andrea Guzman, a 17 year-old in El Salvador who rebuffed the advances of a gang leader. He ended up sending seven gang members to tie up her family and kidnap Andrea. She was then shot in the head. Her family has a photo of her corpse, lying in a field, on a phone. It's at the top of the article. It's heartbreaking.
Andrea's father said, "It is better not to have a daughter here...I should have left the country with my children."
And who could deny that that would have been a wise choice? What parent wouldn't think that for the safety of their kids? Who would not have made a journey on foot, if necessary, to save the life of their daughter? Would you listen if you were told you needed to stay in your country in hopes things will get better there? Yes, there has been some progress in getting the justice system to arrest and convict the killers in their countries, but it is slow, and, certainly, it would be a long time before reforms reached the small farming village where Andrea Guzman lived.
Today, in the U.S., Judge Emmet Sullivan struck down the Trump administration's savage, hateful policy of limiting asylum claims, including those for women and families trying to escape domestic or gang violence. It guts disgraced gnome Jeff Sessions' policy that "generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum." Those families, those women do not have a "credible fear" of violence that would allow them to try to escape to the United States. How terrible a human being do you have to be to believe that? Sadly, we have a government filled with those terrible humans.
Sullivan, who was also busy this week kicking Michael Flynn's ass, wrote that Sessions (and, by extension, Trump) "unlawfully and arbitrarily imposed a heightened standard to their credible fear determinations" and that the policies "are arbitrary, capricious, and in violation of the immigration laws."
"Plaintiffs credibly alleged at their credible fear determinations that they feared rape, pervasive domestic violence, beatings, shootings, and death in their countries of origin," Sullivan wrote. One of the plaintiffs in the case that challenged the policy had seen her brother killed and her son maimed by a "politically-connected family" who also threatened to kill her. If that's not a credible enough fear for you to at least have a hearing, you're the monster.
And, because we are led by the worst people, of course, Sullivan's decision will be appealed.
New Episode of AGD Podcast: Eric Boehlert and Holiday Tips for Dealing with MAGA Family
It's up now and free, motherfuckers, totally free. A new episode of Another Goddamn Podcast (AGD Podcast for those who have tender ears or work filters).
First, based on something I wrote on this here blog, I give you some tips on talking to wayward MAGA family about climate change during the holiday season.
And then an interview with Eric Boehlert, author, media critic, and MSNBC contributor, where we talk about how fucked we are by the way the news media has handled the Trump administration and all its crimes, and we look back at this year in news failures. But Eric's got some encouraging words for the coming year, so...hope?
You can subscribe, listen, rate, review, download, drive to it, have sex to it, whatever, on iTunes or Stitcher.
(If you want to hear the extended interview with Eric Boehlert and all the guests on Another Goddamn Podcast, you can join up at Patreon for $5 a month. You'll also get weekly bonus blogs and other audio-visual treats.)
First, based on something I wrote on this here blog, I give you some tips on talking to wayward MAGA family about climate change during the holiday season.
And then an interview with Eric Boehlert, author, media critic, and MSNBC contributor, where we talk about how fucked we are by the way the news media has handled the Trump administration and all its crimes, and we look back at this year in news failures. But Eric's got some encouraging words for the coming year, so...hope?
You can subscribe, listen, rate, review, download, drive to it, have sex to it, whatever, on iTunes or Stitcher.
(If you want to hear the extended interview with Eric Boehlert and all the guests on Another Goddamn Podcast, you can join up at Patreon for $5 a month. You'll also get weekly bonus blogs and other audio-visual treats.)
12/17/2018
On the Need to Drop Stephen Miller Naked Into Guatemala
Put aside for a moment that White House senior adviser Stephen Miller looks like what happens when a Mr. Potato Head becomes human-sized and mean. Put aside that he has the facial expression of a man who knows the pleasure of using a disembodied head for fellatio. Put aside that, for his appearance on CBS's Face the Nation yesterday, he seemed to have pasted Sarah Sanders's shaved pubic stubble onto his forehead. Put aside all that shallow but hilarious stuff about Stephen Miller, whose head, it should be noted, looks like a scrotum stretched over a hard-boiled egg.
Instead, let's talk about why he should be stripped naked and dropped into the middle of Guatemala. Somewhere really fucking poor. Just drop his pasty, bare white ass right there.
Because if we learned anything in his interview with Margaret Brennan on Sunday, it's that this vicious motherfucker won't rest until he has personally watched children from Mexico and Central America die horribly. Sure, Miller paid lip service to the objective tragedy that is the death of 7 year-old Jakelin Caal while in the custody of the Border Patrol. But then he made sure to blame everyone except the people running the goddamn federal government. "Hundreds die on the dangerous trek up. Smuggling organizations profit off death and misery. They are vicious, vile organizations," he said, which is true, but he could at least have fucking said that the death was being investigated, which you do, if you care.
When Brennan brought up that the Border Patrol itself said it wasn't adequately prepared for the number of immigrants that arrived and asked why, Miller went to the pass-the-buck well again: "One of the great tragedies that is going on in our country today is the loopholes in our immigration laws and the deficiencies in our immigration laws. And left wing, activist judicial rulings that incentivize the most vulnerable populations to come to our country."
Asked about Democratic opposition to funding the bullshit wall, Miller went full apeshit and said, "If the Democrat Party wants to go down the road of continuing to preserve a model that enriches smuggling organizations, that spreads misery on both sides of the border, that kills 300 Americans a week through heroin overdoses alone." Yeah, most heroin comes from Mexico and not Central America, where many of the refugees are traveling from.
And you know what would fucking help Americans with heroin addiction? A goddamn national health insurance, but earlier in the segment, Miller celebrated the worthless decision by that asshole judge in Texas that declared the whole Affordable Care Act unconstitutional (funny how that judge isn't an "activist," but I guess that's in the short-eyes of the beholder). Then he made vague promises about how the mighty Donald Trump is going to come up with a better insurance program even though, you know, our president, who is 500 pounds of shit in a 300 pound bag, wouldn't understand health care if Ronald McDonald taught it to him.
But, of course, as every member of this administration has to do when they speak to anyone in the media, Miller licked Trump's orange asshole: "This president has taken historic action to stem the tide of illegal immigration and to fight for working people in this country." Except, of course, he hasn't done dick except make it possible for shitty people like him come up with a way to justify the death of a child in U.S. custody.
Let's say that Miller is dropped naked, with no passport, no i.d., no phone, no money, into a small town, like, hey, what about Raxruha, which is in the middle of fucking nowhere Guatemala. It's also the incredibly poor place where Jakelin Caal and her father left to head for the U.S.
There is a kind part of me that hopes that nude Miller would seek out help in one of the thatched roof huts with a dirt floor and a fire pit for cooking. And that the family there, where they earn $5 a day harvesting beans, would take him in and share their ragged clothes and meager food, caring for him the way that strangers often take care of those in strange lands who need help. And that kind part of me extends to a sort of redemption, that Miller would learn that the people that he thinks are so terrible, are so violent, are such burdens to this nation are none of those things, that they are simply humans who want a better life for their children. And in my most generous moments, I see Miller having a change of heart; I see him being taken to the American embassy in Guatemala City, of him coming back and giving up the white nationalism that has ruined his hairline and his soul; I see him transformed and demanding a transformation of the policies of the United States. Yes, that part of me exists.
Mostly, though, I hope they just put a collar on him and make him their pet.
Instead, let's talk about why he should be stripped naked and dropped into the middle of Guatemala. Somewhere really fucking poor. Just drop his pasty, bare white ass right there.
Because if we learned anything in his interview with Margaret Brennan on Sunday, it's that this vicious motherfucker won't rest until he has personally watched children from Mexico and Central America die horribly. Sure, Miller paid lip service to the objective tragedy that is the death of 7 year-old Jakelin Caal while in the custody of the Border Patrol. But then he made sure to blame everyone except the people running the goddamn federal government. "Hundreds die on the dangerous trek up. Smuggling organizations profit off death and misery. They are vicious, vile organizations," he said, which is true, but he could at least have fucking said that the death was being investigated, which you do, if you care.
When Brennan brought up that the Border Patrol itself said it wasn't adequately prepared for the number of immigrants that arrived and asked why, Miller went to the pass-the-buck well again: "One of the great tragedies that is going on in our country today is the loopholes in our immigration laws and the deficiencies in our immigration laws. And left wing, activist judicial rulings that incentivize the most vulnerable populations to come to our country."
Asked about Democratic opposition to funding the bullshit wall, Miller went full apeshit and said, "If the Democrat Party wants to go down the road of continuing to preserve a model that enriches smuggling organizations, that spreads misery on both sides of the border, that kills 300 Americans a week through heroin overdoses alone." Yeah, most heroin comes from Mexico and not Central America, where many of the refugees are traveling from.
And you know what would fucking help Americans with heroin addiction? A goddamn national health insurance, but earlier in the segment, Miller celebrated the worthless decision by that asshole judge in Texas that declared the whole Affordable Care Act unconstitutional (funny how that judge isn't an "activist," but I guess that's in the short-eyes of the beholder). Then he made vague promises about how the mighty Donald Trump is going to come up with a better insurance program even though, you know, our president, who is 500 pounds of shit in a 300 pound bag, wouldn't understand health care if Ronald McDonald taught it to him.
But, of course, as every member of this administration has to do when they speak to anyone in the media, Miller licked Trump's orange asshole: "This president has taken historic action to stem the tide of illegal immigration and to fight for working people in this country." Except, of course, he hasn't done dick except make it possible for shitty people like him come up with a way to justify the death of a child in U.S. custody.
Let's say that Miller is dropped naked, with no passport, no i.d., no phone, no money, into a small town, like, hey, what about Raxruha, which is in the middle of fucking nowhere Guatemala. It's also the incredibly poor place where Jakelin Caal and her father left to head for the U.S.
There is a kind part of me that hopes that nude Miller would seek out help in one of the thatched roof huts with a dirt floor and a fire pit for cooking. And that the family there, where they earn $5 a day harvesting beans, would take him in and share their ragged clothes and meager food, caring for him the way that strangers often take care of those in strange lands who need help. And that kind part of me extends to a sort of redemption, that Miller would learn that the people that he thinks are so terrible, are so violent, are such burdens to this nation are none of those things, that they are simply humans who want a better life for their children. And in my most generous moments, I see Miller having a change of heart; I see him being taken to the American embassy in Guatemala City, of him coming back and giving up the white nationalism that has ruined his hairline and his soul; I see him transformed and demanding a transformation of the policies of the United States. Yes, that part of me exists.
Mostly, though, I hope they just put a collar on him and make him their pet.
12/13/2018
Join the Patreon Party (and Here's How Much I've Hated on Orrin Hatch)
In the last week, another couple dozen of you joined up for the Rude Pundit page on Patreon, and that's so fuckin' awesome. I've got a simple goal of 500 patrons, but I'd love to hit 250 by the end of the year. The big money goal is enough to pay someone who is way more skilled at this shit than me to edit Another Goddamn Podcast so I can get it out to you at more than a once-a-month or so rate. (And let's be honest with each other: it's more like "Hmm, am I sober enough to finish it this week?")
There are multiple donor levels because why the fuck not. So even for $1 a month, you can get extra rudeness and audio tasty bits. The more you donate, the more you get, and every single one of you gets my arousing appreciation. In the last month, donors have heard me tell stories about people I've met traveling this big, weird world; they've gotten to see a video interview I did with a crazy-ass Trump humper; and they've gotten posts on everything from political art to horror movies to a script I wrote about climate change for a late-night show. Big fun: whenever you donate, you can see and listen to everything I've posted at that donor level.
It's a bounty of goodies, motherfuckers. So join on up.
Meanwhile...
Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah inconveniently didn't die before it was time for him to finally retire from the Senate. In a bullshit pile of a speech, he bemoaned the loss of "comity, compromise, and mutual respect" in the body where he served for about 800 years. He refused to admit his own role in taking comity behind the barn, putting three bullets in the back of its skull, and fucking its corpse. But that would take a wise and reflective person. He might have once upon a time worked with Ted Kennedy and other Democrats on bills, but Hatch has always been a miserable shitheel.
And I've said some truly wretched things about him over the years, none of which I regret.
For instance, I imagined him as a hermaphrodite prostitute who puts on "a show where he sits spread-eagled on a bed, takes his cock, and bends it into his pussy so he can fuck himself."
Continuing a theme, I said that, at a hearing with then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over warrantless domestic surveillance, Hatch "more or less took out a 9-inch dildo and told Gonzales to watch him fuck himself right there in the chamber as Hatch bent over and slid that bad boy home."
Before same-sex marriage was legalized, but after a decision that put it on that path, I fantasized about Hatch in a closet in the Senate, jacking off at the thought of finally being free to consummate his forbidden love with Patrick Leahy. (It's probably the kindest thing I've said about Hatch.)
I wrote that Hatch was "not above worm shit at the bottom of a grave." I wrote that Hatch's "picture is shown to Mormon teenagers whenever they are tempted to masturbate." And just last month I said that Hatch "would tongue fuck the eyeholes" of Roy Cohn's skull.
Yeah, I'm not sorry I won't have Hatch to kick around anymore. Fuck him. Fuck his poisoned legacy. The country is a small measure better with him gone.
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