In Brief: Today's Terrorist Attack Changes Nothing (And, Unlike Gun Massacres, It Shouldn't)

Some cunt from Florida rented a Home Depot pickup truck and cuntishly drove it into a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing and injuring people. Then that cunt, who is probably a crazy cunt, started shooting with a pellet gun because he's a pathetic cunt, and then he yelled, "God is great" in Arabic, which is a cunty thing to do in this situation, but this cunt is a total cunt who then got shot in his cunt ass (literally, in his ass) before being arrested.

It's frightening. It's awful. Our hearts should go out to the families of the dead and wounded. We should look at some enhanced safety measures, maybe some barricades. We should make sure that mental health care is available to people who need it. And that's pretty much it.

Except, see, conservative politicians are gonna go apeshit, as usual, demanding crackdowns and bans and more. It's the exact opposite of what they want to do when there is a gun massacre, which is tell everyone to shut the fuck up about guns and la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you-with-the-NRA's-dick-in-my-ears.

The difference between this attack and a gun massacre is that no amount of regulation of cars is going to prevent some fucknut from slamming into people. But gun regulations can (and do) limit the number of gun deaths. In fact, if the aforementioned cunt had had a real gun, many more people could have been harmed.

This is New York City. We will absorb this and go on, whatever this dumb shit did. The Greenwich Village Halloween parade is going on as I write this, a wonderful, debaucherous event that is an affront to the fundamentalists of every faith. Tomorrow, I guarantee there will be bikers and joggers back in the area. Because the cunts don't get to win. And the politicians don't terrorize us.

We live in an incredibly safe period in American history, despite the Fox "news" and Infowars freakout lies about BLM rioters and Antifa executioners. Shit is gonna happen, but a whole lot of shit needs to happen to move us out of living in an incredibly safe time.

When we can do something about violence (like gun laws, like dealing with poverty, like punching Nazis - oh, wait, scratch that one), we should. But every shithead with a credit card and directions to the Home Depot is never gonna be stopped. Pause, mourn, move on.

We don't need to give the bastards more power. The terrorist bastards and the politician bastards.

The Mueller March: Conservatives Head to the Barricades

Look at this crazy-ass shit right here: "Now, you’ve heard that the Washington Free Beacon and Paul Singer were the first to hire Fusion GPS. This is true. And I will explain this in due course. But that doesn’t mitigate in any way the involvement of Hillary Clinton, the Democrat National Committee, and Marc Elias, the law firm of Perkins Coie, it doesn’t mitigate or erase their involvement in any way." The fuck? That seemingly drug-induced string of words was heard today on Jiggles the Clown's Masturbatorium of Lies, spoken by Jiggles himself, Rush Limbaugh.

Jiggles was droning on Limbaughishly about special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that led to the indictments of former Trump campaign manager and Moscow's "Man Most Likely to Drink Polonium If He Turns," Paul Manafort, and Rick Gates, Manafort's boy wonder and another Trump adviser. Limbaugh's approach to defending the Trump administration is distraction ("Look! Hillary!") and obfuscation ("Here's a bunch of shit I strung together and made it sound eeevil").

Today, the Trumpanistas and the conservatives who are seeing a giant expiration date on their movement have rushed to the barricades to try to keep the Visigoths of Justice (yes, totally great metal band name) from storming their nice, racist empire.

In addition to the crazed conspiracies involving Hillary Clinton, the corpse of Lenin, and, hell, the Necromonicon, why not, you've got the right-wingers who are dismissing the Manafort indictment with a wave of their hankies.

Like Andrew McCarthy over at the National Review (motto: "Remember when we were against Trump? No? Good"). McCarthy thinks it's all bullshit, smoke, and mirrors. He says, "Mueller’s case, at least in part, seems shaky and overcharged." And he accuses Mueller of using "an abusive prosecutorial tactic that flouts congressional intent" in the false statements charges. Inadvertently, McCarthy actually does get at what Mueller is doing: "It’s not so much a serious allegation of 'conspiracy against the United States' as a dubious case of disclosure violations and money movement that would never have been brought had he not drawn attention to himself by temporarily joining the Trump campaign."

Okay, listen, Manafort didn't just "join" the Trump campaign. He wasn't handing out fliers; he was the fucking guy in charge. And that's the goddamn point, isn't it? Manafort was a money-laundering scumbag who didn't give a shit who paid him.

Honestly, the only thing that makes the last year or so make any sense is if the Trump campaign was really a giant money-laundering operation and the Russians were just fucking with the American public to make sure that Hillary Clinton would be a weak president and they all bumblefucked into Trump winning, which was never part of the plan. It'd be a farce if Trump's actions didn't cause actual harm to actual people.

So, of course, if you thought Trump would lose, you'd get involved in the scam to clean your filthy Russian and Ukranian payoffs.

Maybe. Who knows really at this point.

But conservatives sure as shit want you to think it's nothing. Or, as Laura "My Soul Left Me Several Decades Ago and You Are Seeing My Human Husk" Ingraham put it, "It's a nothing-burger." Ingraham defended her Trump god, "The idea that this is a bad day for Trump because it in any way alludes to a collusion with Russia — you’ve got to be living on another planet if you think that. That’s just not what this is about...They don’t have anything on Trump. If they had something on Trump, that would be the indictment today. They would have something on Kushner or any of these other characters, but they don’t. So they go for Manafort and Gates." Which is counter to everything anyone who has ever been a prosecutor of big cases has said today. You go for the low-hanging fruit first and get them to turn on those on the higher branches who think they're safe from picking.

That's where we are with the pants-shitting conservatives. Clinton conspiracies, attacks on Mueller, and declarations that Trump is totally not involved. It's gonna be a wild and woolly ride from here on out. Gird yer loins, motherfuckers. Shit's gonna get nasty.

And, of course, Sean Hannity is going batshittier than usual tonight, having called Hillary "President Clinton." Goddamn, we wish, you dumb asshole. We wish.

Border Agents Proudly Detain Just-Hospitalized Child Who Has Cerebral Palsy

Look at her. That's the face of evil right there. That is the face of a future rapist or drug mule or murdering member of the MS-13 gang that has us all huddled in our houses, curtains closed in fear. Where will she strike? Whose job will she steal? Yeah, when you look at the grinning girl in a Moana t-shirt, you are seeing the insidious reality of the illegal immigration problem in the United States. And God help us if we don't treat her like the criminal she is.

Or, maybe, you could see little Rosamaria Hernandez, who was brought to the United States 10 years ago, when she was a 3-month old baby. Her parents wanted to get her more help for the cerebral palsy she has, and this week she was on her way to a hospital, from Laredo, Texas, to Corpus Christi, in an ambulance so she could get an emergency gall bladder operation.

The ambulance had to cross an immigration checkpoint, which led to Border Patrol agents discovering Rosamaria's status as an undocumented immigrant. They allowed her to get the surgery, accompanying the ambulance to the hospital, but they were stationed outside her room to take her away when she was well enough to be moved. The surgery was on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Border Patrol took her into custody and brought her to a detention facility in San Antonio to await deportation.

We're talking about a 10 year-old developmentally disabled girl with cerebral palsy who has lived all but 3 months of her life in the United States and who asked her mother over video chat, "Mom, where are you?" after she was being taken away. Oh, and she's got a grandfather who is a permanent U.S. resident and a cousin who is a citizen. If you can read those facts and not feel even a wince of empathy, you are a fucking monster who deserves this Trump-coated shit world we're damned to exist in. Hell, you probably love wallowing around in it.

I wonder how the Border Patrol agents felt doing this. I wonder if they were proud of how they were discharging their duties. I wonder if they went home after work and told their partners or spouses or other family how they were responsible for making sure that a little girl was taken away from her parents. I wonder if they thought for even a moment that they could have been using their time perhaps going after those drug mules. Or maybe stopping some human trafficking. I wonder if they thought it was really worth it, that it had been a good day. I suppose they could claim they were just doing their jobs, except that immigration enforcement standards say they shouldn't be targeting hospitals (let alone kids in hospitals).

And then I saw this:

That's one of the agents smiling as Rosamaria's bed rolled by. And I both had a moment of sympathy - here was a man who was obviously smiling to comfort a little girl going through a frightening situation - and more than a few moments of rage. Because that smiling son of a bitch is there to make sure that little girl's life is turned upside down and that damage is done to her that she may never recover from.

I hope smiling fuckface up there wakes up in the middle of the night, wondering if the anxiety that's pounding his chest is a heart attack, as he realizes that his life was devoted to hurting children. And I hope he'll tell his supervisors that it's bullshit and can't he go after real criminals. And I hope his supervisors will tell people at the Department of Homeland Security that it's bullsh--

Nah. Who am I kidding? He's fuckin' proud of what he did. And so are all of the idiot hordes who voted for this.

This Particular Hell: Another Nonsensical Trump "Interview"

Yesterday, President Donald Trump sat with Fox Business host Lou Dobbs for an "interview" (if by "interview," you mean, "providing an alibi for a little while"). This is our national Hell: every day, we have to hear Trump say some dumb goddamn thing or other. If we're really unlucky, we have to see his jowls flopping around while he spouts words in a random order until he gets to a phrase like "believe me" to denote the end of what I suppose we could generously call a "thought." We have to watch his sagging scrotum of neck flesh undulate as he emphasizes some talking point he's made a thousand, ten thousand times before.

Dobbs, who has been an eager Trump chowder guzzler for decades now, threw so many soft balls at the president that it was less a newsworthy interview than a gentle massage from tits to prostate. Dobbs opened by saying, "In nine months in office, you’ve already accomplished more in the way of job creation." He praised, "You’re the first President to talk openly and honestly about offshoring of production, the outsourcing of jobs." He groveled, "The country owes you a great debt on so much." He knob-polished, "You’re also one of the most loved and respected men in history." To call Dobbs a sycophant is to do an injustice to the level of self-abasement he enthusiastically engaged in. He was the kind of whore who wants you to know you can shit on his face and he'll still call you "Daddy."

For his part, Trump was Trump was Trump. He spouted such blithering idiocy that you wonder how he can walk and breathe at the same time (and the evidence is not strong that he's capable of doing that for long periods). For instance, talking about his fucking border wall, he said, "You think of a wall as a wall. But honestly you do need some see through ability because you don’t know who’s – if you do pure concrete which is a wall then you can’t see who’s on the other side. You know you have a wall that’s this thick and you can’t see who’s on the other side. So, we’re going to need some see-through abilities." Yes, he really said, "See-through abilities." Insert your favorite gif of someone slapping their forehead or rubbing between their eyes.

Let's say this one more time: Have you ever heard of cameras, you inbred-eyed human-sized slime mold? And if the fucking wall is see-through, doesn't that mean people on the Mexican side can see if there are border agent and ICE waiting for them? That's how fucking "see-through" works.

But motherfucker wasn't done. As he usually does, Trump got a case of his echolalia, stuck like an old record on the word "wall." He went on about border agents, "They know more than anybody and they also know the wall and the wall systems. And, we’re going to take a look at the wall and we’re going to get it built and it’s going to be – it’s going to be quite the wall." First of all, engineers, construction workers, and architects know more than border agents about walls and whatever the fuck wall systems are. Second of all, the fuck? "Quite the wall"? This brain-damaged baboon wants some kind of monument to the Great Stupiding of our country. At this point, we deserve the Trump Wall.

While he repeated the word "wall" eight times in about a minute, Trump also got the word "fake" stuck in his hair implants. Trump said of stories on any network that isn't gooey with Roger Ailes's spooge, "It is so fake. And you know, I have come up with some pretty good names for people. There's -- I think one of the best names is -- you know, I’ve really started this whole fake news thing. Now they’ve turned it around and then, now they’re calling, you know, stories put out by different -- by Facebook fake. And they’re fake."

I'm trying to figure out exactly what the fuck Trump's saying here. He's proud of his bullying names for people (lemme try: "Donald Dimwit." See how easy that is?) He started calling things fake news (never mind that the phrase has been around for a very long time, but, sure, yeah, through sheer dullard repetition, he's popularized it). Then he seems to be criticizing people for calling Facebook stories fake and then, maybe, says that the allegations are fake? Or he agrees Facebook stories are fake? Who the fuck knows because actual, syntactical sense is impossible.

Then, as if to demonstrate his complete inability to do math or understand social media, Trump offered, "The good thing about social media is that I have so many millions of people, so many -- I guess, 128 million. You could add up -- you know, you add up all the different platforms -- massive social media." Now, even getting rid of the 15 million or so bots that are on his Twitter account, Trump does have a large social media presence. But you don't fucking count my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook profiles as three separate people. You can't "add up all the different platforms." That's ridiculous. It's like saying that everyone is gonna get $4000 from the cruel tax cuts being proposed. No, asshole Trump voter, you're not getting $4000. The rich guy up on the hill there, he's getting $400,000, while you and 98 of your buddies are getting a pile of goose shit. But, hey, that averages out to $4000 per person.

The whole interview is one soul-breaking comment after another, from the praise for the tyrant-like power that China's Xi Jinping now has to Trump's desire to be friendlier to Russia (while completely denying what his own intelligence agencies say about Russia being distinctly unfriendly to us). Of course, there are the incessant attacks on Hillary Clinton, the demonizing of the Democratic Party, and the failure to see anything good that doesn't involve his giant-ass ego.

I used to think "Tomorrow is another day" with hope. Now it's with the knowledge that the dull thrum of the continued blabberings of a belligerent buffoon will always be in the background.

More GOP Hypocrisy: Trump and Conservatives Defended Getting Opposition Research from Russians

Yeah, apparently the new fake scandal involving the seemingly endless and omnipotent evil of Hillary Clinton is that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped pay for the dossier that ties Donald Trump to Russia, as well as details his enjoyment of piss whores. Putting aside that Clinton and the DNC were paying a Washington, DC firm for the information (and not paying any foreign agents), we knew that Democrats were picking up the bill for it (after it had been initially paid for by Republicans who were trying to stop Trump) back in January, even as early as last October, although I suppose the Clinton campaign part is a newish wrinkle (if we all pretend we didn't assume that to be the case).

This being Hillary Clinton, and Republicans being motherfuckers, of course, there is now an enormous uproar on the right because we're all doomed to live in this unceasing loop where every action by Clinton is the height of criminality. I fully expect Breitbart to have a report on how Clinton's farts are the real cause of the California fires, and every fucking low-browed yahoo will take that to be dogma.

On the Steele dossier payments, Trump blathered today, "I think it’s very sad what they've done with this fake dossier. It was made up, and I understand they paid a tremendous amount of money, and Hillary Clinton always denied it. The Democrats always denied it. And now only because it’s going to come out in a court case, they said, yes, they did it. They admitted it, and they're embarrassed by it. But I think it’s a disgrace. It’s just really -- it’s a very sad -- it’s a very sad commentary on politics in this country." There are about 5 lies in those brain turds there, but the biggest, by far, is that the dossier is fake. In fact, it's still being investigated, with a good part of it already confirmed as true. The right is just trying to turn us away from its legitimacy and onto Clinton as liar.

What the Clinton connection does is affirm that it was opposition research for a campaign. And Trump and his conservative dogfuckers should understand that. They spent a whole bunch of time this summer defending Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Donald Trump, Jr. (aka "That douche in every 1980s college comedy") for meeting with actual Russians in order to, they claim, get oppo research on Clinton directly from the Russians. (They also claim they got nothing.)

In fact, here's Trump from July: "Most people would’ve taken that meeting. It’s called opposition research, or even research into your opponent. I’ve only been in politics for two years, but I’ve had many people call up, ‘Oh gee, we have information on this factor or this person’, or, frankly, Hillary. That’s very standard in politics. Politics is not the nicest business in the world, but it’s very standard where they have information and you take the information." That shit's illegal when it involves direct contact with someone from a foreign country.

Conservative commentators were quick to jump on the "it's just oppo research so who gives a shit" wagon. It's a "micro story" because getting oppo research is "nothing new," said the unceasingly dumb Kayleigh McEnany. Skeevy ex-congressfuck Jason Chaffetz declared it a "nothingburger." Newt "Yes, We're Still Talking About this Bastard" Gingrich asserted that "virtually every campaign in the world" would have taken the meeting.

So you got that, right? Meeting with actual Russian agents in private in hopes of getting dirt on Clinton is totally fine with Trump and the GOP. It's normal. It's what you do. Who wouldn't do that?

But paying an American research company for research? That's a fucking outrage. In fact, as the White House said today, that's "the real Russia scandal."

Go fuck yourselves in a bed of piss.

Regarding Senators Corker and Flake: So Fucking What?

People on the sensible-shoes left, the lying-to-themselves center, and the semi-rational right are praising two Republican senators today for speaking honestly about the threat that President Donald Trump poses to the nation and the world. In and of itself, in a vacuum, it's pretty cool to see Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona go all in on calling out Trump for being dumb, divisive, and dangerous.

Corker, who previously had said that Trump is "crazier than a shit fight in a monkey house" (or words to that effect), was on several morning news programs today to say that Trump is a fucking liar who's gonna get us all killed. More precisely, on CNN, he said, "But I think at the end of the day, when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth telling, and the -- just the name calling, the things that I think the debasement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for." It barely needs to be mentioned that Corker doesn't think that Trump is a good role model for children, unless, you know, that child wants to grow up to be an asshole. Corker, by the way, has already announced he's not running for reelection in 2018.

Then, this afternoon, Flake got up on the Senate floor to announce he won't seek a second term basically because Trump's a dick and his voters are a bunch of goddamn nutzoids: "There is an undeniable potency to a populist appeal – but mischaracterizing or misunderstanding our problems and giving in to the impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people." To put that in non-Senate-floor-ese, Trump's a lying douche who doesn't give a shit about ripping the country apart for his amusement, and a bunch of yahoos love him for the lulz.

In fact, Flake asserted that Republicans should stop being such dumbasses about Trump: "With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it. We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that." Of course, it would have been more potent a speech had Flake had the balls to say Trump's name.

So, yeah, relative to the silent complicity of most Republicans, it's refreshing to see two well-respected and pretty damn conservative senators state the obvious.

But so fucking what? They're both leaving. Neither is willing to get into the trenches and fight. One can imagine they're sick of getting Pepe the Frog death threats. Still, they're bailing. Other than Corker making a vague promise that "we're going to be doing some hearings on some of the things that he purposely is breaking down, relationships we have around the world that have been useful to our nation," they aren't pledging to do a goddamn thing to stop Trump, even though, according to them, he's a potential despot who stokes fear and anger, a lying ignoramus who has no desire to understand issues that involve the life and death of millions of people.

What could they do? If they were really brave, they'd say, "Yeah, you know what? Fuck the Republican Party." And they'd bail, offer to caucus with the Democrats for the rest of their terms, even if it defies their core ideology (as if supporting Trump didn't), and get Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski to do the same. Thus that changes the leadership of the Senate and puts a halt to Trump's agenda and a mighty big fucking check on his power. Obviously, Republicans aren't gonna do anything about Trump. Otherwise, senator after senator would have risen after Flake to say they agree. If Republicans are the cowardly shitheels that Flake described, why stick with them?

Or they could have called for impeachment proceedings to begin. They could have said that the president has committed many high crimes and misdemeanors, and, c'mon, people, we fuckin' impeached Clinton for lying about a blow job. What the fuck is wrong with us now?

Not only are Corker and Flake moral cowards on this count, but, fer fuck's sake, they both eagerly support every effort by Trump, having both voted for gutting the Affordable Care Act, for the cruel budget agreement, and for every shitty administrator and judge Trump has nominated. Perhaps we should hold off on the hosannas until they fucking do something to prove they hold the beliefs they speak of. Maybe we can stop giving them rhetorical hand jobs because they said shit that we like.

Because right now, it's just words. And, sorry, that's as good as nothing, as good as a series of tweets into the abyss.

The Bible Teaches That Rape Is Just Fine (Guest Post)

(My pal, folk singer Addie Brownlee, wrote this on Facebook this weekend, and she has kindly allowed me to post it here. Addie has long been wrestling with Christian-pud-thumpers; if you go to one of her shows, she'll likely do a riff on "Weird Shit in the Bible." Here, though, responding to someone who sent her some pud-thumping, she writes about the dangerous, fucked-up things in the Bible that have affected the way men behave.)

I. Have. Had. Enough. of Anyone. Saying ignorant things like “we can’t throw out God and beebee jeejee the way we have and not expect this stuff. I mean I sympathize with the #MeToo thing..."

Well - here’s what I think of all that shit. A reply I just posted to an ignorance I refuse to tolerate another day.

Hi, (person I knew 20 years ago) - Long time. I hope you’re well.

I can’t understand why you would even post this in response to the #MeToo movement. But regardless...

If by: "his Word that communicates to us what RIGHT and WRONG 'IS'" you mean the Bible? Then you need a refresher.

There’s the obvious - Lot - who in order to try to protect the angel/stranger/men staying under his roof from the angry mob says to said mob, “Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out to you, and do you to them as is good in your eyes: only to these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.”

Here. Gang rape my daughters.

And don’t deign to explain to me that this verse is actually about ancient Middle Eastern hospitality laws.

Ancient or modern - this “righteous” man told a group of men to gang rape his daughters.

Is this one of the moral absolutes we as a society have thrown out?

And then there’s the extra creepy part at the end that they sometimes do and sometimes don’t tell little tiny children in Sunday school - yeah - that part.

And speaking of which - I’d like to pose a question. Which sounds more believable?

1. That two girls who live in an epoch in which a woman who is believed to have had sex out of wedlock can be stoned (and what is better proof than having a child?), and whose father just offered them to be gang raped by the men from the town they just escaped - thought, “Let’s get our awesome dad drunk and have sex with him so we can have children because we will never ever in the rest of our lives ever encounter another man who isn’t our father!"

2. OR that the creepy old dude who wrote this part of what - after additions, deletions, mistranslations, spelling errors, punctuation changes, political calculations, and printing errors over the years became what some Protestant Christians refer to as "the Bible" - was a creepy old dude fantasy?

Cause I can tell you that no woman in the history of freaking ever thought about getting her Dad drunk and having sex with him.

Ever.

And this - as unsettling as it is - is not even an original story in the Good Book - it’s not the last time something like that happened.

There’s the Levite who offered his concubine to a mob made up of men from the tribe of Benjamin (so they wouldn’t hurt him). They took him up on it and raped her to death.

Open the Good Book. Drop your finger on any given page and there’s a decent chance that you may land on a verse in which god is telling his chosen people to kill the men and rape the women of his non-chosen people in battle.

“Well - that’s the old covenant. When Jesus came he made a new covenant.”

😂😂😂😂😂 OK wait. I’m sorr... 😂😂😂😂😂 OK I’m sorry. 😂 That’s one of my favorites. [RP note: If you can't see it, Addie put in a bunch of laughing-to-tears emojis.

So... if the Old Testament is abolished, does that mean you don’t believe in the Ten Commandments?
But GUESS WHAT 😐?

(What?)

Jesus “said” do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.

No whammies no whammies no whammies noOOOOOH NOOOOOOO

Right.

And if you’re feeling attacked right now? You’d be right.

And you’d be feeling like all of these people you are so flippantly disregarding with your wise man wisdom.

Intelligent women and men are sick and tired. Yes we are TIIIIIRRRRED of people like you who never stopped believing in Santa not just wasting everybody’s time. But causing harm, TRUE harm in this world.

If you REALLY want to do something immediate about this problem?

You can call up the board members of an old church I believe you’re familiar with, and ask them why they would tell a young woman that she could no longer teach Sunday school because it had been discovered that her ex-husband had returned and was living with her (which is adultery), BUT took no action to remove the current church treasurer despite the fact that he has recently been convicted of soliciting a prostitute?

If you want to know what really happened to make this world a place where men rape and torture women with impunity while men like you type up smug statements and refresh your page waiting for the all the congratulatory e-pats on the back you’re about to get, then pick up your Bible.

Open to page one.

The first sentence is your answer.

“In the beginning, God”

Oh, Just Fuck Off, John Kelly

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: No matter where the fighting is and no matter the cause, most soldiers will act bravely, sometimes even heroically, to support their fellow soldiers. In every bullshit war, there are men and women who fight, get wounded, and die, and their sacrifice should be honored and respected. They went to war because the leaders we elected made them go there.

But let's also get another thing straight: We have not fought a war that wasn't bullshit since World War II. And every death and every wound has been for nothing (beyond the soldiers protecting each other.) Korea was bullshit. Vietnam was bullshit. The Persian Gulf was bullshit. Iraq was bullshit. Afghanistan is bullshit. They are all built on lies. Sometimes we allow ourselves to believe they weren't lies. But each and every one was based on lies to advance some policy or ideology that no Americans should have had to die for.

Which gets us to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general. Yesterday, Kelly appeared at the White House press briefing to set the record straight or some fucking thing about President Trump's callous phone call to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, killed in Niger earlier in this month.

In doing so, Kelly took his career and any respectability he had, which he had already handed over to Trump when he agreed to work for him in the first place, and he allowed Trump to fuck it in the ass while he cheered Trump on.

You can read about the many ways in which Kelly lied about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. You can get confused at Kelly's statement that Wilson "listened in" on a conversation that was on a fucking speakerphone in the car she was riding in and therefore she had no fucking choice but to listen in. You can roll your eyes at Kelly calling Donald Trump "brave" for reaching out to the family of a fallen soldier, as if Donald Trump has ever done anything braver than eat one too many Big Macs in a single sitting. You can even shake your head at Kelly's beyond ignorant invocation of the past when "Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor."

But I'm saying, "Oh, just fuck off" to John Kelly for a couple of reasons.

First, he should fuck off for talking about how Gold Star families (those who lost someone in battle) are no longer sacred because "I think that left in the convention over the summer." He is probably invoking the Khan family, who criticized Trump at the Democratic Convention, and not Patricia Smith, who lost her son in the Benghazi attack and called Hillary a murderer, more or less, at the Republican Convention.

And Kelly should fuck off because in the rest of his fucked-up appearance he completely politicized Gold Star families - who, it should be noted, often politicize themselves in honor of their lost loved ones. He ignored that the president didn't treat those families as sacred when he attacked the Khans. That didn't fucking crop up in his obsequious fluffing of Trump. As if to make his point clear about who he values, Kelly took a couple of questions but only from reporters who are in Gold Star families or are related to them.

Then he pretty much said that you're an asshole if you don't serve in the military: "We don't look down upon those of you who that haven't served. In fact, in a way we're a little bit sorry because you'll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our service men and women do -- not for any other reason than they love this country. So just think of that."

To which one can only say, "Fuck off. There are so many ways to serve your country and your community that don't involve the military and how fucking dare you diminish those."

Even more, John Kelly can fuck off because of what I started with here. Kelly said he was so upset that Rep. Wilson said mean things about Donald Trump (by, you know, quoting Donald Trump) that he had to take a walk. So, as one does, he went to Arlington National Cemetery, and "I went over there for an hour-and-a-half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed."

What were they doing under his orders? Fighting in a bullshit war in Iraq, where Kelly had various commands, up to being in charge of the whole damn show in 2008. Yeah, Kelly led men to die for nothing. And so many in the military know that they were it was a war for nothing. Oh, he could have retired, but he didn't. Which means he believed in the bullshit war and sent soldiers to die for bullshit. I'm pretty fucking sure they didn't sign up for that.

But let's go even further here because, you know, if you're gonna tell someone to "Fuck off," you may as well go all the way. One of Kelly's sons died in combat. He usually doesn't talk about it because it's horrific and personal and why should he. But Trump dragged the corpse of Kelly's son into this shitpool. And Kelly brought him up yesterday. Kelly's son died in Afghanistan in 2010 in a war that should never have been started and was fucked up from the start by President Bush and it wasn't even unfucked by President Obama. Like every other soldier in this war, he died for nothing because he shouldn't have been there in the first place. Kelly's younger son is now on his fifth tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Yeah, John Kelly walked out in front of the world yesterday to announce that he is just another piss whore in Trump's bed, and he'll willingly degrade himself and his family in order to stay there.

(Note: I support the troops so much that I don't want them to have to fight because some politician needs to prove that a think-tank's position on democracy or terrorism is correct. I want them to defend us and defend our allies. And, yes, I have family in the military. I don't want them to die for bullshit.)

What Sgt. La David Johnson Didn't Sign Up For

It's practically a saying from the old country: If you elect a raging sociopath with a dead soul, don't be surprised when he acts like a raging sociopath with a dead soul.

So, frankly, what would have been shocking is if President Donald Trump had expressed remorse, sorrow, and sympathy to the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, killed on a mission in Niger along with three of his fellow soldiers. Did anyone think that he wouldn't screw it up?

Of course, every time you think that Trump has cleared some incompetence bar, he sets it lower and still manages to flatten his gelatinous body to squeeze under it.

Talking to Myeshia Johnson while she was in a car with Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson on her way to the airport to greet the casket holding her husband and the father of her two children and one on the way, Trump referred to Sgt. Johnson only as "your guy." This is according to Wilson and Johnson's mother, who heard the call on speakerphone. And Trump's words of comfort were "He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway."

The first part of that sentence has gotten the most attention, but, really, the second part is just as callous and malignantly narcissistic. "I guess it hurts anyway" makes it seem like Trump thought the death shouldn't have hurt as badly because Johnson had joined the military. Even more, it's that he doesn't comprehend what the pain of loss is like because it's not about him.

Let us pause here to recognize that the deaths of four soldiers in Niger on October 4 weren't acknowledged by Trump until Tuesday. The "fake news" had reported on it shortly after the ambush that also wounded two others. And Johnson's body was found two days after the assault by Nigeriens, not by the U.S. Special Forces there. American soldiers are in the African nation to train the local military on dealing with al-Qaeda, although history has shown that the mission creep from this kind of activity often plunges more troops into danger (see Vietnam, El Salvador, and on and on).

Let us also recognize that had this attack and these KIAs had occurred when Barack Obama was President and Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, it would have been a scandal that would have stoked impeachment talk, if not criminal charged. The silence from the administration and the president would have been an indicator to Republicans of some massive cover-up, perhaps even the willingness of the administration to allow soldiers to die.

It would be a shame if, say, not only did the American forces lack enough medical support in Niger, but that "the military’s Africa Command asked lawmakers broadly for more help months before the attack in Niger, a West African nation nearly twice the size of Texas." Oh, right, they did. On March 9, 2017. To the Senate Armed Services Committee.

General Thomas D. Waldhauser, the head of the U.S. Africa Command, testified, "[Our] African partners lack the capability and capacity to assist with personnel recovery missions. Integrating personnel recovery and surgical stabilization/medical sustainment capabilities are a moral obligation and essential for the proper care of U.S. service members who risk their lives to protect our nation."

Committee Chair Sen. John McCain pledged at that hearing, "We owe our witnesses, and the men and women they lead, unambiguous national security priorities, clarity in our strategic thinking, and an unwavering commitment to provide them the resources required to support the necessary courses of action."

Except just under seven months later, those resources weren't there in a way that might have been able to help the soldiers killed in Niger. There are reasonable discussions to be made about distribution of forces and the use of resources. But had this been Obama and Clinton, we would be hearing how incompetent they are and how they abandoned our troops.

Certainly, we should now at least be saying that Republicans and Trump were warned and did nothing about it (just as they did nothing when Clinton asked for more funding to shore up defenses at embassies and consulates overseas).

So when Trump told Myeshia Johnson that her husband "knew what he signed up for," well, that's bullshit. What he signed up for didn't involve the nation not putting out the resources needed to make any medical attention quickly available. What he signed up for didn't involve being left to rot for a couple of days because of inadequate ability to search for his corpse.

What he didn't sign up for was that his family would be treated like their grief should be muted because his Commander-in-Chief cannot handle human feelings and doesn't understand that his incompetence contributed to their pain.

What Did That Dumb Orange Motherfucker Say Now? (Part 874)

In the shitstorm of lies that President Donald Trump fertilized the Rose Garden with yesterday, there was one that should have bugged the living fuck out of the jerk-off Republicans who have to pretend they even can stand being in the same room as him. No, it wasn't his declaration that Bill Clinton's FEMA director gave Trump's administration an "A+" on hurricane relief (Trump said, "And that includes Puerto Rico," which Witt took to Twitter to directly contradict). It wasn't his assertion that President Obama and other presidents didn't call the families of soldiers who died in battle (get to that in a sec).

No, it was when Trump asserted, "Don't forget it took years for the Reagan administration to get taxes done."

Surely, a number of Republicans' heads snapped at that. Surely, more than one thought, "Motherfucker, Reagan's first tax cut was signed and done on August 13, 1981." By the magic of math, that's far less than "years," and less than the amount of time Trump has been in office. It cut taxes by 25% and was the beginning of Reagan's bullshit trickle-down economics, a theory that fails every time, no matter how long you take to pass the bullshit bill. That aside, Trump not only lied, but he also benefited massively from that tax cut. You could argue that had Reagan not slashed taxes for the wealthy, we wouldn't have even fucking heard of this tangerine turd.

Every day is a new level of Hell as we sink into the seven-layer dip of cruelty, nonsense, and misery that spews out of Trump and his White House of Horrors. You know what the big news was this time 8 years ago? That the bank bailout was working so well that Wall Street executives were already being greedy fucks about their bonuses. That the deficit was going up. That President Obama and the Democrats were trying to get health care to millions of people. Spin that around in your head. No insults, no lies, no attacks by Obama against John McCain for losing the election. You forget what it was like to not have to add "What the fuck is our dumb motherfucker of a president saying today that might kill us all?" on top of the shitpile of dealing with your regular life. Like, goddamn, can't we have one fucking day when Trump's not ruining everything for us?

In today's Rose Garden scat play with the poor president of Greece, Trump spun off so many lies and exaggerations in a short period of time that it was mindboggling. From his constant misrepresentation of what the cost-sharing reduction in the Affordable Care Act is to his insistence that Democrats are the only reason that he hasn't had more nominees approved and not his failure to nominate more people quickly to his completely false claim that his vaguely defined plan has "the largest tax cuts in the history of our country," Trump may as well have said, "And I am twenty feet tall with a ten-foot long dick. Believe me."

And as soon as Trump asserted, regarding contact with the families of fallen soldiers, that "if you look at President Obama and other Presidents, most of them didn't make calls, a lot of them didn't make calls," he knew he had fucked up. His tell is that he goes into a kind of self-echolalia, where he gets stuck on a word and repeats it like on a loop. Right after making that accusation, Trump continued, "So, generally, I would say that I like to call. I'm going to be calling them. I want a little time to pass. I'm going to be calling them." Fuck, somebody hit him so he stops skipping.

When pressed on that later, a wise man might have apologized and admitted the mistake. A kind man might have said he didn't mean to malign every president ever. A decent man might have talked more about the soldiers and their families. But this is Donald Trump, and he is a motherfucker, and when a motherfucker is called out on fucking mothers, he just goes right on fucking them: "President Obama I think probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn't. I don't know. That's what I was told."

Then he sent Sarah Huckabee Sanders out to say that President Obama didn't call every family, as if that's what Trump said. And, to make it even more pathetic, the White House told NBC News that Obama didn't call General John Kelly when Kelly's son was killed in combat in 2010. And? It's like reality has to be bent in order to make sure Trump is never at fault.

Yeah, he's never to blame. Not for a goddamn thing. In a weird-ass cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, Trump insisted that Congress has failed, not him. No, fucking never him. "I’m not going to blame myself, I’ll be honest," he said.

As if anyone would ever think he was man enough to do so.

Trump and the ACA: The Slumlord-in-Chief

It's an old story when it comes to urban real estate. The owner of a building with a bunch of rent-stabilized apartments wants to jack up the cost of the places to meet what has become an exploding market or he wants them gone so he can wreck the place because the real estate parcel is that valuable. But if an elderly couple who has lived there for decades doesn't want to move out or if a family couldn't find anything nearby that was close to the low rent they get to pay by law, what's a landlord to do? It's not a perfect place to live; still, it's where a lot of people are comfortable and happy.

Now, you can start hitting them with harassing lawsuits and threats to evict them for minor or outright made-up lease violations. But if that doesn't work? Then you gotta raise your game. You refuse to make repairs so that leaks and other things get out of control unless the tenants repair them. Hey, you didn't cause that mold to grow up the walls. You do construction in a way that causes noise and dust and shaking walls and floors. You don't do anything to get rid of any bugs or vermin. If you get really desperate, you can open up part of the building to the homeless, allowing them to stay there for free.

You're not kicking them out. You're just making it miserable for them to be there so that they want to get out. You're doing it for the sake of hurting them, and you don't care what happens, even if it costs you money to do it.

We don't really have to imagine the above scenario because that's exactly what Donald Trump did when he was a slumlord in the 1980s at the 100 Central Park South building he had just bought in 1981. Yeah, he wanted to tear it down to build another big, dumb tower, but the place was full with tenants who were quite happy to pay far below-market for their homes. And Trump knew the apartments were occupied, but he wanted them gone. So he made life hell for them.

Trump's approach to the Affordable Care Act is essentially the same thing. He tried to just get rid of it, but the repeal effort failed, so now he's dropping a family of rats into it. His executive order of last week that sets up the cross-state junk insurance plans, called "association plans," and his refusal to pay the cost-sharing reduction money to insurance companies to help keep costs down for low-income Americans are designed to saw a hole in the walls and force everyone there to live with the dust and wreckage.

Between those two moves, the change in the birth control rules, and the cuts to enrollment programs, Trump not only has become the owner of Obamacare, he has become its slumlord. As former adviser and a rotting banana peel with feet Steve Bannon said this weekend at the Values Voters Summit (motto: "Making a mockery of the word 'values' for over 10 years"), Trump is not making the CSR payment because he's "Gonna blow that thing up. Gonna blow those exchanges up, right?" Which may sound like the President of the United States seeking to undermine a law in violation of his oath, but, really, who's gonna impeach him?

Trump sees himself as some kind of hero here, mocking insurance companies for losing stock value, daring Democrats to come work with him. But, like every slumlord, he's just trying to drive people out by making the thing they want so terrible that they run away. Then he can swoop in and have his way with it.

Of course, he's not the only slumlord in the family. Jared Kushner, a creepy guy who likely places his creepy penis inside Trump's daughter repeatedly, has been accused of that kind of behavior in various housing developments and buildings he owns. This includes letting things get so bad at one Maryland complex that, in one unit, "The bedroom ceiling...started leaking one day. Then maggots started coming out of the living room carpet. Then raw sewage started flowing out of the kitchen sink." So between that and the racist policies of his father, the Trump clan is filthy with terrible landlords.

After his hissy fit was over back in the 1980s and over a million bucks in legal bills, Trump didn't get the tenants to all move out, although many did.  The building was never knocked down. The top floor is now the home of one of his awful children, Eric Trump, and his family. Daddy slapped his name on the front, "Trump Parc," and now he advertises it as "one of the most desirable addresses on Central Park South, combining renowned luxury with a warm and unique intimacy that is a rarity in today’s new construction."

In other words, he failed, but he owns it. He couldn't take the wrecking ball to it, but he could make it so he could claim it. And he may declare, as he did today, "Obamacare is finished, it's dead, it's gone..You shouldn't even mention it. It's gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore." We may all call it "Trumpcare," but the Affordable Care Act is still there, with its Medicaid expansion and its laws governing pre-existing conditions and limits on payments and more. He didn't touch those.

The slumlord caused a lot of damage but didn't get what he wanted yet.

(Note: The slumlord theory of Trump's behavior can also cover what's going on in Puerto Rico, although that's seeming more like the Shock Doctrine.)

Trump and Hannity Should Get a Room Next Time

Just before it was time to record, Fox "news" host Sean Hannity asked his assistant, "He likes the mint, right?" His assistant assured him that the mint lip balm was his guest's favorite. "Okay, because I want to make sure he's happy," Hannity said. "He is, after all, our president."

The question came up when Hannity sat opposite Donald Trump before an audience of cheering supporters at the Air National Guard base in Middletown, Pennsylvania. "I hope you remembered the mint this time, Smilin' Seannie," Trump said.

"Yes, Mr. President, I sure did," Hannity exclaimed, pulling the small tube out of his jacket, delighted that Trump had remembered that nickname.

Trump leered, "Lemme see you put it on. Slowly." Hannity grinned as he took the top off and slowly dragged the greasy stick around his lips. "Nice, Seannie. Nice."

The director counted down and then they began. "My second interview since you've been president," Hannity said and then turned to the crowd. "Do you guys want to start with good news?" To the screams of the audience, the TV host got down on his knees and reached into Trump's already unzipped fly, dug around for a moment before coming across something like a toddler's pinky or a shriveled Vienna sausage, pulled it forward as far as he could, and encircled it with his lips.

"Oh, yeah, love that mint," Trump said, leaning back, the better for Hannity to get an angle that would allow him at least some minimal head bobbing without the worm-head penis flopping out of his mouth. Hannity was used to this part, the effort to get Trump even partially erect.

"The market is up 25 percent since you won," Hannity fluffed. "$5.2 trillion in wealth created. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 16 years." He felt the dick twitch until it became like an old cornichon, rubbery but with some stiffness to it. Now he could really go to town. He said, "We are going to be talking at length about your economic plan. It's reform but it's a massive tax cuts."

Trump moaned, "This is the largest tax cut in the history of our country." And then he shoved Hannity's head down as he lied, "Right now, Sean, we are the highest taxed nation in the world." The lies always bring him to the edge of orgasm.

On it went, as Hannity moved through the fake economic plan, and then got to energy and jobs, keeping up a steady pace of sucking and licking, occasionally trying to use a couple of fingers to find room for some yanking. "You've ended a lot of the Obama era regulations," he said, knowing that degrading the name of the black ex-president would give Trump the kind of pleasure that you usually only get from a willing fellater with a pierced tongue. "Especially in industries like energy and coal."

Hannity had learned well and was really good at this, Trump had to admit to himself before gasping in ecstasy, "We are opening mines. We are opening mines in the state of Pennsylvania. We're opening mines in other places. You know, coal is a very, and I call it clean coal. They have technology today that is so incredible, what they can do with the piece of coal is so incredible. I call it clean coal." The fact that mine jobs aren't coming back and that he has no idea what clean coal is (and it's a lie, too) didn't even enter into his mind. All he could think was "Yeah, Smilin' Seannie, yeah."

As the blow job went on, Trump almost came four or five times, but Hannity had the better part of an hour to fill, so he knew when to let up. When Hannity got the crowd to applaud and yell its approval for the phrase "fake news," Trump almost spooged, but Hannity slowed his pace. His cock almost exploded again when Trump went racist talking about crime in urban areas: "You look at what is happening in our inner cities. It's horrible what is going on in terms of the death, in terms of shooting. A woman gets up and she wants to go on a walk with her beautiful daughter. Get a loaf of bread and she ends up getting shot or the daughter gets shot."

What finally did it for Trump is what always does the trick. Hannity brought up potential Russian interference in the election, which gave Trump some brief rage wood. That made Trump flashback to his glory day. "This was an excuse that was used by the Democrats. An excuse for losing an election that frankly they should have won, because winning the Electoral College is so easy for Democrats," Trump whispered, starting to shake a bit as Hannity bore down, sucking like a Hoover set on deep pile. "They start off with three major states. To win the electoral college for a Democrat, it's almost like a given. That is why people said you cannot get to 270. We got to 306."

And, at that number, those magical three digits, as the crowd burst into cheers, Trump came, thrusting forward, dribbling a drop or two of semen into Hannity's mouth, which he eagerly devoured as he sat back. Zipping up, Trump winked at Hannity, who grinned as fulsomely as any man ever has.

Before heading out, Trump said, "And thanks for not asking a single thing about Puerto Rico."

"Now, I would never do that to you, sir," Hannity assured the back of the president.

Conservative Pundits: Mike Pence Would Sexually Assault Women If He Was Alone With Them

Let's be crystal fuckin' clear about Harvey Weinstein: Set him on fire in the middle of Hollywood as a lesson to every shit man who tries to coerce women and, yes, men into sex. Set him the fuck on fire and don't let anyone put him out no matter how much he screams and then say to everyone gawking, over his charred, grease-smelling corpse, "Okay, you got the message, you abusive bastards?" Do you have any other ideas? Because, at this point, in the 21st goddamn century, I've run out of ways to get across the seeming common sense notion that you don't fucking treat people the way Weinstein did.

It's simply ludicrous that there's gotta be a reckoning on sexual harassment, assault, and rape every few years. Clarence Thomas's pubic hair, Mike Tyson's rape conviction, and Senator Bob Packwood's groping spree, all from the 1990s, seemed like a turning point. Apparently not so much. Now we've got this rash of powerful media figures who should have been taken down decades ago, with Bill O'Reilly, the rotting corpse of Roger Ailes, and Harvey Weinstein. Fuck all of them.

Of course, conservatives, ignoring the fact that Donald Trump has over a dozen such allegations against him, not to mention a certain tape where he talks about grabbing pussies, have been jubilantly demanding that Democrats condemn Weinstein, who was a big donor to Democratic candidates and causes. Fucking Republicans have to be shamed into returning contributions from white supremacists, but, sure, yeah, attack the Democrats on this.

On the outer edge of completely absurd is a short piece by noted Jesus fellater Erick "Erick" Erickson on his internet journal of tongue-gargling and armpit-huffing, The Resurgent. Erickson talks about how liberals mocked Vice President Mike "Always Looks Like His Hemorrhoids Are Acting Up" Pence for his "rule of not dining alone or taking meetings alone with women." Oh, who's laughing now, libtards? The media "will never run stories about Mike Pence sexually harassing women. They’ll never run stories about women unsure whether Pence was propositioning them" because Pence isn't alone with them. Mother, ironically his wife, is by his side on such occasions.

Erickson is so goddamn sure this is a great statement of honor. "Mike Pence could never be accused of wanting to have sex with someone other than his wife in these sorts of situations," Erickson froths, "because he avoids putting himself and the other person into these situations."

Former Trump whisperer Sebastian Gorka, an evil goatee with a human body attached to it, concurred in a tweet: "THINK: If Weinstein had obeyed @VP Pence's rules for meeting with the opposite sex, none of those poor women would ever have been abused."

Put aside for a second that most every man can be alone with a woman without raping her or even grabbing her breast (it's true!). Just today, I was alone in meetings with three separate women. All somehow escaped unscathed. Crazy, right?

And put aside the implication that somehow the women are to blame for allowing themselves to be alone with Weinstein. (Sorry, Erick and the Prick, that's pretty much what you're saying.)

Instead, without much of a leap, what is being implied here is that Vice President Mike Pence would sexually assault women if he was alone with them. What else could they be saying? It's pretty goddamn clear that Pence considers himself a threat to any woman who is close enough to him that he can sniff their lady scent. He couldn't help himself. All that Christian repression would be tossed out the window. And conservative pundits agree. It's truly best that no woman is ever in a space with only Pence. Consider yourselves warned by, well, Erickson and Gorka.

The thread through all of the GOP responses to Weinstein (beyond those who just said, "This is fucking awful for the women involved") is a desperate attempt to spin attention away from the sexual predator they nominated and got elected president. They want their hands to be clean by making sure everyone else's are dirty, especially Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's.

Harvey Weinstein will disappear. He might even end up in prison. His victims will have to continue to deal with the damage he inflicted on them. Others will likely be brought down with him.

But Trump will still be president. And the Republican Party will still be abetting him and, by extension, his crimes.

Time to Out Republicans (Not for What You're Thinking Of)

You've been reading the articles about how Republican Senator Bob Corker said Donald Trump's recklessness and ignorance are setting us "on the path to World War III." Or maybe you've seen the Washington Post story that quotes multiple sources, many anonymous, on how Trump is becoming isolated and rage-filled and unpredictable. Or perhaps you read Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times saying, "Among people who work in politics, Republicans as well as Democrats, it is conventional wisdom in DC that President Trump is staggeringly ill-informed, erratic, reckless and dishonest." Or you could have seen the Politico article that "Trump, several advisers and aides said, sometimes comes into the Oval Office worked into a lather from talking to friends or watching TV coverage in the morning," and they have to calm him down by rubbing his chins or something.

Corker, who isn't running for reelection in 2018, also said, "The vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here...of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road."

And that's the thread that runs through these articles. It's taken as true that many, many Republicans know that Trump is unfit for office. What else we can glean is something that Vox's Ezra Klein tweeted today: "Every political reporter know plenty of top Republicans routinely talk like Corker behind closed doors. There is such widespread cowardice here, and the country is paying the price."

I don't know many people who have access to Republicans in Congress, but the few I've spoken to say the same thing, that, with the exception of the nutzoids in the Freedom Caucus, pretty much down the line and around the nation, Republicans in the House and Senate know that Trump is unfit. What's more, they know he's dangerous. What's more, they know that if he does something completely insane, like nuke North Korea, they are responsible. So it weighs on these cowards. Do we challenge the president and face the wrath of Breitbart and Fox and the doxing, death-threatening legions of insane tweeters and Redditors and 4 and 8chan-nintgtons, bots and true believers alike? Or do we just keep our mouths shut and hope we get reelected and hope beyond hope that he's not that crazy?

Here is where those political reporters and all the connected pundits come in. Yeah, you're not supposed to name your sources. Yeah, it's a big damn journalistic principle. But if I thought my best friend was going to shoot up a school, I'd violate the bro code or whatever and tell someone because that's what you do. (Note: None of my besties own guns.) When it comes to Trump, we're talking far more than that level of danger, and that's coming from Corker, one Republican who did speak out.

You know how you play this game, the one that asks, "If you could go back in time and stop Hitler, would you?" Here, you don't even have to kill a baby. But you might stop a nuclear war. You might get a madman out of the position to inflict his madness on the world.

Media folk just need to reveal the Republicans who believe that Trump can't function as the president. Out them. Let's get it all out in the open. I don't know if the next step would be for them to impeach or remove him in some way. But at least it might force them to support something like the Lieu/Markey bill to compel a president to go through Congress before launching an offensive nuclear strike.

Sure, you're gonna burn sources. But maybe that's a small price to pay to force sunshine into the darkness we find ourselves facing.

Columbus Day for the Conquered: Yeah, Trump Dicks Over Indigenous People, Too

Believe it or not, the policies and proposals of President Donald Trump, for whom the Washington Redskins could rename themselves "Orangeskins" and offend far fewer people, will have or are having a detrimental effect on Indian communities throughout the country. No one is immune from his patented brand of incompetence, cruelty, and fuckery.

Take, for instance, Trump's budget proposal from a few months back. It cuts federal funding to Indian country over 10 percent. That's $300 million less for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $50 million cut from HUD's budget for housing for Indian communities, and $150 million cut from the Indian Health Service. Oh, and Indian education programs would be cut by $64 million plus an additional $58 million cut from funds to repair worn-out school buildings in Indian country.

On and on the cuts go, to law enforcement, to youth delinquency programs, to assistance programs, to tribal national resource management programs. And because the war on children by this administration is never truly complete, cuts to child welfare programs on reservations are proposed, too.

The budget proposal so thoroughly dicks over Indian country that an Oklahoma Republican member of Congress, Tom Cole, who is a Chickasaw, spoke out, saying, "I can tell you, whoever came up with this budget, I don't hold them in high esteem."

Trump himself actually met with tribal leaders back in June, and he didn't talk about Pocahontas or Tonto or say, "How" and tap his "woo-woo"-ing mouth. Of course, what he did was make unrealistic promises because he had no fucking clue what they were talking about. "We love Indian Country, right?" he said because, yeah, that's what he does. And Trump talked about how he was going to make land use much easier for Indian tribes: "All you want is the freedom to use them, and that’s been the problem. It’s been very difficult, hasn’t it? It will be a lot easier now under the Trump administration."

While some things won't happen (like a weakening of the National Environmental Policy Act so drilling and other shitty activities can get going faster), the Native American groups' representatives there hoped for an answer on getting land-into-trust requests expedited. This is how tribes get more land around their reservations, by restoring traditional lands to the tribes. But the Trump administration just last week announced that Department of the Interior was proposing to make the already years-long process more onerous and to actively discourage tribes from getting land back. So, in other words, deregulation is great except when it might benefit someone other than huge corporations.

Meanwhile, North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, has proposed a bill to help with the "epidemic" of "missing and murdered Native women." In a speech on the floor of the Senate, Heitkamp told the stories of four women whose cases are still open. She said, "Native women and girls face a crisis of exploitation, violence, and murder – we must take action to protect them as I’ve long been working to do."

The bill, named after a young woman who disappeared when she was 8 months pregnant and was later found murdered, would require "federal agencies to discover the extent of the problem by reporting on the numbers of missing and murdered Native women every year. To address potential shortfalls, it creates a standardized protocol for federal, tribal, state and local governments to follow in dealing with these types of cases."

Heitkamp's impassioned plea, followed by equally strong words from Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who is co-sponsoring the legislation, received virtually no media coverage. This despite the fact that, as Heitkamp points out, "In 2016, North Dakota had 125 reported cases of missing Native women according to the National Crime Information Center, but numbers are likely much higher as cases are often under reported and data isn’t officially collected."

Which is a situation that Christopher Columbus would approve of.

Fuck You, Steve Scalise

Before he was shot and nearly killed in June, Representative Steve Scalise was a motherfucker on cultural issues. How much of a motherfucker was he? His security detail as Majority Whip in the House of Representatives included Capitol Officer Crystal Griner. Griner and another officer, David Bailey, were injured saving Scalise, with Griner being shot in the ankle. Scalise released a statement specifically thanking the two: "I am especially grateful to Crystal and David, who I have been blessed to have by my side day in and day out in my job as Majority Whip. I would not be here today without the bravery of Crystal and David. They saved my life, and are my heroes."

That's right. For three years, since he was elected Majority Whip, the Louisiana Republican has had Crystal Griner by his side. Griner, as you may have heard, is a lesbian who is married to, wait for it, a woman.

Being a nutzoid Christian, Steve Scalise has spent a good chunk of his career blocking the rights of the woman who put her safety on the line for him and, as he said, saved his life. On his official congressional web page, it brags, "Congressman Scalise has worked diligently throughout his career to protect traditional marriage. Scalise has co-sponsored legislation to amend the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. As a member of the Louisiana State Legislature, Congressman Scalise authored a similar amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that protects traditional marriage."

So he was being protected by someone whose happiness he sought to prevent. That's how much of a motherfucker he was. And now, after the shooting, after he was saved by Griner, he's even more of a motherfucker because he's going right back to fucking mothers.

One of his first big public appearances will be at the hategasm known as the Values Voters Summit. That's a gathering of homophobic Jesus-fellaters who rant for a couple of days at a DC hotel about how fucked the nation is, how much they hate libtards, the poors, and the darks, and how Donald Trump's shit tastes like delicious chocolate pie. It's sponsored by the mad Family Research Council (motto: "Proud to be labeled a hate group"), whose "Human Sexuality" page makes you think that LGBTQ Americans are essentially Isis in better clothes and that the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage is the day God puked.

Yeah, in a royal "Fuck you, my real savior," Scalise is gonna speak to these dipshits.

And before you say, "Oh, wait, he might say something about a change of heart."

After I stopped laughing at how adorable you are, I'd point out that in his first post-hospitalization interviews this week, Scalise has said that his being shot and all those people in Las Vegas being killed has only strengthened his desire to stick his dick into a shotgun barrel and fuck it.

On Fox "news," Scalise was firm about his bullshit, dangerous interpretation of the 2nd Amendment: "I think it's fortified it because first of all, you've got to recognize that when there is a tragedy like this, the first thing we should be thinking about is praying for the people who were injured and doing whatever we can to help them, to help law enforcement. We shouldn't be first thinking of promoting our political agenda." And then, like so many fucking idiots talking about guns, he brought up how law enforcement has guns, which no one is saying should change: "Frankly what I experienced was when there was a shooter, luckily we had Capitol Police there with their own guns. Every single day in America regular citizens that just have a passionate belief in the Second Amendment, who have their own guns, use guns every single day to protect themselves against criminals...that's a different side of the story that I think is important. People use guns way more to defend themselves against criminals than criminals use guns to hurt people."

Oh, go fuck yourself with your own shattered pelvis, you fucking blind shitheel. First of all, Griner and Bailey didn't have "their own guns." They had department-issued guns. And, you dumb motherfucker, guns harm more people than they help, as study after study after study has shown. And you can't just compare crimes committed versus crimes stopped; you better throw in accidents, suicides, and more in there or you're just a lying son of a bitch.

Did anyone really think that Scalise, who comes from a gerrymandered district in deep red Louisiana, David Duke country and the creepy-ass area where the first season of True Detective took place combined, would gain wisdom and perspective from learning what exactly bullets can do to a body? C'mon. He could have taken ten bullets and watched his whole family be shot and all of them saved by a group of gay EMTs and not a goddamn thought of transformation would enter his depraved fucking head. A bought and paid for whore knows that he's gotta keep working for his pimp. He gets no sympathy. He doesn't get a pass for his pain when he wants so many others to suffer.

Welcome back, Steve Scalise, and fuck you endlessly.

On Guns, on Abortion, on Everything, the Right Knows It's Wrong (and They Don't Care)

The conservative movement in this country is filthy with hypocrites. It's always been that way: the ones who talk morality and law and order are always the ones who are busy snorting coke off the hard dicks of male prostitutes. Conservatism can't function without hypocrisy because it demands an impossible purity from its adherents.

You, dear, corrupt conservative, have to be able to trick the rubes into signing onto the greed and avarice part of your policies. You need those votes because, for now, there still is some semblance of democracy. You need to give the rubes red meat to keep them interested because they sure as shit aren't going to understand marginal tax rates. So that's why you gotta feed 'em flags, guns, Jesus, and abortion. And that's where the purity no one can achieve fucks you over all the time.

Rep. Tim Murphy of the former coal mining area around Pittsburgh is a Republican (of course) who was a big deal in the anti-abortion movement (of course). He just cosponsored a bill to ban all abortions after 20 weeks, something that is generally only done in medical emergencies and is about 1% of all abortions. He is married but had a mistress he was fucking (of course) and knocked up (of course). So he told her to get an abortion. Of course. Like every gay-bashing cocksucker and every hooker-humping preacher, Murphy was a conservative who was saying one thing and doing another. When Shannon Edwards, the forensic psychologist Murphy was boning, confronted the congressman about an anti-choice Facebook post he supposedly had written after saying she should abort their love fetus, Murphy responded, "I get what you say about my March for Life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced."

In other words, Murphy, like nearly every anti-choice politician, knows that abortion needs to be safe and legal for his misterss. But he refuses to say it should be for everyone else.

A whole other level of hypocrisy is that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, two of President Donald Trump's closest advisers, have been using private email accounts for government business. And now, it seems, they have been using the private email server of the Trump Corporation. Let's put it this way: this is exactly what Trump and the media talked about for months during the campaign. Hillary Clinton's private email and use of a non-government server was worse than five Watergates plus three Teapot Domes. It was the greatest scandal in America's history because we were told it was. Sure, everyone investigating it found nothing to prosecute Clinton, but that's just that the fix was in and Clintons murder people and Seth Rich and fucking nothing matters because Jared and Ivanka are doing the same shit but no one cares.

In other words, "but her emails" was a big fucking joke, a lie to make Clinton appear sinister and a trick to make the rubes happy with rage.

And the thing is that they know it. Conservative politicians and commentators simply know the difference between right and wrong. They just don't give a happy monkey fuck because anything that impinges on their power needs to be suppressed.

Which brings us around to guns. I promise you that most NRA-owned politicians know that no Democrats are trying to take away all the guns, despite the NRA's scurrilous propaganda. I promise you that they know that common sense laws restricting gun ownership would actually slow down the number of shootings. I promise you that they know there should be an assault weapons ban and more. Sure, there are the true believers, but reporters hear all the time from Republicans, especially, that they would support background checks and permits but, if they do, the NRA will say they want to melt down all your guns to make a Black Lives Matter monument.

Conservative beliefs are utterly delusional and fly in the face of all facts and all aspects of human behavior. We know that gun control works because it works everywhere gun laws are strict. We know that limiting access to abortion and birth control ends up harming women. We know that use of a private email server isn't a major crime. We know that football players protesting by kneeling during the National Anthem is protected speech. But conservatives have to keep the rubes at bay. The only way to reconcile the abject, fucked-up hypocrisy that conservatives live with is that they know. They just don't fucking care because there has been no cost to not caring since 2008 (and much longer in some congressional districts).

And so nothing will be done when it comes to guns in the wake of Las Vegas (and Orlando and Newtown and...). Until they are forced to pay for their hypocrisy, for the complete and utter fraud they have perpetrated (including the support for Trump), nothing is going to ever happen.

Donald Trump Beclowns Himself in Puerto Rico

Jesus fuckballs, how much more embarrassing can this presidency get than soulless tangerine cretin Donald Trump play-acting sympathy while touring the devastation in Puerto Rico? At this point, Trump could drop his pants, bend over, and blow his fast food shits all over homeless children clutching their last teddy bear, and we'd say, "Yeah, we were pretty much expecting that."

Speaking at a National Guard base on the island, Trump spent a great deal of time on how awesome his administration is. He bragged about Linda McMahon more than he talked about the people of Puerto Rico: "I also want to thank Linda McMahon, Small Business. I always joke -- I said, she's in charge of small business, but small business is massive business when you add it all up. And she has done an incredible job -- built a great company with her husband, Vince McMahon. And I wanted her so badly for this position because there's nobody that knows how to build a company like those and, let me tell you, like this woman. She has been amazing in business, and now she's doing an incredible job as the Administrator." We get it, man. You like wrestling.

And then he gave a lesson in what Mick Mulvaney does: "Mick Mulvaney is here -- right there -- and Mick is in charge of a thing called 'budget.'" Trump pretty much did the rhetorical equivalent of blowing shit when he said, "Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico." I'm sure the starving people digging their few surviving possessions out of mud will try to economize to save the "budget." Fucking moron. Fucking clown.

But it got worse when he compared the deaths in Puerto Rico to the deaths during Katrina, which he really did, for fuck's motherfucking sake: "Every death is a horror. But if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with, really, a storm that was just totally overpowering -- nobody has ever seen anything like this." What kind of savage bitch-faced cock mite tells devastated people that they have it better than other devastated people? Comparing the number of reported (so far) deaths in Puerto Rico to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Trump said, "Sixteen people versus in the thousands." No, not "thousands." Less than 2000 died in Katrina. Horrible, but not thousands. Besides, this is not a game. Except to a clown, everything's a game.

You might be reading this, thinking, "Well, at least he didn't do that thing where he brags about himself." No, fuck you, of course, he did. When an Air Force representative talked about supply and rescue flights, Trump jumped in, "So amazing that we're ordering hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new airplanes for the Air Force, especially the F-35." Then the chemicals in his shrunken brain rolling around inside his soft skull clicked over to campaign mode as he said, in the middle of a place that was ripped apart and will take years to put back together, "That's an expensive plane that you can't see. And as you probably heard, we cut the price very substantially -- something that other administrations would never have done, that I can tell you."

We are in some kind of psychological experiment in how much stupidity, shame, and savagery we can take before we break or we just say, "Fuck this. I'm watching Netflix and never coming out." And Netflix is calling louder and louder.

When he was getting ready to go on the tour, Trump said that the people who are waiting all day to get water or gas or food, who have no place to store the dead, who are starting to see diseases crop up, who have no power, should be grateful: "I appreciate your support and I know you appreciate our support, because our country has really gone all out to help. And it's not only dangerous, it's expensive." Yeah, they'll get right to decorating a thank-you card as soon as they can eat and have more than one operational hospital.

In Texas in August after Hurricane Harvey, Trump didn't mention how expensive the support would be. He didn't talk about the budget. In Florida in September after Hurricane Irma, Trump didn't say a word about the cost. Only in Puerto Rico. Only there.

And, leaving one area, he told the victims of the storm, "Have a good time." The whole visit was his way of saying that he's not responsible for the clusterfuck of ineffectiveness and incompetence that has ruled the rescue and clean-up effort so far. But Trump's the fuckin' president, man. He can spin, but he can't hide.

Goddamn, this dumb, racist asshole is beclowning our entire country.

Gun Crazy: Las Vegas Edition

I'm not going to try to recapitulate the horror of last night in Las Vegas where at least 58 people were killed by a single gunman firing from the 32nd floor of a hotel into a crowd of 22,000 at a Jason Aldean concert, the deadliest massacre in modern times. I'm not going to tell you about the gunman because fuck him. Fuck everything about him. Fuck his life. Fuck his death. Fuck everything he ever loved. Fuck him in Hell with the hot barrels of the 18-20 guns and each of the thousands of rounds of ammo he had with him in the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

I don't give a fuck if he was white or brown or plaid. I don't give a fuck if he was ISIS or Nazi or whatever. I don't give a fuck about his brother, who keeps getting interviewed. What I do give a fuck about is that he was able to own that many guns. How the fuck does a nation allow that? How is that rational? How does it make anyone safer? It's aiding and abetting someone's mental illness at some point. He's just a hoarder with a side of intense paranoia and a socio- and/or psychopath.

Not that gun owners care or have any perspective. Let me give you one anecdote before getting to the motherfucking NRA. Lorraine Berry wrote to me this morning: "I'm trapped in a waiting room in Florida waiting for a mammogram. Watching the news and some newsperson asks why the guy did this. I say, 'Because we sell machine guns in this country.' Immediately, 5 women come after me, tell me they love their guns. One owns 6. Immediately start speculating it was Antifa that did this. I cite facts but they accuse me of being emotional...After they thought I had stopped paying attention, they started talking amongst themselves. 'My son-in-law is a registered gun dealer. I know so many people with mental problems that own guns. I don't know how they got through the loopholes. Unless you've been certified, you can buy a gun.' But they're so sure that it's their right to own those guns. Told me it was their constitutional right. They told me they were tired of being 'silenced.' I said, 'You haven't had a gun law passed in a decade. You own Congress. I have no idea how you are the victims here.'"

That feeling of imminent victimhood is what drives the National Rifle Association, a group of vermin that feeds on the corpses of gunshot victims, sucking their blood to boost gun sales and their membership, fostering the mental illness of thousands of Americans, the 3% who own over half the guns in the nation, a group that the dogfucker in Vegas belonged to, and the NRA fans the flames of their madness, telling them, through the cruel, pursed, snarling lips of Dana Loesch, that politicians are gonna send goons to take their guns away, something that has never happened in the modern United States, but it makes them feel like victims, it feeds the paranoia, it pushes them to buy more guns and more ammo.

What a goddamned, pathetic nation this must be for this to be allowed.

Right now, not only is the NRA active in trying to get a bill allowing silencer purchases for any "hunter" or "sportsperson," it's trying to get a decision on a magazine size ban in Maryland overturned. It's celebrating new laws allowing for concealed carry of weapons on college campuses in several states. It's a terrorist organization as sure as ISIS is. The NRA uses fear and violence to promote its political agenda. And it uses shit-tons of money. The NRA leadership is dancing on piles of cash with fresh bodies of people from Las Vegas and with the rotting corpses from Orlando and with the child-sized skeletons of Newtown.

We have to be able to agree that some things are just wrong. If we can't agree, as a society, that the way we have handled the ownership of guns in the United States is a complete catastrophe, we can't move forward. At this point, the proliferation and propagation of guns is like what happens when measles gets into a group of children whose parents have refused to inoculate them. Yeah, your freedom got a bunch of people hurt. Is it worth it?

You should not be allowed to own a bunch of guns. You should not be allowed to own large magazines. You should not be allowed to own semi-automatic or automatic rifles. You should be required to get trained and licensed. You should have to register every gun. You should have to use whatever modern technology is available to make guns safer. You shouldn't be allowed to buy a large amount of ammunition without a special permit. You should have to pass a background check for every purchase. You should have to be certified as not mentally ill. You shouldn't be allowed to have a gun if you have had domestic violence restraining order filed against you.

That's basic, man. Any society that doesn't do that, the bare minimum in the realm of "well-regulated," is a society that has gone insane.

Instead of doing something, Republicans and other conservatives tell us that we shouldn't politicize a shooting (although, you know, ignoring the politics of something is a political act). They tell us that good guys with guns can stop crimes (although I'm not sure how a few thousand people firing at the hotels on the Strip would have helped anyone). They tell us that places like Chicago, with slightly tighter gun laws, have a great deal of gun violence (although most of those guns come from outside Chicago because, apparently, there are roads that go in and out of the city).

They will do anything to protect the delusions of the gun nuts, as well as their filthy campaign war chests.

I have no words of wisdom. I can't offer any comfort.  We've all said it all before. We all know what has to be done. But we don't do it.

We are all hostages to the armed and deranged among us.

(Note to complainers: I don't give a fuck today if you think my use of "mentally ill," "crazy," or "insane" is "ableist." I just don't give a fuck today. Save it for tomorrow.)