Barack Obama Reminds Us That We Are a Nation

There is a tone that Barack Obama has whenever he's talking about something where you know he's thinking, "This is so damn obvious that I can't believe I have to say it out loud." It's a mixture of incredulity that people (generally Republicans and Fox "news" viewers) could be so fuckin' stupid and disappointment that he has to say something that's been said a million times before. But it's also got an air of optimism behind it, that maybe it needs to be said over and over and this is just the burden we all bear. Yeah, that's it. That's the tone, and, goddamn, I've missed it.

Former President Obama's eulogy at the funeral of Rep. John Lewis, one of the titans of the civil rights movement, was blissfully political. It was refreshingly confrontational. And it was in the spirit of Lewis's entire life, as Obama well-knew. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Lewis had asked Obama to bring the fire to his funeral, especially since it was held at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King had been pastor until his murder in 1968. What a better place and what a better time for Obama the fighter to finally, fully re-emerge. We missed you, man, and, holy shit, we need you.

The moment that had the tone was when he tied the current political and social reality to the past we try to believe we're better than. "Bull Connor may be gone," Obama said. "But today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans. George Wallace may be gone. But we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators." 

If there is one thing that Obama must recognize now is how easy it is to take away the promise of progress, to move backwards on the very things that you believe must move forward. Obama has had to watch for the last three-and-a-half years as Donald Trump and the GOP savages dismantled everything that had been accomplished over the Obama's two terms: deal, agreements, policies, the fucking pandemic response team. What remains - the Affordable Care Act - has powerfully changed millions of lives for the better, and it is the white whale that conservative pricks want to harpoon for no reason other than it gives people hope that government can be a genuine force for good. That must be undermined because if Americans believe that, then they are going to want their government to do more than protect the assets and property of the very wealthy.

On the same day that Trump frighteningly suggested that the presidential election be delayed because of deranged lies about nonexistent mass voter fraud, Obama was passionately advocating for making elections more free and more fair. "We may no longer have to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar in order to cast a ballot. But even as we sit here, there are those in power are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting — by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision," and here his voice rose in genuinely righteous indignation, "even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people don’t get sick." Right there was where that tone was at its clearest. It was as if he was rhetorically asking, "Isn't it clear that you have to be evil to do this shit? This is about keeping people healthy and alive and engaged in our democracy. If you don't want that, you don't believe in this country." 

And, of course, the evil motherfuckers don't.

Obama was just getting warmed up, as he attacked the conservative effort to undermine minority voters: "Once the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, some state legislatures unleashed a flood of laws designed specifically to make voting harder, especially, by the way, state legislatures where there is a lot of minority turnout and population growth. That’s not necessarily a mystery or an accident. It was an attack on what John fought for. It was an attack on our democratic freedoms. And we should treat it as such." If you treat something as an attack, then you get in the trenches and you fucking fight, with your body, with your soul, with your voice, and with your vote.

And then Obama laid out the plan of attack, taking it right to the Republicans who are scared for their electoral lives if people could vote as easily as they should be able to. If the GOP really believed that rights are "God-given" or some such magical hoodoo, then they would be doing everything they could to allow everyone to avail themselves of those rights. But, like voter fraud, conservatives don't believe it. It's just something they say to justify their hatred. So they attack, and here's how you fuck up their attack, according to Obama: By making sure everyone is automatically registered to vote, giving freed inmates their right to vote, making Election Day a holiday, enfranchising Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, and ending partisan gerrymandering. "And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do," Obama said, going after the very thing that had been weaponized against him by that rat bastard Mitch McConnell and his band of brutish racists. 

He ended this section of the eulogy by placing the responsibility on all of us. He said, "As long as young people are protesting in the streets, hoping real change takes hold, I’m hopeful but we cannot casually abandon them at the ballot box. Not when few elections have been as urgent, on so many levels, as this one. We cannot treat voting as an errand to run if we have some time. We have to treat it as the most important action we can take on behalf of democracy."

We're a goddamn nation, not 350 million islands selfishly at war with each other all the time in order to accumulate the most shit. We're citizens of a nation, and we're supposed to give a damn about that fact. While Trump and Republicans have done everything in their power to divide us, to set us against each other, to make every minor difference into a vast gulf and to make vast gulfs into uncrossable oceans, President Obama, evoking the legacy of a man who bled on American soil for his human, not divine, rights, asserted that it's time to act like a goddamn nation and actually give a damn. And isn't that just blindingly obvious? Did we forget about hope and change so quickly?

We may never live up to even those basic expectations, but we can at least make the effort, if for no other reason than to expel this poison that is weakening our system on the way to a painful death. We have responsibilities to each other. Too many Americans have forgotten that. 

AOC Fucks the Patriarchy's Shit Up

The line from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's calm evisceration of Rep. Ted Yoho yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives that will likely be the one that is remembered is something that shouldn't need to be said: "Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man." Too many terrible men have tried to use the fact that they're related to women as a defense for their shit behavior. Ocasio-Cortez was done with that, as we all should be. Ted Bundy had a mom. Bill Cosby has a wife and daughters. Donald Trump has had three wives and two daughters. Their proximity to women did nothing to ameliorate their hideous acts towards women.

Ocasio-Cortez said that she wasn't speaking so much because Yoho had called her a "fucking bitch" on the steps of the Capitol but because, the day before, Yoho had offered the fake apology of a fucking bitch. Yoho has long been a fucking bitch. He rode into DC on one of the racist Tea Party waves in 2012, representing a district in Florida that's 75% white. He's been a loyal gobbler of Koch money, the kind of piece of shit Republican who votes to defund Planned Parenthood, won't say if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is constitutional, and refuses to vote for a federal anti-lynching bill because that would be "overreach." What had so upset Yoho that he felt he had to confront Ocasio-Cortez? The Democrat from NYC had said a month ago that poverty leads to crime, something that we've fucking known since at least Les Miserables. But that set off Yoho because if there's one thing a Republican doesn't want to hear, it's that you might need to actually help people.

Then, proving that he's one of the littlest fucking bitches in the bitch-filled GOP caucus, Yoho went to the mic in the House on Wednesday to say, in essence, "Sorry if what I said upset you. Oh, and I didn't say it. Oh, and I might have said it but I didn't intend for her to hear it. Oh, and I only said the thing I didn't say because I love my country and God and my wife and daughters and I'm gonna hide behind all that because I'm a fucking bitch." More or less, that was it. 

Sure, one way to read and watch Ocasio-Cortez's response is that she ripped off Yoho's little nutsack and showed it to him, laughing as he looked at his torn scrotum in her clutched hand while he bled to death. It is more than gratifying to see it that way. "I want to be clear that Representative Yoho’s comments were not deeply hurtful or piercing to me, because I have worked a working class job," she said, adding, "I have tossed men out of bars that have used language like Mr. Yoho’s." And you totally know she could. It was cathartic, but it was so much more.

More importantly and more incisively on her part, Ocasio-Cortez universalized the insult to show how it's simply part and parcel of the patriarchal world that women have been forced to negotiate and, really, fuck that shit. Fuck this male-dominated institution and fuck all the men who fuck up women's lives and fuck them that they do it without consequences. Or, in her words, "I want to thank him for showing the world that you can be a powerful man and accost women. You can have daughters and accost women without remorse. You can be married and accost women. You can take photos and project an image to the world of being a family man and accost women without remorse and with a sense of impunity. It happens every day in this country. It happened here on the steps of our nation’s Capitol. It happens when individuals who hold the highest office in this land admit, admit to hurting women and using this language against all of us."

Yoho's pathetic little slap at Ocasio-Cortez is just another of the last gasps of a white patriarchy that has been on oxygen for at least a decade, kept alive by unholy medical procedures and the force of pure racist and sexist fear, like Sheldon Adelson or the thankfully dead Strom Thurmond, that their day may finally, at long last, after so much delay, be over. And it's going to be women like Ocasio-Cortez and the dozen-plus women in Congress who stood with her, as well as the daughters and granddaughters of soon-to-be extinct creatures like Yoho. 

Goddamn, it can't come soon enough. Please take the keys away from men, whether in Congress or in other positions of power and hopefully the presidency one day soon. God knows people like Ted Yoho have fucked this nation he supposedly loves for everyone, including wives and daughters. No, the people who really love the United States know it must change or it will die. Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley and Mikie Sherrill and Rashida Tlaib and so many more will keep giving the patriarchy a beat down in the Congress and elsewhere until it's finally yielded to the hope of progress.

Trump Assures That We Stay Angry with a Parade of Horribles

One thing that is remarkable about the remarkably bad presidency of Donald Trump, who is really just a sack of yams with a deranged parrot on top of it, is that every single time the mongrels of the media start to say that he's "pivoting" or taking "a new tone," he undercuts that by doing more scandal. It's either an offhand remark or tweet, like telling accused child sex trafficker and rapist Ghislaine Maxwell that "I wish her well," or the revelation of some other scandal, like the fact that Trump asked redundantly-named Woody Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, to convince the British government to move the British Open golf tournament to Trump's failing golf resort in Scotland.

There's always a danger that we simply get used to one form of fuckery, like Trump's constant violation of the emoluments clause in the Constitution, and it fades into the deafening background drone of crime and offense that marks this presidency and this administration and this party. You don't want to become complacent, but as long as Republicans are willing to cover up for Trump, many Americans have a "well, what are you gonna do?" attitude. Ah, well, we'll fix it in the election, we think, hilariously, since there's no guarantee we'll make it to the election or that the election won't be fixed in Trump's favor or that Trump would leave office if he lost. Our adorably naive belief and hope that the mechanisms of democracy will function as they're supposed to in 2020 might not be enough. 

But there's no fucking break here. Sure, sure, we keep saying, "This isn't normal," but systems have a way of adapting. Some of us think about the migrant kids who are still being separated from their parents or the mistreatment of the kids who are on their own, but most of the country has absorbed that horror as either forgotten or solved or "well, what are you gonna do?" We moved on from something so abjectly, objectively terrible, the very policy that Trump should have been impeached over, and that truly says something sad about all of us.

Fortunately, Trump is a bounty of crime and unethical behavior. Today, as I'm writing this, that piece of shit president and his evil walrus attorney general are announcing that they will be sending an alphabet soup of hundreds of federal law enforcement officers (or, you know, stormtroopers) to Chicago, since the ongoing dress rehearsal in Portland went so well, and that other cities will follow. Trump said, militaristically, "Today I’m announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime." Of course, Trump spoke about this in the rapiest way possible, saying that the cities "need it badly" and "should want it." Of course, they don't want it, as governors and mayors have made crystal-fuckin'-clear, but der Trumpen-fuhrer will not be deterred from securing the fatherland (as in "I bet my father would love me if he saw how I'm treating this land"). And, hey, it's probably unconstitutional for him to be doing this specifically for policing purposes, as Walrus Barr said it would be, so throw another impeachment log on the dead fire.

Speaking of unconstitutional, Trump signed an executive order saying that undocumented immigrants aren't people and shouldn't be counted by the Census for the purpose of reallocating congressional districts, even if the Constitution is pretty fuckin' clear on this matter: minus some Native Americans, because racism, the 14th Amendment says you gotta count "the whole number of persons in each state." What's vaguely hilarious here is that Trump's memorandum cites (not by name) California as benefiting in the number of congressional seats it gets because of the number of undocumented immigrants, but the other states that get fucked by this include Texas, Florida, and Georgia. It's just more racist chum to the scavengers and bottom feeders in Trump's fucked-up base, real implications be damned.

And, of course, the titanic coronavirus fucktastrophe. But, sure, he said to wear a mask.

The point here isn't just to point out all the ways that Donald Trump is just awful, just the worst human being, the kind of gluttonous, greedy scumbag who thinks his success should be measured by how many models he's banged while married and how shiny his gold toilet is. We know that. It's that the real mistake Trump is making is, by not giving us a break from new outrages, he's assuring that we don't lose our anger. I think that the GOP and Trump and Trump's evil cockscab advisers think that if they keep hitting us, we'll give up. 

But look at those brave motherfuckers in Portland, man. The federal officers there are making every goddamn mistake in the goddamn book short of shooting someone with live ammo. Yet more and more people, less Antifa and more soccer mom, are showing up for the protests. He's fanning flames, and he thinks the fire makes his orange color shine brightly when it just makes him look like a fucking demon. What do you think is going to happen in Chicago? I don't put it past Trump to go full Kent State. Hell, I don't put it past Trump to cut unemployment benefits so that crime skyrockets in cities and he can justify his troops taking over. It's hard, man, really fucking hard to keep seeing what's happened to this country so quickly. It's heartening to see us not go quietly into that fascist night.

(Note: Of course, all of this would have been easy if news organizations had latched onto one fuckin' scandal with all the energy, resources, and time they poured into Hillary Clinton's stupid email server story.)

Portland Becomes the Testing Ground for the Next Level of Trump Fuckery

Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, who has the douche name and the douchier face stubble of the asshole Wall Streeter who gets punched in the dick by, say, Michael J. Fox in a late 1980s comedy, issued a statement on "the Rampant, Long-Lasting Violence in Portland." The Portland is the one in Oregon, and it's been the site of ongoing protests in the wake of the police execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. In the last couple of nights, they've escalated into confrontations with police and other authorities (get to that in a sec), confrontations that have been provoked by the police and other authorities. For Wolf and DHS and the Trump White House, "Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property."

What follows is a list of actions by day on, near, or against federal property, and, gotta tell you, it's just fuckin' embarrassing and overwrought, like trying to hype D-Grade meat as a quality Trump steak. This is really from the DHS doc: 

For three days, apparently anarchists violently spray-painted graffiti. I'm not really sure how you do that. Maybe you scream, "Fuck Trump" as you write that. Maybe you punch the wall. What I'm saying here is that you kind of water down your accusations of violence if you include wanton tagging in the category. Basically, you look like a pussy or a drama queen, which is really the two modes that Trump and his lackeys operate in. 

And even when Secretary Wolf's weak-ass list of alleged crimes gets to more serious stuff, any credibility has been destroyed by the image of the federal government shitting itself before the terrorism of the graffiti artists. Oh, and it's destroyed by the fact that most of it is complete hyperbole. 

Seriously, this is in there on June 7: "Portland Police were forced to deploy crowd control spray to disperse a crowd that was throwing animal seed at officers." The police are dressed head-to-toe in riot gear. Was it animal seed made of bombs? Because otherwise, we're talking extravagant overreaction on the part of the historically racist and violent PPD.

You've gotta go through a whole bunch of fences breached or torn down, fireworks being launched (no, really, like bottle rockets), and a lot more graffiti before you get to something that might make an objective reader think, "Okay, that's bad." Like on July 13: "Violent anarchists continued to assault law enforcement officers with lasers, slingshots and fireworks. Others were armed with sledge hammers, tasers, and stun guns, and dragged flaming debris into the scene." That seems bad. And no doubt there are people in the protests who would like to fuck cops' shit up. 

But if you dig into things, what you see are the cops using fencing and police lines to push protesters onto sidewalks on federal property, for instance, and using that as an excuse to declare a riot, when they go batshit beating people and arresting them. And then they fire tear gas and pepper bombs and they start using this fuckin' thing where they swing a smoking container, like a thurible in Hell.

Or maybe some "violent anarchist" throws a water bottle at the people gassing them, and then that's it. It's go time. 

Of course, then we have the unidentified federal officers, from Customs and Border Patrol, among other agencies, who are disappearing protesters off the streets and into unmarked civilian cars and vans, even when they are not on federal property (which is the only place they should have authority). It's like kidnapping except...no, wait. If they don't say who they are or what you're being arrested for, it's just kidnapping. And here's the deal on the attacks on protesters and the Pinochet-like random arrests: they don't give a fuck who they use the power of the state on. It doesn't matter if you were just down there marching or reporting or even offering medical care. They just want to force obedience and capitulation, preferably through violence. Legit violence, with batons and shit, and not just graffiti violence.

To at least some of their credit, the leaders in Portland and Oregon want the federal marshals and others the fuck out of there. Mayor Ted Wheeler said, "We do not need or want their help. The best thing they can do is stay inside their building, or leave Portland altogether.” The state's congressional delegation is demanding answers. And Governor Kate Brown went right at the real reason the feds are even there: "This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety. The President is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government."

That abuse is represented by the U.S. Attorney in the District of Oregon, who went back to a seemingly never-dry well of blaming Antifa. Billy Williams (seriously, everyone in this story on the Trump side has a punch-my-face-please name) said, "Portland is well known for Rose City Antifa, right? They’ve been around a long time. It’s hard to call it organized. Antifa is known for loosely organized versions of their group … I believe they’re a part of this." Meanwhile, Trump has been crowing about sending in federal officers to Portland because of course he is.

This is scary shit right here. I don't want to be like Chad "Punched Dick" Wolf and blow this up (I've avoided using the term "Gestapo," yet if the overcoat fits...), but when your government feels like it can just snatch you off the street without even the pretext of some kind of official reason, we're into new levels of necessary paranoia. 

And while we're a few steps from needing to find decent-sized attics to hide out in, we're damn far down the list of "they came for," getting preciously close to "me."

A Weary Nation Watches Trump and Asks, "What the Hell Was That?"

Today, President Donald Trump, who is really just three hogs stacked on top of each other while wearing a trash bag with a tie, called a White House Rose Garden "press conference," the ostensible purpose of which was to announce some half-cocked new way to punish China for trade shit. I'm not going to bother trying to figure out our trade relationship with China because it ain't something that I can comprehend, and that's what makes you a goddamn adult: the willingness to say, "I don't fuckin' know about this," not "I know more than anyone" as a way to hide your blinding ignorance.

Speaking with blinding ignorance, Trump pretty quickly jettisoned the idea of a press conference and decided to act like he was at one of his bullshitter rallies, where every shape of geek, ghoul, and goober screams their appreciation for Trump givin' those minorities what-for (until his speech goes on too long and they get bored and anxious because the goat waiting for them back home ain't gonna fuck itself). The major difference is that without the braying jackasses in the crowd giving him some kind of energy he could vampirically suck from them, Trump sounded bored, stoned, drunk, lethargic, distracted, and that was on top of the usual rambling incoherence, constant repetition, and irrational rhetoric. 

See, Trump had a list of shit that he said Joe Biden and the Democrats believe. Sounding like Willy Loman on quaaludes, Trump said, "Biden was here for 47 years. Eight years, the last eight years, not long ago as Vice President. He said, 'One in five miles of our highways are still in poor condition.' Well, we’re doing a good job on highways, but why didn’t he fix them three years ago? Why didn’t he fix them? Tens of thousands of bridges are in disrepair and on the verge of collapse. Well, that’s probably not a right number, but we have bridges that should have been fixed. Why didn’t he fix him? He was here for eight years with President Obama. Why didn’t they fix them? Tens of thousands of bridges." 

Is it worth fact-checking any of this? Is it worth talking about how most of Biden's career was as one of 100 senators and thus couldn't just "fix" anything? Is it worth talking about how President Obama desperately tried to get an infrastructure bill passed but was blocked at every turn by the infected congressional cockholes in the GOP? Or that Biden helped get the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed, which actually did do something for infrastructure, something that Trump hasn't done at fucking all?

No. It doesn't. It's a waste of time to make the effort (sorry, Daniel Dale). Trump's slavering idiot hordes actually believe he's telling the truth. People around Trump who know better stay silent or continue to back the lies. And the rest of us with, you know, eyes, ears, and non-Adderall-fucked brains understand that Trump's going to lie, he's lying now, and he's nothing but lies and scams and failure. He repeats lies even after they're shown to be lies. Lies are his lube and America is his blow-up doll and he's gonna fuck it until it pops and then he'll have it patched and blow it up again and go to town once more.

But, more than the lying, there's simply asking, "What the fuck was that today?" Because, seriously, "We did a travel ban in January. Nancy Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco a month later and even later than that and others too"? What the fuck? It's like something that's said for incels who are jacking off to the idea of Trump hate fucking Pelosi with his words, daring the cucks to cancel them (or something- I don't speak psychopath).

Nothing is more harmful than the insanity he spouts about COVID-19, which is literally causing people to allow themselves to get sick and die. Now kids are going to die or get other people sick who will die because of his refusal to face the reality of the virus. Here he is on it: "Frankly, if we didn’t test, you wouldn’t have all the headlines because we’re showing cases. And we have just about the lowest mortality rate. But if we did… Think of this, if we didn’t do testing, instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we would have half the cases. If we did another… You cut that in half, we’d have yet again, half of that, but the headlines are always testing." 

And you wanna scream, "Motherfucker, testing doesn't fill the hospital ICUS in Texas and Florida!" But you'd be screaming into a void, a soulless, sucking vortex that wants to devour everything in its attempt to be all there is that exists.

Everything I just described to you took place in the first 18 minutes of Trump's rant today.  He went on for another 35 minutes, mostly blathering on about how Joe Biden and the Democrats will be nicer to immigrants (including saying this weird shit: "[The Democrats will] grant work permits for illegal aliens, so if you come in illegally, you get a work permit. People that live here don’t get work permits, many cases," because we don't fucking need work permits, you stupid, rotting tangerine) and musing about punishing protesters while protecting Andrew Jackson's horse statue. Then he took a couple of token questions before fucking off to tweet.  The reporters should have walked out. They should have said, "Fuck this. We'll watch the video later. You misled us about what this whole bullshit was about" and just left Fox "news" and the One America ass remora who is always with Trump. 

We are watching last days of Jonestown here right now. And I just wanna ask Trump voters (or maybe I don't because I know what the answer will be): How do you trust someone who says this shit? How do you say that this is the man you will follow off a cliff? You fucking know he'd tell you to jump and, yes, absolutely, he'll be right behind; Trump's not even a good cult leader. But they'd be fine leaping anyways if he told them to. Because he told them to. 

What the hell was that? It was the soliloquy at the beginning of Act V of our national tragedy.

Hey, Where the Fuck Are You?

I'm taking the full week off because I'm in Louisiana visiting family. Gotta tell you: It's weird to go into a restaurant and eat a meal like a real person. Hell, they've even spaced the tables a responsible distance apart. 

Of course, mask-wearing isn't mandatory here in Cajun Country.  Lafayette Mayor Josh Guillory refuses to require masks in public places indoors, and when he was asked if he consulted his task force of health experts to come to that decision, he dickishly responded, "I didn’t ask them their favorite color, either." Because that's how Republicans roll down here. Well, everywhere, I suppose.

So I'll be back next week with more juicy rudeness. For now, enjoy this painting at the delicious Cafe Sydney Mae's in Breaux Bridge.

Biden and Trump: Who's the Demented One? A Comparison

Yeah, I haven't exactly been shy about my opinion of Joe Biden. I have a track record of shitting on him that goes back to the Clarence Thomas hearings. I have not been kind to him recently. And I sincerely believe that it's a toxic combination of sexism, racism, and Trump hatred that has made Biden not just the Democratic nominee, but leading Trump overall by big numbers, and, by varying margins, in every battleground state. He's the good, "here's five bucks" Grandpa to Trump's evil, shits and doesn't flush Grandpa. 

And since I goddamn well come as close as a stone-cold atheist can to praying Biden will be president come January, I better figure out times to say something more than, "Well, hell, I'd rather have the nice dementia patient instead of the cruel one."

So lemme say a nice thing here: Biden did pretty damn well at his press conference Tuesday after a speech where he ripped Trump another new one over Trump's brain-damaged response to the coronavirus. Trump had been repeating endlessly, and it was echoed across the conservative media circle jerk, that Biden was out of it, incapable of answering questions, lost in his thought, weak, confused, and every other synonym for that kind of thing. 

Except when it came time for Biden to leave the prepared remarks behind and take questions, he was more cogent than Trump has been in years, and smarter than Trump has ever been in his entire worthless life. For instance, here he is on whether or not Trump has fucked over the United States by refusing to do anything after learning that Russia is paying bounties for American heads in Afghanistan: "One of two things, this president talks about cognitive capability. He doesn’t seem to be cognitively aware of what’s going on. He either reads and/or gets briefed on important issues and he forgets it, or he doesn’t think it’s necessary that he need to know it." In other words, "You think I've lost a step or two? Have you seen fucko in the White House?"

Other than rage tweeting about it being another "hoax," Trump hasn't taken any questions about the Russian bounty story. But in a town hall with Fox "news" toilet Sean Hannity, he offered this not quite as nimble take on Russia: "Look at the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer Prize is very embarrassed. It’s lost a lot of its credibility, because all these writers got Pulitzer Prizes on the Russia, Russia, Russia, and they were all wrong. But John Solomon and all of the people that you deal with. And you, by the way. Laura, Lou Dobbs, Fox and Friends, people that are great. Great group in the morning, including the weekends, to be honest, with Pete. You have some great people. But they got Pulitzer Prizes on Russia, Russia, Russia, and they were wrong." Honestly, that's more understandable, like on a basic language level, than when he tries to talk actual policy about Russia. It's like he's reading Page Six in the New York Post and wondering why the blind item he fed them isn't there. 

Asked about Black Lives Matter protesters taking down statues, Biden was again clear and empathetic, saying, "I think the idea of bringing down, I think all those Confederate monuments to Confederate soldiers and generals, et cetera, who strongly supported secession and the maintenance of slavery and going to war to do it, I think those statues belong in museums. They don’t belong in public places."

And here's Trump on the same subject: "Like the character on the horse the other day, he’s up there putting on the ropes. He’s in trouble, on the Andrew Jackson … beautiful, it’s beautiful, right opposite the White House. And you got to remember Andrew Jackson, the Battle of New Orleans and so much. He was a very good president. He was a great general and you can’t let that happen."  (To be a little fair here, Biden did say that he was against tearing down statues of Jefferson and Washington. But he didn't mention Jackson, who was a bloodthirsty motherfucker who we should be embarrassed to call one of our presidents.)

When he was questioned about everything becoming political, including wearing masks so you lower your risk of fucking killing someone, Biden dismissed Trump's bullshit and talked about how we've gotta do this for each other, you know, like a nation, not a mass of individual islands screeching about freedom: "We’re also talking about it in terms of the president talks about manhood and being strong and you don’t need the mask. I think we have to start appealing to the better side of human nature by pointing out that that mask is not so much to protect me. It’s if I have it, it’s to protect you against me. It’s to protect other people. And it’s called patriotism. It’s called responsibility. It’s called making sure you look out for the other person." 

In an interview with Eric Bolling for Sinclair Media Group (motto: "Trump's balls aren't gonna polish themselves"), the president offered grudging support for mask-wearing at last, but he put it this way: "Well, I've already had masks and I want a mask. And if I'm near people, you know, you were tested, right? Just now. And everybody that's around me as president gets tested, that's like standard. Uh, and I'm also -- I keep distances. I'm, you know, supposed to keep a distance and I keep distances. But if I needed a mask, if I was in a crowd of, you know, crowd, a lot of people and everything else, I'd wear -- I have no problem with a mask at all...I have no objection to masks whatsoever. Do what you're supposed to do and also do what makes you feel good." Not a single goddamn word about being kind to each other. It was purely about how he feels, purely selfish, with not even a nod to the larger good because he doesn't fucking see how that matters. 

Joe Biden is 77 years old. Donald Trump is 74 years old. It's not ageism to say that they have slowed down a bit, that they have moments when they're not as quick on their feet. It's not ableism. It's medical science. But Trump has made it a centerpiece of his reelection campaign that Biden is somehow suffering such grave cognitive decline that he can't function. It's absurd for Donald "Can't Complete a Sentence" Trump to make that allegation. That's projection to such an extreme extent that he may as well be accusing Biden of combing his hair like it's old cotton candy, fucking a porn star, and putting on orange makeup. Motherfucker, that's you.

Honestly, occasional lapses aside, the biggest difference is that Biden sounds like a regular old politician, and that just sounds fuckin' weird now, man. It's like we've dated someone who kept shoveling cocaine into our noises and screaming at us to tell him we love him for four godforsaken years and all of a sudden we meet a guy who says, "Just have some tea and lemme tell you how it can all be better." Jesus, you think, I wanna get off this fuckin' bender and here's my chance.

(Note: Full disclosure- I have praised Biden in the past, too, like when he debated Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin. Context is everything.)