Republicans Force Ketanji Brown Jackson (and All of Us) to Live in Their Disturbing Fantasy World

The Republican Party demands that we accept a reality that is not reality. That much is clear. If they're not demanding that we accept that the 2020 presidential election was really won by Donald Trump, they're demanding that laws be passed to prevent "voter fraud" that doesn't happen. That's the range of opinion on that matter, and to accept either as a rational position is to allow the GOP to keep spinning a fucked-up web of that fantasy. 

But the GOP Fantasy World is not limited to the Big Lie of 2020. It's not limited to declarations that the first impeachment of Donald Trump was based on what they see as Democratic delusions about Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia and his blackmailing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to get dirt on Joe Biden. No, the GOP say, all of that is innocent and fine. It's not even limited to whatever bizarro shit they think is on Hunter Biden's laptop computer, like it's a Rosetta Stone of corruption (side note: Republicans treat technology like it's some kind of mystical art with sigils that cannot be understood by mere mortals).

Now, as the GOP slips deeper and deeper into the absurd world of QAnon conspiracies, they want us to live in a world where all Democrats must be child sex traffickers, rapists, and pornographers. They dragged Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson into that fictional world during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week. It didn't matter that Jackson is easily one of the most qualified people ever nominated for the Supreme Court, vastly superior to all three justices that Trump put on there. It didn't matter that she's supported by groups across the political spectrum, with an A+ rating from the American Bar Association and two previous Senate confirmations under her belt, both with Republican support. It didn't matter that she's adjudicated over 500 cases. 

No, all that mattered is that in seven cases, Jackson didn't give as punitive a sentence as she could have to some scummy fucks who collected, looked at, and, in a couple of cases, traded child pornography. Most of the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee grilled Jackson on those cases. The clear implications of that questioning goes beyond an attack on her judicial philosophy. I mean, lots of judges believe that sentencing guidelines are ludicrously over-punitive, and that's a real debate Graham, Cruz, Hawley, etc. could have had with Jackson. 

But that wasn't the point of this. The real point was to say that Jackson enables child fucking and enables people to look at photos and videos of child fucking. The real point was to tie Jackson to all the fucked beyond fucked bullshit that a large portion of the GOP base and, increasingly, GOP legislators believe. That Graham, Cruz, and the rest decided to go apeshit on Jackson about her entirely mainstream sentencing of child porn offenders showed how desperate they all are to win that nutzoid base. There's nothing there. Nothing at all. They all stood there with flaccid, little cocks, screaming about how big a hard-on they had and the QAnon onanists nodded in agreement that, yes, those soft choads were mighty flesh rods of vengeance for the abused kids. It was revolting. (Sure, yeah, for Marsha Blackburn, change it to a dry pussy she said was gushing.)

But if you are inclined to want to rip your eyeballs out and flush them down the toilet, you can check out some of the QAnon message boards and see how outraged the onanists are that an "apologist for child molesters," as one of them described Jackson, will now sit on the Supreme Court. And it doesn't fucking help that Jackson was the judge who sentenced the guy who shot up the DC restaurant Comet Ping-Pong in the Pizzagate madness to four years in prison. If you remember, crazy motherfucker thought Hillary Clinton was raping and eating kids in the basement of the place or some such shit that is just as fucking absurd. Yeah, so Jackson's involvement there proves their shit, and they're all just declaring outright that "She's a pedophile" and theorizing (sorry, but you gotta know how fucked up this is) "I think she was groomed at a young age. She talked about how her uncles use to come over a lot. I bet she had a relationship with one of them, one that she still holds dear even though she knows it was 'wrong.'" Yeah, someone wrote that. And then that dickscab goes on about it. 

It's all because the Republicans on the committee decided to make her, again, entirely mainstream sentencing of child porn offenders into something insidious, just so they had something to attack her on. It's frankly slanderous, and they all put her and her entire family in danger. 

Another part of this is that preening pompous pricks like Graham keep talking about how the questioning is like some kind of payback for the "mistreatment" of Brett Kavanaugh, who had multiple people talking about him as a rapist and all-around creepy fuck, and Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote an article about the role her faith plays in her legal decisions. Those were real issues with real questions behind them. Jackson's sentences rise to the level of a question in passing, not a full-on gallop into a mad world. 

We are heading into the potential for a real nightmare, where the people that one party's leaders are trying to please are increasingly divorced from reality, where those fucking loons are getting elected, and where they try to impose that unreality on everyone else. We're seeing it in those voter fraud laws or anti-critical race theory laws or "Don't Say 'Gay'" laws, all existing to deal with problems that simply don't exist but feel like they exist to dumb people so fuck it, pass the laws. These are not politicians who give a fuck about the lives of anyone, child or adult. They are not serious people.

And yet throughout the hearing, Senator Dick Durbin and other Democrats kept talking to Republicans as if they weren't spouting shit-scrawling insane nonsense, insisting on talking about bills they were working on together, pretending to some kind of comity, as if that would slow them down. Instead, they bulldozed the Democrats, so the only fucking thing anyone is going to remember from this hearing is all this child porn bullshit and not what a compassionate, intelligent, wise, and experienced person Jackson is. They tainted her nomination, which was also the point.

Jackson would have been well within her rights to say, "Senators, you are accusing me of supporting child predators. You can go fuck yourselves" and walked out. Frankly, we don't deserve her. And this post doesn't even get into the crazed levels of racism and sexism in her mistreatment by the GOP. 

(One note here: If we've learned anything about Republicans, it's that when they get worked up about a legal or moral issue, it's almost certainly because they're covering for themselves or others who are doing the very thing they are decrying. I'm not saying Graham or Cruz or Hawley or Sasse or Tillis sexually exploit children. But, like their beloved Tucker Carlson, I'm just asking questions.)

Everything Is There for Democrats to Wreck Republicans in the Midterms and Beyond

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Rick Scott, GOP Senator from Florida and the last thing you see before you're dropped into Dip, put out a pamphlet of conservative fantasies that was essentially spanking material for Federalist interns. In it, he proposed that "All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again." Now, you might read that and think, "So...no one can plan anything for more than five years out because shit might just get shoved back up Congress's ass and we all have to deal with it?" You might also think about laws that needed to be renewed that weren't or were delayed, like the assault weapons ban or the just-reauthorized (after a dickish delay) Violence Against Women Act. 

Of course, it should immediately occur to you that Social Security and Medicare are "federal legislation." And that it's been a dream of Republicans to cut, get rid of, or privatize those entitlements for ages. Yes, some in the GOP like Mitch McConnell, who always looks like he was just told that women can have orgasms, have scolded Scott for that and the part of his plan that reads, "All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax," which, of course, would entail raising taxes on low- or no-income people. But Scott has support in the GOP, including Alabama Senator and winner of the 2021 "Are you fucking kidding me? That idiot is a senator?" award Tommy Tuberville and rapey forehead Matt Gaetz, also of the increasingly shitty state of Florida.

Lots of pundit-y types have written about the beautifully-wrapped gift that Rick Scott has given to Democrats. "Whoa, whoa, you mean we can campaign on Republicans saying they wanna shitcan Social Security and Medicare? And raise taxes on the poor?" I can imagine a consultant for Democratic Senate candidates saying. "Oh, fuck, just jack that shit right into my veins."

But the gifts don't stop there. You know how Republicans like to scream about deficits whenever Democrats are in office and then tell everyone to "Suck it" when they pass tax cuts for the rich? Yeah, deficits are falling under Biden, by a trillion bucks next year. That kind of shit shouldn't matter, but it's one of the nails that the GOP likes to hammer Democrats with and Democrats tend to cower and say, "You're right" instead of telling them to shove their tax cuts up their asses. 

Last week, I said that Democrats need to go all out in joining the culture war that the GOP has been fighting. There, I was talking about Democrats embracing abortion rights and campaigning on them. But we can go toe-to-motherfuckin'-toe on a bunch of culture war issues and use them to turn out our base just like Republicans use them to turn out theirs. 

Start with federal funding for Covid response, which was cut out of the budget because Senate Republicans would have balked on the rest of the $1.5 trillion budget if Democrats had tried to push it through. Without that money, it means the federal government's response on a new variant would have to be somewhere between "fuck us" and "go fuck yourself." This is not to mention the slowdown in vaccinations here and around the world (which can prevent the next variant from even evolving), as well as testing, treatment, and research. The math here is easy: Most of the country is vaccinated. Most of the country wants to make sure we don't face a new corona fucking. While Republicans screech about mask mandates, Democrats can campaign on "Okay, then why won't you fund the shit that will prevent mask mandates?" 

Go to town, motherfuckers. Face them down on the anti-trans kids bills. Face them down on all the bullshit about what teachers can teach in the classroom. In Virginia, all 133 school superintendents wrote to Gov. Glenn "Tricked You Suburban Douches, Didn't I?" Youngkin and said, in essence, "Fer fuck's sake, you're being a dick to educators with your idiot tip line on teachers who piss off a parent and ban on things no one is teaching. Stop it." That was supported by superintendents in districts from Wokesville near DC to Fuckacousin near the Tennessee border. You know how hard it is to get all of these people of a scary range of political beliefs to agree? And it's an ad for Democrats that writes itself. 

Add into that the opposition to bans on critical race theory (which, again, is not being taught in elementary schools) in places like Indiana. Yeah, the GOP-controlled Senate there killed an anti-CRT bill because of an outcry from parents, religious leaders, civil rights groups, and others who saw it for the punitive bullshit it is. That happened in fucking Indiana, where Mike Pence's tight ass was elected a few different times. This hysteria is losing its erection, and Democrats need to punch it in the balls and be on the side of teachers. Jesus, just say that teachers and parents need to work together, like they already are in most places. 

Meanwhile, Republicans are stepping on their own dicks, making unforced errors. The leadership can't control the crazies and the Jesus fellaters like Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Rick Scott insanity has the potential to split the caucus. And Trump's out there, wandering the country freely for some reason, the presidential candidate who won't announce he's a presidential candidate, saying completely bizarre shit like that parents need to "lay down their very lives" against critical race theory, which means...what? Suicide bombing a school? Throwing yourself in front of a bus going to a Black history museum? The wheels are coming off the GOP clown car and that means a bunch of clowns will be slamming to a halt and running around, tripping on their oversize shoes, scaring the children.

Again, we're not appealing to the idiot hordes of MAGA cretins and anti-science ghouls. They can go live on plague island and fuck each other until their nipples bleed or whatever. No, we're talking about moving that sliver of a semi-rational middle that is easily manipulated by scary talk but has at least a lick of sense when presented with reality. We can't leave anything unanswered because the majority is on the Democrats' side and we have let them control the cultural narrative in the political realm for way, way too long. It's just that Democrats are like actors who get a dozen great reviews on a play and then obsess on the one bad one, perversely thinking it's more important than what everyone else fucking says. Stop giving power to assholes.

Everything is there to blunt the attacks on Democrats over inflation and other issues. It just takes a little fucking effort to not run away when someone accuses you of being a Marxist or anti-white. Take the shit they throw and use it to fertilize a thousand ads and speeches.

(And to anyone responding to this with "Well, they're Democrats. They won't do it," all I can say is that you're probably right. But I'm fucking trying and now it's time for you to give me your bright ideas.)

Democrats Need to Embrace Abortion Rights Because Republicans Want to Kill Women

If there's one thing that you can count on, it's that crazy-ass GOP motherfuckers who are elected to GOP-majority state legislatures will propose crazy-ass motherfucking legislation that sounds like something conjured by a sweaty Heritage Foundation intern who's trying to impress the boss. You can count on a bunch of people getting upset about the crazy-ass legislation and you can count on it not passing or even making it out of committee because there are enough semi-rational Republicans to tell them to fuck all the way off with that distraction. 

However, there is something else you can always count on, and that's that sometimes those crazy-ass motherfuckers hit the sweet spot of timing and a critical mass of crazies in the legislature and statehouse so that they actually make that shit into law. And, often, that happens when Christian extremist men and cynical pretenders gang up on women and limit or eliminate abortion rights. 

The prime example of this lately is the Texas anti-choice law that turns every citizen of the state into a bounty hunter trying to catch women attempting to get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and narc on anyone helping them do it. And the law has succeeded in forcing women in Texas who need an abortion into becoming de facto fugitives, trying to negotiate a way to get the procedure out of state at great expense or to get abortion pills so they can self-induce. It's a goddamn nightmare in the 2nd most populous state in the country, one where its biggest cities have Democratic mayors, and one where the number of people who identify themselves as Democrats is pretty much equal to Republicans (but with a large number of "independents," which generally means "Republican").

When the bill was first proposed, it was plainly so egregiously punitive, so insane in its methodology, so backwards in its approach that it seemed like another one destined for the legislative dustbin. However, tasting the blood of women as the end of Roe v. Wade is imminent, the legislature went for it and the savage fucknuts on the Supreme Court have let it stand, not giving a single fuck about how much actual harm is being done because, yeah, that's the fucking point. Punish women for daring not to carry a man's seed to fruition. It's like an incel fantasy come true. 

Republican-led and controlled states are sharpening the knives to cut the legs out from women so they can be forced to have children, even the children of men who raped them (and that includes incest, since "incest" generally means "rape by a relative"). In addition to trying to pass bills identical to the one in Texas, states keep pushing back the number of weeks by which a woman can get an abortion (down to 15 in Florida and Mississippi, for instance), and South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Idaho went with the Texas "fetal heartbeat" nonsense, at 6 weeks, all of which are direct confrontations to Roe v. Wade and a sane Supreme Court would put a halt to that shit immediately.

But it gets even more savage when we get to the legislation that they are teeing up, even if it doesn't go anywhere yet. Yet. There was the attempt, twice, in Ohio to force doctors to try to implant in the uterus an ectopic pregnancy, one where the fetus grows outside the uterus, which is not medically possible. In Missouri, some Republicans not only want to end treatment that removes an ectopic pregnancy (which is always fatal to the fetus and, if not removed, fatal or deeply harmful to the woman), but they want to expand the Texas approach and allow people to sue anyone who helps a woman leave the state to receive an abortion, essentially imprisoning women and forcing them to give birth.

That's what these states are doing instead of making life better for their citizens. Republicans are actively harming women and stripping them of bodily autonomy.  The next step is to continue to make it harder and harder for women to get abortion medication, which accounts for over 50% of all abortions in the United States. Meanwhile, 60% of Americans support Roe v. Wade, with 65% opposing laws like the one in Texas. Only 27% want Roe overturned, which is almost certainly going to happen in June. 

And, yet, with notable exceptions, it's only Republicans who are fighting at the front lines of the culture war on abortion. Yes, Democrats tried and failed to pass a law that would codify Roe, which everyone knew would fail and thus was only a symbolic vote. (Honestly, the symbolic vote is one of the most bullshit things both parties do. How many fucking votes to overturn the Affordable Care Act were taken by the GOP? You know what's still there? The Affordable Care Act.) But, in many cases, because they have been cowed by right-wing media and religious nutzoids, Democrats don't fucking go full "Fuck, yeah, abortion rights!" on Republicans.

Democrats can fight and win on abortion access because we're no longer talking about anything in the realm of compassion. Anti-choice Republicans are pushing their fanaticism into other people's lives, too, with their bounty bills. How's this for an ad: "If you live in Missouri and drive an Uber and you bring a woman to a bus station so she can get an abortion in Illinois, you could be sued if a new law passes." And it's fucking true. 

Yeah, you're gonna have to dive into some dark places here, but make the case that a 12 year-old raped by her father would be forced to go through with any pregnancy that happened. That's reality in Texas. Hell, if you really wanna fuck with the white suburbanites, play with their racism and tell them that if their daughters are raped and made pregnant by undocumented immigrants, they'd have to have the baby. These aren't exaggerations. The laws that are being passed by Republicans do this. 

This is a visceral way to demonstrate just how fucking insane the GOP has gone. You're not gonna do that by talking about Trump or January 6 or Russia. For decades, Republicans have made it visceral, with pictures of literal viscera and endless talk about the death of a fetus. It's always been implicit, but now the anti-choice right is making it explicit: they don't fucking care about the women. They don't. They don't care if women are raped. They don't care if a doctor says an abortion is necessary for a woman's mental health. They don't care about hurting anyone close to the woman.  And they sure don't fucking care if women die in the process. That's just an object lesson for other women not to try.

So get on the fucking field on this, Democrats. Center campaigns around women having freedom. We've ceded this rhetorical battle on this issue for far, far too long, relying on Roe to keep some measure of sanity. By the end of June, the guardrails are coming off and we better be in the fight already because Republicans will be.

(Note: The Missouri Republican who wrote the bill that prevents ending ectopic pregnancy says he will revise it to exclude that, but it will still be vague as fuck and why trust these fucks.)

Putin's U.S. Stooges Must Be Called Out

I gotta admit one thought that passed through my mind after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I wondered what would happen if Putin did succeed in winning quickly, if he came in and Ukraine surrendered and it was over in a day, as he had delusionally hoped, thus affirming the worship that way too many Americans have for him. I wondered what if he then said he wanted to take over the United States and I thought about all the armed fucknuts willingly to say they'd rather be led by Putin than Joe Biden and I wondered about the Republican Party, with all the Putin apologists and tyranny humpers, and I thought, "Fuck me. He might have a shot. At least he'd end up stirring up more shit than he has already."

But the myth of Putin, the smart, savvy strategist and technocrat, has been bombed into pieces by a fiasco of an invasion where the best possible outcome is seeming like Russia not completely demolishing the country and massacring people by the thousands. Even that awful outcome, though, is quickly fading as Putin acts like a freaked-out bear who got stuck in Walmart and decides to just fuck everything up, hump the mannequins, and shit on the torn up corpses of the employees. Unless Putin is removed in some way, I'm not even sure at this point that we're not looking at the use of some kind of nukes, from dirty bomb to full-scale ICBM world fuckage. I don't think that will happen, but it's not out of the realm of possibility because that motherfucker is crazier than a shithouse rat right now. 

For years, Putin has been appeased by most of the world as a loony asshole who is gonna mostly stay in his lane. And that was embarrassing enough (and let's face it - Democratic and Republican presidents starting with Bill Clinton have been responsible for letting him get away with awful shit while thinking he wasn't really serious about getting the Soviet band back together). Even more embarrassing are the Putin supporters and his fans, who are those who obviously get all moist for some big dictator energy but won't commit to saying they agree with his actions.

Back in the early 2010s, some conservatives, annoyed that LGBT people were heading towards getting the right to marry someone of the same sex, embraced Russia's anti-gay policies, leading to some hot Putin lovin'. In 2013, Pat Buchanan wondered of Putin, "In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?" because the Russian leader claimed he loved him some Jesus and hated him some gays and was all about white nationalism. This strain of Putin lust continues to this day by people who are just terrible.

Of course, it was with the rise of Putin's pissy poodle Donald Trump (who really was once president of the United States, believe it or not) that nutzoid right-wingers could let their tricolor flag fly. By 2016, 37% of Republicans viewed Putin "favorably," a rise from 10% in 2014, with only 14% viewing him "very unfavorably," down from 51% two years before. 47% viewed him "somewhat or very unfavorably," so not even half of the polled Republicans. Trump chose Putin pal Rex Tillerson for his Secretary of State and batshit Russia lover Michael Flynn for national security adviser, and Trump vigorously rode Putin's jock for all four years of his tragicomedy of a presidency.

And now? Fuck, up until last Thursday, Putin's stooges were proliferating throughout the United States, climaxing in the deranged chant of his name at the Nazi rally called the America First Political Action Conference last weekend. Republicans recently polled said they viewed Putin better than they viewed President Biden. And while we can expect the right-wing media vulture cocks like Tucker Carlson, who always looks like he is trying to figure out where to bury the child's body, to get all high snorting uncut tyranny, it's more alarming that fringe fucks who are elected to Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and others, give aid and comfort to the increasing numbers of Republicans who want a Putin-like government here, with Donald Trump in charge. That's the same Donald Trump who, since the invasion of Ukraine, has called Putin "smart," "genius," and "savvy," while calling NATO and the United States "dumb."

As the war gets more brutal, anyone who ever enabled this shit needs to be called out. George Stephanopoulos made Sen. Tom Cotton, who always looks like he's afraid he's going to get a call from Tucker Carlson for help burying the child's body, very uncomfortable by asking him to condemn Trump's sloppy blow job. That should be the same with every goddamn Republican. Do you agree with Trump on Putin? Do you condemn what he said? Is Trump full of shit or are you? 

Because this is the kind of time where silence equals acquiescence, which, ironically enough, is what Putin had hoped would happen with Ukraine. Instead, we see the power of resistance to shift the narrative. As Russia uses banned weapons and talks about public executions, the US media can aid the resistance or give comfort to the domestic enemies.