Republicans Don't Fucking Care About Your Children Dying

It's pretty fucking simple: If you won't do anything at all about the number one cause of deaths in children and teenagers in this stupid country, you don't get to say you care about children. It really is that easy. No matter what policies you support, good or shitty, you are a fucking fraud if you won't step up on the number of and easy access to firearms, especially high-powered weapons with large magazines. If your house is on fire but you're ignoring that because you want to spackle a hole in the wall, then your minor repair is worthless. That wall's gonna burn, too.

After another shooting at another school, this time in Nashville, with 3 kids and 3 adults murdered by a shooter who had bought their guns legally, Republicans practically lined up to tell parents everywhere that they don't fucking care if your children die. Senator John Cornyn from Texas, who was a Republican co-sponsor of the mild gun legislation that was signed into law in 2022, said, "I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go" on any additional gun control laws. Profiles in chickenshit.

Then there was the kind of motherfuckering that you only expect from a motherfucker who thinks he can fuck mothers with abandon and still get reelected. Rep. Tim Burchett from east Tennessee (so not Nashville) actually said, "We're not gonna fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals."And when asked to clarify, he actually doubled down, saying, If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, you’re wrong. They’re not going to fix this problem. They are the problem." Prior to admitting that he won't do shit to prevent your children from dying, he actually said, "We need a real revival in this country. Let’s call on our Christian ministers and our people of faith." And whenever one of these nutzoid Jesus humpers talk about faith being the solution to gun crimes, someone needs to remind them of how many fucking houses of worship have been the sites of gun massacres. Were the people there not faithful enough?

But what Burchett, who looks like what you get if a neo-Nazi incel fucked a Confederate general statue, said is revealing: Guns are more important than your children's blood. Guns are more important than feeling safe sending your kids to school. And no matter how many kids die, we Republicans aren't gonna lift a goddamn finger to do something about the number one cause of childhood death.

Oh, except two things. 

First, they're gonna pass more pro-gun laws in places like, well, looky fuckin' here, Tennessee. Yeah, the General Assembly is well on its way to lowering the age to carry a gun to 18. It's also gonna legalize open carry, although there is actually a debate on whether or not to allow you to open-carry an AR-15, which, these days, almost counts as moderate. All over, apathetic assholes are passing "constitutional carry" laws, which allows for concealed carry of a firearm without a permit. So, in other words, I could walk past the governor of one of those states while holding a gun, and no one can do shit about it. But if I threaten the governor with my words, I can be arrested. Which amendment is first again? (Note: I'm cool with limiting speech when it comes to threats, even though the First Amendment doesn't require shit to be "well-regulated.")

The idea that more guns will solve the gun problem - whether it's a gun-purchasing free-for-all or arming teachers - is madness and should be treated like it's madness. If you take a Christmas photo with your family holding rifles, it's madness and should be treated like it's madness. If you own seven guns, like the Nashville shooter did, or more, as lots of Americans do, it's madness and should be treated as madness.  We are far too fucking polite with the gun worshippers. They're fucking crazy. Just because something is allowed doesn't mean that you can't do it to an insane extent. If you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and keep stuffing your face until you vomit, no one's going to say, "Well, look at the sign." They're gonna tell you to stop eating, you dumb fuck.

The other thing that right-wing fucknuts are doing is blaming trans people in general because the shooter was apparently a trans man. We don't know a single motive, but it's sure as fuck easier to blame everything else except, you know, the actual weapons. Fox "news" and all of Murdochia is losing its shit over the idea that a trans person could commit mass murder, as if nearly every other mass shooting wasn't committed by a cis white male. 

Anything, anything, anything except to accept blame for all the blood spilled, all the dead children, all the schools ruined. "Oh, I care about the children," you might say, you oh-so-fucking-brave-Republican, "but I want to stop child trafficking. I don't want doctors to mutilate children in the name of gender madness. See how much I care?" Except your solution to child trafficking is to not do anything to actually stop it except to attack people who aren't involved in it, like drag queens. And doctors aren't mutilating kids. They're providing gender-affirming care that actually saves lives. 

No matter what, you're still not doing a thing about, again, the number one killer of kids. And if you're not going to do it, if you're going to pretend it's unsolvable despite the fact that nearly every single other country has solved it, if you're going to walk away from any responsibility, then have the decency to get the fuck out of the way and let others handle it. Otherwise, you're an accessory to slaughter.

A Film in Stormy Daniels' Career That Makes a Whole Lot of Sense Now (with a Lengthy Side Note About Her Financial Prowess)

In 2007, Stormy Daniels starred with Randy Spear in the porn film Black Widow (sorry, not a porn parody of the Marvel film, although, yeah, those exist. Look up The Assvengers). It was one of the first films she made after she had sex with Donald Trump one time in 2006. And, in context, I gotta tell you: there’s a dissertation that could be written about this confluence of fucked-up history and fuck film. 

Lemme set this up for you: Stormy plays Peyton, a poor young women from an abusive mother and a cruel, neglectful father, and she grew up in south Louisiana (like me). The movie takes place after Stormy/Peyton is grown up. She has decided that the way to get anywhere is to find a sugar daddy, marry him, and then murder him. When the movie starts, we know that Peyton is married to Randy Spear or “Charles,” a wealthy corporate lawyer with a heart of gold. She’s 20 and he’s 56. She says, “He was just attractive enough to fuck…He was quiet, gentle, and suffered from chronic depression.” Nothing like hearing about mental illness in the midst of jacking off to porn.

But think about it… think about it...The reason that Stormy Daniels let Donald Trump fuck her was because he was making promises about getting her on Celebrity Apprentice and helping her go mainstream. Except he ended up failing on that promise. So, in real life, she had sex with an unattractive, mentally ill man because she thought she’d get something out of it. 

Back to Black Widow: In order to get what she thinks she deserves, Peyton decides she’s going to poison Charles and take his fortune. She even finds a small book on assisted suicide she uses as a guide to see what to give Charles to kill him. 

Now, I suppose you’re wondering, “Wait, isn’t this porn?” Well, sure. And, just like Stormy with Trump, Peyton has sex with Charles, although I'm sure this was a lot more athletic. There’s a bunch of cocksucking and pussy-eating before some condom covered dick-in-vag action. But the whole thing is scored to some minor key strings, like a bunch of evil shit is happening. It’s like Charles is jizzing on Peyton’s face while saying, “That’s fucking awesome, yeah, yeah” while on the soundtrack isn’t the usual "bang-chicka-wah-wah." No, it’s like a horror movie with dissonant violins screeching.

Which, again, if you think about it, must have been what was going through Stormy Daniels’ mind while Donald Trump lumbered on top of her and thrust his mushroom dick into her without a condom for a couple of seconds before heaving off her and saying how awesome it was. Can you blame her for saying, “Oh, fuck, yeah, you’re paying me for silence” when they offered it to her?

And, by the way, Daniels (or, you know, Stephanie Clifford) is no slouch in the business acumen department. Indeed, you could teach a seminar in supply and demand with her autobiography cum business guide, Full Disclosure. Check out this look at the capitalistic give and take of the strip club:

“If you walked in at ten p.m., you were going in cold, trying to get the attention of guys when you were one of many to choose from. But that’s where the money was. There were three set shifts: 3 to 11, 8:30 - 2, and 10 - 2. Dancers had to pay a house fee for the two later shifts, with the last shift asking the highest house fee for the shortest time. A house fee is the ‘rent’ you pay the club as a contractor occupying their space to offer your services. The same way hairstylists will often pay for their space at a salon. There was no fee if you came in at opening, because no girl wants to be there when it’s three guys.”

Now, here is where Daniels reveals herself to be far wiser than you’d think. She says, “I wanted to avoid the house fee but wanted to maximize profit, so for the first five months, I worked the 3 to 11 shift, clocking out just as many girls were getting there. Then I got smarter and I would work a double, starting at three in the afternoon and not leaving until two in the morning. I could skip the house fee, establish my guys, and stay with them when the later girls rolled in.” 

Am I wrong, economics nerds, that this is an example of market optimization, maximizing profits based on your marketing efforts? I think so. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who saturated the market with his own gaudy, debt-heavy casinos that ultimately went bankrupt because of a fundamental misreading of the market. 

Later, Daniels offers a lesson in long-term investment strategy through her regular customer who she called “Bear” because “his white hair and beard gave him the look of a polar bear.” She writes, “He was definitely a creature of habit, coming in every night at midnight after finishing his job as the nighttime manager of a car wash and taking his usual spot to stay the last couple of hours. Once I saw he came in every night, I always made a point of dancing for him. Bear was never a big spender. He would tip a five onstage, and he only got table dances if it was a two-for-one, which they did every hour. Table dances were only ten dollars, but he always gave a twenty and he always closed out the night with me. That meant Bear was good for between twenty-five and fifty dollars a night. But late on a Friday or Saturday night, there’s always a guy who wants to go into a VIP room and you can get six or seven hundred dollars, so the girls would ignore Bear to make that money. Not me - I would always give Bear the last dance of the night. Girls would be like, ‘This guy wants to give you a hundred dollars for a table dance.

“‘No, I only dance for Bear.’

“‘What’s wrong with you?’ was the constant refrain.

“‘He’s twenty dollars every night,’ I said. ‘Every week. Every month. Do the math.’

“He was sensitive about things, and why be rude to him one night to get two or three hundred dollars off this guy who I’m never gonna see again? It’s the long game, and Bear taught me it.”

Here, Daniels evinced an ethos based on self-control, on customer retention, rather than short-term gain. Customer loyalty allowed Daniels to get through times when there was a reduced market in general. 

When Daniels started doing pornographic films, she acted in dozens before she started to write and direct them. She became recognized as one of the best directors for actors, never demanding they do more than what they had agreed to do. Women especially like to work for her. That's a hell of a great reputation. 

She is currently worth over $2 million and she says that she carries zero debt. By some of the most pessimistic (or optimistic, depending on your bent) estimates, Donald Trump holds at least 1.1 billion dollars in debt. And some other estimates put his assets at around 600 million dollars. That means that there is at least a small chance that Stephanie Clifford - Stormy Daniels - is worth more than Donald Trump.

In other words, being a respectable porn artist and stripper is better for your portfolio than being a wildly irrational real estate speculator and brand operator. To put it another way, Stormy Daniels dealt in less fantasy than The Art of the Deal. And if Donald Trump is indicted and arrested this week, we can thank Daniels for taking advantage of Trump's weaknesses, like a good capitalist.

What You Think You Know About Colleges and Universities Is Wrong

(This was originally published over on my Patreon page. I'm posting it here for two reasons. First, DeSantis continues to be a belligerent, anti-education jerk, including blaming the Silicon Valley Bank failure on diversity. And, second, well, to get you to subscribe to the Patreon.)

To listen to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other politicians attack the curricula of colleges and universities in their states and in the country as a whole, one could come away with the clear impression that a college student in the United States is subject to a nonstop barrage of critical race theory; enforced diversity, equity, and inclusion; and indoctrination into a liberal ideology that says white, straight males are evil and need to be repressed in favor of gender-noncomforming people of color. If that sounds like hyperbole to you, all you need to do is spend five minutes watching a conservative news network or listening to right-wing podcasts, and you’ll hear that left-wing professors are the doom and damnation of the American dream. 

Speaking as a tenured liberal with over 30 years of experience in higher education who is a current  department chair, I can tell you that this version of university classroom life is a perverse fantasy. It has very little to do with the experiences of the overwhelming number of students at the overwhelming number of colleges and universities in this country. Simply put, what the right-wing fabulists want their viewers, listeners, and readers to think is a lie. 

Most schools are not Harvard or Oberlin. Most are like mine, which is part of the City University of New York and which teaches about 10,000 mostly working and middle-class students, most of whom have jobs and families, and many of whom are the first in their families to go to college. Yes, all the students start with similar general education courses. For example, before they get to their major, students are required to take two courses in composition, where they learn to write at a college-level, including how to argue using researched evidence. The topics vary from professor to professor. The students take multiple math, science, and foreign language courses, along with a selection of basic social science and a couple of humanities classes. 

We do require that students take courses within these requirements that cover Pluralism and Diversity as a category, as well as Contemporary World. That sounds scary to the conservative overseers of the curriculum who must think this is where the forced CRT and cis-gender confessions happen, but, again, the reality of it is far different. The choices for P&D include classes like The Japanese Economy or Modern Art in Latin America or The History of Education in the United States. Yes, there are courses like Islam: Religion and Culture, as well as Gender and Sexuality. But no single topic is required. And while a student is completing this General Education curriculum, they move on to majors and minors, and most will never have their hair mussed by Queer Theory or African American Studies. 

To put it plainly, this is how it is at virtually every college and university. Of course, there are exceptions, generally at private schools. But even at the college that has become Gov. DeSantis’s bete noire, the New College of Florida, the current curriculum simply doesn’t support all the allegations made against it. DeSantis said, “The mission has been, I think, more into the DEI, CRT, the gender ideology rather than what a liberal arts education should be.”

But the catalog of the New College clearly shows that its mission is to give students a broad education along with the specialization of their majors. Out of ten classes in distribution areas in the Chart Your Course general education curriculum, one is in “Diverse Perspectives.” Within majors like Economics and Chemistry, no course that might be considered “woke” is included. Within majors like English and Political Science, of course, students can choose courses in the literature of “Globalized Gentrification” or “Freedom and Slavery in Political Thought.” But they can also take courses in ancient Greek literature or the U.S. Constitution. In addition, by Florida law, all students have to take a course or pass a test that demonstrates Civic Literacy, and NCF offers several paths to accomplish that requirement. 

The point here is not to reduce the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion as ideas that benefit students who will have to work in a diverse world. Even the evangelical Christian Liberty University has an Office of Equity and Inclusion. It has a Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Equity and Inclusion because the school recognizes the benefit of these kinds of programs. It’s strange that conservative colleges and universities like Liberty or Pepperdine aren’t condemned for their DEI efforts. Meanwhile, DeSantis demanded that all the public schools of higher education in Florida outline their spending on these kinds of programs. It amounted to less than 1 percent for almost all the schools. 

But it’s simply a lie-filled attack on higher education in the United States to proclaim that all the students are being inundated with left-wing ideology. A small percentage of students at a small percentage of schools are exposed to anything remotely controversial. Those who condemn “censorship” or other perceived thought crimes concentrate on obvious examples of over-reach, like the Islamic art incident at Hamline University.

Students have to seek out classes where anything approaching critical race theory is being taught, classes like mine, to be honest. When I dove into the subject while discussing Amiri Baraka’s play Dutchman in an American Drama class, the students were fascinated. Several said they had never thought about American culture or the legal system from that perspective and it was eye-opening. I didn’t demand that they had to believe what I was presenting, which were mostly facts about racism in their country. 

I simply told them the historical background to the play, history that I’m sure a few students already knew. Perhaps, though, the ones that didn’t know had their perspective changed or at least had new information to consider. Isn’t that one of the things a college education is supposed to do? Challenge students? Expand what they know and maybe what they think?

That’s at least part of what DeSantis and, for lack of a better phrase, the anti-woke forces really want to stop.

(If you want more rudeness, join up for my Patreon, starting at a buck a month. You can even pay a year at once. It's a great community of people trying to make sense of a nation gone mad. Usually, there's a lot more cussin'.) 

 

What You Haven't Heard About: Biden's Gonna Veto an Anti-ESG Bill

Back in December, I warned that the next round of fuckery the right was going to pull had to do with ESG investing. While it's a way more complex thing than I have the ability to explain, lemme give it a shot: investing in well-governed companies that give a shit about the environment and social issues. There you go. E=Environment, S=Social, G=Governance. So, like, it's investing in a corporation that isn't run by shitbags, and instead by those who think climate change is gonna fuck us if we don't do anything and who don't treat their workers like garbage. It's not new, but it's taken off in the last couple of years, and now "ESG accounted for $1 of every $8 in all U.S. assets under professional management."

Doesn't that seem like a good thing? Like, wouldn't you want to invest in companies that don't have completely skeevy motherfuckers in charge? That take things like carbon emissions and the effects of rising seas into account in how they do business? That pay fairly and offer benefits that keep workers happy and productive? I mean, how is any of this bad? In fact, wouldn't it be doing due diligence to see if a company is taking into account, say, droughts and flooding when determining where to build a factory? Or if it isn't, say, hiring migrant children to clean the kill floor of their slaughterhouse?

Well, it is bad because we live in the age of the sentient asshole, and it's a problem because of course it is. See, this is apparently making capitalism "woke," and we can't have that. We can't even have that as a consideration.

The administration of Joe Biden decided to undo a Trump administration rule that said the only thing you could consider in retirement fund investments was "financial factors." In other words, it doesn't matter if Mafia-run Amalgamated Sewage Dumping is pouring shit into the water supply and will likely face future fines and maybe even more enforcement. As long as it's making money now, your retirement plan can put tons of money into it (or a fund that contains it in its portfolio). 

The Biden rule change said, simply, if a retirement fund wants to invest primarily on ESG factors, it totally can. That's it. It didn't mandate it. Trump's rule mandated something. Biden's just says, "Hey, your call." Or, to put it another way, "The rule simply makes sure that retirement plan fiduciaries must engage in a risk and return analysis of their investment decisions and recognizes that these factors can be relevant to that analysis." But it doesn't force investment one way or another like the Trump rule did.

Put another way: Trump said, "You must be shitty." Biden said, "You can be shitty if you want, but you can also not be shitty."

But ESG is ready to be exploited by the shitmongers of the right, like CRT and other abbreviations of the damned. So away we go. 

In Republican states like Texas, Indiana, and, of fucking course, Florida, the cockflea legislatures, encouraged by their dickweed governors, are starting to pass anti-ESG bills that prevent state retirement funds, among other things (like municipal bonds), from being invested with any firms that use ESG as a factor. Florida pulled $2 billion out of Blackrock because it used ESG factors. Governor Ron DeSantis, who always looks like he's gonna giddily evict an orphanage for a single late mortgage payment, has proposed legislation that he says will prevent "financial institutions from discriminating against customers for their religious, political, or social beliefs — like owning a firearm, securing the border or increasing our energy independence." 

By the way, another word for the government controlling the financial sector is "socialism." 

Of course, of course, it shouldn't need to be said that, at the end of the day, the word "douche" is in "fiduciary," and those motherfuckers aren't going to put money in anything that isn't going to make money. And ESG investing is making money. Yeah, companies that are moving away from oil and coal, that are diversifying their boards, that are acting as semi-decent citizens in an indecent economic system are doing well. Why wouldn't you invest in success? In fact, states that prevent such investment are essentially setting money on fire.

Which brings us to Biden's first veto threat. Republicans in the Senate, with the help of fossil fuel Democrats Joe Manchin and Jon Tester, passed a bill to prevent enforcement of Biden's rule. The House passed it on pretty much party lines. And Biden said, "Yeah, go fuck yourselves" and has said he will veto the bill. 

Obviously, Republicans were hysterical pricks while discussing the bill. Sen. John Bearasshole or whatever from Wyoming (motto: "It's fucking hilarious that we have the same number of senators as California") said, "The Biden administration wants retirement plan managers to invest people’s retirement funds based not on the best return for the money — nope — based on woke ideology" and added that it was part of Biden's "radical left" agenda." 

But you know who says the senator from Wyoming should sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up? The Republican-controlled legislature of North Dakota. Yeah, they shit on an anti-ESG bill, going down 90-3 in the House, because the fucking bankers told them it was nonsense. "Our biggest concern is the idea of somebody telling our banks who to do business with or who not to do business with," said the head of the North Dakota Bankers Association. "We believe our banks should be allowed to do business with customers they know, the people they know and to make those decisions." Damn, that's some folksy shit right there in service of both crass capitalism and freedom of association and speech.

The screaming propagandists of the right are going to try to make ESG into the next boogeyman. It'll be interesting to see how far they get.