A Thanksgiving Poem from Indigenous America

"Gia's Song" 

by Nora Naranjo-Morse, a member of the Tewa tribe from Santa Clara Pueblo

Thungjoo Kwa yaa na povi sah

Thungjoo Kwa yaa na povi sah

        Tsay ohi taa geh wo gi wa naa povi sah

        pin povi

        pin povi do mu u da kun

        ka nee na nun dun naa da si tah.

On top of Black Mesa there are flowers

On top of Black Mesa there are flowers

        dew on yellow flowers

        mountain flowers I see

        so far away that it makes me cry.

She opened her eyes slowly,

        as if to awaken from a trance

           cast by a song,

           transporting her to childhood,

        Back to the flowers

        agrowing atop Black Mesa

        so far and yet

        clearly brilliant.

Awake from the song,

        Gia focused on her daughter,

        anxiously awaiting

        to be taught a new song.

The old woman chose to take her time,

        she had learned from experience,

        attention is better paid by children,

        when there is a little pause,

           and mystery

            storytelling.

Soon enough Gia spoke . . .

        When I was a young girl,

        my family would camp

        below Kwheng sa po,

        during the farming months.

        We spent most of our days

        following my grandmother

        through rows of corn

        and playing in the streams below.

One day white men came in a wagon,

        telling us about a school for Indians,

        run by the government.

        We were told this school would educate

        and prepare us for jobs in the white man's world.

        None of us knew what any of it meant,

        but these men spoke sweetly

        offering grandmother a roll of baling wire

        for each child that went to school.

        Before we knew what was happening,

        we were sitting in the back of their wagon,

        on our way to government school,

        away from our families,

        to another man's world.

        Often we would cry,

        out of loneliness,

        but this song helped us

        to remember our home."

Gia thoughtfully straightened

the pleats on her skirt,

swallowing the last of her coffee,

Smiling, she continued . . .

        The government school taught sewing,

        I learned on an electric machine.

        By the time I returned to the village I could

        sew, but few of the people had heard of sewing machines,

        or even electricity.

        The machine I learned to operate as my trade

        could not be carried here and there,

        but this song you are learning,

        will always be carried in your heart,

        here and there."

Be Thankful for the Health Care Workers Not Being Driven From Their Jobs By Anti-Vaxx Morons

Last year, the country was filthy with tributes to health care workers - doctors, nurses, hospital staff - who had to deal with the coronavirus-driven near apocalypse of our medical system. The number of patients was overwhelming, a tsunami of death and suffering that tested the limits of available equipment and the strength and nerve of those who had signed up for jobs where they tried to save lives and ease suffering. And, oh, how we appreciated it. Goddamn, how we put out signs and clanged pots and cheered and applauded. We knew we owed them for their sacrifices, so clearly visible in videos and photos, for their own pain and isolation from their loved ones. 

Then given a chance to demonstrate how much we cared about them, being asked to do the absolute least to give them some relief, to get vaccinated and wear a mask, millions of us said, "Nah, fuck that. I'm batshit insane and I wanna party." So we have had spike after spike of Covid cases. It would have been more honest for many people to have put out signs that read "Suck it, Doc!" and to have chanted, "Fuck you, medi-bitches!"

As we are seeing our 5th (really?) surge in Covid cases, with hospitalizations rising and at least 1000 deaths a day that we have just weirdly decided is fine, we are getting ready to put the exhausted health care workers through another trip to the hellscape of Covid-overcrowding in the ICUs. Michigan, for instance, is seeing a surge that is coming close to the highest number of hospitalizations it's seen. The state just recorded the highest weekly caseload since the start of the pandemic. 

So it's not surprising that a large number of the people who care for us are saying, "No, fuck this shit" and leaving their jobs. "The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the health-care sector has lost nearly half a million workers since February 2020. Morning Consult, a survey research company, says that 18 percent of health-care workers have quit since the pandemic began," says Ed Yong in a recent article in The Atlantic. Read the polls of nurses. 66% have contemplated giving up health care altogether. And "76% say that people who have yet to be vaccinated threaten nurses’ physical and mental well-being." If you're unvaccinated by choice, go fuck yourself. You're hurting all of us not just with the virus but by making the jobs of medical workers miserable by clogging the system with your hacking asses. 

I have two friends who work in the ICU in a large New Jersey hospital. One of them has been doing it for a long time, another just started her job at the beginning of the pandemic. The older one has described the dozens of people she saw die during the January peak. The younger one is getting treated for PTSD due to the "war zone" conditions she had to work in during that awful period. Even though things haven't gotten bad again for them because we happen to live in an area with a decent percentage of vaccinated sane people, I truly worry about them if shit goes crazy again. And that worry reverberates throughout the profession. We had a nursing shortage in this country prior to the pandemic. It's a full-blown crisis now. 

It doesn't have to be this way. If a great many more than 59% of us were fully vaccinated, we wouldn't even be worried about overwhelming the health care system. The vast, vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths are the unvaccinated. The only reason that we're not going to be forced back into lockdown is because of those of us who are vaccinated. So you're welcome, you selfish unvaccinated fucks. 

So. on Thursday, be thankful for the medical workers, the nurses, the aides, the doctors, the staff that cleans the rooms and makes the food, the techs, and more, and maybe offer a toast to them for keeping the country from falling into a complete fucktastrophe over the last 19 months or so. And if anyone sitting around your table isn't vaccinated, ask if they give even a single shit about fact that they are ruining the country's already-unstable health care system, that they are hurting the helpers. Chances are they won't. But they should know what's going to be their fault.

Oh, and if that unvaccinated person happens to be a health care worker? Just stare at them like they are fucking insane. Because they are. 

Hey, Parents, Most of You Are Too Fucking Dumb to Decide on Your Kid's School Curriculum

A vile undercurrent has always existed whenever bullshit arguments erupt over What My Precious Angels Are Learning in School: that parents know better than educators what should be taught in the classroom. The presumption is that, for some reason, the expertise of educators is worthless and only the gut feelings and rank prejudices of the gibbering crowd of parents and political charlatans should guide the curriculum. They devalue educators, who have been trained and often continue to be trained in what experts in the field believe is best, and they act as they have the same level of training and expertise when, for the vast majority of them, they clearly fucking well don't.

Just like with vaccines, too many assholes who have read some shit on Facebook or watched Tucker Carlson's fart-face talk about nonsense believe they know something when they know fucking nothing. Take, for instance, critical race theory. No one is teaching that in elementary schools, middle schools, or high schools (well, maybe now a few are because of how much it's been brought up and students wanna know what the fuck is this dangerous thing they're not supposed to learn and responsible educators would honestly discuss it with them). But whenever any of these rusty cock rings bring up critical race theory (giving it the evil "CRT" abbreviation), they aren't actually talking about critical race theory. They're talking about what they've been told critical race theory is, which is not critical race theory. It's like when someone calls you a "socialist" or a "neoliberal." Fuck them. Almost none of them know what those words actually mean.

And the fact that they don't know is something that is being exploited by repellent shitheels on the right. For instance, in his latest "column" (if by "column," you mean "blindingly brainless babble belligerently belched"), the Washington Post's densest conservative, Marc Thiessen, asserts that it's terrible that "most Americans...do not know just how radical or pernicious CRT is." And then he spends most of the rest of his space quoting historian Allen C. Guelzo, who, when he's not being a Trump apologist, has written acclaimed books about Lincoln and the Civil War. In other words, Thiessen devotes all his precious space to someone who isn't remotely an expert in critical race theory in order to demonstrate how pernicious it is. That's like asking your fucking podiatrist to do heart surgery. At least your podiatrist would be smart enough to say, "Whoa, whoa, no fuckin' way, man." But we're just supposed to accept the word of the ignorant and the uninformed. (And this doesn't even get into the lies about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s beliefs in the damn thing.)

When Terry McAuliffe lost the Virginia gubernatorial race to conservative douchespray Glenn Youngkin, a spiked jello of a human being, many were quick to point to something McAuliffe said in a debate. Youngkin, responding to a question about some book banning bullshit in Fairfax County, proclaimed to the Democrat, "You believe school systems should tell children what to do. I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.”

McAuliffe retorted forcefully, "I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions...I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

That shouldn't be remotely controversial. You don't know enough to teach your kids. That's why you send them to school. If you wanna fuck up your child's education, then elect dumbasses to the school board to fuck it up. But I want educators making decisions about, you know, education, not Katie from down the street who thinks she knows everything because she listens to Dan Bongino's podcast while doing crossfit, and not Deke, the local plumber who heard some shit from his buddies who watch YouTube and OAN. Fix my fuckin' toilet, Deke, and get back to me when you've gotten your M. Ed. And while, of course, there are shitty or deranged teachers (as there are shitty and deranged people in every profession), most of them know a whole lot more than you. Unless you are or were an educator at some level (and not at your church's Bible class), you are too fucking dumb to decide on your kid's school curriculum. Accept that shit. 

You know who knows they're not teaching critical race theory? The fucking teachers. You may as well be saying that your kids are being raped by the classroom leprechauns for all the basis in reality you have. You know who knows what books are appropriate for an age group? The fucking people who study children. If your precious high school student can't handle Beloved, then you're a shitty parent. That's on you, not the teachers. Jesus, I'm just so fucking sick of dick parents who think they know better, empowered by their dick friends and followers on Facebook who like their dickish posts about CRT and the 1619 Project and other stuff that makes them uncomfortable with their racism. 

This is the kind of things that snowballs. Careers have already been destroyed over the absolute fraud that critical race theory is being taught outside of university racial studies courses. Laws have been passed that eliminate honest discussion of the racist past of the nation. How fucking cowardly do you have to be to not be willing to face the reality of history? That fear is driving the desire to block discussion of race and LGBTQ people. And the chicken-shit bitches are not just coming to burn those books and prevent those lessons. They're attacking suicide prevention programs and crisis counseling because they say that kind of stuff brainwashes their kids (into thinking for themselves, which is really the problem).

Too many people in this country want to live in a fantasy United States, where racism was never institutional, where gay people don't exist or don't deserve to exist, where people create vaccines to enslave you, where elections are stolen if your candidate loses. And where teachers are the enemy, not some of the hardest-working, least-appreciated fucking people who have been through hell the last 18 months and now have to deal with these crazed cuntfleas telling them how to do their jobs and threatening them if they don't knuckle under to their brute stupidity, showing up at school board meetings to bleat their dull, savage, incomprehensible yawps and grunts.

Yeah, those people won't be satisfied until we all agree to live in their fake world rather than in the reality  that requires us to see the world as a complex, fascinating, frustrating, and evolving place where we want to learn from the horrors of the past so that we don't keep making the same goddamned mistakes.

What We Can Learn from Germany on Teaching the Hard Past

While the first history textbooks in postwar Germany were light on the subject of the Nazis, by the early 1960s, less than two decades after the fall of the Third Reich, things changed. In textbooks that were used at different levels comparable to middle and high school in the United States, authors began confronting the real history of recent past. They "engaged the most contentious issues of the recent past: Adolf Hitler's rise to power, German support for the Nazi Party, concentration camps, and the extermination of the Jews. For most of them, the traumas suffered by Germans were part of a larger story of suffering and sacrifice brought about by National Socialism and the war," as an article by Brian Puaca, a scholar of German education history, put it. While at first, textbooks portrayed the German people as victims, as the 1960s progressed, the position changed to one of culpability, too, in the atrocities committed. 

How to teach the Holocaust is an ongoing discussion in Germany. But whether to teach the Holocaust is not up for discussion: "High-school students are required to take classes on 20th-century German history, including the Nazi era and the Holocaust," although each state may decide on how to implement that teaching. Obviously, some states do a better job than others, but the lesson itself is mandated. Many students take school trips to concentration camps, and around 2800 schools are part of a program called "Schools Without Racism," where that issue is studied in depth.

Students in Hamburg, for instance, first learn about the Holocaust in 6th grade German class; they read the autobiographical book When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr, about a young Jewish girl in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis. As a report from the U.S. Department of Education described it, "While poignant, the language is simple and graphic imagery is not covered. This book covers the most basic understanding of the Holocaust: that Hitler ‘took away’ the Jews from Berlin." As they progress in their programs, students read more books that do delve more graphically into the actions and the psychology of the Nazis and their victims, especially (but not exclusively) the Jews. The Holocaust is also dealt with in Religious Education class, looking at specific ways in which Jews were targeted for their faith, and it's also part of History classes, obviously.

In 2005, Germany's federal/state education standards recommended teaching about Naziism and the Holocaust at least as early as 8th grade and says that in 12th grade, "in the curricula for the basic and advanced classes, a differentiated and in-depth dealing with the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust is to be provided but also with its consequences for German society (among others: Racist policy as consequence of ideology, questions of the reaction of the population, assessment of the contributions of Jews to German society until the Holocaust, discussions about collective guilt and continuation theses)." 

Over on Reddit, you can read responses from Germans discussing how they were taught about their country's genocide (acknowledging that anyone can lie on Reddit). One Redditor talked about being taken on a class trip to Auschwitz when he was ten: "A lot of my peers weren't ready for the immense shame and guilt we felt; however, we were told that it was not our fault directly, and that as a country, we were working on making a better name for ourselves." This urgency to learn from the past in order to do things better is a thread through many of the responses. As one Redditor wrote, "We learned a lot about WWII, its causes as well as its cruelties and horrors. We were often asked to think for ourself when it came to family stories and the fact, that when you heard elderly people talk about the time, almost nobody confessed being a part of it, while in fact it WAS a mass movement. We learned a lot unpleasant things but always with the perspective to learn from the past and not repeat [these] mistakes."

Sure, a lot of former students express that they get tired hearing about the Holocaust and Hitler and Nazis, and, certainly, the fact that very few Holocaust survivors remain has an effect in making history a great deal more, well, historical.  And no country is going to get everything right in teaching something so unspeakably awful. And, yeah, there is a movement of ultra-right wingers who want to de-emphasize the Holocaust, deny it, or make the Third Reich just a "speck of bird poop" in Germany's history. But it's a very small number of people, and, besides, German law punishes "Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism" under its "Incitement of Masses" section of the criminal code.

You know what you don't see? You don't see a bunch of politicians and parents decrying that teaching the Holocaust and Nazi history is wrong because it makes non-Jewish kids feel sad. That's the point. Make them feel sad. Make them feel regret. Make them understand all the things that happened that led to the Holocaust. If that means German students have to confront that their relatives were evil, well, the truth is more important than maintaining a blatant lie. In a nation that has taken in millions of refugees in recent years, making young people understand the nativism and nationalism and prejudice that led to mass violence is crucial to having a peaceful society. Using the Holocaust as an example of what happens when the worst of humanity gets to run the joint is what that nation (and every nation, frankly) should be doing. 

A nation that keeps its horrors hidden, that believes its students are too delicate to handle the truth about history, is damned to keep repeating the same mistakes. 

The Fuck, Joe Manchin?

Yesterday morning, Joe Manchin, Democratic senator from West Virginia and cockblocker extraordinaire, was on CNN's New Day (which would be far more entertaining if it was a Canadian show called "Nude, Eh?"). As we all know, Manchin, along with Arizona's most dickish dress-up doll, Kyrsten Sinema, has been the biggest asshole on the stupidly-named Build Back Better bill that will transform people's lives through funding of social programs and more, at first saying he was willing to go as much as $4 trillion and then $3.5 trillion and now $1.5 trillion, but he'll settle for $1.75 trillion, but don't you dare touch his coal. 

Talking to John Berman, Manchin demonstrated why he's just a fucking moron. Seriously, there's a line between stupid and liar, and Manchin blurs it constantly, with a barrage of great-sounding pleas for comity and bipartisanship that bear no resemblance to anything going on in what we might call "reality." Watching him babble incoherently for 20 minutes about a Senate and a country that doesn't exist anymore, if it ever existed at all, is like listening to someone explain to you why the Star Wars prequels are good movies. You're just wrong, Brian, you're just objectively fucking wrong.

For instance, Manchin kept talking about how Democrats and Republicans need to "come together." Then he offered, "We didn't participate in the tax cuts in 2017, John. It was all done with Republicans, and we Democrats were all against it. Don't you think we ought to be able to come to agreement just to fix the tax code?" And he's so fucking close to getting it that it's like the moment in hentai when the tentacle is just about to tickle someone's asshole. Because, see, what did happen is that Republicans got what they wanted with the tax cut and didn't give a single dry mouse turd about whether or not Democrats were on board. That's how you use power when you've got power.

Manchin continued claiming that the bipartisan unicorn is out there. On voting rights legislation, he said, "We started talking and working all summer long. But, you know, that all those talks on we never had Republicans involved. That was wrong." Except that Republicans were invited to negotiate. You know who invited them? Joe fucking Manchin in June, and Republicans gave him a wedgie and laughed in his face, using as an excuse that Stacey Abrams supported Manchin's efforts. That's leaving aside the fact that Republicans had supported legislation that was pretty much the exact same as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement bill for decades, including 2006. To not recognize the shift in the GOP to the far right is disingenuous and ludicrous on Manchin's part.

To his credit, Berman followed up with the logical "I mean, you keep on hoping for bipartisanship, but you don't seem to find any partners when you reach across the aisle," which evokes Manchin standing alone at a candy machine, putting in money, and failing to get candy, but rather than move on, he keeps putting money in the machine. 

Then Manchin replied, and you gotta read this in full because it's such blithering dickery and nonsense divorced from everything we know about modern politics:

"I go to work in a hostile working environment every day. If you're a Democrat, and a Republican is up for election, you're supposed to be against that person. If Donald Duck's running against that person, you're supposed to give money from your PAC to help the other person, [not] the person that you've been working with. And even sometimes, they'll say, can you come campaigned against so and so. And then we come back on Monday. And here's the person that we've given money against. And here's the person that we're supposed to give basic work against saying, hey, could you sound on this amendment for me? Could you work with me on this amendment? How well do you think that's going to work, John, and I've never done that. If we ever do anything to change this place, there should be an ethics law against us campaigning against each other against us, basically sending money to the candidate against the sitting colleague. These are people you're working with. You have an obligation or responsibility to get something done. And you can't get something done if you're the enemy on the other side every time there's an election."

What the fuck? Honestly, what the genuine fuck, Joe Manchin? If you wanna play some slap and tickle with wet towels in the Senate gym locker room and all get together to make fun of Ted Cruz's tiny dick, that's great for you. That doesn't get jackshit done for the country. 

What I despise most about that whole spiel is not just its complete logical irrationality, as in what's the purpose of a political party if you don't want to get more of your own elected. It's the idea that somehow you owe something to people who want to prevent the elderly from getting hearing aids, oppose universal pre-k, talk about the 2020 election being stolen, cover-up for insurrection, stole a fucking Supreme Court seat, stated they want a Democratic president to be one-term or a failure, refused to negotiate on anything, and that's just off the top of my enraged head. You need to be nice to them because you work with them and your relationship with them is more important than delivering for your voters? That's one of the most blindingly egotistical things I've heard a politician say and its in the guise of sounding like he's the good guy when he's just the dupe of Republicans and the obvious fuck toy for corporate interests. You don't get things done because you don't want to get things done. Get to the bottom of why that is and you've nailed this prick to the table.

Even more masturbatory spew came when Manchin said he's for paid family leave, just not as part of a reconciliation bill. Berman pointed out that people in West Virginia would benefit from it, asking, "How do you explain to a working mother that you're for paid family leave but you're only going to vote against it because as part of this process bill?"

Honest to fuck, Manchin said, "Because basically the people in West Virginia I work with have common sense. They have responsibilities. They do understand that when you do need to pay for these things, they want that to last, they don't want to be flip flopped back and forth and be used as like a yo-yo." A September poll in his state showed that 70% of the voters there support policies that would raise taxes on the very wealthy. Manchin does not support that, calling it "divisive," even though it's pretty unifying across party and ideology. In 2017, 70% of West Virginians supported paid family leave. So, yeah, they do have some common fucking sense in that they understand that you tax the rich to help everyone else in a goddamn country. In other words, Manchin thinks his constituents are stupid, which, you know, they are, but not as breathtakingly dumb as Manchin believes.

Manchin is talked about in some outlets like some wise elder preventing the Democratic Party from giving into the wild and woolly liberals. He's not. He's a fucking dope who loves pleasing his wealthy donors and pretending that he's a fair, moderate player in this savage game. He has nothing to base his views on, just a bunch of useless aphorisms and folksy cliches that mask a disdain for anything but himself. 

And probably his $700,000 yacht.

Random Lessons from the Virginia Reaming

Let's get a couple of things out of the way up top here. If you voted for Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020 and then voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin for governor in 2021, you're a fucking idiot who has no core beliefs other than what your social media is shoveling into your stupid face. And you're almost definitely white and you don't mind racism; you just don't like when someone is so open about it, like Donald Trump. Someone should have stepped in and said, "The fuck is wrong with you, Stacy? You don't cast opposing votes a year apart. You just fucking undid part of your first vote. You just fucked us on abortion rights and pandemic response. What the fuck, Stacy?" 

Also, don't talk to me about how Terry McAuliffe was a bad candidate. He was a bland, regular middle-of-the-road Democrat, and still tens of thousands of people who had voted Democrat chose the candidate of the party of Trump, of insurrection, of racists, of anti-voting regulations. Or they didn't vote at all. All those Democrats just staying the fuck home, which is almost as vile. The connection to Trump should have been enough. Being Republican should have been enough. It wasn't, which leads us back to the fucking brain damage of the white Virginia voter.

All that said, there are a few lessons Democrats can take from last night's reaming in Virginia and near-reaming in New Jersey.

1. Watching Democrats, who came into office in 2021 filled with bravado about the wide range of shit they were going to get done, bumblefuck around about the reconciliation bill because no one can fucking control Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema had an effect. Joe Biden's approval rating starting to go underwater around the time of two events: the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Manchin's reconciliation fuckery. After voting for the framework for the domestic spending bill on August 11, the Chin of Man quickly started hemming and hawing, joined in it by Sinema, who also had just voted for the framework. Prior to that, Biden and the Democrats were riding high on economic issues. Manchin's newly-found inflation concern gave credence to Republicans' spouting the same ludicrous, overwrought bullshit, and that narrative took over, along with the fecklessness of Democrats who, all of a sudden, couldn't pass anything. 

That's not on the progressives, even if many commentators and Democrats want to blame them. That's on the moderates. The progressive shit that's in the reconciliation bill has huge support. You fucking tell suburban moms that there's gonna be universal pre-k and paid family leave, and they're gonna fucking vote for you. Yeah, it was a state race in Virginia, but this shit matters. The identity of the party matters. Being a goddamn winner matters. That gets the base out. Some of that can overcome the stupid. Some of it might even overcome the racism.

2.  And that racism is something that can't be ignored. Youngkin based much of his campaign on lies, setting himself up as the great defender of precious white children in the evil public school system. Critical race theory is not being taught in Virginia's schools. And why would it be? It's got nothing to do with what Virginia's education standards are. School districts would have to spend extra money on lessons and materials and training in order to include it. It's just not true.  

But that reality doesn't matter. All that mattered is that some white parents think that their white children feel bad after they learn that slavery and Jim Crow and the denial of civil rights for non-whites occurred, all done whites. Most of the examples are anecdotal at best and insidious at worst, coming from Republican activists in on the fucking game. But let's be honest here: "I don't like critical race theory" is just a palatable way to say, "I'm racist" or "I'm afraid of white people losing power." CRT is the new "urban," it's the new "high-crime," and if you can say it's coming to your white neighborhoods, invading and lowering the value of education, then that just fits a fucking pattern, doesn't it. Democrats have to come up with a way to squelch this bullshit. You can't ignore it. You ignore fucked up shit, and it's gonna grow teeth and bite you in the ass. History teaches that every goddamn time. Without a real response, it's gonna be nonstop CRT and cancel culture through 2024.

3. What that means is that Democrats have to come up with a way to counter the weird-ass anti-Democratic media spin, including the antagonism to the Afghanistan withdrawal and the discussion of CRT in schools that leaves out the fact that it's not fucking real. I'll have more to say on that later, but I've been saying for fucking years that Democrats have to own the narrative, not get owned by the GOP's version of it.

4. Local shit matters, too. In New Jersey, the biggest issue was property taxes, not critical race theory. 

5. Don't be an asshole. Lots of good outcomes happened, too. Look at the Boston mayoral race. Biden's presidency isn't a failure. Democrats can recover from this. But that's going to take a fuck-ton of work, and it means passing something where Americans can see the benefits. 

6. Finally, for fuck's sake, blame Republicans, blame Republicans, blame Republicans for being unwilling to even negotiate about the things that Americans want. It's not just Trump. It's the entire depraved, vile, anti-American party. Fuck them up they way they fuck us up. Don't say that you wish they would work with you. Fucking destroy them. They are murderers. They want the elderly to suffer. They don't give a fuck about child care. They want to cut benefits. They don't care if you can't afford drugs or health care. They want more hurricanes and fires and floods. 

This isn't that difficult. Say they're killing Americans and don't back down from that. Stop acting like they can be rehabilitated and start acting like they're the enemies they are.

The GOP Supports Death Threats Against Officials They Disagree With

At yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland, it became clear that for the Republican Party, threats of death and violence against elected officials at every level of government are not only acceptable, but that to speak out in even the mildest way deserves hysterical over-reaction calculated to cause officials to receive even more threats of death and violence. It's the cynical cycle of democratic (and Democratic) doom, and GOP senators were more than willing to aid and abet all the violent motherfuckers using intimidation to chase public servants out of office. 

The basis for this is a relatively milquetoast memorandum from Garland titled, "Partnership Among Federal, State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Law Enforcement to Address Threats against School Administrators, Board Members, Teachers, and Staff." After expressing concern about real violence and threats of violence happening at school board meetings and at schools, Garland says, "I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum. These meetings will facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response."

Now, you, being a rational, at least semi-compassionate human being, might think that that sounds just fine. After all, it's pretty fucking hard to argue against the fact that school board meetings have become shit shows of MAGA freaks bellowing about "critical race theory" and antivaxx fucknuts yowling about masks and vaccines. I honestly don't know how some school board members haven't just started screaming, "Shut the fuck up!" repeatedly at the freak parade they have to deal with. But mixed in with bellows and yowls are often threats of knowing where people live or more direct threats about murdering or beating people. It's using fear and intimidation to force government to act in their favor. Generally, we call that shit "terrorism," as in "I'll fucking kill your whole family if you make my child wear a mask in class." Again, you and I would think that law enforcement might want to be involved here, and that local authorities might wanna get some tips from the agency that deals with, you know, terrorists.

But not the modern GOP. Oh, no. That's akin to rounding up parents and sending them to reeducation camps. As Chuck Grassley, the Senate's crabbiest piss elf, put it, Garland created "a task force that includes the department’s criminal division and national security division to potentially weaponize against parents." Except "parents" aren't mentioned in the memo at all. That didn't stop the next few hours of performative fuckery by Republicans in making this memo seem like it was an attack on the very foundations of Uhmerkan freedom. Think that's an overstatement? Grassley cranked on, "This kind of looks like something that would come out of some communist country expansive definition of national security." Yeah, that level of shitting themselves hysteria.

On it went. John Cornyn, who always looks like he's wondering if anyone will find out where he buried that Mexican boy, sputtered, "Can you imagine the sort of intimidation, the sort of bullying impact, that a memorandum from the Department of Justice would have and how that would chill the willingness of parents to exercise their rights under threat of federal prosecution?" Because the rule of law is something that the MAGA right really seems to give a shit about when they're threatening to overthrow the government. And, by the way, Cornyn repeatedly asked Garland that question and got all red-faced that Garland wouldn't play on the field Cornyn wanted him to play on.

And still on it fucking went. 

Mike Lee said, "In hindsight, would you agree that a natural consequence of your memo could be chilling free speech, protected speech, by parents protesting local school board policies?" Lee also offered that there has been no uptick of violent threats in his state, but his fucking state is Utah, which is founded on mass murder.

The biggest self-fellater was Tom Cotton, who harangued Garland endlessly about the memo, and said, "Why do you continue to dissemble in front of this committee that you are only talking about violence and threats of violence when your memo says harassment and intimidation?" Now, again, you and I may think, "Um, intimidation is generally a threat of violence," but you and I are not mighty senators from the mighty state of Arkansas, where, "Shut up or I'll rape your ass" is a statement of endearment. Cotton then went all Tuckerfied, raging, "So are you going to sic your US attorneys and the FBI on a parents’ group if they post on Facebook something that annoys a school board member, Judge?" before concluding like the dickhole he is with "Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court. You should resign in disgrace, Judge." 

And still on it fucking went. You can read the transcript to get more of the same shit, repeated in different ways, from John Kennedy's corny shit to Ben Sasse's runny shit to Marsha Blackburn's fart mouth to dried turds Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. All of them decided to use this precious time to accuse Garland and the evil Biden administration of using the federal government to silence brave MAGA parents who just want the best for their precious children who hate them. 

But, at the end of it all, what you come away with is that the GOP is trying to protect its base, the violent assholes trying to silence or run out of office officials they disagree with. It's of a piece with the reduction of January 6 to a mere protest than a riot of savage fucks bent on keeping Donald Trump in office. It's of a piece of screaming that mask and vaccine mandates are brutal government control of bodies rather than a public health measure. They want the assholes to keep threatening elections officials and school board members, driving them away, allowing the assholes to install their asshole leaders in positions of power. 

And the senators and House members in a previous hearing who engage in this kind of unfounded attack on the mildest of reproaches, the recognition that fucked up shit is fucked up, ensure that those who might want to make more threats feel empowered to do so. This isn't a fucking political party. It's Al-Qaeda on the Potomac.

(Not to give any credit to any of the GOP's dried jizz stains, but Lindsey Graham actually didn't ask Garland about the memo, sticking to issues of the border and international terrorism. It was still prickish, but it's the kind of prickish we're all used to.)

Note to Anxious Progressive Democrats in Congress: Take the Deal (And Then Fuck Up the Party)

Let's be clear that Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are corporate-owned, preening shitmongers who deserve every bit of rage and condemnation that has come their way. Sinema, in particular, is just a fucking garbage heap made of crass ambition and inhuman levels of egotism, gloatingly pretending to float above it all, including her own voters. Fuck both of them, but fuck her especially. But, still, fuck both of them. Fuck them for watering down the already watered down $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill (that progressives originally wanted to be $6 trillion), fuck them for threatening to wreck President Joe Biden and the Democrats' agenda, the very thing that got them to win both houses of Congress and the presidency. 

I wanna add an extra special "fuck them" for the way in which their bullshit demands and tactical games have delayed the passage of a reconciliation bill for months. Remember: The Build Back Better bill was originally supposed to be one big three-part package that included COVID relief (the passed American Rescue Plan) and infrastructure (the negotiated American Jobs Plan). Without Manchin, Sinema, and moderate Democrats in the House (who Nancy Pelosi reamed into compliance) interfering, this all could have been done in the summer. 

What the delay in passage means is that there's a delay in implementing the genuinely paradigm-shifting aspects of the bill, which, of course, were much greater back then. And the delay in implementation means a delay in the very real people affected by the bill seeing their lives improved by its very real benefits. And that delay can have an effect in the perception of the bill and the Democrats come the 2022 midterms. 

That's why I'm saying that progressive Democrats should vote for whatever bastardized, moderated-to-an-inch-of-its-sad-life version of the reconciliation bill comes out of finally bringing Manchin and Sinema the orgasmic release they obviously desire. Yes, it's criminal to reduce in any way efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Yes, it's fucked beyond fucked that massively popular measures like prescription drug price negotiation or paid family leave or expanded Medicare benefits are being bargained down or out. All of that is so fucking true. It is like eating a shit sandwich with a piss shake.

Progressives need to suck it all up and vote for the goddamn bill because most of the things that will remain come from a progressive viewpoint on the role of government. We need to be able to show voters that the federal government can actually act to improve their lives. That's how this is supposed to work. If you do shit for people and they can tell that you've done shit for them, then maybe they'll connect you with the shit you've done and vote for you. (Of course, you have to make sure they know you did that shit. See the Affordable Care Act.) We're obviously not talking about MAGA voters here suddenly turning Democratic because they actually can intellectually connect Biden with the $300 a month they're getting to help them raise their families. No, we're talking about motivating Democratic voters and, especially, those "independents" who don't normally vote in midterms to get off their asses and vote.

I fucking hate saying all this. But I've got two other reasons why:

First, there's the looming threat of a Republican takeover of the House and, perhaps, the Senate. If that happens, 2024 is going to be a fucktastrophe, on top of nothing getting done except endless investigations of Hunter Biden and fake voter fraud. It will be MAGA up your asshole for years.

Second, if something gets passed, then it's time for progressive and liberal Democrats to parlay that into electoral strength. "Oh, you like 4 weeks of paid maternity leave at 85% of your pay? How about 12 week at 100%?" we can say. You can make the case that bigger benefits are possible with a bigger majority. Don't be stupid about it: no Democrat is going to win in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district. And, in West Virginia, Joe Manchin's about all we've got. But, fuck yeah, we can go after Sinema's seat. Democrats in Arizona are fucking pissed at her. And, yeah, we can challenge in Pennsylvania, Nevada, perhaps Texas, and other places. 

Of course, that would likely also require voting rights legislation to stop GOP election-fixing. And fucking away we go again.

The end part of the vote is a chance to fuck up the Democratic Party, to build progressive numbers and possibly vote out the moderates who keep strangling even the minimal programs that this country needs. Unfortunately, that starts with taking the goddamn deal.

Update: The actual proposal contains no family leave, which is some bullshit. But the premise here still stands: Vote. Get something. Campaign on getting more.

Back to Regular Posting Next Week, But Check Out These UK Anti-Vaxxers

Yeah, it's been quiet in these parts the last 2 weeks while I've been on my UK walkabout. I'll be posting again come next week. Give a guy a fuckin' vacation every decade or so.

One thing I saw in several places were small anti-vaccine protests, where well-dressed fucknuts tried to engage passersby. There were almost always more curious gawkers like me than actual participants. Check out this weird little gathering in front of Parliament last week:

This is what you get when you don't have an entire fucking political party devoted to your bullshit message.

The US Is Ass-Backwards When It Comes to Covid and Freedom

It was as simple as it was obvious. I’m over here in the UK. In Manchester right now, to be precise, and, sure, I’m having a bit of a rough time with the Mancunian accent. When I was buying a concert t-shirt last night, the guy selling it asked if I wanted it “with tits or without tits.” Or at least that’s what I heard, and I thought he was making a joke about wanting a men’s or women’s shirt. So I laughed. It wasn’t funny, but, you know, fuck it, maybe he’d knock five pounds off the price. He did not. “No,” he said. “Tits. Do you want it with tits?” I must have looked utterly confused because another man gestured at the shirt’s back on the display and said, “Tits,” when I realized what he was saying was “dits,” not tits, and that “dits” were “dates,” as in the dates of the band’s tour, and, yes, I did want the shirt with the dits. 

But I’m not writing this to talk about cute misunderstandings between accents in the English language. No, it was before the show that I realized how easy things could be. See, the venue required either the National Health Service’s vaccine passport, which was in a phone app, or, if you weren’t vaccinated or weren’t part of the NHS (as a tourist wouldn’t be), you had to have taken an antigen test within the last 24 hours. In the United States, that would be onerous and expensive, with you needing to find a store that had at-home tests and paying $20-25 for just two in, say, a box from Abbott, as I recently paid at a Walgreen’s in New Jersey. The next time I went there, they were out.

When I said to my companion who lives here that we’d better go try to find an antigen test, she stared at me and said, “No. You just go to a pharmacist or the NHS clinic and you get a box of like 7 or 8 for free.” That was it. Truly. And anyone could get them. You literally walk into a clinic and they…hand it to you like it’s health care Halloween. Now, there’s a certain amount of trust and responsibility built in because you test yourself, scan a QR code, and upload your info and the test result to the NHS, and you can lie. But I’d imagine most people don’t and, like me, simply sent in the results (I was negative), got an email back from the NHS, showed it while walking into the venue, and rocked my ass off among others who were either vaccinated or had just tested. 

Imagine that, though. Imagine having access to free tests no matter your income (no fucking “means testing”). Imagine having that to test before you go visit your parents or grandparents or before visiting friends with kids who can’t get vaccinated yet. Some of the people I’ve met here tell me that they keep getting sent boxes of tests (turns out they have 7 in them) and just have a stack of them at this point. It’s so fucking simple. It’s so fucking obvious. You want people to feel safe? Give them the means to do so. That'll get the economy up and running. That'll get you some goddamn real freedom, not the fake freedom that means "leave me the fuck alone."

You know what else is simple and obvious besides Boris Johnson? That national vaccine passport. Right now in the United States, if I go to, say, Pennsylvania, they won’t take my New York Excelsior Pass as proof that I’m vaccinated. Oh, no. I’ve gotta bring my oversized fucking card with my vaccination details scrawled on it like it’s the goddamn 1800s. In fact, my school has a different pass to get in. And some events have another pass. Right now, I have three different apps saying that I'm vaccinated. Why the fuck is that necessary? Goddamn, we are so advanced in our medical research and so fucking primitive in health care policy.

Here in the UK, no matter where someone goes, their NHS passport is accepted, like this is one fucking country. (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own NHS apps, but they honor the England and Wales one.) But almost no one is shrieking about “government control” or some such bullshit. It makes like easier. That’s it. That’s the calculus. The fact that we don’t have a national database of who is vaccinated in the United States is fucking deranged. Oh, and by the fuckin’ way, the original card is actually wallet-sized here, not some weird index card size. 

Yeah, there are anti-vaxx protesters. I saw a few in downtown Manchester, among the many protest groups vying for attention as the Tory Party met in its annual meeting. They were as barking mad as ours in the United States, with signs with fake statistics about the number of people who allegedly died from the vaccine, with photos of people who they say the vaccine murdered. But in a country where nearly 90% of people over 16 have had at least one dose and 82% are fully-vaccinated (and growing), you can fucking well bet that the effect of the anti-vaxxers has been something close to nil. 

The UK is going through a lot of unnecessary bullshit right now because of Brexit and because of the cruel Tory government and because of vile fucknut Boris Johnson and because the Labour Party is a feckless shadow of itself at this point. But, after royally fucking it up early on and with fuck-ups along the way, the nation seems to have gotten itself past the crisis at last. Hell, most people don’t even wear masks up here in the North West which might not be smart, but you can do that if you’ve got most everyone vaccinated. 

I'll give the final word to a guy from Northern Ireland I was drinking with when I said it was miraculous that even a Tory government could accomplish this. He said, "That’s what can happen when half your politicians aren’t working to undermine science like the right cunts you have in the United States." 

Kyrsten Sinema Is Getting Off on This

One of the most fulfilling aspects of self-pleasure done right is how deeply individual, totally personal it is. Your masturbatory preferences are completely yours, and you don't have to tell anyone whatever you need to get off on your own. No one needs to know that what really gets your rocks rolling is, say, a Seaside Woods Yankee Candle scenting up the joint, some Esperanza Spalding on the speakers, and a well-lubed, fully-charged Duke vibrating prostate massager on high jacked all the way up your rectum, taking full advantage of its taint-shaking action until you're jizzing so hard you might rip a hole in time. You can keep all that to yourself, if you choose. Or, you know, you can share it with the world. But it's your call. It doesn't hurt anyone either way.

The problem, of course, is when what it takes to get your peen stiff or your lips juicy is something that affects other people. It's one thing when your kinks are between you, your brain, and your happy spots, like watching blood porn (I have said many times, and I will say it again: if you google shit I mention, that's on you). Yeah, that's all well and good and consensual all around. You get to have your kinks and enjoy them. But if you're a particularly sick fuck, you get off on the actual misery of others. 

Now we're not talking basic schadenfreude, you know, enjoying someone else's failures and fuckups, although I'm sure more than a few hundred thousand of us rubbed one out when Trump was finally, officially declared the loser of the 2020 election. Mostly, though, a good schadenfreude is like ice cream truck soft serve on a hot day. Sweet and fulfilling and you're fine moving on with your life.

But schadenfreude ain't enough for some. There's a depraved sexual thrill that MAGA cretins get in making the liberal snowflakes sad online. You know they have a bottle of lube next to the bed that they've re-labelled "Liberal Tears." You know they're already wanking furiously when they get on Twitter and troll someone successfully. "Fuck yeah, I got AOC upset by mocking her fear on January 6," they might say while jacking it. Or if they attack some regular person for posting sympathy with asylum seekers at the border and that person gets angry in return, man, that's foreplay. Time for the fist-shaped vibrator with Trump 2024 emblazoned on it, eh, Jessie Rae?

Which brings us, in a not-so-roundabout way, to Senator Kyrsten Sinema, ostensible Democrat from Arizona, who has never given a single fucking reason for why she's refusing to vote for the Democrats' budget reconciliation bill, other than "I don't like the cost" and not offering a goddamned alternative. The outline of the bill contains a transformative amount of spending on social programs, finally undoing some of the damage that Republicans have done since Reagan gutted the government's role in making people's lives better back in 1981. 

And it's also gonna do some good in slowing down the out-of-control train that is climate change. Shit, Arizona faces becoming an unlivable wasteland within 30 years if things don't turn around really fuckin' quickly. Being from, you know, Arizona, you'd think that Sinema might give a fuck about her state turning into a dried up hellhole. But Sinema is too busy sucking down wine (no, really) while gobbling truckloads of corporate donor cash. Those fuckin' quirky-ass outfits aren't gonna buy themselves. Meanwhile, she's met four times with President Biden at the White House and issued a simpering, self-serving statement that essentially says nothing, moving the needle on the bill not a fucking inch.

While pundits and politicos try to figure out what the fuck her game is and what she wants, I can tell you. It's simple. And if you've read to this point, you know what it is: She's totally getting off on this. On the attention. On the rage other Democrats are feeling. On the power. On the way in which she's fucking with the lives of millions of people. Hell, she's probably loving that the people voted for her are ready to support a primary challenger. She's long had a perverse, ego-driven streak of doing shit just to piss everyone off. 

You can just picture it: Sinema in a bright kimono on her silk covered bed after a warm bath, using her hand to caress her sopping self to a giant photo of John and Cindy McCain she has glued to the ceiling above her, intoning, "I'm a maverick, too, I'm a maverick, too," over and over, louder and louder, MSNBC on in the background as she hears Rep. Katie Porter tell Lawrence O'Donnell how wrong she is for being an obstructionist. Jesus, fuck, all she needs now is to flip over to Fox "news" and hear them praise her for not backing down and laugh at Democratic in-fighting and she'll have a screaming orgasm. Fuck, finish already.

Maybe then she'll be ready to fucking negotiate like the goddamn politician she's supposed to be. If not, take away the one thing she wants: the much-reduced bipartisan infrastructure bill she so proudly humped to life in an orgy with other bullshitters. Deny her the climax she desires.

Democrats Should Be Having a Five-Alarm Freak Out Over Voting Rights

Yeah, there's a whole lot of shit that needs to get done, but right now Democrats should be freaking the fuck out over voting rights. They should be losing their fucking minds and screaming nonstop on every outlet they can find. Get your gravest, most serious senators, like Leahy or Bennett or Shaheen, and have them shitting themselves at Jake Tapper's scowl or George Stephanopoulos's hair. Because if we don't have a freak out now, then any freak out later will be useless.

Others have played this out, projecting what will likely happen if Congress doesn't pass some version of a bill that secures voting rights. The bullshit voter suppression laws in bullshit places like Texas and Georgia, combined with extreme gerrymandering in every state where Republicans can do it (yeah, Democrats can do it, too, but it won't be enough to counter the GOP), will allow the GOP to at least take the House, if not the Senate, too, in 2022. Then, filled with Trumptastic belligerence and fascistic glee, they would refuse to certify any presidential election that doesn't go their way, and, voila, we very quickly become Jesusstan or Christsylvania or Trumped Trumps of Trumperica.

And that all sounds shitty enough. But here's the thing: once this path starts, there is almost nothing that can be done to stop it once the democracy dominos have begun to teeter over because if Republicans win the House, that's it. The laws simply won't be changed and the total Republican hold on the federal government, with a minority of voters, will be in play. In fact, by that point, a Republican Party that is based on believing elections are only legitimate if they win will go further to dismantle voting protections because it has to make its belief into unimpeachable reality. Of course, this will happen even more at the state and local level, too, because if you're gonna fuck constitutional rights, you might as well fuck 'em into the ground.

Why freak the fuck out now? Well, we should have been freaking the fuck out for a long while now, but  we're seeing a general escalation of anti-voting rights rhetoric and actions, from the racist and completely fucking idiotic assertion that Democrats want to let refugees and asylum seekers into the country so they can be made instant citizens and vote Democratic (which implies that Republicans have nothing to offer immigrants, which, well, if the white hood fits...) to the fact that over 75% of the GOP believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected. The fake allegations of voter fraud and the deeply-held belief that Democrats are not really legit, true-blue Americans are held as gospel with the idiot hordes of the right and, even though most elected Republicans know this is utter twaddle, they are going to use it to solidify power through the exclusion of anyone who might challenge that power.

Even more directly alarming is the fact that Trump's goddamned lawyer, John Eastman, had laid out a six-part plan for how then-Vice President Mike Pence could shitcan some Electoral College votes and allow the House to vote Trump back into the presidency. You can look at that and say, "Well, that's ridiculous. Too many Republicans in Congress would have protested," and I'd respond, "Where the fuck have you been living for the last 40 years?" and then some of you would say, "I'm only 20, old man" and I'd say, "Fuck you. Then get me the good Molly" before explaining how this has all been part of a GOP project to disenfranchise Americans since Reagan shat the White House bed. And, as Eastman wrote, fuck permission. Let those who don't like installing King Trump's lumpy ass into the presidential throne try their luck in court. Fortunately, multiple people advised Pence to not go down that destructive path, even though Pence was trying to have someone he trusted give him the high sign to do it. The crisis was averted because Pence decided to listen to the angel lovingly caressing his right ear, not the devil savagely humping his left one. That's it. That's how close it all came to coming apart.

You want to hear that in scary scholar-speak? Trump "pursued a political and legal strategy aimed not just at sowing doubt but at subverting the outcome of the presidential election. This strategy, which has no precedent at any point in American history, had many parts, but the best evidence now available showed that this was less about saving face and more about reversing election outcomes," writes Richard L. Hasen, Co-Director of Fair Elections and Free Speech Center at the UC-Irvine School of Law. That "no precedent" part is the giant "Freak the fuck out already!" sign.

That's not only how fucked things were or are. On top of that, now we know that Trump's campaign knew that allegations about hacked or fucked-with voting machines were hot garbage being sold out of the back Sidney Powell's limo, but they did almost nothing to stop her from embarrassing herself, Rudy Giuliani, and humanity in general because it kept the rubes all het up. On top of that, just last week, Trump sent a letter to Georgia's Secretary of State asking him and Governor Brian Kemp to overturn the election results there in hopes of overturning the whole thing now, nearly a year later. These aren't red flags. They're motherfucking bright lights, bells, and sirens with packs of howler monkeys on top screaming into the void to fucking do something.

I can't help, think, though: How much shit don't we know? That's the part that keeps me the fuck up. God, can you imagine the phone calls where Stephen Miller screeched his demands at Arizona officials? Or Pennsylvania? I want to know how close we came to the coup before the coup attempt on January 6.

So, yeah, we've gotta get the stupid debt ceiling raised. We gotta pass the Build Back Better Act. And the infrastructure thing. We gotta do all that shit. But none of it will mean a goddamn thing if voting rights are left out in the rain like a rag doll forgotten by a distracted child. That's why the freak out has to happen. Anything else passed now would easily be undone by a Republican majority that will fucking laugh as they tear the filibuster out of the Senate rules on their first day back in charge. These fuckers don't care. They don't give a shit if it all burns down.

And Democrats can either be the firefighters or they can just be the gawkers on the sidewalk, wondering why no one tried to put out the inferno while holding the hose behind their backs.

(Sure, yeah, what about Manchin?  Jesus, threaten to investigate his daughter.  And Sinema? Buy her a winery or something. Whatever you can do to move things.)

Missing the Real Story: Like Many Others, Milley Said Trump Is Nuts

I get the uproar over Bob Woodward's latest luridly compelling book on the administration of Donald Trump. Woodward is like a filthy tabloid version of Robert Caro, and he always squeezes every anecdote for maximum salaciousness. So in his telling, Gen. Mike Milley, Trump's (and now Biden's) Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, was so alarmed at Trump's behavior before the election and after the January 6 riot that he felt compelled to call his counterpart in China and say, more or less, "Don't listen to this president. We're not going to attack you."

What you're hearing mostly about Milley's two phone calls is that he was "treasonous," that he should be "court martialed," and that he should face "immediate dismissal" for undermining civilian leadership of the military. On the other side, Milley himself has defended what he did as proper and that it was "within the duties and responsibilities" of his position to tell other countries that the United States is not going to war with them. He's backed by other generals and President Biden. Chances are that this is really a big nothing sandwich that Woodward oversold and overhyped, as is his way. 

And that's a whole interesting discussion we can and should have, but it really misses the whole fucking forest for a few shitty trees. Because, see, what's truly important about what Milley, along with then-CIA director Gina Haspel, said is to confirm that the United States was run by a dangerous and unstable fucknut whose naturally worst instincts were held in check by a few public servants who saw that Trump had the potential to fuck things up in an even more deadly and destructive way than he already had.

In other words, the person who is seen as the head of the Republican Party, who would win the presidential nomination in a walk, who is worshiped by millions of Americans, who has politicians bowing and scraping for his favor, yeah, that fuckin' guy is legit a goddamn maniac.

That's the story. That's what we should be talking about. Yeah, fine, we can get around to the debate over whether Milley overstepped his authoritah or whatever. But I'd like to put that on the back burner until we're done reckoning with and doing something about the murderous lunatic who's in charge of one of our two parties. See, when someone is trying to burn down my house, I'm not gonna worry if the pizza delivery guy overcharged me, especially if the pizza delivery guy stopped the arsonist. In that case, I'd probably just tell him, "We'll call this one a wash."

You can just toss Milley and Haspel, who called Trump's post-2020 election behavior "insanity" and said that he was "acting out like a six-year-old with a tantrum," onto the pile of former Trump officials in some of the most important jobs in government who have been quoted or have publicly stated that the ex-president is a mothefucking loon. You've got former national security adviser John Bolton, a loon himself, saying that Trump is "irrational" and a conspiracy-monger. You've got former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying that Trump acts impulsively and, perhaps, calling him a "fucking moron." You've got former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former Chief of Staff John Kelly, and former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, among others, saying that Trump is, at best, an incompetent boob and, at worst, a danger to the existence of the country. We may never know how many times Trump took us to the brink of national calamity, only for someone to intervene and get him to back off. We know how his insane insistence on bullshit and lies prolonged the pandemic and got hundreds of thousands killed. Goddamn, what else could he have done?

We should have been talking about that every day. Nancy Pelosi told Milley, "He's crazy. You know he's crazy. He's been crazy for a long time." Sorry, but that's way more important than whose toes Milley might have stepped on. And if Trump announces that he's running in 2024, then we're gonna need to make the fact that he's out of his tiny mind front and center in any discussion of him. It's the only story. We can't be too polite about talking about the mental health of someone whose mental health affects every person on the fucking planet. And we sure as hell can't be distracted by something that isn't about life and death.

Republicans Can Suck Swollen Democratic Balls in California

Here's a conundrum that's hard to explain: 

Impeachment is a perfectly legal, constitutional way to attempt to remove a president from office. I mean, it's right there in the actual, you know, Constitution. And there are no real limits on why you can start impeachment proceedings other than "this feels like a high crime or misdemeanor." But Donald Trump and Republicans lost their fucking minds and starting screaming that the first impeachment of the orange spit globule of rage was "illegitimate" and an attempt to "overturn" the 2016 election. 

Of course, that was all total bullshit and propaganda, meant to keep the yahoos all fired up and ready to rampage. In fact, as long as the House of Representatives is running it and abiding by the Constitution, no impeachment can be illegitimate, no matter how much you don't like it. And as for overturning? Motherfuckers, we would have gotten Mike Pence as president, same as if Trump died or quit when he realized he couldn't just pardon himself for money-laundering and rape.

Because of the stupidity of California's laws, the recall process there is also completely legitimate. It's fucked up and weird and anti-democratic in many, many ways. But it is the actual law of the state, so you gotta surf the waves you got. What that fucked up process does is if the target of the recall, say, the governor, is actually recalled, that overturns an election because it's not the lieutenant governor who takes over. Oh, no. It's whatever celebrity fucknut gets the most votes. 

In this year's recall, Governor Gavin Newsom, who won with nearly 62% of the vote in 2018, could have been removed from office and replaced with the top vote-getter in the dumbfuck second part of the recall, which is picking someone else to replace the recalled official. In this case, the Democratic governor may have been replaced with nutzoid Republican piece of shit Grade D talk radio fucknut Larry Elder. Elder got 2.3 million votes. In 2018, Newsom got 7.7 million. But Elder would have taken over. Now that's undemocratic times nearly 4. But it is the law, like impeachment, so even if the law is idiotic, you gotta follow it. 

So here's the conundrum: Republicans had no problem embracing the California recall like it was their grandma they haven't seen in a year because of Covid. Impeachment? Illegitimate. Cali recall? Awesome beyond awesome. 

That's Republicanism in a nutshell right there. They love the laws and the rules when they can contort them to do their bidding, like fucking a mannequin with multiple joints in its arms and legs. Think Mitch McConnell and the Supreme Court. Man, he bent that mannequin of ethics and tradition in two and twisted its legs behind its head and put its cold finger up his asshole while he balled away, gleefully denying Merrick Garland any consideration while speeding Amy Coney Barrett through like she had explosive diarrhea and needed to get to the shitter. 

But the second those laws go against them? Then everyone's fucking cheating and everything's fucking rigged and everywhere there's illegal shit happening. 

They tried to do that with the California recall, teeing up the outrage machine prior to the election, priming the bullshit pump for the results they knew would be coming. Trump himself bellowed about how he was cheated in the state in 2020, which is stupid on its face, on its chest, and on its ass. Other right-wing self-fellaters jumped in, and Elder even wouldn't say if he would accept the outcome, declaring that there "might very well be shenanigans."

What fucked all that up was the overwhelming win by Newsom, receiving 64% of the vote so far. It was such a blowout that Elder actually conceded (while hinting he might run for governor in 2022, which would be hilarious). Democrats in California told Republicans to suck their balls and take that Trumpy shit somewhere else. This time, the rules and laws worked in Democrats' favor. 

Rather than make any kind of broad predictions about the midterms based on this - although it should be noted that the enthusiasm Democratic voters had was much higher than prognosticators thought it would be - another lesson we can take from the recall is that the Republican playbook is to undermine our election laws. That's not a big revelation. I mean, most of the fucked allegations of fraud or election "shenanigans" involved trying to attack laws passed by legislatures or actions resulting from a court decision. The fucking GOP tried to say that allowing people to vote by mail during a goddamned pandemic was really about allowing election fraud. That's some monstrous shit right there.

And if they would dare to attempt this play with California, a state where Democrats have a 2-1 registration margin, a state that Trump delusionally said he only lost because of the votes of "illegal immigrants," if they would fuck around there, they're gearing up to fuck around everywhere. 

So it's beyond time that Democrats use the rules and eliminate or, at the very least, "reform" the filibuster in the US Senate and get voting rights secured. That's a fair evolution of process and not the blatant fuckery of McConnell's Supreme Court seat grab or refusal to allow votes on pretty much fucking anything. 

Because if Democrats don't, then, in 2022, barring the entire nation telling Republicans to go to hell by huge margins, the balls will be in the other mouth.

9/11 Knows America Lies to Itself

9/11 hates these years the most. Every half-decade, the annual commemoration is amped up, as if some magic exists in numbers that end in 5 or 0. Every time, the same speeches, the same images, the same patriotic fervor in some places, the same performative sense of loss in others, the same, the same. The only part she feels still has any power is the reading of names. It has an incantatory quality, like a Buddhist prayer, with the timed striking of a sonorous bell. She feels something then. 9/11 is accustomed to feeling nothing anymore. She has been used and brutalized and caressed and beaten and loved and raped and paraded on high and dragged through the streets. 

She was degraded regularly by George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani and the monsters and ogres of that time, forced on her knees to choke as they forced their anxious pricks into her mouth, desperate to steal her power for themselves. She was told to get out and perform for the Obama administration, to dance a whore's dance, to masturbate for the masses in order to justify the unending war done in her name. And through it all, every ceremony, every time she's been dragged out to take her defiled part in, she has appreciated the reading of names. Because then it isn't about them. It isn't about Bush or Cheney or Osama or, ludicrously, Saddam. It isn't about every TV demagogue trying to force finger her or every candidate for office slapping her ass. No. It's not about them. It's not even really about her. It's about heart-wrenching loss and soul-breaking hurt, which is all it really should be. The rest is worthless. 

9/11 hates the lie that Americans desperately need to believe. She wants to scream at her TV or her iPad whenever a report comes on that talks about how the country "came together," how there was "unity," how we "cared about each other." 9/11 knows the purpose of this lie, to cover up the instant divisions in the nation, to bury the hatred that welled up in the streets and in the police precincts, to spackle over the holes in the American conscience that could justify everything that came after. They say, "Never forget" over and over, like a mantra of the deluded inside a rubber room, as if a country that is devoted to forgetting its real past, its evil and its racism and its violence and its cruelty, has to cling to this illusion of a moment in time, a fantasy of togetherness across party, across identities, across the world. 

9/11 doesn't remember it the way the overheated politicians and the frothing media figures remember it. She remembers how Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld got harder than they had in years at the chance to blow shit up. She remembers how completely a spell was cast over the American people, with anyone opposing blowing shit up being labeled a traitor. She remembers how many other lies were told, about who was responsible, about what bombing the shit out of them would do, about how people had too much freedom in their lives and that it needed to be limited. She watched, even from the pied-a-terre near smoldering Ground Zero where Karl Rove had stashed her in so she could be conveniently and roughly sodomized by him whenever it seemed the public was straying from walking the War on Terror line, and she saw how immigrants were mistreated and stigmatized by the Bush administration, even as so much lip service was paid to not blaming those immigrants. Or Americans. 9/11 has felt all the savagery done in her name, every drone strike in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Sudan, all under the banner of fighting them there so they don't come here when, really, almost none of them want to come here. She has heard every civilian scream. She knows the faces of the tens of thousands upon tens of thousands who were killed, the payback for the almost three thousand killed on her birthdate, when she emerged, whole and adult, from the burning rubble that was made of poison.

It all disgusts her, but, she has to admit, seeing her reflection in the glass on the outside of the museum that bears her name, the nausea from her disgust has kept her in pretty good shape. It's more than she can say for some of the ghouls from back in that time. Sean Hannity looks like someone put two wax dummies of him together. Kellyanne Conway looks like she was washed in a filthy river and balled up in a corner. And Giuliani? 9/11 doesn't even know how he's still alive. But she figures the Devil he made a deal with is just enjoying watching Rudy crash and burn. And so does 9/11.

9/11 does appreciate the memorial in Lower Manhattan. She can stare at the water falling into the void for hours at a time, allowing herself to feel as if she is falling into it, too. She can turn and smile at the giant One World Trade Center building. Goddamn, she's relieved they stopped calling it "the Freedom Tower." What a crass, awful name. It's not as bad as "Patriot Day," as some like to call her. That just reeks of flop sweat, like explaining a joke that no one laughed at. Which, really, that name kind of is. 

Fewer and fewer people notice her now in the plaza. That's the one nice thing about the years going by. She's not something real to so many now. And those who do notice her are startled when they see her, but they don't approach her. They don't want to know the real her. They need the illusion. 

9/11 can't give that to them anymore. If nothing else, the end of the war in Afghanistan has made plain that she was never the gal they thought she was. And that's hard for most of them to deal with.

She does want to hear the names again. But that list should keep being read with everyone killed in the name of those names, victims as sure as those who died here in Manhattan or over at the Pentagon or in a field in Pennsylvania. 9/11 believes that's the only way to tell the truth: since that day 20 years ago, it has never not been 9/11.

Don't Tell Me Not to Mock People Who Hate My Guts

This past weekend, I was at an event where I learned that someone with whom I have shared some good times "hates your fucking guts," as a cousin of his told me. Why do my fucking guts so upset him? Did I kick his cat or shit on his sofa or fuck his son and leave him? Nothing like that. It's my politics. He hates my fucking guts because I don't believe that Donald Trump was a great president and that Joe Biden is destroying the country. And here's the thing: I knew he was very conservative for a long time. I even knew he went full MAGA. But I never disliked him. I disliked his beliefs, but I can separate that out, especially for someone like him who really has been through hell for the last few years for a number of health-related reasons for him and his loved ones. So, fuck it, I just didn't talk politics with him. There's a whole lot of other shit to bond over.

Apparently not, though. I don't know what tilted him into hating my fucking guts. I don't know when it happened. I do know that he didn't speak to me or even acknowledge me at a gathering this weekend. I do know that he wants nothing to do with me. I don't know if he wishes me harm, but what I did find out was that he supported the January 6 insurrection and demands justice for Ashli Babbit, the terrorist shitbird who got her empty head shot when she tried to break through cops guarding Congress. Mostly, at this point in time, I just pity the deluded fucker. 

The timing of this weird-ass, playground-level bullshit couldn't have been more perfect because over the last week or so, we've been treated to various levels of shame-shaming those of us who mock the fuck out of the deranged and pathetic losers who die after willfully and proudly refusing to get vaccinated or who do something arugably stupider and treat themselves with the horse and sheep deworming drug Ivermectin if they get Covid after not getting vaccinated.

The pleas for kindness or empathy cross ideological lines. In The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig asks us to "Stop Death Shaming" the unvaccinated and says, "It’s worth considering what an honest persuasion effort aimed at the unvaccinated or vaccine-hesitant would look like," although the answer is "It would look like exactly what was done when the vaccine first came out." Writer Conor Friedersdorf asks us to stop "mocking people" for sucking down horse paste and instead do the "tedious work" of convincing them not to suck down horse paste. In the National Review (motto: "Democracy dies in the darkness we created"), longtime right-wing dickstain John Fund wants us to be nicer to people who ingest Ivermectin because there is a version for humans. That's a common refrain: there's a human version that is widely prescribed in places where parasitic worms are an issue (and I don't mean the Republican Party, hey-yo!), so, you know, those who think it's worth a chance to take it shouldn't be instantly dismissed and insulted. 

And all I can say is "Don't be fucking ridiculous. Of course, we're gonna make fun of them. All of them." First, on the Ivermectin insanity, yeah, rich pricks like Joe Rogan can pay a doesn't-give-a-fuck doctor to get the human prescription version, but most of the people doing it aren't rich pricks. They're poor and middle class pricks whose doctors are telling them, "The fuck is wrong with you? Fuck, no, I'm not prescribing the anti-lice and worm drugs for you" so they go to the ol' feed and seed and pick it up. Or, for ten bucks, some Walmarts. It's a tube of paste, for real, often apple flavored, and dumb motherfuckers are sucking it down to prevent or cure their Covid. It's gotten so bad that the FDA and other health officials, as well as the makers of Ivermectin, Merck, have issued statements saying, more or less, "Would you dumb rednecks stop sucking down the sheep goo?" And the goo is selling out at farm stores because you don't need a veterinarian's prescription to get it for your horse or sheep or cow (there is an injectable version that does need a prescription). A Memphis feed store can't keep it on the shelves. A Las Vegas store wants you to prove you have a horse before you can buy it. While, sure, the story about Ivermectin overdoses preventing gunshot victims from being seen at a hospital in Oklahoma was, at best, overblown, the fact is that people are calling poison control in huge numbers after taking the horse drug and they are ODing and taking up space in the ERs with their stupidity.

And you can make all kinds of statements about how we need to understand why people might do this absolutely fucking moronic thing. You can talk about the unfair medical system and rural areas without access to proper care or how desperate people do desperate things. You can blah, blah, blah all fucking day trying to fluff that sympathy cock into a full-blown erection, but it fails for one simple reason. There's a goddamn vaccine. It's free. It works. That's the answer. Anything you try to say after that is bullshit. It's all a lie. You don't want the vaccine because it's "experimental," but you'll eat the horse goo even though it's totally untested for Covid. That's fucking hilarious. You don't want the vaccine because you heard it might harm you and then you got Covid and died. That's so fucking miserable that I better make fun of it or I'll scream at your grave about what a shit-souled loser you were. 

I don't hate them. I pity them and feel superior to them because, well, I am (and so is everybody who gets vaccinated and doesn't put a tube of cow paste to their lips). I won't treat them like children. As I've said repeatedly, they are adults who made an adult decision to listen to assholes instead of doctors. So I save my hatred for Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan and Ron Johnson and every scum from the garbage pail bottom who keeps telling their viewers or listeners or voters not to get vaccinated and to try this bullshit drug or that bullshit cure. 

No, I don't hate the willfully unvaccinated, but I don't have sympathy. I lost that a long goddamn time ago. And that's because the people we are trying to convince to get vaccinated hate our fucking guts and dream of slaughtering us or at least exiling or concentration camping us. So, yeah, I'm gonna keep mocking them for their refusal to do the easiest goddamn thing in the world. I'm gonna do it because they scare the fuck out of me by their actions that might end up dragging us all down into the ditch with them and joking about it keeps me sane amidst this genuine insanity. Being nice about it is a waste of goddamn time. 

Plus, c'mon, finding out that some of these idiots are eating so much horse paste that they shit out their intestinal lining and think it's worms and then think that's a good thing? That's comedy gold. 

(Just to note about the opening story: He wasn't a good friend or anything. Just someone who I always enjoyed seeing when a particular group gathered, so his loss doesn't leave a hole in my life. More of a "Huh. That's fucked up.")