On Mental Health, Like on Everything Else, Republicans Are Always Liars

In June, during the debate over two Democratic-sponsored bills with mild new rules for purchase and ownership of firearms in the wake of the horrific school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, Republicans predictably lost their collective shit over "muh 2nd 'Mendment." Putting aside the fact that without the guns, people in all kinds of mental states would not be able to shoot other people, what was fascinating in that GOP shit-losing was how many times Republicans said that they wanted to pass bills that addressed mental health issues, not guns. It's as if they found a magical talking point and they waved it like a wand made of liberal tears.

For instance:

Rep. August Pfluger of Texas claimed that Republicans had a bill that provided funding for "mental health counselors" for schools.

Rep. Michelle Fishbach of Minnesota affirmed that Republicans "stand ready to work with the majority to directly address school safety, mental health, and the root causes of gun violence."

Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas insisted that Republicans were big supporters of mental health programs: "Yesterday, in the Rules Committee, it was stated that Republicans vote against all mental health bills. I don't know where that concept comes from. Republicans passed into law the 21st Century Cures Act, which represents the most significant reform to the mental health system in several decades."

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska was clear on what he thought the bills were missing: "What this piece of legislation does not do is address how the shooter in the majority of these incidents has exhibited concerning behaviors on social media and in public and it does not provide mental health services to those who need it."

Rep. Cliff Bentz of Oregon felt much the same: "Instead of politicizing the response, we should be actually enforcing our existing laws and addressing the mental health crisis that results in these terrible events."

In fact, the House GOP declared that it did already "support mental health care."

So, on Thursday of this week, when given the chance to vote on the Mental Health Matters Act, which specifically expands access to mental health services for many Americans, including students, they must have obviously been in favor it. I mean, to do otherwise would be the height of the hypocrisy. They were pretty fucking clear on how they felt much more needed to be done to help people.

But we're talking about Republicans here. And they already rail against abortion while having or paying for abortions. They want to take away rights from LGBT people while being LGBT themselves. Hypocrisy is like air to these motherfuckers: they couldn't exist without it. So, yeah, they were fucking lying when it comes to their expressed desire to get people needed services for their mental health. 

One Republican voted for the bill while 205 voted against it, including every single one I mentioned above there. Why? Well, reasons, of course. The bill would eliminate some arbitration requirements on disputes between employees and their health plan administrators, thus taking some power away from corporations, including big insurers. And then there's this truly, epically idiotic rant from Rep. Bob Good of Virginia:

"The China virus lockdowns of our schools resulted in an undisputed increase in mental health issues for our students, for our children. This bill is yet another leftist response to the lockdown problems that Democrats created. Thanks to Democrat lockdowns in collusion with their beloved teachers  unions, students across this country are suffering academically and mentally."

Does it get fucking crazier? Oh, yeah. It gets fucking crazier: "History will judge us harshly for how we treated children during the China virus pandemic, regarding how this government crushed the economy, this government crushed small businesses, this government crushed individual liberties and sacrificed our children on the altar of the leftist political agenda and the special interest groups."

In other words, the kids need help but because the help is coming from Democrats, fuck those kids. 

In otherer words, Republicans are goddamn liars about caring for the mental health of children or anyone, really. The easiest proof of that is that people still vote for them despite the fact that they are obvious liars. If you get everyone help with their mental health, hell, they might lose a lot of their voters.

The Gnawing Anxiety That Trump Will Get Away With All of It

I can't get past something when it comes to the multiple crimes of Donald Trump, who really was president (something I still can't fucking believe happened - I mean, I know it happened. I'm not denying the existence of facts, like Trump and his braindead legions do. I'm just always gonna be like "Fuck us that we let that happen"). And it's really simple, one of those elegant confluences of circumstance that should have complete clarity. It's this:

The law is intensely clear: With a few exceptions that need to be approved, the records of a presidential administration belong to the nation, not the president. All of it, classified, unclassified, and declassified, go to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, an office set up to take care of those records that are, again, by law, the nation's. There's no wiggle room on this. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals made it crystal-fuckin'-clear in its decision this week in favor of the Justice Department when it comes to the hundred or so documents found by the FBI at Trump's shitty fake castle, Mar-a-lago. "They are ‘owned by, produced by or for, or . . . under the control of the United States Government,'" it wrote. 

And this is what bugs the shit out of me. I get that rich people are treated differently when it comes to legal matters. I get that presidents are treated with kid gloves for some goddamn reason. But Trump and the people around him took those documents that don't belong to him. Then NARA gave them the benefit of the doubt (or pretended to) and said, "Hey, you took these documents that by law don't belong to you. Please give them back." Then, not only did they not give them all back, they lied and said they did, which means they fucking well knew they had shit that didn't belong to them. Under the most generous of definitions, that's theft. They fucking robbed the country. 

So I cannot wrap my brain around the idea that Trump and everyone involved in keeping the documents were not immediately arrested when the FBI fucking caught them with stolen fucking property. As just about everyone sane who has commented on this, from across the political spectrum, has said, if anyone else had been caught hiding government documents, let alone super-duper Top Secret Classified documents, the FBI would have sealed them in concrete until trial.

This is the kind of shit that plagues my brain at 3 a.m. when the whiskey is wearing off and the drugs just aren't holding the bullshit at bay anymore. Right now, a plague of lawsuits and investigations ought to be making Trump wonder if he'd rather live the rest of his miserable life in the UAE, Russia, or Indonesia when it comes to places without extradition treaties. And I know, I know, I fucking know that you want to be optimistic, even gleeful, thinking, "There's no fucking way he gets out of all of this." I mean, c'mon. If nothing else, E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit accusing Trump of raping her has to bring him down. She's got DNA evidence, after all. 

It's not just that we've been burned before (although I'll brag that I stopped leaping at every "We got him!" moment a long time ago). It's that when Trump gets away with it, the story shifts. The Mueller Report has become nothing more than a failed witch hunt (which it wasn't). The impeachment over Ukraine has become part of the "Russia hoax" (it's not a hoax and the phrase has become so broad as to encompass anything that even mentions Russia and Trump). Trump prances all around his red state yahoo fests, lying about this shit with extravagant abandon as he pushes closer and closer to simply saying, "Kill everyone not like you."

And it's not just that Trump's gotten away with so much throughout his life. How many regular, working and middle class stiffs does he have to dick over before the rest understand they're being conned? How the fuck did it take so long for some entity in New York to seriously go after his entire ass? And why do they always stop short of actually arresting someone who has blatantly flouted the law? I'm honestly pissed as hell at Cyrus Vance and every AG and DA who allowed Trump and his shit children to remain free to fuck over more people. The only explanation that makes sense is that they have been corrupted in some way. It's why Letitia James's actions have been so stunning and relieving to many of us up here. You can sit there in another area of the country and think it was wrong for her to be so open about her desire to bring Trump down. But you don't understand how much we genuinely fucking hate him. She could be so brazen in her contempt for Trump because Trump's been so brazen in his contempt for the law.

I don't fear that Trump will get away with all of it simply because he has, though. His lawyers are shit, but they are good at the one thing that they can get away with: delaying the gavel coming down as he's dragged away, screaming about "fake judges" and "rigged jury" into the prison abyss he so richly deserves (a moment that would give me a thrill that would not be unlike an explosive orgasm). It's obvious that the gamble is that the GOP takes over the House of Representatives and then shuts down any investigation or prosecution through the power of the purse. I've said before that we're talking about a cabal of barking mad, rabid animals defending their pack leader. It's a gamble, sure, but even as Democrats are polling better, the gerrymandered-to-death map still favors Republicans. And when Republicans win by even one, they act like they just slaughtered their enemies and left them in a heap in their burnt cities as they hump the ashes in triumph.

"But what about Georgia and New York?" an imaginary reader might ask. Those cases would go forward, but then we're into what happens in Georgia in 2022 and we're into the delays until 2024. The New York case is going to take years because that's the way financial bullshit works. Then the gamble is that Trump or someone Trumpish is gonna win the presidency. Then we're all so fucked that we're gonna have to head into the streets to stop the Christian nationalists from forcing us into the "Love Jesus or Die" camps.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is just that typical Democratic anxiety about winning. I honestly hope that by the time I hit "Publish" on this, we'll at least have an indictment. But an indictment is just the beginning of the process. So many things need to go right. So many people need to not fuck it all up. And there are so many others who will be trying to knock any prosecution off the rails, up to and including perhaps a majority of the Supreme Court. 

Yeah, fucking enjoy Trump's shitty week. Enjoy the shitty weeks to come. But we're not playing a fair game here. Or that dull orange motherfucker would be sitting in a cell, awaiting trial.

Graham and DeSantis Tried to Own But Got Owned

You know what's darkly hilarious or perhaps hilariously dark or maybe not hilarious at all and just plain dark? I'd bet that Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis thought what they did this week was fucking awesome and that they'd show those no-good liberals what fucking hypocrites they are. Except that reality ended up punching them both in the dick for acting like dicks, and, yeah, that's pretty fucking funny.

First, South Carolina Sen. Graham, who lately always looks like he's on his fifth mint julep while annoyed that he doesn't have enough liquor for number six, put out a bill to outlaw nearly all abortions after 15 weeks, and he fucking expected Republicans to jump for joy that he had solved the post-Roe clusterfuck of bad news for his party going into the midterms. At his weird little press conference announcing the bill, Graham pronounced, "If we adopted my bill, our bill, we would be in the mainstream of most everybody else in the world. I think there are 47 of the 50 European countries have a ban on abortion from 12 to 15 weeks. And I pick 15 weeks, which is a little longer than Belgium, Germany and Spain, longer than France, Denmark, and Norway." So now we're taking our cues from Europe? I thought that was wrong and might turn us all gay to do that. 

Let's put aside that every single country he mentioned has universal health care, paid child care, and maternity leave, with Germany and Spain mandating full pay during the leave, and thus make life a fuck of a lot easier for new parents and new children. And let's leave aside that France, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway all pay for abortions in their national health care. Instead, let's focus on one aspect of those countries' abortion policies: yes, they do limit abortion on demand after a certain period, but they also have exceptions for the mental or emotional health of the woman. Graham's savage bill specifically prohibits that. It says that, yes, if the woman's physical well-being or safety is in danger after 15 weeks, abortion is fine, "but not including psychological or emotional conditions." So we're not just talking about a pregnant woman saying that she is not mentally well enough to have a child. We're talking if a woman, say, suffers from severe post-partum depression that might even lead to self-harm. She's shit out of luck and will have to hope she can endure. "Fuck you, bipolar lady," Graham says. "You did the fucking, you do the time."

And I'm not even getting into the fact that Graham calls any abortion after 15 weeks "late term," which is just not how words or time or math works. Nor am I diving into the creepiest part of this really fucking creepy bill, which is all about how "the pregnancy must be terminated by the method most likely to allow the child to be born alive unless this would cause significant risk to the mother." I mean, what the fuck? That's not abortion. That's premature birth, and I'm pretty fucking sure that it ain't happening at 15, 16 or even 20 weeks, before which over 98% of abortions are performed. 

Graham really was proud of this bill, not realizing or not giving a fuck that he pissed off Mitch McConnell, who always looks like he's trying not to show that he shit his Depends; he pissed off the fucking lunatics in the GOP, who want a total abortion ban nationally; and he pissed off the Republicans who have been saying that the laws should be decided by each state. Obviously, it also pissed off the pro-choice politicians, too. So this was a masturbatory exercise by Lindsey Graham, and he thought everyone would watch him jack it and exclaim, "Oh, wow, you are so hot when you yank off." But instead, he's not allowed to orgasm, and this whole thing may end with him putting his flaccid dick back in his pants and shuffling away.

Speaking of public masturbation, what else was the purpose of Florida Governor Ron "That Cunt" DeSantis's little stunt of flying 50 asylum-seeking Venezuelan migrants to Martha's Vineyard, the charming island where rich fucks have summer houses? At his press conference on Thursday bellowing about it, DeSantis tried to justify this bullshit: "If you have folks that are inclined to think Florida is a good place, our message to them is we are not a sanctuary state, and it’s better to be able to go into a sanctuary jurisdiction."

First off, DeSantis and his staff of ass remoras proclaimed that "illegal aliens" or "unauthorized immigrants" were being transported. No, dickscabs, by federal law, asylum seekers are not illegal. Second off, DeSantis might have violated state law. See, the budget that was passed in July in Florida included $12 million "for implementing a program to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with federal law." So...not "unauthorized aliens." They were picked up in Texas, so not "from this state." And it looks like federal law might have been broken because the migrants were lied to about where they were going and what for in order to entice them onto the planes. You can't fucking do that to real human beings, real families, real children, goddamnit. That's called "kidnapping" or "trafficking."

The entire purpose of the stunt was to own the libs and see how they like it when migrants come through. In December, DeSantis pricked, "If you sent them to Delaware or Martha’s Vineyard or some of these places, that border would be secure the next day." He fully expected residents to get all NIMBY. But the libs aren't being owned. No, despite some on the right crowing that blue areas are in a "panic" over the migrants being sent there, what the places are trying to do is provide the social services that they need. In Martha's Vineyard (which is now more or less done for the season and is just populated by the locals, so shitty timing there, Ronster), they opened their arms and buildings, providing food, shelter, legal advice, and more for the migrants. 

That's not being owned. In fact, all that most places want is a heads up that a state is sending migrants there so they can be prepared. But DeSantis (and nutzoid conservative knobgobbler Greg Abbott of Texas) want to do all this in the cuntiest possible way, sending the migrants to the middle of cities or train stations or outside Vice President Harris's residence because that's how they get a hard-on they can grab and wank for the racist yahoos that form their base. I mean, fuck, the governor of Massachusetts is a Republican. So DeSantis is trying fuck over his own party.

All Republicanism is now is stunts and Trump worship. There's really no one with any power who is serious about any of this shit. Graham and DeSantis thought they were gonna really fuck the left. Instead, they ended up fucking themselves. And, hopefully, their bullshit worthless party.

Abortion Rights and the Lie of "Reaching Across the Aisle"

Democrats make ads all the time about how they are willing to work across the aisle with the opposing party. (I know some Republicans do, too, but it's not as prominent a thing on the right.) The notion is worn like a badge of honor, as if Democrats need to show how not Democratic they are.  For instance, in this election cycle, we have Elissa Slotkin in Michigan saying, "I refuse to let partisan politics hold this country back." Senator Maggie Hassan goes even further, bragging, "I took on members of my own party" on a gas tax holiday. President Biden campaigned in 2020 on his supposed ability to work with Republicans (even if he's learned how ludicrous a notion that is). 

And while the realities of getting legislation passed sometimes forces cooperation, to insist that you as a Democrat need buy-in from the other side in order to justify your position makes it seem like you're apologizing for being a Democrat. The whole idea is a comforting lie, affirming a fictional tale of the two parties who can put aside differences for the good of the country. Mostly, it forces Democrats to agree to negotiate with people who are insane extremists and pretend like their positions aren't so. 

Lemme give you an example here:

Think about how extreme the anti-choice position is in abortion politics. Not only does the Republican Party, as a whole, believe that women should be forced to carry fetuses and give birth to children they do not want or cannot afford, a large part of the party also believes that the health of the mother or the fetus doesn't matter, nor does the trauma that may have resulted in the pregnancy. Their ideal situation is a national ban on abortion by law under penalty of imprisonment. Forced birth is as extreme as it gets. The only thing that could go any further would be to imprison a pregnant woman to make sure she doesn't get an abortion or behave in any way to harm a fetus. Oh, wait. That's already begun to happen.

While the abortion extremists of the right like to say that allowing abortion without restrictions or even codifying the Roe v. Wade decision is radicalism on the left, that's just not right. Telling people that they have the choice when it comes to their own bodies isn't radical at all. Really, it's not a stretch to come up with what extremism on the other side of the anti-choice coin is. If one side is forced birth, then the other would be forced abortion. If the Democratic Party believed in forcing people to end pregnancies that might result in disabled children or forcing abortions on women who are deemed unfit for one reason or another to be a mother, then you'd have extremism. But no mainstream Democrats or, indeed, no one in the realm of mainstream on the pro-choice side believes in this (hence the word "choice").

So in the debate over abortion rights, Democrats are arguing from a reasonable, moderate position (choice) and Republicans are arguing from an extremist position (forced birth). To "reach across the aisle" means to capitulate to extremism, to say, "Okay, we'll agree to allow some forced births." When it comes to abortion rights, many Democrats are at least drawing a line in the sand. Rep. Abigail Spanberger is running for reelection in a tough district, but she's put out an uncompromising ad on the post-Roe landscape, eviscerating her opponent for her cruel position on forced birth.

Let's be clear, though. The very idea of reaching across the aisle exists because of the filibuster. It's kind of a joke when the House talks about it because the majority doesn't need the minority. Yes, differing coalitions within the party can affect the development of legislation. But that is still the majority figuring out how to accomplish its goals. Without the filibuster, the entire impetus for negotiating with the opposing party evaporates, and the voters get the government they actually voted for, doing the things they voted the majority into power to do. (You could also add in the entirely flawed design of the Senate to a file marked "Things That Make It Hard to Get Stuff Done in the US.")

In the United Kingdom and other countries, the parties run as parties, proudly, trying to convince people not just to vote for a candidate, but for the party. Of course, that's in a parliamentary system where the majority party (or coalition of parties) decides who is going to lead the country. But ads in the UK hype the party when talking about an issue. 

Party identification isn't absent in the United States by a long shot. However, the idea that there is some innate good in working with just terrible people needs to be abandoned. If you are in an election battle, you believe the other side is wrong. After you win your election, why in the world would you behave as if their ideas have validity? The losing side needs to figure out how to work with you to get some things it wants. You are under no obligation to bother responding.

And if your approach fails to make people's lives better, well, that's what the next election is for.

A Poem for the Laborers

"Waitress" 

by Dorianne Laux

(Chosen because Laux is an amazing chronicler of the working class and also in memory of Barbara Ehrenreich, a tireless advocate for the forgotten laborers. She was a giant influence on my own political sense of the world, and she died this past week. You should read both of them.)

When I was young and had to rise at 5 am

I did not look at the lamplight slicing

through the blinds and say: Once again

I have survived the night.  I did not raise

my two hands to my face and whisper:

This is the miracle of my flesh.  I walked

toward the cold water waiting to be released

and turned the tap so I could listen to it

thrash through the rusted pipes.

I cupped my palms and thought of nothing.

I dressed in my blue uniform and went to work.

I served the public, looked down on its

balding skulls, the knitted shawls draped

over its cancerous shoulders, and took its orders,

wrote up or easy or scrambled or poached

in the yellow pads’ margins and stabbed it through

the tip of the fry cook’s deadly planchette.

Those days I barely had a pulse.  The manager

had vodka for breakfast, the busboys hid behind

the bleach boxes from the immigration cops,

and the head waitress took ten percent

of our tips and stuffed them in her pocket

with her cigarettes and lipstick. My feet

hurt.  I balanced the meatloaf-laden trays.

Even the tips of my fingers ached.

I thought of nothing except sleep, a T.V. set’s

flickering cathode gleam washing over me,

baptizing my greasy body in its watery light.

And money, slipping the tassel of my coin purse

aside, opening the silver clasp, staring deep

into that dark sacrificial abyss.

What can I say about that time, those years

I leaned against the rickety balcony on my break,

smoking my last saved butt?

It was sheer bad luck when I picked up

the glass coffee pot and spun around

to pour another cup.  All I could think

as it shattered was how it was the same shape

and size as the customer’s head.  And this is why

I don’t believe in accidents, the grainy dregs

running like sludge down his thin tie

and pin-stripe shirt like they were channels

riven for just this purpose.

It wasn’t my fault. I know that. But what, really,

was the hurry? I dabbed at his belly with a napkin.

He didn’t have a cut on him (physics) and only

his earlobe was burned. But my last day there

was the first day I looked up as I walked, the trees

shimmering green lanterns under the Prussian blue

particulate sky, sun streaming between my fingers

as I waved at the bus, running, breathing hard, thinking:

This is the grand phenomenon of my body.  This thirst

is mine.  This is my one and only life.

Dark Brandon Ascending: Random Observations on a Patriotic Speech

1. There are a few criticisms to be made about President Joe Biden's speech in Philadelphia last night. For instance, when he said, "Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.  Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology," he's really talking the difference between someone who comes to your house and murders everyone and someone who comes to your house, murders everyone, fucks the corpses, and sets the place on fire. Sure, the latter is way worse, but, you know, in the former, you're still murdered. 

Yeah, one way to look at that is Biden offering the supposedly "mainstream Republicans" a lifeboat from the Trumptanic before it smashes into the iceberg of reality and sinks into the depths of the brutal ocean of history. That lets Republicans off the hook for a whole lot of fuckery. While the "MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution.  They do not believe in the rule of law.  They do not recognize the will of the people," it's not like pre-Trump Republicans were handing out daisies across the aisle. What was the Republican Senate's use of the formerly rare filibuster as a regular tool to block legislation starting with Barack Obama's administration but another way to thwart the will of the people when they voted in Democratic majorities in Congress? Yeah, it's not the same as overturning an election because the results make you feel sad. But it's not that fucking far off. 

So, please, fucking spare me any wistful thoughts about Republicans who aren't full MAGA drones. Almost none have dared to criticize Trump or, heavens forfend, vote against him, even when he sent his braindead army to attack them. Biden said, "MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love." That's been the Republican agenda for decades. That's what "mainstream Republicans" believe. Don't pin that on the Trumpnuts. 

1a. Also, it's pretty sketchy to leave out the racism at the base of the MAGA movement. It's one of their prime motivating factors. Some of these fuckers wouldn't come out of their basements if they didn't think go time included killing them some non-whites. 

2. However, setting all that aside, the bulk of the speech was truly an ass-kicker, the Dark Brandon meme come to life. Setting it at Independence Hall was a nice middle finger to the January 6 insurrectionists, as if Biden was saying, "This is what a real revolution is, you fucking children." And he spoke in no uncertain terms about how fucked up the hopes of the MAGA hordes are: "They refuse to accept the results of a free election.  And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself." This is pretty much undeniable, and it's happening in nearly every Republican-led state, including places like Georgia, which said that its 2020 results were totally legitimate yet somehow it needed to overhaul its voting laws because "fraud." It's fucking madness. It's like saying that you need to create a Leprechaun Crime Unit in your state because those motherfucking leprechauns keep shitting in clover patches. Or, you know, it's like saying your rights come from God. You don't base laws on fantasies.

Biden went on, "MAGA Republicans have made their choice.  They embrace anger.  They thrive on chaos.  They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies" as some jagoffs with bullhorns screamed "Fuck you" in a pure demonstration of the very thing Biden was saying. I appreciated Biden calling out the MAGA chodes for being the whiny little bitches that they are. I mean, it's one thing to want to challenge an election right after the results come in. It's another to be saying two years later that you think it should be tossed out. That's as juvenile as cosplaying soldier. When Biden said, "They don’t understand what every patriotic American knows: You can’t love your country only when you win," he was saying you are a bunch of titty babies suckling at Trump's teats and you need to grow the fuck up. 

This was a Democrat standing up to bullies: not only the bullies in the streets and in Congress and in state houses, but the bullies in the right-wing media bullshit machine. When Biden said, "MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair.  They spread fear and lies –- lies told for profit and power," he was talking about Fox "news" and Steve Bannon and Trump and every fuckwhore podcaster and SuperPAC making coin by driving weak-minded people mad. He took the fight directly to the bullies and didn't hedge (other than the distinction between "mainstream" GOP and MAGA GOP). That's gonna fuck up the brains of the spoogerags of the right. They're gonna go to Defcon Tan Suit over this outrage.

2a. The fact that so many Republicans condemned the speech pretty much proved that a "mainstream Republicans" is a MAGA drone.

3. The dumbest response I've heard to Biden's speech is that it was wrong for him to speak with two Marines posted at the entrance to Independence Hall, that that was improper for a "political" speech and broke decorum or some such shit, with some offering that it was wrong when Trump did such things all the fucking time. And the only thing I could think was there was only one line of the speech that was genuinely political, the one about "no right to choose" I quoted up there. Yeah, sure, that's where there are policy debates. Otherwise, seriously, what the fuck was "political" about the speech, if by "political," you mean, "saying that your policies are superior to the opposing person/group's policies"? Biden's speech was about threats to democracy. The one time he mentioned Democrats was in a list with others: "Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to destroying American democracy." Everyone united against a threat: honestly, how is that any different than a speech condemning terrorists for attacking the country? You don't ask for the terrorists to get a minute to explain the bombing because otherwise the speech is too "political." MAGAmites are trying to tear down democracy. That's a threat to the whole nation. Hell, it's even a threat to the MAGAmites, except they're too fucking stupid or corrupt to see it or care. 

And, yeah, fuck you if your takeaway from the speech is that you thought the Marine shit was a little over the top. Motherfucker, we have a country to save. The decorations don't matter. That's not politics. That's patriotism.

4. Biden believes in this country. He believes in the goodness of those of us damned to live through this idiotic time in this degraded nation. He believes that's worth fighting for. We can either join him in the fight or capitulate to the worst assholes. Fuck that malarkey.

Ron DeSantis Is Not Your New Trump, But He Is a...

Cunt. He's a cunt. If I put that in the title, someone would report it somewhere, but we're all presumably adult(ish) here, so I'll say it clearly: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a total, irredeemable cunt and every word out of his cunty mouth is filled with cuntishness. Sure, sure, you can have a delicate sensibility and call him a "dick" or "prick" or "asshole." But those insults don't capture the feeling of seeing and listening to Ron DeSantis quite as viscerally as "cunt." 

Honestly, there would be no reason to discuss the nature of DeSantis's cuntery were it not for all the talk about him being the most viable non-Trump candidate for the Republican nominee for president in 2024, with some seeing him as even more viable than Trump because he's not (yet) tainted by the scandals and barrage of lying and braying egotism that Trump has hanging over him. I'll get to why that's bullshit in a few. But let's just explore some of DeSantis's recent words and actions in order to get the full measure of his cuntocity. 

Like, for instance, the "speech" (if by "speech," you mean, "ranting culture war nonsense that exists only to give the yahoos a semi-chub for a couple of pathetic minutes") he delivered while rallying for despicable hate-humpers J.D. "Man, I really tricked you assholes with that shitty book" Vance in Ohio and Doug "Chew My Own Ballsack Crazy" Mastriano in Pennsylvania. Check this cunty bullshit: "We must fight the woke in our schools. We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies. We can never ever surrender to woke ideology. And I’ll tell you this, the state of Florida is where woke goes to die." 

"The woke" are also known as "people who give a fuck about people other than themselves," and we scare the shit out of cunts like DeSantis because we want them to, you know, give a fuck about people other than themselves. If you're a cunt, that's not even in the same universe you live in. It doesn't even occur to you. In fact, it so doesn't occur to DeSantis and the like-minded cunts in the Florida legislature that they passed a law that made it illegal to, well, pretty much talk at all about race or gender or real history or anything that might make cis het white people upset at schools or in businesses. Yeah, a judge blocked it, saying, in essence, "That shit's unconstitutional, you cunts." It's named, no, really, the "Stop WOKE Act," as in "Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act" because they couldn't think of anything cuntier. 

You can throw in the "Don't Say 'Gay'" law DeSantis signed that regulates how sexuality can be discussed at all grade levels, not just in early elementary schools, as its supporters like to pretend. It has so freaked out teachers that they wonder if it's okay to wear rainbow stickers in the classroom. We could talk about what a gobsmacking cunt DeSantis has been to Disney, one of the largest employers in the state and one of the centers of the entire tax base there through tourism bucks. We could talk about the racial gerrymandering of the state he supports, or the decimation of the ranks of teachers because of his cuntish attacks on them, with his absolutely garbage plan to replace teachers with untrained, "retired law-enforcement officers, emergency-medical technicians, paramedics, and firefighters." At least they need to have bachelor's degrees. The military veterans DeSantis thinks can saunter into a middle school and teach algebra don't even need that. It's utterly degrading and demoralizing to educators, just like a cunt would do.

But for sheer, uncut culture war cuntistry, there's the new law that established a "Victims of Communism Day," something that is such a blow job to the Cuban community in Florida that DeSantis won't need to smoke cigars for all the cocks that are in his mouth. Check this shit out: "high school students enrolled in the United States Government class...must receive at least 45 minutes of instruction on 'Victims of Communism Day' to include topics such as Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet System, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and Nicolás Maduro and the Chavismo movement, and how victims suffered under these regimes through poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech."

Putting aside that it's fucking rich that none of this teaches anything about, you know, the theories of Marx, which might highlight how far from "communism" most of those regimes were, it's the height of smarmy, fuck-you cuntliness to required discussion about how all those dictators suppressed speech when you've signed laws that specifically suppress speech. But that's how cunts roll. They don't give a single, solitary fuck about hypocrisy.

Here's the difference between DeSantis and Donald Trump, and the reason why saying that he's the new Trump (even as he desperately wants to be the new Trump - seriously, motherfucker is trying to look like Trump) is fucking dumb: Try as he might, DeSantis can't hide his cuntiness. Yeah, Trump's a cunt, but Trump's also a goddamn showman. He enjoys playing the role of the raconteur and professional roaster, a con artist supreme, doing his double-handjob dance for the delight of the rubes. For people who believe the same savage things that he does, Trump's got charm to spare. Add to that the number of fucking idiots who really think Trump's some brilliant business tycoon and the even greater idiots who think "He TV man, must vote for TV man because on TV," and Trump was able to coat his cunty ways in a slick lube of celebrity. DeSantis is just a cunt, an angry, petty, whining cunt who appeals to a narrow bunch of shut-ins and maniacs and wealthy fuckfaces who all happen to congregate in Florida. No one else is gonna give a solitary fuck about him if he tries to run for president.

And Republicans know this. They know that, on a national level, their only hope right now is Trump. If DeSantis had a chance, more Republicans would be leaping off the Trump train before it goes over the scandal cliff. They know DeSantis is a cunt, cuntier than most of them, who are definitely also cunts. But a cunt with nothing to distract from being a cunt is just a cunt.

(Note: Your problems with the word "cunt" are noted.)

What About Those of Us Who Want Donald Trump Prosecuted? Talk to Us, Media

If there's one thing that runs through most political coverage of just about anything, it's that something is only good if Republicans believe it's good. Whenever some dullard pundit smirks pure bullshit about "bipartisanship," it inevitably means, "Here's a Democratic idea that is worthless unless Republicans buy into it." But a Republican idea never needs the approval of Democrats. I'm not talking votes alone. I'm talking how issues are covered. 

During Trump's presidency, we got a nonstop stream of yokel safaris, where some reporter from, generally, the New York Times, although they were certainly not alone here, goes to a stronghold of Trump support like Sisterfuck, Ohio, and interview the Sisterfuckians about how much they love Trump and what he was doing, which was always "a lot." You had to struggle to find articles on what Democratic voters thought. And then, with the election of Joe Biden, the media still ventured out to Sisterfuck, Cousinream, and Blowagoat to get their oh-so-American opinions on how much they hate Biden and what he's doing, which is always "a lot," with an added "and the election was stolen."

This is reaching its peak with the people decrying the FBI's search of Donald Trump's garish nightmare country club and home, Mar-a-Lago. As Michelle Goldberg points out (yes, in the New York Times), there is a strain of "centrist" thought that the search was out of bounds because it will divide the nation further, that it will "deepen" the country's "civic wounds," as Damon Linker wrote. Linker goes on to say that the high probability of violence in response to a Trump prosecution means that prosecution should be avoided: "I simply don’t agree with those who insist that not going after Trump will be even more dangerous than pursuing his prosecution." 

Certainly, voices on the right are screaming this, with politicians coming just up to the line of threats of violence (although certainly Republicans in Congress are threatening the FBI and the Justice Department, not to mention Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray personally, with investigation and defunding). And, yeah, the fucknut squad is doing what it's been jonesing to do, which means some of them are starting to die for the lies that Donald Trump keeps telling. But those dumb shitheads were just itching to try out their ARs and their YouTube military training on a government building. Most of them will just rant into the TikTok void for likes and subscribes, the currency of our moronic present. Of course, it takes only one getting a bomb next to or in a building or a few guns into an office to fuck things up for a whole lot of people. So I'll keep the mocking of these ignorant, delusional prickmites to a simmering minimum. 

The point here is not just that, obviously, prosecution shouldn't be based on how much upheaval it will cause to numbskulls who have smeared a viscous coating of lies on their naked flesh and are pretending it's armor. But media coverage is focusing only on the violent fucknuts. It ignores the much, much larger portion of the population who want to see that orange motherfucker behind bars for crimes he flaunted in our flustered faces.

Yeah, what about those of us who want Donald Trump indicted and prosecuted? We deserve to be heard, too. Prosecuting Trump is not merely for some abstract concept like adherence to "the rule of law." That has meaning. We have seen powerful people get away with crimes time and again. We needed George W. Bush and his crew of war criminals prosecuted. We needed the motherfuckers who almost blew up the economy of the world in 2008 to face justice. And we got nothing. We got the false promise that forgiveness would temper their behavior, only to see that forgiveness shit on and tossed back at those who did the forgiving, using it as a ticket to go further and act with impunity to wreck shit even more. 

We have to know that there is a limit. We have to know that in a nation that incarcerates more (mostly poor) people than any other, in a nation that tolerates mass murder on a daily basis, in a nation that does nothing to stop the unending harassment and threats that stream through our social media, in a nation that allows for lies to become policy, whether with climate change (until last week) or the election or abortion rights or education, in a nation as fucked as this nation is, something fucking matters, and that something has to be the very foundational idea that a president isn't above the law. The Obama administration, including Joe Biden, dropped the ball big-time with the Bush criminal enterprise. It can't happen again, so soon, because all faith in this delicate web we call "democracy" will fucking collapse. That's way more dangerous than Skeeter pretending he's Rambo and trying to take out an FBI office. We can stop the Skeeters, even if they do cause harm. We can't stop a web from collapsing once the threads are plucked free.

Jesus fuck, at least Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest had the good sense to realize they had gotten away with it and went the fuck away. I sincerely believe that if Trump had accepted the results of the election and let everything go ahead peacefully, he would have gotten away with it, too. Instead, he's fucking daring anyone to stop his criminality. Trump is fostering this violence now. He could stop it, like he could have stopped the January 6 insurrection. But he won't. So he must be stopped by legal action.

Interview us, CNN and MSNBC and, yeah, even fuckin' Fox "news." Talk to those of us who need this prosecution to happen. What we have to say is far more important than what a bunch of lunatics ranting about civil war on The Donald think.

Note on Democratic Groups Helping Trump Republicans Win Primaries: So?

In one of the great "tut-tut" pieces in a while, the Editorial Board of the New York Times (motto: "We're partly responsible for the Iraq War and Trump's election, but you'll still subscribe") wrote that it was appalled by the idea that "Democratic Party groups have been elevating Big Lie proponents over their moderate Republican opponents all year." They take great umbrage - umbrage, I say - that Democrats would dare attempt to give subversive support to the fucknuts and grifters who make coin and get votes by saying that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election and that a conspiracy involving at least a few hundred thousand people worked to keep him out of office. The idea, of course, is that in a general election, those fucknuts and grifters (and, to be fair, the fucknut grifters) will be easily defeated by a Democrat. And what's the big strategy here? Reminding voters who is endorsed by Trump because to some idiot voters, that's like getting oral from Jesus.

But the Times's reasoning is this: electing "moderate Republicans" is a good thing. And what makes you a "moderate" Republican these days? Pretty much if you're not hooting racism into a tin can because an internet ghost told you it will bring about the Great Googamoogle or something. 

One example the Times gives of a Big Lie-loving, Trump-endorsed fucknut is Maryland's Dan Cox. It should be pointed out at all times that his campaign website is "Cox for Freedom." No, I'm not lying. Anyways, yeah, Cox is huffing deeply of the fumes from Trump's taint, but in just about every other way, he's your average fucking mad Republican. He supports guns for babies (or something close - you really can't tell anymore), is a nutzoid on abortion, and hates him some critical race theory in schools.  You know who else supports all those things except is a little more distant from Trump's grundle stink? Cox's opponent, Kelly Schulz. Oh, and groups like the Democratic Governors' Association bought ads saying that Cox was endorsed by Trump. 

Here's the thing, though. No one forced those voters to go for Cox. They were adults making adult decisions. 

Look at the even more bugfuck mad Kari Lake in Arizona. She campaigned on shitting in the dried up Lake Mead and laughing while she did it. Yet she won her primary. So, clearly, Republican voters in Arizona are good with attacks on wokeness and anti-choice madness (by the way, one interesting thing about Lake? She's for making almost all birth control available over-the counter and having the government pay for it. Hmm). But other than her support of the Big Lie and her vows to change Arizona voting laws so that this thing that never happened never happens again, her defeated opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson believes pretty much the same damn thing. Again, the key difference is that Lake got the help of Democratic groups because they hope crazy will lose.

But the key point here is that they're all fucking crazy; nearly every Republican is nuts. And even the ones who aren't explicitly saying that the 2020 election was stolen are calling for election "reform" or support gerrymandering and other shit that will hinder voting and help the GOP undo democracy.  So maybe we need a little less garment-rending over the idea that Democrats' bet that the general election voters won't give a nod to the crazies will fail and a little more over the fact that it simply doesn't fucking matter which Republicans are elected. 

And also let's not pretend that the right doesn't do this shit all the time. As Judd Legum and Kyle Tharp reported, a Republican-linked group is attempting to influence liberal members of Congress to vote against the climate change legislation by pretending to be a liberal group. The motherfuckery is deep in our politics.

I Haven't Disappeared

I know shit's been non-existent the last couple of weeks, but I've been in the UK (and continue to be) for some personal time. I'll have something up in the next day or two. 

Until then, enjoy this Liverpool road warning.

An Observation on the Nature of Extremist Fucknuts at the January 6 Committee Hearing

One thing that jumped out at me while watching Tuesday's televised hearing from the January 6 Committee into the insurrection of fucking idiots, which came closer than we want to believe to actually working, is how the extremists coming to DC on that cold day didn't emerge from a vacuum. No, in fact, it was the action, or, really, the inaction of the federal government on another uprising that gave the idiot hordes the confidence to go full overthrow. Jason Van Tatenhove, former member of the Oath Keepers (motto: "If this whole beach was completely covered in dicks, and somebody said I had to eat every dick until the beach was clean for liberty, I would say, 'No problemo!'"), pointed very clearly to an event from 2014 that helped inspire motherfuckers to start fucking more mothers all the way to the Capitol. 

Van Tatenhove said, "My time with the Oath Keepers began back at Bundy Ranch with that first standoff when I went to cover them as an independent journalist." He was talking about the ludicrous standoff between a Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, and the federal government over grazing fees on federal land that Bundy refused to pay for his cattle. So the government seized his cattle, and, with an assist from uber-fucknut Alex Jones, the Oath Keepers and hundreds, maybe thousands, of other armed dickheads showed up to "defend" Bundy.  

As things went on, "The standoff grew increasingly volatile over several days, with federal agents deploying dogs and stun guns, and rifle-carrying militia members taking sniper-like positions on an overpass overlooking the area. Fearing a bloodbath, federal authorities ultimately backed down and released the cattle." They also pulled out of the whole conflict, preferring to try to get the money from him through every fucking way they had already tried. 

That backing down gave these dickheads delusions of grandeur. In a press conference after, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, not wearing an eye patch, said, that the standoff was "a significant watershed moment" and praised the militias and the Bundy clan for an "armed effort" to face off against the federal government. The Oath Keepers released a video that said the standoff was "the first time in our country's recent history that good Americans stood up and said, 'We're not going to let this happen on our watch.'"

Elaborating on a statement about the country being "lucky" shit hasn't gotten more violent, Van Tatenhove told the congressional committee and the rest of the country, "I think as far as the luck goes, we've had the potential from Bundy Ranch on, I mean, being boots on the ground at these standoffs and they were standoffs where there were firearms pointed across lines at federal law enforcement agencies, you know, whatever it may be with that particular standoff. But I do -- I think we've gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen because the potential has been there from the start." 

Bundy and his shitty family and the assorted extremist dickheads refused to recognize the authority of the Bureau of Land Management and the federal government. He owed the country a million bucks in unpaid fees and penalties. When the BLM decided to say, "Fuck this shit," they let, as then-Nevada Senator Harry Reid said, "domestic terrorists" off the hook. "They had sniper rifles on the freeway. They had assault weapons. They had automatic weapons," Reid said, all in service of someone who didn't wanna pay for his shit. They were ready to murder BLM agents and others. They should have all been rounded up and dragged off to jail. But it was fear of violence and escalation that caused the retreat by the BLM. And the end result of that retreat was more violence and escalation, including at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge two years later. One could also argue that the failure to arrest the violent thugs in Nevada led directly to the Las Vegas mass shooting a month later. The shooter had been at Bundy's ranch, inspired by the way the dickheads faced down the feds and won. And, obviously, January 6 can be tied to the sense of empowerment the Bundy ranch "victory" gave the dickheads.

Tattooed, denim jacket and Descendants t-shirt-wearing Van Tatenhove said he fully believes that there will be violence in 2024: "I do fear for this next election cycle because who knows what that might bring if a president that's willing to try to instill and encourage to whip up a Civil War amongst his followers using lies and deceit and snake oil, regardless of the human impact, what else is he going to do if he gets elected again. All bets are off at that point. And that's a scary notion." Of course, he's talking about armed dickheads, but he's also talking about Trump and other leaders of this extremist bullshit. He offered clear advice: "I have three daughters. I have a granddaughter, and I fear for the world that they will inherit if we do not start holding these people to account."

When motherfuckers wanna fuck mothers, you gotta shut that shit down or motherfuckers will just think they can keep fucking mothers without consequences. They'll fuck more mothers because there is no price to pay for motherfucking. You don't coddle insurrectionists. 

We are long past time where those in charge need to be punished. We're running out of time to be able to do that. Don't walk away from the goddamn standoff again.

This Fucking Shirt (Updated)

I wanna talk about this fucking shirt I saw today. I was at the Jersey Shore (yeah, your jokes are right and wrong, depending on the beach) for a little sunshine and wandered into a local diner for lunch. Sitting at the counter was a dude in this fucking shirt: 

First off, fuck this guy. I don't know a goddamn thing about him except he was wearing this shirt and camo shorts. He might be a hero firefighter. He might be a saint to dogs and children. I don't fucking care. Fuck. This. Guy. Besides, he ended up talking to another guy who had an unlit big cock-sized cigar in his stupid round face. So I'm pretty sure they're both just wretched human beings. And even if not, fuck this guy. 

But I gotta talk about this fucking shirt. Look at it in detail there. Sure, you notice the words instantly: "I will not comply," obviously meaning, "I'll fight you if you try to take muh guns." What a pussy-ass thing to say because it's pretty fucking clear that no one is going to take away his guns. That's like saying, "I will drive-thru McDonald's" like you're defying God and the universe to stop you. No, motherfucker. No one is hindering you unless you fucking drive into the front door of the McDonald's. Then you might be shit out of luck on nuggets. Might be.

So, yeah, the words are bullshit. But it's the picture that pisses me off. That's a fucking skeleton version of the Statue of Liberty, one of the most non-violent symbols in this entire shabby, savage country. And not only that, but Liberty's eye sockets have sights or gun barrels coming out of them.

The fuck does that even mean? Does Skeleton Liberty scream in horrific pain whenever she fires eyeball bullets from the sockets? Jesus fuck, that's a nightmare. 

And then she's holding an assault rifle (fuck you, I don't care what the definition is) in her bone fingers. Is she gonna stone cold murder the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses, yearning to be free? Because it sure as shit seems like she is, and that means that the people who made this fucking shirt and the people who wear this fucking shirt know fuck-all about the Statue of Liberty or American history.

Wait, here's a better view:

It's from a company of cockscabs known as Shield Republic, and those cockscabs sell lots of merch so you can get your January 6 on all fuckin' year.  There's antivax shit, "Let's Go Brandon" shit, own-the-libs shit, and more gun-related shit than you can jack off to for the rest of the decade. 

But fuck all that. I want to talk about this fucking shirt. And the fucking tools who wear this fucking shirt, like our fucknut up top. What gets me is how fucking stupid they are. I could design a t-shirt with Jesus reaming his own ass with a crucifix made of dildos while jizzing on an American flag and have it say, "Your fake god can go fuck himself," but why? 

I'll say this: Jizzing dildo Jesus is a hell of a lot smarter image than this dumbfuckery. Skull Gunface is just goddamn stupid, to be sure. But on the left, we wouldn't bother with this kind of idiocy because it's just so masturbatory and worthless. It's so fucking smug, rubbing people's faces with something that you think is edgy but is really simply demonstrating that you probably gave a ton of your hard-earned money to alleged billionaire Donald Trump, and that makes you a complete dumb fuck. 

I mean, seriously, they put "Death List" on top of their death list. Was that so they wouldn't confuse it with the groceries? "Hmm, do I kill Nancy Pelosi or Rice Krispies?" It's embarrassing that these morons are actually a threat to the nation. We deserve a better quality of nemesis.

Mainly, though, fuck that fucking guy in this fucking shirt.

Not very important update/correction: Several people have pointed out those aren't gun barrels on Death Liberty. It's the optical tubes on night vision goggles (that apparently cost $40k to law enforcement agencies because freedom). As one reader tweets, "So, she's not only shooting the huddled masses...she's hunting them at night for sport," adding, correctly, "Fuck that guy."

The Supreme Court Tells the 21st Century to Go Fuck Itself

This session, the newly-ripened conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court of the United States decided it was time to lift up their robes and piss on the 21st century and reality. The half-dozen justices, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, looked out at a nation, no, a world that demands progress, that demands care, that demands a government that can act to help people, and said, "Nah. Fuck that." And their reasoning essentially came down to, in every case, "Because we can."

We have a gun crisis in this country. The Supreme Court said that the only thing that mattered was that more people have easier access to guns. We have a policing crisis in this country. The Supreme Court said that it's more important to protect cops from being sued or charged with crimes and that you don't need to worry about being told your Miranda rights anymore. We have an ongoing pandemic that has killed over a million people in this country. The Supreme Court said that public safety takes a back seat to whatever stupid bullshit makes people decide not to get a vaccine. We have an electoral crisis in this country. The Supreme Court said that gerrymandering away fair representation is a-okay. 

And then the Court decided, in two cases, that the whole separation of church and state wasn't real because Christians need to have group prayers at school and schools that discriminate against LGBT people need to get our tax dollars. The former one there is where Gorsuch, lying about the facts of the case, told students who feel pressured into praying to suck it up, which would probably get him a cane up his ass from Benjamin Franklin, which would be some actual originalism.

And then the Court decided that a fetus has more rights than the woman it's attached to, and so fuck 50 years of Roe v. Wade. It's time to turn that motherfucking clock back to the 1950s. Alito insisted that Roe was the cause of chaos because anti-choicers were sad about it, and he used as an excuse, among others, that states had anti-abortion laws 150 years ago, which is so fucking dumb that it boggles the goddamn mind. It didn't matter that the Court, in throwing it back to the states, created two different legal statuses for women and girls in the country. It didn't matter that the Court created two different countries, essentially, if not 50 different ones. "We can do this, so we will," they said, "because fuck you, liberals." Which, to be fair, makes more sense than anything in the goddamn decision.

And then the Court decided that, despite a climate emergency that will wreck the earth, the Environmental Protection Agency really can't protect the environment, even though the statue that established it said that it explicitly could. In the case over setting standards for systems to reduce emissions at power plants and elsewhere, Roberts wrote, "Yeah, I don't like that so here's a thing I made up to overturn it and eat shit because these other five crazy pricks will go along with me. Just be grateful we didn't completely outlaw the EPA." So, yeah, enjoy that "air" and "water" while you can.

Hell, I haven't even mentioned the fucking over of tribal sovereignty for indigenous people or the cases that fucked over habeas rights. And this isn't getting into the fact that the Court has decided to hear a case that will essentially give state legislatures the right to overturn elections if they feel like it. In other words, yeah, you should totally vote to change things, but the Supreme Court is gonna make sure that your vote only matters if you're conservative, because, clearly, those are the only real Americans.

A lawyer friend of mine said to me after the Dobbs decision on abortion rights, "I'm fucking scared to death because those justices decided that precedent doesn't matter anymore. And if once you decide that, you can do whatever you want and justify it in whatever bullshit way you want." Which is as accurate a way to describe the damage that has been done. 

I have this image in my head that I can't get rid of. It's when the first woman dies because she attempted to give herself an abortion in one of the states that outlawed it, like Louisiana, and caused massive internal bleeding. I picture the corpse being delivered to the Supreme Court, to the chambers of Samuel Alito. When the corpse arrives, Alito invites the other four justices who voted with him on Dobbs to join him. And then they take turns fucking the corpse in front of each other, Alito first because he wrote the majority opinion and then Thomas because he wants to use this woman's corpse as a way to undermine the rest of modernity and then Gorsuch because he got onto the Court only through Mitch McConnell telling fairness and comity to get the fuck out of the Senate and then Kavanaugh gets sloppy fourths because he's still just a beer-drinking asshole who lied to senators faces about what he really believed about Roe. Finally, they all gather round and cheer on Barrett as she fucks the corpse's face until she orgasms, high-fiving one another when she's done. They're not ashamed of what they did, but they know they have to head to church to confess and be absolved of their sins, like good Catholics and pseudo-Catholics. And on the way out, Thomas places a single one of his pubic hairs on the woman's forehead.

That's really fucked up, yeah, but so is the nation that the Supreme Court wants us to live in. And Democrats need to recognize how much worse things are getting. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren have been leading on this by calling out the Court and not pretending that it is above political attack. That's the direction to go in. Make reforming the Court, whether through more justices or more regulations (which the Constitution allows Congress to do). Congress should act like it's co-equal.

Now is not the time for rational, calm responses that consider all sides. Fuck that. This is a five-alarm freakout because the cruelest states are already teeing up laws to prevent women from traveling to another state for an abortion, as well as outlawing abortion-inducing prescription drugs. They're even coming up with ways to make information about getting an abortion elsewhere illegal. And if you think for one fucking second that the Christian Taliban (which, yes, is a good messaging phrase) justices who shitcanned the Establishment Clause will all of a sudden uphold the First Amendment, you need to fucking get out of the political arena. 

This Court has put it all on the table, all that it wants to undermine in this country. We're heading into an Independence Day that feels sarcastically named in the no-longer United States. The time for fake moderation is over. The majority of the nation backs all the things the supposed "extreme left" wants (because it's not extreme at all). Now, Democrats need to back it fully, and with full voice, as we head towards the midterms with a desperate hope we can stop the country from being murdered by the right.

The Supreme Court vs. the United States, Part 1: Alito Loves Fetuses, Hates Women

You will never love anything as much as Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito loves fetuses. That skeevy, creepy motherfucker is all about the fetuses; he loves fetuses so much that he doesn't give a fuck how many women must die in order for fetuses to live and become babies that he can then ignore and strip away their rights. Seriously, that savage cockscab must jack it to ultrasounds. You think I'm being hyperbolic? You think I'm just trying to be extra cruel to this ratcunt because he authored the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that specifically overturned Roe v. Wade and the guarantee of the right to an abortion in the entire country? You think it's because I fucking hate him and Thomas and Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Barrett for ensuring that women in some of our biggest cities, like Houston, Dallas, Nashville, and New Orleans, with Indianapolis and Atlanta no doubt not far behind, can't get an abortion and women from small communities can't travel to those cities and that all the women in these savage states will have to travel hundreds, if not a thousand miles (no, really) to reach a state where abortion is legal and that if they can't, many of them will resort to methods that will harm if not kill them? 

Yeah, all that. But also because Alito can't fucking get enough of fetuses. Check out the decision. Seriously, this part will make your head fucking explode: "The dissent has much to say about the effects of pregnancy on women, the burdens of motherhood, and the difficulties faced by poor women. These are important concerns. However, the dissent evinces no similar regard for a State’s interest in protecting prenatal life." You got that? Hey, little ladies, your burdens, all your health effects, all your difficulties are important, says big white male Alito, but, really, a clump of cells that can't survive on its own is just as important as you. 

By the way, 93% of all abortions are in the first trimester. Yeah, it's a fucking clump of cells for most of that and still completely nonviable towards the end of 12 weeks.

That clump of cells is given far more rights than women by Alito as he considers the notion of "viability," as defined by the Roe and Casey decisions: "According to the dissent, the Constitution requires the States to regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a pregnancy has passed...If, as Roe held, a State’s interest in protecting prenatal life is compelling 'after viability,' why isn’t that interest 'equally compelling before viability'?" In other words, if a state thinks you should stay pregnant, bitch, you're staying pregnant. That fetus controls you. You only exist to protect the rights of the fetus. Your rights don't matter if you have a fetus.

Alito goes on, dickishly, "Due to the development of new equipment and improved practices, the viability line has changed over the years. In the 19th century, a fetus may not have been viable until the 32d or 33d week of pregnancy or even later. When Roe was decided, viability was gauged at roughly 28 weeks. Today, respondents draw the line at 23 or 24 weeks. So, according to Roe’s logic, States now have a compelling interest in protecting a fetus with a gestational age of, say, 26 weeks, but in 1973 States did not have an interest in protecting an identical fetus. How can that be?" Yes, it's so weird how things change with medical advances. C'mon, this is just making shit up to justify an obviously bullshit opinion. Or, you know, the conservative way.

You think that's mindbogglingly fucked up? Wait: "Viability also depends on the 'quality of the available medical facilities.' Thus, a 24-week-old fetus may be viable if a woman gives birth in a city with hospitals that provide advanced care for very premature babies, but if the woman travels to a remote area far from any such hospital, the fetus may no longer be viable. On what ground could the constitutional status of a fetus depend on the pregnant woman’s location? And if viability is meant to mark a line having universal moral significance, can it be that a fetus that is viable in a big city in the United States has a privileged moral status not enjoyed by an identical fetus in a remote area of a poor country?" Fuck Alito in every fucking hole he has and in a few that don't exist yet.

Alito and the rest of a cruel quintet who overruled Roe and Casey are quite literally splitting the country in two so that the quality of health care a woman receives will be dependent on which state she lives in. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that a fetus might live outside the womb if born prematurely a couple of weeks earlier in a city than in a village in the mountains of Ecuador? About 1% of all abortions happen after 21 weeks. How does that in any way justify a decision that will allow states to outlaw the 99% of abortions that clearly occur before the fetus can live on its own? Even John Roberts thought that was fucked. It's a fucking game to the majority. It's absolutely nonsensical, so much that it only makes sense if you say that Alito loves fetuses and hates women, which is part and parcel with a Christian extremist view of the sexes.

Because that's what this is, you know. It is a cabal of Christian extremists, radical Catholics and nutzoid fundamentalists, deciding that women have had enough freedom and those whores deserve whatever hell they have to go through. They are imposing their radical, extremist doctrine on the rest of us and pretending that it's freedom.

In my home state of Louisiana, the anti-choice Democratic governor signed an update to the state's trigger law on Monday that said abortion would be outlawed in the state the second Roe was overturned. And so it was. The three remaining clinics in the state, in Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, stopped performing abortions. While the morning after pill remains legal, other drug-induced abortions are also outlawed, and there are no exceptions for pregnancies for rape and incest. With Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi also banning abortions, the closest place for a safe, legal abortion right now is in Pensacola, Florida, and who knows how long that will last with Ron DeSantis fascisting up the joint. Then women in Louisiana would have to travel to North Carolina or Illinois. Madness. And then states might pass laws that say you can't travel through them to get an abortion because of course they will.

Sorry. I'm not thinking completely rationally today. We've known this day was coming for a long time. We've been waiting for it since at least the 1990s, probably since Clarence Thomas was confirmed. Many of us have been waving our arms and screaming that this was coming, to stop trusting any motherfuckers who said not to worry, to stop pretending that anyone on the right was honorable. We knew it would happen. 

But that expectation doesn't make it hurt less. It doesn't reduce the feeling of panic. It doesn't mitigate the despair for what a fucked beyond fucked nation we've become, what backwater we've turned into. We're not a shining city on a hill. We're a teetering shack on a pile of shit.

Mostly, though, it doesn't make me feel less sorrowful for women, from the preteen rape victim to the mother who doesn't want another child to any woman or girl who fucking wants to choose when she has children. If my nieces get pregnant, I will fly them anywhere they want to go if they want to get rid of the fetus. Fuck that fetus.

We failed. We fucked up and we failed. We let the worst fucking people keep winning. We can't let that keep happening. There's going to be a pile of women's corpses to remind us of that. 

The vile Christian pricks have tasted blood. They are completely unleashed, and they are heading for a feeding frenzy. We better be ready. It's about to get genuinely frightening out there. 

More on that coming up.

Call It What It Was: An Assassination Attempt on Mike Pence

I have despised Mike Pence longer than most of you, even before he was that fuckin' conservative prick in Congress from 2001-2012, even before he was that motherfucking governor who refused to allow a needle exchange program in a town with a high rate of HIV (until he prayed and partially gave in). Yeah, see, I was damned to live in Indiana in the late-1990s when Pence was a right-wing radio twatmite, advocating for laws against adultery and railing against the cartoon Mulan for daring to say that women could be in the military with men and hating on LGBT people with a fervor that could only be described as protesting way, way too much. When I say, "Fuck him in every hole from ass to eye," I mean it. 

So if I say anything that is perceived as a kind word about him, just know that I really think he's lower than worm shit. 

That said, yeah, Pence did one good thing with his sad, homophobic, nutzoid Christian life. He stood firm against a wave of spittle and being called a "pussy" and "wimp" from Donald Trump, as well as Trump's caricature of a mob boss threat that "I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this," and ratified the electoral count in the 2020 presidential election. I don't think he did that for honorable reasons. He consulted with, among others, former Vice President Dan Quayle, who told him, "I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That’s all you do. You have no power" when Pence sought his blessing in overturning a clean election, which would have thrown the country into dictatorship. Pence had spent the last five years being Trump's most loyal lickspittle, a remora suctioned onto Trump's ass so tightly that he may as well have been Trump's vestigial tail. Pence wasn't strong. Pence certainly wasn't a goddamn hero. He was scared that he'd break the law and end up in prison if it all went sideways. He didn't want to commit a crime. He didn't do the right thing so much as he didn't do the wrong thing. So, fuck it, may as well act like the great defender of the Constitution.

And what did Pence get for his trouble? As his chief of staff Marc Short told the January 6 committee, he was so worried "that the president would lash out in some way" over Pence's disloyalty that Short contacted the head of Pence's Secret Service detail to make sure they were ready in case shit went south. And south it went.

Let's stop beating around the goddamn bush with this shit. The January 6 attack on the Capitol was, among other things, a coordinated assassination attempt on Mike Pence, one that was cheered on, if not directed, by the President of the United States, who really was Donald Trump. 

In front of a mob that was there specifically to stage a coup (which is what it's called when a group tries to use force to throw out the results of a legal election and install their own people, whether that's as electors or president), Trump kept expressing how Pence "is going to have to come through for us. And if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country." Trump didn't stop there, coming right up to the line of threat: "And Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you, I will tell you right now." 

Of course, Trump didn't have to threaten. He had a horde of cretins who were slobbering all over each other to do his bidding. I mean, did no one remember what happened at Trump's Nazi rallies when he verbally attacked protesters and cheered on and encouraged physical violence against them? People fucking did it. They got violent on his order. Trump fucking well knew the powder keg was right in front of him, and that narcissistic cockscab wanted to see what would happen if he lit the fuse.  And when Trump had a chance to calm shit down, he threw fuel on the fuse by tweeting that "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done." That's insanity.

So what did Pence get to hear from the hooting cretins who were heading towards and into the Capitol? Chants of "Hang Mike Pence!" and "Bring out Pence!" His Secret Service team brought him to a secure location in the building, coming within 40 feet of Trump's zombie army that he could hear rampaging around, calling for murder of him and anyone who would betray their orange idol. And Pence refused to leave in a Secret Service vehicle, fearing, at the very least, that the president would order him driven away and kept away from the count. That is fucking insanity. That is fear of assassination by the mob, ordered or at least ordered-by-implication by Donald Trump.

You can say that Pence bravely stuck to ratifying the electoral vote count, but that fear of prison hung over him hard. And I think fear is why Pence will not testify before the January 6 Committee. Sure, I know he's delusional and craven enough to think that he might have a chance at a future in politics that will be shitcanned if he puts a stake in Trump's desiccated heart, not realizing his career is dead already, and I know that Liz Cheney and the committee are doing their damnedest to spin things as if there are decent Republicans, even if Pence helped the country get to the point where a goddamned coup was attempted by vigorously bobbing on Trump's knob for the entire term. 

But Trump's army is still out there. And they're armed. And they are violent and insane. And they want blood, specifically Pence's blood, for his betrayal. And you know that life has been one nonstop death threat for Pence and his family because that's how these motherfuckers roll. If we can call the non-attempt on Brett Kavanaugh's life an "assassination attempt," then this is an ongoing assassination plot to kill the former vice president.

So I'm gonna say the possibly kind words about Pence here: If this fear of being killed is figuring into Pence's silence and it's not just false hopes of a political future, I sympathize. That means he's capable of feeling trauma, as any normal person would, and it means he wants to protect his family. Again, he's despicable in every other way and, mostly, I don't give a shit if he lives or dies now, but I get it and it makes sense. 

But that also means he can't be a hero in this story. He's just the guy in the horror movie who walked away after the monster seemed to be defeated, not making sure that fucker can't rise again and kill even more people in the sequel.

(Note: I do hope the 1/6 Committee is going to look into the other assassination attempts on Nancy Pelosi and Democrats, and not just leave it at Pence.)

Liz Cheney Is Trying to Save the House She and Her Father Built and Other Observations on the 1/6 Hearing

On Thursday night, the Select Committee on the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol finally, after far too long, frankly, made its case to the American people and the world. The committee wasn't talking to you and me, we who are damned to spend far too much of our time elbow-deep in the clogged sinks of political shit. The committee wasn't talking to the scores of MAGA drones who are joyfully face-fucked by dildos of misinformation, disinformation, and lies and will never return to what we like to think of as "reality." They were clearly talking to other entities, including, as many have noted, Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose Justice Department is moving at a pace that might be best described as "nearly still" when it comes to charging top officials with crimes related to the attack. To my weary (and currently Covid-addled) mind, the hearings had another target: Americans who checked out after Donald Trump's second impeachment and haven't followed the evolving story. For them, much of what was said on Thursday was new, and let's just fucking hope that at least a few of them watched. 

As strong as committee chair Bennie Thompson's opening statement was, with its clear and almost immediate assertion that "Donald Trump lost the presidential election in 2020. The American people voted him out of office," as well as clearly placing Trump as the central figure in a conspiracy to overturn the election, it was Republican Rep. Liz Cheney who truly brought the wood chipper to shred the MAGA right and, most especially, Trump himself.

Cheney's purpose was also clear: to separate the good Republicans from the Trumpist Republicans, and to give those supposedly good ones a chance to come clean by warning them about what's coming. In essence, Cheney was trying to save the party that her father built, one that she worked on, too. The MAGA right has turned away from the beliefs and projects of Cheney and daddy Dick, the former Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and member of Congress. Among other things, that GOP was pro-business no matter what (none of this bullshit condemning a corporation for an internal policy) and pro-intelligence community. Cheney constructed a GOP that was for a strong interventionist military, especially with the goal of "spreading democracy" at the end of a gun, which was incredible for profits for companies aligned (mostly but not exclusively) with the GOP. Trump mocked that and turned the party more isolationist, and he attacked IC for its perceived disloyalty to him. You might not remember, but a decade ago, Liz Cheney and your new Twitter buddy William Kristol led an organization called "Keep America Safe," which was all about attacking Democrats for being soft on Muslims. They went after anyone who supported the "Ground Zero Mosque," and they attacked lawyers who defended detainees at the Guantanamo Naval Base, calling them the "Al Qaeda Seven," questioning their loyalty to the country. She's just the fucking worst. 

In her truly great presentation on the evidence against Trump and his despicable co-conspirators, like a compelling opening statement in a huge trial, one thread that ran under it was that you could be an honorable Republican or a dishonorable one, and she was pretty fuckin' clear about who she thought was on the side of honor. She showed a clip of Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr, who was also AG when Dick Cheney was George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, declaring that the allegations of voter fraud were "nonsense" and "it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that, and it was doing a great grave disservice to the country," even backing up the opinion of Barr with video of Ivanka Trump saying, "I respect Attorney General Barr. So, I accepted what he was saying." Mike Pence is also praised by inference, playing a clip of him saying, "President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election," along with video of Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley saying that Pence was giving orders about securing the Capitol and not Trump. "Look at these loyal Republicans," Cheney was saying, "this is who this party is supposed to be."

It's worth noting that not a single clip of a Democrat reacting to the attack or condemning the attack was played. Just Republicans.

So let's be clear: Yes, obviously, her running at Donald Trump with a dagger to cut his throat and dance in the arterial spray is awesome. At this point, we'll take anyone who will actually help turn this ship around before it plunges off the edge of the world. I'm totally fucking here for Cheney burning down the house of Trump. But Cheney is doing it to preserve an already corrupt and harmful party. Jesus fuck, Trump wasn't president when Mitch McConnell blocked the consideration of Garland for the Supreme Court. Trump didn't force Cheney to vote against voting rights legislation. She has done exactly one thing to try to save the country before she goes back to destroying it under her terms.

It sucks, but we'll take it because while we may all be circumspect about what will come, what we know is that we were almost fucked in January 2021. One or two factors could have fucked it all, from Pence deciding to throw in with Trump to the violent shitbirds succeeding in murdering some legislators. We were so close to fucked that we need to ally with those who we would otherwise want to defeat. And we need to save ourselves from what is the inevitable next phase of this coup and from Donald fucking Trump, who comes across not as a buffoon in the evidence presented so far, but as an angry hippopotamus, ready to use his girth to wreck anything that pisses him off, not giving a shit what gets destroyed as long as he ends up getting his way at the end.

Liz Cheney may be a plague, but Trump is a poison. Stop the thing that acts faster before going after a cure for the other.

(Note: I couldn't work him into this piece, but, man, fuck Jared Kushner in every fucking hole he has in his soft, patrician body, and even in a few holes that aren't there. What a goddamn worm.)