Impeachment Is a Chance for Democrats to Take Back Patriotism

If there is one rhetorical success that has held back Democrats even when we win elections, it's the lie that Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats. While it used to be the province of right-wing nutzoids like Joe McCarthy and other red baiters that liberals were un-American, the odious scumfucker Ronald Reagan propagated that Republicans held the true mantle of the United States and that Democrats merely sought to tear it down with their gender equality and multiculturalism and civil rights and income equality and queasiness about war. This was couched in purely heteronormative and racist terms, that there was something inherently white and masculine about being a real American.  It was an attack on academics and the media who would dare point out "facts" and "reality" as opposed to the will of the American ubermensch in the form of Reagan. 

Goddamn, the right has been painting Democrats with that broad brush for so long and fucking Democrats bought into it. They fucking bought that they had to be more like Republicans in order to seem more patriotic. They had to be "tough on crime" with harsher penalties; they had to support stupid, worthless wars; they had to cut programs for the poor; they had to go along with tax cuts. Oh, yeah, there was that economic part, too, of patriotism: make sure the rich are as rich as fucking possible because you wanna be rich like that some day in the impossible future. It was selfishness as an end in itself. Me above nation.

The rubes bought into it because they weren't given an alternative way of viewing patriotism. Sure, with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, there was a brief window where it looked like we were finally going to change the narrative to an idea of a nation above individuals, but then Democrats returned to their natural state of allowing Republicans to define the terms of national identity (thanks in no small part to Joe Biden, but that's a rant for another time). Like I always say, motherfuckers fuck their mothers. It's all they know how to do. It's right there in the word. And Republicans are motherfuckingest motherfuckers around.

Now, Democrats have another chance to take back what it means to be American. I'll get to that in a moment.

There is something so clarifying about Trump's call to Ukraine's president and his brutish attempt to muscle info on Joe Biden out of Zelensky. It's like a distillation of everything that millions of us have been saying about Trump for decades: he does nothing unless there's something in it for him. When his crimes were obfuscated by layers of bullshit provided by conservative hacks on Fox "news" and elsewhere, as well as by the mainstream media contorting itself in order to please some false god of fairness, Americans could put on blinders. But Trump's such a toxic combination of narcissist and dumbass that he really thought his phone call pseudo-transcript would exonerate him, that everyone would buy into his story. How fucking ludicrous. 

It helps that there is genuine affection in the country and in the media for Joe Biden. Whatever you think of him (and, as I said, I've got a few problems), the man has been a DC fixture for nearly 50 years. You don't think that he's built up some good will? He's probably been to weddings, funerals, and parties with every reporter in the DC and New York press. He probably has sent presents and gift baskets and letters of encouragement, congratulations, and comfort. Whatever you think of the too-cozy relationship between our leaders and our reporters, this time it fucking worked.

'Cause, see, unlike every allegation against the Clintons and Barack Obama, Republicans are getting confronted with facts at every turn, and not just in a "well, some people say" way. Watch CNN's Jake Tapper absolutely lay into creepy goblin and child-fucking enabler Jim Jordan. Watch Fox's own Chris Wallace not have any of creepy psychopath Stephen Miller's bullshit. Watch CBS's Scott Pelley calmly vivisect bitch-faced creep Kevin McCarthy over what facts are. 

Now, the tidal wave of revelations, like the Intelligence Community is finally fuckin' done with Trump, has added to the sense that shit's really going on. We're no longer talking about what Trump did before he was president (although, to be fair, you're a pretty shitty human if you were in any way fine with or apathetic about Trump before these latest revelations). He's manipulating an election while president. And he's using our money to do it by threatening to withhold funds from Ukraine for Biden dirt. 

The country is primed to wrench its primary identity away from Republicans. Nancy Pelosi couched the impeachment inquiry announcement in very specific terms to appeal to patriotism, with its hearkening to our founders and the Constitution. Adam Schiff did the same in his opening remarks at the House Intelligence Committee hearing last Thursday. 

Essentially, they are saying, "You want to be a real patriots? Then fuck these traitors up." That's a powerful message. It's one that a majority of Americans are responding to, with a clear majority supporting the inquiry and a 10% jump in support for the removal of Trump from office. Democrats are the ones upholding the laws and traditions of the nation. Republicans are merely aiding and abetting a criminal, if they're not doing crimes themselves. That's as crystal-fuckin'-clear as it gets.

For the first time in I can't remember how long (maybe since the Affordable Care Act), Democrats are leading the charge on something, and they're telling Republicans to get the fuck on board this train or fuck off and get run over. 

And maybe the happy-clappy end result of this is that we take back the American story and try to make the country great. Not again. But for once.

(Note: Whatever optimism I have here is not that Trump will be removed. It's that Democrats will successfully set the terms for 2020 and that Trump will keep punching himself in the face along the way.)

16 Years of Rude Punditry: What Vengeful God Did I Anger?

I'll have more to say tomorrow, but today is officially the 16th anniversary of this here little postage stamp of the internet. What started with a pissy manifesto and a "fuck you" disclaimer (that's weirdly still relevant) is now a podcast, regular radio appearances, a couple of books, an album, an upcoming stage show (the third), and more, with, yeah, significantly less bloggery. That's because Twitter eats up time, man, and creativity, and people love them some quick hits rather than long pieces.

And some of you have been here from the start, which is so humbling and frightening, considering all the country has been through, that I feel like we need a support group. Or more whiskey and Molly. Something to get us through.

It's a fine time to sign up for the Rude Pundit Patreon page. There, for as little as a buck a month, you get bonus rude material, often more storytelling and other shit. (Although, to be fair, you should wait until Tuesday to do it. The first of the month saves you a couple of bucks.)

And every other year I have done a big damn fundraiser to get new equipment. This time it's not just a new computer. I'd like some better mics and better shit for remote recording. You'll also be helping to get the new show on the road and restocking the liquor closet. Always needs restocking.

You can show the love by hitting that PayPal button there on the side or by clicking here. If you wanna give another way, I'm happy to tell you how.

16 years. This is my Sisyphean boulder, and that fucker doesn't ever stop rolling back. But I'm happy to keep pushing it for you.

That Trump/Zelensky Call Was Fucked Up for Even More Reasons Than Biden

It's pretty goddamn clear that the motherfuckin' quid has a motherfuckin' pro quo in the weird pseudo-transcript of the July 25 phone call between Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. And a great deal of it all comes down to the word "though."

Zelensky says, "I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes."

The very next thing is Trump saying, "I would like you to do us a favor though" before going into some conspiracy theories involving Ukraine and, no shit, Hillary Clinton's email server, with Attorney General William Barr tossed into the mix. And that's before he brought up Joe and Hunter Biden by name, which he totally did, unprompted.

Now, I have a PhD in this shit so that gives me superpowers to interpret texts of various sorts. But a freshman would know that "I would like you to do us a favor though" is a conditional sentence, taking what was said before and applying demands before any action is taken on the previous sentence. In other words, it is obvious unless you're a fucking moron or a Republican or both that Trump was saying, "Hey, Voldemort, you gotta do something for me if I'm gonna do something for you." In otherer words, it's the fucking dictionary definition of quid pro quo. And no matter how many times "No quid pro quo" is repeated like "No collusion," there was quid pro quo here. And, by the way, there was an attempt at collusion. The Ukrainians knew the deal.

But, really, the transcript is also fucked up because it reveals the way that foreign leaders have to abase themselves before Trump's massive ass...I mean, "ego," his massive ego.  Zelensky has to tickle Trump's taint with a feather, probably because it's the only way to get the dumb pile of rotting tangerine rinds to pretend to listen.

Right at the outset, Zelensky praises Trump for showing him how to win an election: "I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections." Then he kisses Trump's ring even more, repeating his overused phrases to him: "[W]e are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country...we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that."

That's the kind of flattery that would have made a French monarch in the Restoration say, "Sacre bleu, stop fingering my asshole." Not Trump, though. He revels in how world leaders are compelled to fondle his enlarged prostate.

It gets worse because of course it does. "Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park," Zelensky probes, "and I stayed at the Trump Tower." No, really. And that right there should be another obvious emoluments violation. The head of a foreign country is trying to curry favor with the president by telling him that his country spent money at one of Trump's terrible properties. It's what the Constitution specifically says is not allowed.

Trump is such an intimidating dickhole throughout the conversation. He praises Zelensky for winning and then immediately starts to strongarm him. Seriously, this is rank mobster shit right here: "I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about." I mean, come the fuck on.  Hell, twice, Trump informs Zelensky, "The United States has been very very good to Ukraine." Replace countries with names like "the Lasagna Family" or "Fat Cavatelli" and it's right out of a terrible Godfather ripoff.

The discomfort that Zelensky is obviously feeling comes across as he tries to appease this fucking asshole who sounds like an overwritten villain character in a Ukrainian soap opera. He agrees to whatever Trump is saying, even as he's trying to figure out what the fuck Trump is saying. He talks about how great it'll be to visit with him while Trump goes on about the fired prosecutor (the one at the center of Biden bullshit), praising the prosecutor who most of the European Union and President Obama wanted fired because he wasn't going after corruption, including not investigating Burisma, the company that put Hunter Biden on its board. So Zelensky had to listen to Trump just fucking blather about shit he doesn't know, which, as we all understand, is the only way Trump speaks.

Trump ends the phone call by shitting on Zelensky's election win by making sure the Ukrainian president knows his win wasn't as awesome as Trump's. Our goddamn president says, "I’m not sure it was so much of an upset but congratulations." Why the fuck say that? Who does that except the biggest asshole in the world?

Yes, it's not really a transcript, but this is what the White House released, so it's the only thing we have to go on. But even this reveals criminality and pettiness and intimidation, conduct and actions so worthy of impeachment that it might as well be written on dildos and sent to all Republicans with the message, "Go fuck yourselves with this."

And that's without the whistleblower's report, which looks like is gonna fuck shit up even worse.

Let's Do This Impeachment Thing

Let's get straight what the straw that broke Nancy Pelosi's back on impeachment was. It wasn't the phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky where he said he wanted that country to go after Joe Biden and his son (or at least make it look like they were going after them). It wasn't the implication of the president of the United States using our country's relationship with a foreign country to go after a political opponent, to, really, collude with that country.

While surely that call and Trump's admitted actions played a role in Pelosi finally giving in to her increasingly restive and vocal caucus, it was really more cut-and-dried: the law says that if a whistleblower gives information to the inspector general of the intelligence community that the IG deems "urgent" and legitimate, it must be given to the proper congressional committees. It's that fucking simple. And even though Pelosi has let some things slide (like Trump refusing to turn over his taxes to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, as required by law), this one could not only be couched in terms of "national security" since it involves, you know, intelligence. But the motherfucking IG who found it urgent is a Trump appointee.

You know how this is gonna play out over the next few days: Trump has already said he's going to release the "transcript" of his July 25 call with Zelensky. And let's be clear: it ain't gonna be a transcript, unless they record the calls in the Oval Office, which would be peak Trump stupidity, and even then there's no way to trust it. Probably the transcript will show that Trump never said, "Hey, Voldemort, dick over Biden or no bomb money for you." But, as Jeffrey Toobin and others have said today, if Trump even mentions Biden's name, it's abuse of power. I'm betting that, if you're really concerned about corruption in Ukraine, there are lots of people not named Biden involved. (Besides, Hunter Biden was already completely cleared of any involvement in anything. He was never even formally accused of anything.)

This fuckin' dance will go something like the Mueller Report. Because it's not absolutely obvious to the dumbest dumbass what's going on in the phone call, most Republicans and Fox "news" and Twitter fucknuts will proclaim it a "witch hunt" and try to discredit the whole impeachment effort.

But we don't even know if that's all that the whistleblower was talking about. As I write this, the New York Times is reporting that the White House is figuring out how much to allow the whistleblower to speak to Congress, which, again, is not what the law says. It's a distraction strategy so that that array of leperous whores who run interference for Trump can say to his idiot hordes of voters, "See? Look how transparent your orange god is."

While I'm still leaning agnostic on the whole "this is finally what brings this motherfucker down" early celebration because we've been burned so many times before,  I gotta say that there is something different going on here. First off, today, Mitch McConnell, that infected sore on the scrotum of politics, went along with a nonbinding resolution calling for the whistleblower's complaint to be given to the intelligence committees, and it passed with unanimous consent. Say what you will about it, but it gives Democrats some pretty potent ammunition to say that Trump, Barr, and the Acting Director of National Intelligence are being fucking criminals by holding it back.

If I were an optimistic person, I'd say that we might see some Republicans start to peel off as people wake up and see that, at last, in a game of chicken with the White House, Democrats in the House did not swerve at the last minute. It's a whole lot more fun to root for a fighter, and if polls start to show growing support for impeachment, I'd say some GOP House members, at the very least, are gonna start to get a little nervous about keeping their lips superglued to Trump's voluminous ass.

And I've seen a few conservatives in the media agreeing that Trump admitted to impeachable offenses when he bragged that he talked about the Bidens with Zelensky. Maybe we'll get more who give a shit about the rule of law, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The one thing I would say to any Republicans who might be reading: "Fuck you." And then the next thing I'd say is "You knew it was gonna come to this. You knew Trump was just that vile and depraved and greedy and dumb and narcissistic. How else was this gonna go?" Perhaps I'd add: "Did you see him at the United Nations today? Sweet Jesus, I thought he was gonna collapse into himself like a deflating yoga ball. He ain't right. You wanna stand by that?"

We are at the beginning now. I don't think this will be like the oddly fast Clinton impeachment, which took a little over two months (with the trial and acquittal in the Senate over two months after that). That came in the wake of the Starr Report, so it was a response to a full, ludicrous, shameful sham of an investigation. We're starting from scratch here. Let's have some hearings on the TV, please. Drag Trump's ass for as long as it's necessary.

What Nancy Pelosi finally did was to stop allowing Democrats to be so goddamned feckless and seemingly random in their attempts to investigate Trump and his administration. An effective Democratic caucus would have already gone after Trump for profiting off his position or for what was revealed in the Mueller Report, which essentially said, "You gotta impeach this crooked cock."

Now Democrats can have a crystal clear, simple message that can tie together the threads of all the various committees' work: Trump is a criminal, and here are all the ways he has violated the law, his oath of office, and the public trust. Now let's impeach the motherfucker.

Gird yer loins, oh, good Trump-haters of America, for things are gonna get intense and weird and possibly (even more) violent, if his yahoo-brigade starts to think their racist president is going down.

We've finally, really joined the battle. It's about goddamn time.

(One last note: Rudy Giuliani is fucked. He better cut some deals fast because Trump is selling him out in a heartbeat.)

Remembering How Trump and the Right Tried to Convince Everyone Obama Was a Traitor

Every fucking day they went after President Obama. Every fucking day they looked for the merest hint, some seemingly insignificant spark that they could fan into a full conflagration, some misstep that would give his evil game away. Every fucking day the syphilitic cocks of the right tried to prove that Barack Obama, who was clearly guilty of being president while black, was a Muslim, anti-American traitor out to destroy the good (white) American way of life.

Goddamn, the things they came up with. It's almost laughable. They thought a photo of him holding Fareed Zakaria's book The Post-American World proved that he was some kind of crazy radical. Vile sack of rotting flesh with a bloated fish head on top Dick Cheney more or less called Obama a traitor for daring to have an exit strategy for the endless (and still going) war in Afghanistan (Cheney really said, "I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid and comfort — to the enemy"). Hell, one human-shaped fart, former Rep. Trent Franks, called Obama "an overt traitor to the state of Israel," to which any American ought to say, "The fuck?" Fun fact: Franks was forced to resign from Congress over sexual harassment allegations for offering women on his staff money to bear his child.

This isn't even to get into all the treachery that was implied by birtherism. Or all the shit said by the racist fucknuts in stupid hats that made up the goddamned Tea Party. Or every conservative twatmite trying to get some ratings or publicity by insulting Obama or accusing him of high crimes.

Donald Trump, of course, was into this degradation of President Obama long before he ran for president in 2016 and went into overdrive while running. In June 2016, after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Trump said of Obama that "we're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind." And, because Trump is a cowardly bitch, he hinted rather than stated, "And the something else in mind — you know, people can't believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.' There's something going on. It's inconceivable. There's something going on."

You gotta think about those last lines - "It's inconceivable. There's something going on" - in light of the whistleblower allegations that Trump did something so alarming that an intelligence official felt compelled to report it to the inspector general of the intelligence community, who found it "urgent" enough that he wanted to tell Congress but was stopped by Trump's Acting Director of National Intelligence. Think about all those attacks on Obama, all those digging into the minute details of his words, his dress, his friends, Michelle, all in a vain attempt to show he was a traitor.

And compare that to Donald Trump, who it now seems was holding up funding to Ukraine, perhaps to try to force the country to find or create dirt on Joe Biden and/or Biden's son. That funding was passed by Congress, so, yeah, maybe they have an interest in this.

Or compare it to Trump's ongoing coddling and support of savage dictators and monarchs, like Kim Jong-un or MBS, or that prick Putin. Compare it to Trump saying he was awaiting word from Saudi Arabia on whether we should go to war for "the Kingdom." Trump always accuses others of being guilty of the very crimes he has committed. And you don't even have to try very hard to find them.

The right, especially the GOP in Congress, won't say a fucking word about the traitor whose traitorous acts are staring them right in their dumb faces. And that makes them accessories to Trump's crimes. But they'll go right ahead calling for investigations of Obama and Clinton and whoever else they can throw up as a smoke screen to their genuine destruction of our democracy.

Little Bitch Corey Lewandowski Testifies Before the House Bitchily

Honestly, at some point, I would not have been surprised if the ghost of James Madison had shown up at yesterday's hearing of the House Judiciary Committee and just started sodomizing former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with his walking stick. Just sodomizing the shit out of him while slamming his head on the witness table and yelling, "That's. Not. How. This. Shit. Works. You. Little Bitch."

The thing is that, even after getting raped and beaten by a Founding Father, Lewandowski would have said,  as he did repeatedly, "The White House has directed that I not disclose the substance of any discussion with the president or his advisers to protect executive branch confidentiality," before he crawled out with bloody anus and bruised head to await his Trump treat in the form of a tweet.

It's hard to pinpoint the dickiest moment that Lewandowski had as he just decided to either stonewall or answer like a smartass child who everyone watching thinks, "I don't believe in spanking, but, goddamn, that little son of a bitch needs to be spanked."

Maybe it was when Rep. Hakeem Jeffries asked (admittedly dickishly himself), "Are you the hit man, the bagman, the lookout, or all of the above?" and Lewandowski responded, "I think I'm a good-looking man, actually." Jeffries should have countered, "This is obviously perjury since I've never seen a pathetic motherfucker who hates himself so much."

Maybe it was when he told Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee that she used her time for "just a rant." Or when he called Rep. Eric Swalwell "President Swalwell" to mock him for his failed campaign. There's contempt and then there's trying hard to be as contemptuous as possible in some weird dick-size battle.

Either way, Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler should have had the sergeant-at-arms cuff Lewandowski and dragged his ass out of the chamber like a fucking pervert at a playground. And, yeah, that's not the way the House is supposed to behave and it likely breaks some rules, but, fuck it, tell Lewandowski to take it to the courts and fight his treatment. That's the approach the Trump administration uses with every flouting of the law. And it would have actually gotten some great headlines: "Corey cuffed as Democrats sick of Trump's shit; 'I'll fuck his orange face blue,' says raging Nadler, 'and wipe my dick on his stupid hair.'" (And, by the way, to an extent, Nancy Pelosi agrees with me.)

However, towards the end of the day, one person was finally able to slap Lewandowski in his nuts and get that prick to squirm. When the Democrats on the committee finally gave 30 minutes to House Judiciary Counsel Barry Berke, shit got real. Just let the lawyers do this job. They don't give a fuck about being liked. And Berke tore into Lewandowski, getting the slimy worm turd to say flat out that he lies when he's talking to the media, thus putting his entire credibility into question.

"I have no obligation to be honest to the media," Lewandowski said after an MSNBC clip showed him lying. And when Berke played a Fox "news" clip, Lewandowski said, "I don't think I was under any obligation when speaking to Fox News to not engage in hyperbole." Which is basically the way everyone at that shit network acts. Hell, their motto oughta be "Fox News: We're Not Under Any Obligation to Not Engage in Hyperbole."

Berke calmly sliced and diced the visibly irritated and uncomfortable Lewandowski, throwing at him quotes from his book (which the asshole tried to turn into an ad for himself) and from the Mueller Report, forcing him to affirm that he had lied and lied and lied publicly, again and again, and so why the fuck would anyone trust he's telling the truth.

But it was likely too little too late. You can come up with 100 ways that Democrats did the right thing with this hearing, but the messaging was for shit, and the ability to rally the troops around a strategy has to come from the messaging, not some hope that something will give at some point.

And while he's got snarky little fuccbois like Lewandowski who are ready to snarl and snap going to bat for him, it's gonna take a whole lot more muscle to get at Trump than Democrats are showing now.

As for the media, of course, Lewandowski was on CNN this morning to fuckin' lie some more.

I'm in Twitter Jail for a Week Because I Was Mean to Corey Lewandowski

I called Corey Lewandowski "a little bitch." To be precise, here's the offending tweet:

According to the delicate flowers at Twitter Central, I violated their "Hateful Conduct" policy. Of course, my first reaction was "Have you ever been on Twitter? If it ain't cat videos, it's hateful conduct." But they gave me their definition: "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."

I was calling Corey Lewandowski, a public figure, a little bitch and even went so far as to specify what kind of bitch: I was calling him a dog (and, no shit, I get the other implications).  I wasn't promoting violence or attacking him or threatening him on any basis listed. And if what I said was bad, then everyone who took up Chrissy Teigen's insult of Donald Trump and called him a "pussy ass bitch" oughta be suspended, too. I don't want that because Donald Trump is a pussy ass bitch and he oughta be called that. And Corey Lewandowski is a little bitch. And whoever reported me is a little bitch. And whoever suspended me is a little bitch. But there it is.

Now, I've already deleted the evil tweet because that's what Twitter wants and it is their fucking Nazi-loving, Trump-humping, world-destroying hellsite that we're all forced to use. So if they want me to behave a certain way, well, shit, I'm not gonna be the asshole who open carries in Walmart. But, you know, let's have a bit of consistency.

And, for the record, Corey Lewandowski did more violence to this country today than one crude tweet from some asshole writer ever could. More on that tomorrow. And I promise extra nasty comments.

Look, in the scheme of things, this ain't that terrible, to be sure. Hell, I'll probably actually get some actual work done. But it's a sign of how haphazard the rules are for social media and how the corporations that control it don't really give a damn about that. I'll be back. You'll be back. And they fucking well know it.

(Note: You can still see and follow me over on said hellsite. I can't post, like, or retweet anything until September 24. And I can still read everyone's tweets. I just get to rage into the darkness for a while.)

Random Observations on the Democratic Candidates After Their Third of 850 Debates

Last night's debate of the current top ten Democratic candidates for president was both uninspiring and inspiring. Inspiring because how awesome is it that Democrats as a group are finally openly discussing universal health care. How awesome is it that Beto O'Rourke can outright say, "Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47" to the irrational gun owners and no one is writing his political obituary. How awesome is it that Pete Buttigieg can talk about embracing his identity as a gay man and still getting elected in Indiana. How awesome is it that there were four people of color on the stage. It was a little less awesome that there were only three women, but, still and all, considering American presidential races, pretty awesome. And, yeah, it's pretty fuckin' great that you can look at all 10 of the people up there and be assured that every single one of them would be vastly superior to that orange sack of environmental cleanup waste who's currently in the Oval Office.

It was uninspiring, though, for more mundane reasons. Nothing really happened. No one changed anything about where they were in the debate standings. That's partially because of this ludicrous forced march of endless campaigning, something that is just a cruel trick to play on an already stressed-out electorate. And it's partially because we know where everyone stands, pretty much, so it's just about seeing who stumbles.

The other uninspiring part is that the seeming inevitability of Joe Biden as the nominee is closing in on us, and, sorry not sorry, but he's the second least inspiring person up there (looking at you, Amy Klobuchar). I'll get back to that inevitability. First, lemme say a few words about each candidate, in no particular order.

(Note that always has to be made: I will vote for any one of these candidates if they turn out to be the nominee, so when I talk shit, it just means I do have preferences, like everyone. But I'm not gonna be an asshole if my candidate doesn't win.)

1. I like Bernie Sanders, but every time I see him, he slips more and more into self-parody. He looked physically weak and his voice was so gravelly that he overcompensated by yelling even more than usual. I mean, nearly every single candidate up on that stage owes a debt to Bernie Sanders for stretching the parameters of what Democrats can believe (and many of them believe the same things that he does). The man changed the conversation. Let's not deny that. But he just seemed small and at times out of control, and it didn't help that, after the first half-hour or so, his speaking time was severely limited.

2. Joe Biden was never a good speaker. He signifies being a good speaker because he knows how to do that thing where you make your voice sound like it's saying something with great empathy or great force when your words are ludicrous or meaningless.  Like he could say, "Get me some butter" and do it in a way where you're sure he's your best friend when he just really wants butter. He had his good moments and he had his pretty racist, out-of-touch ones like saying that poor kids should listen to their "record player." Biden was part of one of the low points of the evening, when he and Sanders were yelling at each other like someone took the last pudding cup.

3. Elizabeth Warren was the same intense, engaged, intelligent Elizabeth Warren she has always been. She's calm Bernie (I know that shit drives Bernie's voters nuts, but, well, deal). She's doing what she's done this entire campaign: she chugged along like an unstoppable idea train. You can either get on board or get out of the way, but she's gonna keep going down this track until she reaches the station or someone derails her.

4. Kamala Harris tried to laugh and ingratiate herself. That part didn't work at all. It was weird and uncomfortable, like watching a really stoned dude try to roll a cigarette for you ("Too much tongue, man, too much tongue"). What did work was when she talked straight and cut through what she sees as bullshit about her record. No one wants warm and fuzzy Harris. We want the Harris who is going to gut Trump like a fat fish on a Pacific pier.

5. Pete Buttigieg will be a fine Secretary of State who can run for president again in 8 years.

6. Give me money, Andrew Yang.

7. Cory Booker is a natural politician, one of the best up there. In another year, we'd talk about how no one could beat him. He's sincere (sometimes to a fault) and passionate (sometimes over the top), and, even if he has some DeVos issues, he's a hell of a fighter. In a functioning Senate, he'd be one of its superstars. You want something snarky and petty? The man needs to figure out how to blink. At times, he looked he had snorted all the cocaine.

8. Amy Klobuczzzzzzzzz.

9. Oh, Beto, Beto, Beto O'Rourke, you should have run for Senate. Texas fuckin' needs you to push it over the line to a blue state. His fiery denunciation of the lack of gun laws was a clarifying moment, but Betomania is gone.

10. Julian Castro is a motherfucker and I love him for it. He had the other worst moment of the night, although we didn't know it until after. He jumped on Biden for "forgetting" what Biden said two minutes before about poor people and health care. Castro practically hooted in derision and yelled "Old fart! Old fart!" But it turns out that Biden didn't misspeak or forget, so Castro was just a dick. Still, he got in even more dickish lines, like telling Buttigieg "That's an election. You know? This is what we're here for. It's an election" when the mayor bemoaned incivility on stage. Oh, he's going nowhere, but Castro touches my rude soul.

I have lots of issues with Biden, not the least of which is his age, which gets you all kinds of shit when you say it (and which I'll go into at length soon). But it's becoming clearer and clearer that, barring some huge gaffe or health crisis (beyond his eye filling with blood), he's currently the likely nominee and that's because Biden is a pair of broken-in shoes for many Americans who are sick of the crazy-ass kicks they bought on a whim. They just want their comfy shoes.

Those of us on the left are going to have to accommodate ourselves to Biden's inevitability probably a few months into 2020. Otherwise, we'll fuck up what was accurately described by Booker as the "one shot to make Donald Trump a one-term president."

Goddamnit, when is the next one of these fucklorn things?

How Much of a Pussy Ass Bitch Is Donald Trump? An Investigation

You don't really need to know why model and TV host Chrissy Teigen called President Donald Trump a "pussy ass bitch." I mean, you can probably think of a dozen reasons right off the top of your head and nod, saying, "Yeah, that makes sense." Because, obviously, Donald Trump is a pussy ass bitch. He's always been a pussy ass bitch. He'll always be a pussy ass bitch with his pussy ass bitch sons and his pussy ass bitch business.

It's more a question of degrees than a discussion of whether or not it's true. We know it's true. We just need to figure out how much. And Trump's actions in the last few days give us ample opportunity to examine the amount of pussy ass bitch he's been.

So let's take a look at the evidence of pussy ass bitchery.

1. Trump fired National Security Adviser John Bolton by tweet because he's always been too much of a pussy ass bitch to fire anyone in person unless they are fake employees on his old game show. (Note: John Bolton is dangerously batshit insane and should be sprayed with a fire hose if he comes anywhere near a government position, but he's not a pussy ass bitch.)

2. He had Commerce Secretary Wilbur "Hey, Can You Check to See If Wilbur's Dead" Ross threaten to fire people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This was after some NOAA employee in Birmingham, Alabama, did the responsible thing last week and informed the public that Donald Trump was totally wrong when he said that their state was in the path of Hurricane Dorian. We had a week-long fit from Trump because he was too much of a pussy ass bitch to admit he fucked up.

3. Trump dismissed the idea of allowing some of the tens of thousands of people whose cities were wiped out by Dorian in the Bahamas to come to the United States, saying that other areas of the Bahamas that weren't hit should take them. And he did it in the most dickish way possible, by accusing victims of possibly being "some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers." So he's such a racist pussy ass bitch that he won't allow people who've lost everything to recover here in the United States.

4. When it was revealed that the Air Force had been using the Trump resort in Scotland for its crews to stay during long flights (and play golf there), as well as using the airport right near the resort to refuel at a higher price than a relatively nearby airbase, Trump claimed he had "nothing to do with" it, which, of course, turned out to be a lie, as it often does. He's such a pussy ass bitch that he can't even cop to something that he personally signed off on.

5. Trump gave the Public Safety Medal of Valor to six police officers from Dayton, Ohio, in honor of them doing their duty in taking down a mass shooter there. However, he did not invite the mayor of Dayton, Nan Whaley, because she's a Democrat and she's been critical of Trump. Instead, he had Republican political leaders from Ohio present. When you can't handle having anyone around you who doesn't kiss your ring, that's some pussy ass bitch behavior right there.

In sum, Trump is a total pussy ass bitch. Everything he does stems from him being a pussy ass bitch. His entire immigration policy is about turning us into a nation of pussy ass bitches. Every time he says something about reforming gun laws, the NRA shows him their pimp hand and he cowers back into his natural state of being a pussy ass bitch. And let's not even get into how much of a pussy ass bitch he is when it comes to the dictators in North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.

Oh, sure, he's the tough guy at his rallies. But then, well, he's surrounded by all the pussy ass bitches who support him.

Let's thank Chrissy Teigen for giving us a shorthand way to define Trump. It's especially sweet that it takes the words he used to talk about assaulting women and turns them against him.

Corporate America Is Finally Getting Sick of Your Guns

How fucking pathetic is this: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his mass murder-enablers in the GOP caucus are refusing to do anything to tighten gun laws, including things that are supported by between 60 and 90% of Americans. McConnell is taking the bitch way out by saying that he won't bring to the floor anything that Donald Trump won't sign. But the NRA keeps fisting McConnell with a clenched hand filled with cash, so as long as they hit that prostate just right, the saggy-faced motherfucker won't budge.

And to make things even more pathetic, Walmart and Kroger, both of which have a huge presence in red state America, have taken action today that politicians won't take.

After a couple of mass shootings in their stores, Walmart announced that, in addition to previous steps like halting the sale of handguns and massacre guns, it's gonna stop selling handgun ammunition and "discontinue sales of short-barrel rifle ammunition such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber that, while commonly used in some hunting rifles, can also be used in large capacity clips on military-style weapons." They even recognize that they're gonna lose a big chunk of sales, but, well, when you're a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars, you can afford to do something that might stop your customers from being killed.

Walmart also goes even further, though. Because idiots walking around with their big fucking rifles freak people out, Walmart is "respectfully requesting that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores or Sam’s Clubs in states where 'open carry' is permitted" unless you're a cop. Kroger, which is a multi-billion dollar supermarket chain based in Ohio, also put out a statement on open carry that said, in essence, "Jesus fuck, stop being such little pricks and leave your guns at home, you dumbass cowards." But they said it "respectfully." (Kroger is also being sued for negligence for allowing open carry in its stores, so it's got a bit of motivation there, too.)

The part that takes this to the next level of how deranged and out of touch Republicans have gotten is that both corporations are calling for gun control legislation. Walmart's CEO said, "We encourage our nation’s leaders to move forward and strengthen background checks and to remove weapons from those who have been determined to pose an imminent danger." Damn. He heavily suggested renewing the assault weapons ban and added that "We must also do more, as a country, to understand the root causes that lead to this type of violent behavior," which is a fuck of a lot stronger than just saying the words "mental illness" over and over.

In Kroger's statement, the company said much the same, as well as "Kroger has demonstrated with our actions that we recognize the growing chorus of Americans who are no longer comfortable with the status quo and who are advocating for concrete and common sense gun reforms."

You get it, you whores of the NRA in Congress? Two of the biggest retail corporations in the United States know that so many Americans support gun control that they don't give a shit if a few hyper-armed yahoos decide to buy their scratchy toilet paper over at the Piggly-Wiggly on the other side of town. They know that the country is shifting, and instead of being scared of not being armed, we're finally getting fucking scared of those who are armed. And we don't think the solution is more guns. In fact, we think the solution is to get rid of some of those guns.

Oh, sure, the NRA is pissing out its usual blustery bullshit, declaring that "Lines at Walmart will soon be replaced by lines at other retailers who are more supportive of America’s fundamental freedom." Really? Motherfuckers, this is Walmart. Walmart already ate the other stores. And you sure as shit ain't gettin' ol' Jesse to get on his old computer with the Confederate flag background and shop at Amazon, where Jeff Bezos makes up fake Russia news or whatever the fuck Trump is shoving in their ears. Nope, he's going back to Walmart because that's all he's got.

Walmart won't suffer any real backlash because the vast majority of the country supports the same thing, and that'll prompt more and more companies to follow suit. Supply and demand, motherfuckers, supply and demand. Maybe some of those corporations will even put their donation money where their mouth is and get GOP asses sent out to pasture (or to lobbying gigs). Republicans are essentially accessories to murder now. No company wants to be associated with that.

Goddamn, its fucked that we have to hope that capitalism will save our asses from Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.

(Note: Gun nuts are gonna say, "What's a massacre gun? I've never heard of that." Fuck you. You know exactly what guns I'm talking about, assholes.)

A Poem for the Laborers

"Pioneers, First Women in Construction"
by Susan Eisenberg

Her sister was shot, and hers found bludgeoned
dead in her car trunk; her mother was alcoholic,
and hers a suicide; her daughter killed by an uncle,
and hers stayed alive thanks to prison.
Before the term, date-raped, she was. Before
domestic violence, love punched her face.

We wanted the career. Not just skills and money,
but structure, focus, printed plans, the rowdy order
of raising buildings that years later would still stand
right where you left them. We joined a tradition,
expected a well-marked path and a welcome.
The earnest ads never mentioned

we’d be human minesweepers steering around
barricades, sinkholes, lethal instructions, We learned
Solidarity was a corporation privately held.
Some left in shock. Some were maimed.
Some went missing. A few found gold.

Those with talent for sifting real threat from bluff,
or detecting hair-triggers before the blast, fared best,
We taught ourselves to disarm booby traps, shared
hand-drawn maps, and prepared for a long winter.
We lied on postcards home.

America Is Not Just for Americans

At my college, the semester just started. And in my classes, as usual, I have an array of students from other countries, including Syria and Lebanon. I have said on other occasions that my Middle Eastern students are almost always some of the best, hardest-working, least-complaining ones. It's just an anecdotal observation based on years of experience, but make of that what you will.

In my classes, we read literature that has a political bent, often a liberal bent, but, let's be honest, there ain't much good literature written from a conservative point of view because creativity necessarily forces you into empathy for people different than you. And if you're an artist and don't believe that, you're a shitty artist.

Our class discussions can sometimes be freewheeling debates where all kinds of opinions are expressed. I have Trump supporters and Bernie supporters and everything in between and everything out from the edges, and I encourage them to say why they believe what they believe. Often, I ask them to write about some of the topics we discuss as they relate to the literature we're reading. Anyone who saw what we read and what we discuss could interpret it as a subversive attack on lots of political beliefs. And it definitely can be that. But mostly it's just adults having adult conversations.

So it was disturbing as hell to read about Harvard freshman Ismail Ajjawi, who is a Palestinian from Lebanon, being denied entry to the United States because, as he explained it, a Customs and Border Protection agent searched his phone and laptop. "She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the U.S. on my friend list," Ajjawi said. Because of those friends' posts,  his visa to study here was revoked. Ajjawi said he himself has never posted anything political on social media.

It makes me wonder where this examination of what's-on-your-laptop will end for some foreign students. It makes me wonder if some asshole CBP agent will look at the computer of one of my students one day and see the readings, like plays that are sympathetic to the Palestinians, and then perhaps that asshole CBP agent will dig a little deeper and see that the student's professor is a wild and woolly blogger/tweeter who has called President Trump all kinds of horrific shit and strongly suggested that Trump is a rapist who fucks his own daughter.

Because, see, if someone can be excluded from coming to the United States because his Facebook friends said the United States is, say, a racist country that mistreats immigrants and supports maniacal dictators, then what's to prevent the next person to have a visa revoked be an international student who went home to visit family over the summer and just so happens to have taken me or any politically-active professor who has a problem with the policies of this bullshit president and his bullshit party. What's to prevent any CBP agent from looking at the reading list for the student's classes and seeing The Communist Manifesto on there and freaking the fuck out?

(Quick aside: We don't read Marx in my classes. But I do give a lecture on understanding Marxism as it relates to other stuff we're reading.)

The mistreatment of immigrants both legal and undocumented by the Trump administration is getting increasingly hysterical and increasingly savage. This includes the honestly stunning and horrific change in a policy that gave a visa waiver to immigrants who are receiving life-saving medical treatment in the United States, and, in some cases, their families. Now, cancer patients who are in the middle of their treatment face deportation. You can put that on the growing pile of inhumane policies, and add in Trump's "joke" that he wants his wall built no matter how it's done, even illegally, and he'll pardon anyone who breaks the law to do it, as well as his taking billions of dollars from FEMA to build it. (Let's not even get into the clusterfuck of irony that is illegally building a wall to keep people from coming here illegally.)

This isn't just hateful, xenophobic, and racist. It's all actually un-American. While the United States has rarely lived up to the principles that it has propagated about itself, at the very least there was an understanding that America is not just for Americans, that the very idea of America is of people who made a journey to get here and that the only reason America exists is because people continued to make that journey (and kill the people who were here first and take their land).  I mean, fuck, one way to see slavery is forced immigration. They weren't Americans but we sure as hell exploited, raped, and brutalized them for their labor in order to build the goddamn country.

The United States has always been in conflict about the next wave of immigrants, whether it was the Irish or the Chinese or Eastern Europeans or Latinx people. Or Middle Easterners. Ultimately, though, every population that comes here, even just as students for a few years, is part of America, even if they never become Americans.

And we've always fucking let students come here.  Jesus, does no one remember the insanity about Iranian students studying here after the revolution in their country in 1979? I knew someone whose government job in the mid-1980s was to spy on them and make sure they didn't do anything "wrong." You know what those students did? They fucking studied. They learned the United States is not the enemy. My spy-pal realized early how useless his job was, but he sure as hell loved hanging out with the Iranians. (He did file report after report about how nothing was going on.) Now, between 2015 and 2018, the number of applications for international students to come here has plunged 40%. Can you fucking blame them? Hell, if I were a Lebanese kid, I'd apply to Canadian schools.

Ultimately, incidents like what happened to Ajjawi or not giving flu vaccines to migrants in detention centers have nothing to do with protecting the lives of Americans. It's about fear, and not just fear of violence. It's about the constant fear that a new population will come to the United States and change it, make it less white, less homogeneous. But that shit never works.

Failing to allow the United States to change, to evolve, undermines the entire idea of America.  Like I said, while we don't live up to our principles, at least we had them. 

Focusing on the Amazon in a Time of Maximum Distraction

The Amazon rainforest is on fire. The Arctic, along with parts of Alaska, Siberia, and British Columbia, have burned this summer or are continuing to burn.  The conflagrations destroying the forests of the northernmost parts of the world are a result of the effects of climate change. While climate change has made fires more likely, the Amazon blazes are directly caused by the fuckery of humans, allowed by the savage, shitty president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.

We're literally living the meme of the dog wearing a cute little hat sitting in a blazing room with his cup of coffee, saying, "This is fine." Except this is pretty fucking far from fine. And if you see that whole comic strip the panel comes from, the dog fucking melts horribly. It's not a goddamn metaphor anymore. It's prophecy.

While the world is burning and accelerating the effects of climate change so that we're just in a destructive loop, the United States, the biggest economy in the world, isn't doing jackshit about it. We're all caught in the mesmeric gaze of the madman at the center of our government, with most of us wondering how the fuck we're going to survive another 16 months, and that's if Trump loses,. And there's a not insignificant number of Americans hoping he goes even more batshit insane because they're already batshit insane.

We are beyond anxiety and into something akin to slow-rolling panic, heading into existential exhaustion.

Look, I know, I know, I fucking know that it's depressing/amusing/alarming when Trump says some idiotic bullshit like "I am the Chosen One" or retweets barking shiteater Wayne Allyn Root calling him the King of Israel. I know, I know, I fucking know that it feels like a Nazi threat when Trump is proclaiming which Jews are loyal and which Jews are disloyal. And I know, I know, I fucking know that it's hard to comprehend how the whole buying Greenland thing even happened, and it's even more hard comprehend that there are people out there defending Trump on it, and what the fucking fuck is fucking wrong with these fuckers. I haven't even gotten to the recession denialism. Or the condemnation of Ford Motor Company for wanting to be environmentally responsible. Or the continuing cruelty to migrants.

It's like we walked into the zoo and all the animals got free and they're all fucking each other. They're not fighting like they should be. They're all fucking. Monkeys are fucking hippos. Gazelles are fucking crocodiles. Lions are fucking peacocks. Tortoises are fucking hares. And you'd think for a second, "Well, at least they're not eating each other," except they're fucking each other to death. It's horrible. It's a nightmare of blood and animal moans and elephant jizz and gorilla fisting. How the fuck did this happen? And how the fuck do we get out of here? But the goddamn gate locked behind us so all we can do is cower and hope it all ends before they find us and fuck us to death.

So I choose to focus, today, at least, on the burning Amazon. I choose the environmental apocalypse because, ultimately, there are things we can reverse down the road. We can clean up a shitload of messes. We've done it before. But once the planet is fucked, it's fucked, and there is no unfucking it.

If we had a real president, one who believed in reality and science, she'd be calling on the nations of the world to intervene to stop the destruction of the Amazon. Fuckin' bribe Bolsonaro out of office. Do something. Jesus, how about Jeff Bezos just fucking buying the Amazon as a branding exercise.

The worst part here is that, until things change with our government, we know we're only witnesses of our ongoing demise.

If You're Not Anti-Fascist, You're Pro-Fascist

This weekend, I called the Proud Boys and other marching fascist fucknuts "Nazis." When this was posted by a pal on Facebook, one of his FB friends was quick to say that this was tin foil hat-worthy and that I was degrading history. I explained that I called them "Nazis" because they want to kill all Jews and non-whites and that the easiest way to explain to people what the marching fascist fucknuts support is to call them "Nazis." See? You automatically think, "Oh, shit, they wanna do some genocide." I know this because of all the hate-tweets and hate-messages I get telling me that I'm a Jew (which I already knew) and will be exterminated.

But, obviously, I was insulting the marching fascist fucknuts.

On Sunday morning, I made the mistake of turning on the television. I try to avoid the Sunday gabfests like they are testicle-eating lizards hungry for more testicles. And then I made the bigger mistake of thinking, "Huh. Wonder what bullshit they're slinging over on Fox 'news'?" There, on the Doocy-free weekend Fox and Friends (Who Are Blonde), the top story was that evil Antifa was going to rampage through Portland, Oregon, and that they were throwing food at some people. 

Indeed, on its website, Fox referred to the events in Portland as "planned protests involving supporters of the far-left Antifa movement and supporters of several conservative groups." You see that? Antifa is "far-left" but the white supremacists and, you know, Nazis? They are just "conservative groups." Another piece called Antifa "one of the core drivers of violence" in protests right now.

Yes, in other articles and on-air pieces, Foxeteers have spoken out against "Antifa and far-right" groups. No less a motherfucker than Sean Hannity said, "To each and every single person on either side that has an extreme agenda, you must stop this insanity — this lawlessness." The Chin of Doom declared that Antifa and white supremacists are two sides of the same coin: "They're all tied to sick, ugly, twisted, evil ideologies." And we should kumbaya ourselves out of any conflict: "Let's not forget, we can have political disagreements but at the end of the day, we are all Americans. We're all created equal. We're all one nation under God."

But the context is so fucked up. It's saying that white nationalism, Neo-Nazis, and other assorted racist, heinous, violent shitheels should be given the same consideration as those whose ideology is (checks a dozen websites) stopping white nationalism, Neo-Nazis, and other assorted racist, heinous, violent shitheels. Oh, and also support immigrant rights, health care for all (including white supremacists), and other mainstream progressive ideas. In other words, it's fascists versus, you know, anti-fascists. Seems pretty easy to pick a fuckin' side here.

I'm not saying that Antifa groups and individuals haven't committed violence. Every movement has moments of violence, but incidents are isolated and blown out of proportion, usually by whiny pukes like "journalist" Andy Ngo, who is desperately trying to grift his way into relevance. Hell, in Portland, Ngo just outright lied about supposed violence. And, honestly, you know how fucking lame you look crying about a tossed milkshake and some Silly String sprayed at you when people on the right are literally shooting children to death for being non-white? Also, violence and threats against Antifa supporters are far more prevalent than violence against, for lack of a simpler word, Nazis.

Of course, conservatives have to condemn Antifa because they'd lose a big percentage of their base of inbred mutants and anxious pigfuckers if they said, "You know what? I'm anti-fascist. Cut this Nazi shit out." It's no different than the condemnation of anti-war protesters or civil rights marchers in the past. Right-wing bitches will be right-wing bitches.

Gotta say, though, this is some weird ass shit. The right in this country just wants to erase all the history that makes it uncomfortable. Yeah, let's pretend that the rise of the Nazis in Germany happened overnight, not that it took years of propaganda and refusal to take the threat seriously before things got all Holocausty. Frankly, if you're saying let's be nicer to Nazis in this country, I'm gonna say, "Go fuck yourself. I'm not waiting for another Kristallnacht to call evil 'evil.' I'm gonna call Nazis "Nazis.'"

Fascist motherfuckers have the right to speak. They have a right to gather. They have a right to freely write any idiot hate they want. They can get their 88 tattoos all up and down their faces. And we have the right to raise our voices louder and in bigger numbers and tell them to shut the fuck up and go back to their holes in the ground like the piles of shit they are.

But we still want them to have health insurance.

We're Not Gonna Do a Damn Thing About Guns

A memo of talking points for House Republicans makes plain that the GOP has no intention of doing a goddamn thing about guns. The document, obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, is one of those repellent but totally expected things that clearly define exactly how low these motherfuckers are.

It reads, in part, "White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form...We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa." Now, the "El Paso shooter" reference is wrong, according to a flak for some evil fuck of a congressman. They meant "Dayton shooter," although, generally, leftists don't keep a list of women they want to rape and people they want to kill.

Trying to contort the recent mass shootings into a "violence from the left" movement is pure bullshit. If nothing else, on the scale of murderous fuckery of the last couple of decades in the United States, the right pretty much tips the damn thing over. And we know, for a fact, that there has been an upsurge in violent yahoos proclaiming their violence in the name or in the shadow of Donald Trump. We know that white supremacists fucking love Trump and believe he has given them a wink and a nod at getting more shooty.

So, essentially, despite the niceties of declaring racism "pure evil," the GOP has decided to give white supremacists a pass on their violence while ginning up a fake leftist threat, which mostly consists of some tossed milkshakes and a couple of punches.

It's all because Republicans refuse to act on any kind of gun legislation, even that which is supported by two-thirds or more of the general public, including majorities of Republicans. Goddamn, how much of a pussy do you have to be in order to be cowed by an NRA that is falling the fuck apart?

As usual, Trump himself talked for a moment about background checks, but he quickly turned that around and now is going all-in on another bullshit approach to stopping mass shootings. As he told reporters yesterday, "I do want people to remember the words 'mental illness.'  These people are mentally ill and nobody talks about that.  But these are mentally ill people, and people have to start thinking about it. I think we have to start building institutions again because, you know, if you look at the ‘60s and ‘70s, so many of these institutions were closed.  And the people were just allowed to go onto the streets.  And that was a terrible thing for our country. "

A few things here. First, who doesn't remember the phrase "mental illness"? Motherfucker, we're reminded of that every day that you're president. Next, none of these fucking shooters were let out of the abusive, horrific mental institutions in the 1970s. And they weren't denied care during Reagan era. They're not 60 years old. 

Trump kept going on this point at his hell-rally last night in New Hampshire (aka "That other homogeneous state we have to pretend is more American than everywhere else every four years"). He slurred, "We are working very hard to make sure we keep guns out of the hands of insane people and those who are mentally sick and shouldn't have guns. But people have to remember, however, that there is a mental illness problem that has to be dealt with. It's not the gun that pulls the trigger. It's the person holding the gun."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The gun has the trigger. No gun, no trigger. It doesn't matter who is around to pull it if there is no gun there.

He went on, "Even today, we're going to have to give major consideration to building new facilities for those in need. We have to do it. And at the same time, we will be taking mentally deranged and dangerous people off of the streets so we won't have to worry so much about that. It's a big problem. We don't have those institutions anymore and people can't get proper care."

Bitch, that's national health care. That's what he's calling for here. And if he wants to provide mental health care for all Americans, let's do that shit.

But he's not. He's just gonna get his prison industry buddies to build hellholes to lock up people and probably figure out a way to get some kickbacks from it.

Republicans need to be called "murder enablers." They are accomplices. And they will say anything and do nothing because they fear their own gun-toting base that they created. All these Dr. Frankensteins trying to appease their monsters.

Trump Administration: The Huddled Masses Can Go Fuck Themselves

Let's get one thing straight here right off: If you are a legal immigrant in nearly every other country in the world, you are allowed to participate in that country's national health system. You're paying for the benefit through your taxes and other fees, and, goddamnit, just like everyone else legally in the country, you don't have to worry about paying much of anything else for your medical care. Nothing will be held against you. Nothing will turn you into a "public charge" or whatever fuckin' term for "undesirable" you want to use. And that's because most every other country in the world is not filled with ignorant savages who think that calling health care a "right" is akin to mass enslavement by socialists.

We in the United States happen to live in a country that is, in fact, filled with brutish idiots who would rather die in a ditch of a treatable disease than have a government-run health insurance system for everyone. So that means that only the poorest of the poor get to be on Medicaid, and then you're considered on welfare and a burden to the state. And that means that, unlike every other civilized nation, if you're a legal immigrant, the American government wants to hold it against you if you have a shitty job that doesn't provide health insurance (like, say, in a chicken processing plant) and need help so the flu doesn't financially ruin you.

We are a nation run by sadists who get off on hurting the poor. So, in the new rule, "Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds," published yesterday in the Federal Register, taking advantage of a whole bunch of government programs meant to, you know, help you survive could result in you getting booted from the country.

See, previously, "'public charge' has been interpreted to mean a person who is 'primarily dependent on the Government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalization for long-term care at Government expense.'" Yeah, we didn't take into consideration "an alien's reliance on or receipt of non-cash benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps; Medicaid; and housing vouchers and other housing subsidies." 

But that was before motherfuckers took over and decided to redefine shit that didn't need redefining unless you are a motherfucker.  Here's the new shit: "DHS is revising its interpretation of 'public charge' to incorporate consideration of such benefits, and to better ensure that aliens subject to the public charge inadmissibility ground are self-sufficient, i.e., do not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities, as well as the resources of family members, sponsors, and private organizations." Wow, sounds almost logical, no? Except it's just fucking cruel for so many reasons. Keep reading.

"This rule redefines the term 'public charge' to mean an alien who receives one or more designated public benefits for more than 12 months in the aggregate within any 36-month period (such that, for instance, receipt of two benefits in one month counts as two months). This rule defines the term 'public benefit' to include cash benefits for income maintenance, SNAP, most forms of Medicaid, Section 8 Housing Assistance under the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program, Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, and certain other forms of subsidized housing."

The fuckery is deep in this, but let's put this simply. Let's say you're an immigrant who has been in the country for a few years totally legally. All of a sudden., you lose your job when the restaurant where you're waiting tables or, hell, the office where you're working closes. For four months, you need to go on Medicaid, you need SNAP, and you need housing assistance. That's it. You can be denied a green card for circumstances completely beyond your control unless you starve, go homeless, and let yourself be sick.

This has been one of the pet projects of presidential adviser and man most likely piss in your swimming pool, Stephen Miller, whose head is essentially shaped like a white hood. It's racism that is so plain, it's almost laughable. Yes, let's punish those who want to come to the United States and work our shittiest jobs so rich pukes can get richer. Yes, let's make them pay sales taxes and other shit that prop up our economy. And by all fucking means, let's take the income taxes of people who may have paid them for years before needing some government assistance.

In the UK, if you are a legal immigrant, once you receive your National Insurance number, you have access to many (not all) financial benefits, starting with the National Health Service. You can apply for Employment and Support Allowance, in case you are too ill or disabled to work. You can apply for a Carer's Allowance if you are forced to stay home because you must care for someone. You can get housing credits, maternity leave pay, and retirement income. And it's specifically because you've been paying into the national insurance while living in the UK that you are eligible. In the United States, it doesn't matter how much you've paid. Go fuck yourself in your old country if you need Medicaid for over a year.

Of course, the demented dullards of the Trump administration are all on board. Acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that verminous cockscab Ken Cuccinelli, couldn't even fake it when he completely undercut the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty, ignoring the "huddled masses" and "wretched refuse" part. And then he insisted that the poem was about Europeans, which, really, just sodomize your ass with a burning cross at that point.

As for President Ignoramus Q. Shiteater, when asked about the rule and Cuccinelli yesterday, he said, " I don’t think it’s fair to have the American taxpayer paying for people to come into the United States...I am tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other things.  So I think we’re doing it right." We should point out that not only are the taxpayers of the country paying for the months and months of vacation he has taken, but a good chunk of that taxpayer money is going straight into his business coffers and his own pockets.

Frankly, it's pretty fucking clear who should be booted from the country for being a public charge.

We Are Led by Ghouls and Goons

Check out this pair of fucking ghouls, acting like they just stole a baby to drink its sweet, young blood so they can live on for a few precious days before they suck another child dry. What you're looking at is Donald Trump, a worn-out sack of lies painted orange and shoved into a terrible suit, and Melania Trump, a lamprey in human form, who happen to be the President and First Lady of the United States, smiling as they hold an orphan named Paul. 

Paul became an orphan because an immigrant-hating fuckworm decided to gun down people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart. Paul's parents, Andre and Jordan Anchondo, died protecting Paul when the fuckworm opened fire. More specifically, his mother, Jordan, was protecting Paul, and Andre leapt in front of Jordan to protect her. When Jordan was shot dead, she fell on Paul, breaking some of his tiny fingers. He had been sent home after treatment. Well, not home, per se, because that doesn't really exist anymore, but sent with family. But when our First Couple of ghouls needed a prop for their visit to a hospital in El Paso and almost none of the victims there could or would act as that prop, Trump's goons called and asked if Paul could be brought back. 

There is something so fucked up about those smiles, something so empty and soulless, something chilling and depraved, that it should hurt us to our bones to see it. The failure to act humble in the face of pain, pain that was caused in part by Trump's own words and actions, echoed in the fuckworm's 8chan post, is galling. And Trump's pathetic thumbs-up may as well just be a middle finger. They don't care, at least not in the sense that we generally think of empathy. They care about how they are perceived, yes, but they don't care about Paul or any of the dead or dying or wounded.  They are our American void, the abyss we have earned, the black hole that we have come to deserve. 

Halfway across the country, just before Trump bragged about how his El Paso crowd size was bigger than Beto's to hospital staff who had been putting people back together, 600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had surrounded chicken processing plants in several small Mississippi towns and then arrested 680 workers for "not having proper documentation to be in the United States." 

You ever spoken to anyone who works in a chicken processing plant? Or worked there yourself?  It's a fucking nightmare of slaughter and blood and guts. It is horrible, hard work. Jesus, just imagine the noise you must deal with. 

After traumatizing the children of the workers, who had just started their school year, ICE ended up releasing 300 of the people they had taken into custody who had kids waiting for them. The parents  promised that they would return for their immigration hearings. You got that? You understand that? It was literally catch and release. And while ICE claims they were always cognizant of ensuring that the mostly American children of undocumented workers were taken care of, you can fucking well bet that it wasn't until video of sobbing, pleading kids got onto the news that anything was done.

And what did our emotionally and morally vacant president say about this today? "I want people to know that if they come into the United States illegally, they’re getting out; they’re going to be brought out.  And this serves as a very good deterrent...when people see what they saw yesterday, and like they will see for a long time, they know that they’re not staying here." What a baldly inhuman statement, essentially saying that it's good to see children sobbing because...fuck it. I just don't want to tease that out. Fuck him.

The saddest part is how many of Trump's taint-licking supporters think he's right. "Hey, if those parents didn't want their kids to suffer, they shouldn't have been here illegally," they say, as if the decision to come here was made on a whim, as if they hadn't faced extraordinary suffering and deprivation in order to take a goddamn chance and work in one of the worst fucking jobs in the nation.  Trump is a leader of monsters.

But the only funny part of this is that the raid, where no Americans who hired the undocumented workers were touched and no executives who want this cheap labor force were rounded up and driven away, is going to hurt the bottom line of the companies to the tune of millions because, well, fuck, ICE just took away a shitload of their employees. One of the plants was partially shut down today because of a lack of workers. That's what your donations to Trump got you, motherfuckers.

It's not just that cruelty is the point, as we say all the time since Adam Serwer coined that phrase. It's also that, given the chance to even pretend not to be cruel, Trump will shove that aside, as if anything but cruelty is weakness. The orange ghoul in the White House will not soften for your dead; he will not bend for your children's pain. 

This Desperate, Armed Land

One afternoon in Barcelona last week, I walked back to the small apartment building where I was staying to find two police officers waiting for the elevator. The elevator was tiny and could only fit one person at a time, so one cop went up while her partner waited to take the next one. I asked the remaining officer if everything was okay, hoping he spoke some English as my Spanish is pretty much nonexistent. 

"Yes, it's fine. Someone had some things stolen," he said in better English than most Americans. "It happens all the time here." He asked where I was from and I told him, and that prompted him to say, "Oh, it's not like the United States here. We have pickpockets and some robberies. But no one is shooting people." While he was underselling crime overall in the city, he was absolutely right on that last point. No one worries about being shot for going to a festival or a Walmart or a club or a school or anywhere, really. Barcelona has over 1.6 million people with millions of tourists visiting. There were 10 murders last year.

In the ten days I was out of the United States, there were three mass shootings: Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton. In Spain, the murder rate is about 0.6 per 100,000 people. In the United States, it's currently  at around 5 per 100,000.  So the US has 8-9 times the murder rate of Spain, which isn't even the lowest in Europe. If you visit Italy or the Czech Republic, you could write this about how they are even safer when it comes to murder. 

Other countries have mentally-ill people. Other countries have young people who play violent, first-person shooter video games. Other countries have racists and fascists and white supremacists who shit-post on online message boards. What these countries don't have is the staggering number of guns that we have in the United States. They don't have the ludicrous availability of weapons originally designed for war. And thus they almost never have a mass shooting, despite the presence of mental illness, violent video games, and the ineluctable array of assholes.

When our savage lump of a president undulated over to the microphone on Monday to give a flat, forced, utterly false speech about the two massacres in 24 hours, he absolutely refused, as ever, to place any blame on the out of control gun lobby and manufacturers and sellers. And owners. In that slurred, trash-Muppet voice of his, squinting as if light from the teleprompter would melt his eyeballs, Donald Trump blurbled blame at video games and "a culture that celebrates violence." 

It should be noted here that right after the Dayton shooting, Trump praised an MMA fighter and wished him luck. It should also be noted that Trump participated in WWE events and was a regular in attendance at boxing matches, with promoter/criminal Don King as one of his "friends." In other words, (mostly) real violence occurred for his entertainment and somehow that's more noble than pretend-shooting enemy soldiers and hell beasts. This is not to mention his threats of violence against protesters at his rallies, his musing on nuking Afghanistan and North Korea, and every filthy fucking word out of his shit-filled mouth that degrades immigrants and non-whites.

He also said, "[W]e must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but, when necessary, involuntary confinement.  Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun." Except that the gun provides the trigger. No gun, no trigger. Also, if you're going to assert that people should get treatment, then the government ought to offer medical care to those diagnosed "mentally disturbed."

And let's talk for just a moment about that idea that these mass murderers must be mentally ill. I read the "manifesto" or "screed" or "decent sophomore-level college essay" by the El Paso shooter, as I've read the words of just about every one of these shits. Inasmuch as we all pretend we can distance diagnose someone through their writings, this one was not written in any kind of state of mental breakdown. It was a calm argument on various points, like he had just gotten a class assignment on racist murder.

Calling mass shooters "crazy" for committing the shooting may be comforting because it makes them Not Like Me, but it's a lie. It degrades the real sufferers of mental illness, and it demonizes them. It places the blame at arm's length and gives every NRA-owned politician an out. This is much the same as Trump's offer to discuss even weak gun control measures in the context of immigration reform. It blames the wrong thing and the wrong people. Immigrants aren't what ail the country.

Simply put, the special sickness in the United States is the guns. The majority of Americans know that. I'd venture that the majority of politicians know it. But the Republican has a stake in keeping its voters stoked with paranoia about outsiders, about any government programs, about their own neighbors who aren't like them. The GOP needs its base to be desperate and then to exploit that desperation in order to maintain power. But the desperate need to have something that gives them comfort, that makes them feel safe in a world that they are constantly told by their leaders and their media is out to destroy them and their fading way of life. Guns provide that security. No, they may not have health care, access to a good education, a fair wage at a fair job, or decent infrastructure, but, goddamnit, they can have guns and the belief that it inoculates them should shit go south. Or if they believe it's finally go time to act on whatever belief is driving them, never realizing that the people who sold them this bill of goods are the real enemy.

In his statement after El Paso and Dayton, former president Barack Obama made guns the very first point: "First, no other nation on Earth comes close to experiencing the frequency of mass shootings that we see in the United States. No other developed nation tolerates the levels of gun violence that we do."  Yeah, he said, there are these other factors (not violent video games because that's just stupid).  But as any law enforcement officer will tell you, you have to disarm someone or render them no longer dangerous before you can do anything else for them.

Of course, Trump, who is the king of misdirected grievance and thus the ideal leader for the desperate and armed, only saw that Obama said, "We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments," and made the whole thing about himself and unwittingly admitting he uses that very language. Then he started tweeting about how the Dayton shooter had leftist leanings and that people should stop blaming him and Beto O'Rourke sucks. The guns may be the sickness. Trump is the parasite that feeds on the ill.

Guest Post: The Four Politicians Who Really Need to Go Back to Where They Came From (Part 2)

(Continuing R. Sharp's post from yesterday. He's getting a bunch of shit off his chest, so just kick back and enjoy the ride. Yesterday, he went after Trump and McConnell. Here are his other two politicians who we should send back to some goddamn place.)

Good riddance to Paul Ryan, that spineless piece of trash. My only wish was that he had been voted out instead of comfortably retiring. Here’s the thing though: Paul Ryan might be out of politics, but his actions in and on his way out of office prove that this motherfucker doesn’t give a shit about America or anything that can’t make him filthy rich. Not only did he enable Candidate Trump and work with him to get him elected, he knew a possible President Cheeto would be a complete disaster. He could smell Trump from a mile away (it's true - this is a proven fact about Trump), and he did nothing to stop him. In fact, he worked with Trump and assimilated him into the Republican Party’s decadent framework.

Sadly, Ryan isn’t a complete idiot. He planned his moves very carefully. He saw the results of the 2016 election as an escape hatch from American politics. When his disastrous American Healthcare Act failed in the Senate, Ryan knew he was on his way out. But before he retired, he promoted Trump’s cruel immigration policies and actively supported Republican candidates before the 2018 midterms. What really pisses me off about Ryan was his final act in Congress. In late 2018, Ryan pushed for thousands of unused work visas to be used for Irish citizens who wanted to emigrate to the United States. Yeah. After years spent blocking comprehensive immigration reform, Ryan decided he would hand out visas to white people who shared his heritage, but he even failed at that since it was blocked by a Republican, Tom Cotton, in the Senate. The final shiv from his own party. Ryan helped build the horrifying America we see today. Then he retired and left his mess all over the place for others to clean. If Ryan loves Ireland so much maybe he should go back. He clearly doesn’t give a damn about the United States.

Finally, the last deplorable prick on the list is an oldie by Trump administration standards. You may remember John F. (Fucking Asshole) Kelly as Trump’s chief of staff starting in mid-2017 and through 2018. You probably recall his hardline stance on immigration and his oversight on the implementation of the zero-tolerance policy at the southern border. Kelly pushed policies that led to thousands of Central American children being detained at the border in facilities run by government contractors. We’ve all read the stories and seen the news. These places are essentially prison camps where children have no access to basic hygiene products, are regularly abused and neglected, and have been indefinitely separated from their parents. If Kelly’s support for these facilities wasn’t bad enough, wait until you hear what he’s been doing since leaving the White House.

Kelly is currently on the board of Caliburn International, the parent organization of the company that runs the largest facility housing migrant children in the United States. He actively pushed for family separation and throwing innocent children into prison camps, and when he left the White House he saw an opening to make money on other people’s suffering. But this is only part of the reason why Kelly sucks so much. You see, Kelly is a military man. He served as a four star general in the Persian Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, and the Iraq War. He’s been to countries where children and their parents live in squalor with absolutely nothing but the clothes on their backs. He fought to end oppression in these regions. He fought to uphold American ideals. But that all seemed to change when he entered the White House. Kelly is making money off practices that are totally un-American, and that’s simply because he doesn’t care. He’d rather see children mistreated and live in their own shit than fight for what’s right. Just as long as he gets a fat paycheck at the end of the week.

There you have it. Throw these four fuckers out of the country. Chant "Send them back" at them, but, of course, Trump voters are too high on their racist fumes to know who the real enemies of the state are.