I'm So Sorry, But We Need to Talk About Climate Change

A couple of times a year, I write about the catastrofuck or the fuckpocalypse or the fuckageddon that will be caused by the effects of climate change. Sometimes it's about searing temperatures somewhere in the world, the effect of which will be eventually be to cause a refugee crisis in the neighborhood of a billion people and pretty much completely upend the way in which we all exist. And that's not even mentioning the floods, the fires, and the wildly fluctuating weather and its effects. We're screwed. But every single time I write a climate change post, without exception, it does some of the lowest numbers of anything I put out.

We know that's one reason why there is so little coverage of climate change even as its effects ram our asses every day: no one wants to see that we're fucked by something so massive that it would require the entire world to do something about it. Of course, you can make the news compelling if you want, but I guess that inevitable doom is a turn-off.

But we need to talk about climate change. And I'm really sorry. I know you'd rather the political shit that goes straight to the dopamine center of the brain and floods you orgasmic satisfaction. Trust me, I'd much rather be writing about Tucker Carlson's nut tanning or the ludicrous decision by a Trump-appointed idiot judge that overturned the mask mandate for public transportation. I'd love to spend my time mocking them and calling them horrid names. (I mean, to be fair, last Friday, I already spent a good bit of time on Tuckus.) 

So fucking listen for a few minutes here because we're fucked beyond fucked, fucked in a way where you look at everything going on and think, "Yeah, it's horrible that such suffering goes on, but, basically, we've got a few decades and we're all gonna be suffering horribly." I know, I know, I fucking know that you know this and you try to put it out of your heads, like we good Gen Xers did with the threat of nuclear annihilation back in the 1980s. But listen:

A couple of weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from the United Nations put out the third part of its assessment of the state of the climate crisis. This was the final piece of the assessment, and it focused on "Mitigation of Climate Change," as the title read. It was the section that was supposed to give us hope after the screaming alarms of the first two parts. Except this one screamed at us, too. And the scream was "What the fuck is wrong with you? We're gonna die and you're doing almost nothing to stop it!"

Without getting into the weeds of the findings (although feel free to read them), what we're facing is that while some mitigation of fossil fuel and other harmful emissions has slowed, it hasn't by nearly enough. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres put it, "Current climate pledges would (still) mean a 14% increase in emissions. And most major emitters are not taking the steps needed to fulfill even these inadequate promises." You got that? The shit that everyone said they're gonna do, including the Paris Climate Accords, isn't enough, even if everyone comes through, which, let's face it, if the barbaric Christian extremists in the GOP take over, the United States will be saying, "Suck our coal, fuckos" to the rest of the world. 

Hell, we don't even have to wait until then. Guterres also said, "Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness," madness that the United States is engaged in now. At least we're doing some spending on renewable energy, even if we need so much more. If Republicans get back into power, that pittance will disappear.

Remember when we hoped to hold warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to prevent the worst catastrophic effects? Yeah, you can flush that down the shitter. The only way we're getting there is if we get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2060. "That would require using about 95% less coal, 60% less oil, and 45% less gas by 2050," and even then we'll need a fuck-ton of trees and technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere. So the best we can hope for, really, is 2.2 degrees, which will murder the coral reefs and render large parts of the planet uninhabitable, killing masses of people and bringing about that migrant crisis I mentioned at the top. I'm pretty sure that it means shit will get miserable for the rest of us, too. 

You feeling terrible yet? Remembering why you don't read this kind of news because it seems so insurmountable, so existentially hopeless? Well, it's about to get worse because, see, according to many scientists, this is the watered-down version of the report, avoiding getting too real about the kinds of emissions-cutting that are needed because it will make rich countries sad. That's why when this report was released, a thousand climate scientists engaged in civil disobedience around the world over national governments' inaction; they blocked entrances, chained themselves to buildings, including the White House fence, and more, getting arrested in the process, all to make someone listen. It failed.

Most of us didn't hear a goddamn thing about the report or the protest. I get it. An article on the protest has been sitting in my tabs for the last week or more, reminding me to write about it. And I'm not saying that shit like the war in Ukraine or "Don't Say Gay" laws or gun violence in the United States aren't important. Absolutely they are, and, as awful as they are, we can comprehend those challenges in a way that we can't with the climate emergency. 

But we better figure this shit out, and by that I don't just mean eliminating fossil fuels. We better figure out a way to make everyone care, to attempt to unify over this, to act or die. 

Okay, that's it. You made it. Next up, I'm sure I'll write something about Ron DeSantis getting ass-fucked by a horny Goofy or some such shit. And climate change can go back to that threatening thrum in the background until hurricane season.

Tucker Carlson Has an Orgasm: A Fantasia

Tucker Carlson is checking the strength of his belts. He's putting them over the reinforced bar in the closet in his office and pulling with both hands, sometimes even seeing if he can lift himself off the ground. He knows from experience that it's not the belt's ability to hold his weight briefly but for two or three minutes. That's key to the whole thing. He thought he only bought the best, toughest leather, but last time, the belt snapped, and he ended up hitting the ground, pantsless, almost jamming a wingtip into his asshole in the process, which is not an unpleasant thing, just one you want some anticipation for. Luckily, he hadn't passed out, so when his assistant knocked on his door to ask if he was okay, he could gasp out, "Fine. Fine. Just doing some pull-ups." That's why he told the Fox News execs he needed the bar: because he's so into fitness that he might want to do pull-ups before he hits the set. Although, truth be told, they knew exactly what it was for because Sean Hannity has it. O'Reilly had one. It's almost as if it's a requirement in order to be a male host on Fox.

The last belt checks out. It'll work great, Tucker Carlson thinks, and it feels comfortable enough around his neck. Now it's time to get everything ready. He's got footage from Bucha, Ukraine, all unedited and unblurred, every detail of every wound, every bleeding orifice, every body part visible in HD, filmed by locals who they pay on the cheap to risk their lives to get news out about the reality of the war in their country, not realizing that at least one nightly "news" show host finds it all kind of, for lack of a better word or, indeed, any word at all to adequately convey the visceral feelings at play here, hot.

He turns the big screen mounted on the wall so that it faces the closet. He does a bump of Adderall off his desk, which focuses him on the task ahead. Tucker Carlson pulls off his pants and carefully places them over the back of a chair. He takes off his underwear and sniffs them, inhaling his own ball sweat and fart smell deeply. Then he folds them and puts them on the seat of chair. He takes out a Tiffany box from his desk and opens it, revealing a butt plug with Vladimir Putin's face on it. Tucker Carlson removes it, tells it, "You're not some woke beta cuck," and then lubes it up before shoving it into his sphincter, grunting as he feels Putin's love nuzzle his prostate.

One side of the belt goes around his neck. The other goes around the bar in the closet door frame. He has a stool with hand cream and a remote for the video player. Tucker Carlson already has an erection in anticipation. Hands moisturized, belt tightened just right, he presses "Play" and starts to touch himself.

Tucker Carlson watches the scenes of destruction, ruin, and massacre as he jacks off slowly at first. He doesn't want this to end too soon as more images appear: mass graves, bodies in the streets, dead children, torture victims with their hand tied behind their backs, the torn-up corpse pieces after a missile attack. He's jacking off faster now, leaning forward to start to cut off his breathing, with video of men crying over their murdered families, with the half nude bodies of women who were raped before being killed. "Oh, yeah," Tucker Carlson thinks, "that's it. That's it. That's strength. That's leadership." And, at last, he bends his knees and lifts off the ground, oxygen deprivation reaching a critical moment, and he ejaculates, and, yes, it's as divine as it always is.

He wants to cry out but is unable to, and in a split second, Tucker Carlson realizes what is happening, that he is about to pass out and that if he does, he will surely strangle himself dead, hanging himself. In that heartbeat span of time, just before his lights go out for good, Tucker Carlson sees himself being discovered, and he knows that enough people despise him at Fox that they would leak how he died, and everyone will cackle at the Prince of Frozen Dinners killing himself while wanking to the ruined asses and genitals of war crime victims, even if, truly, that is basically what Fox News does every day. 

He hopes that all those people who follow his every word, who think he's the top of the heap of modern white masculinity, the ubermensch to their worshipful aspirations, will believe his death is a fake, a false flag, something set up by the Deep State and Antifa to ruin him, more cancel culture, more censorship, and not, as it so obviously would be, just an idiot asshole who accidentally offed himself with his limp dick in his hand.

But then he finds some strength and he's able to stand up straight. He quickly loosens the belt around his neck and grabs a breath, the fog dissipating. That's better. He laughs at himself, shaking his head. No need to panic. He knows that people like him are never the ones who die doing this kind of thing or, really, anything. Yes, he nods, taking a wet wipe to clean his jizz off the faux wood floor, he'll always be fine. He has his new special on how men are being neutered by this degraded socialist AOC-run country. It's an important new piece of propaganda. He had to live to see it broadcast.

Tucker Carlson is about to pull Putin out of his ass when he decides, "No, leave him in there." He wants that guiding spirit as he gets ready to do his show. What's the topic tonight? CRT? Woke professors? Biden is essentially a zombie? Dystopian cities? Cops being mistreated? Billionaires being attacked? Who are the powerful people that he can give aid and comfort to? He's there for them, as he always has been and always will be. 

Pants back on now, Tucker Carlson does another bump of Addy and sends an email to the news division: "I need videos of some of those beheaded bodies." He smirks. He's ready to go again. 

(Note: I'm not saying that Tucker Carlson likes to wear a Putin butt plug and masturbate while choking himself as he watches videos of atrocities from Ukraine. I'm just asking questions.)

Democrats Should Go on the Offensive By Celebrating Accomplishments

A couple of things really stick in my craw from the last couple of years, and those are that we've been denied celebrating as a nation some pretty remarkable accomplishments. And while that denial is led by Republicans, quick to stomp any hints of optimism or hope like they're cockroaches, Democrats should have and still can embrace amazing things and turn it into a story that the nation is not failing. Rather the opposite. It offers a counter-narrative to Republican gloom, doom, and pedophilia. It massages the part of the lizard brain that is often used to getting dopamine hits of hate and rage. 

I mean, everything's not even in the neighborhood of perfect, but, c'mon, look at this:

1. I've said this before, but it deserves repeating: The 2020 election was a miracle, one that should give us national pride. In the midst of a global pandemic, at a point when cases were surging, despite all kinds of obstacles, the 2020 election went amazingly smoothly for the vast majority of Americans (that is, the ones who weren't forced to spend hours in line because of state incompetence or hostility to voting). By Donald Trump's own Department of Homeland Security's assessment, it was "the most secure in American history," with more people voting and no increase in the rejection of ballots despite the surge in mail-in voting. 

2. The United States played a big role in getting a vaccine against Covid-19 done in record time, which is the only reason we can even pretend that the pandemic is over (which it definitely is not). And I'm not just talking about the creation of the vaccine. The rollout of the vaccination program has been astonishing, with 563 million shots given in the United States in about 15 months, 11.3 billion shots around the world. Even acknowledging the need to do more in Africa and elsewhere and the intransigence of anti-vaxxers, that's a stunning pace. 

3. And after the American economy was wrecked by Covid, the unemployment rate is now down to 3.6%, with wages rising more quickly than they had been. There are always caveats: wages should be higher, and inflation due to mostly worldwide factors makes those wage gains worth less. But people are working, and they are getting hired at rates we simply haven't seen in decades. We've gotten back 93% of the jobs lost in the pandemic shutdown. That's an incredible turnaround.

All three of these accomplishments are objectively positive. They are inarguably good. There is simply no way to argue that a well-run election, a vaccine to stop a virus, and more jobs are bad. Sure, if you're a terrible person, you can say that higher wages affect corporate bottom lines, but for most of us, it's awesome and meaningful. If you spin these as bad, you are actually degrading accomplishments that cross party lines. The federal election was run by a Republican administration, and most of the state elections were also run by Republicans. The vaccine was developed with support from a Republican administration. 

But you could pretty successfully argue that the first one, the successful election, is what led to the successful distribution of the Covid vaccine and the quick pace of the economic recovery. Because Democrats took over the running of the federal government, allowing for competent people to be in charge, we not only survived the pandemic, but we're thriving after it.  

The only way Republicans and their allied media could tear these things down is to outright lie about them. Despite what Republicans say, there wasn't widespread voter or election fraud or misconduct. The vaccine prevents hospitalization and death and isn't experimental. And the economy is doing great and isn't remotely a communist nightmare. And the lies worked. They made a large portion of the United States hate these accomplishments by creating a narrative about insidious incompetence, putting Democrats on the defensive, attempting to respond to the GOP narrative, which drowned out the successes.

I've talked for years about Democrats creating a counternarrative to the Republicans' insistence that we're living through a Soviet-era hellscape whenever Democrats are in charge. The narrative is there for the taking. 

Instead of being on the defensive, how about cheering on that we did this. Holy crap. How amazing are we? Don't you wanna feel good about things? Isn't it just incredible what this country can do when it tries? And the implication would be that if you don't think these things are good, you hate this country. I mean, it's one thing to be angry when the country fails and does harm, which it does all the time. It's entirely, willfully delusional to feel that way about things that are unalloyed good. I'm not saying there isn't a ton more work to do, but we're allowed to have a sense of having accomplished something.

I'm not even getting into things that could cause any dissent. We should be celebrating the first Black woman being confirmed to the Supreme Court. We should celebrate teachers who have worked so hard to get kids through the pandemic under ridiculous conditions. And there was so much more to celebrate, but conservatives decided to divide us further and further through lying and creating controversies where none exist.

Yes, of course, Democrats put out ads that talk about this stuff. Yes, of course, the mainstream media gives time and fuel to Republican lies with a both-sides obsession that makes those lies seem the equivalent of facts. And, yes, of course, none of this will break through the haze of Trumpist fanaticism that drives the right. 

But you want to inspire your own people to get out to vote. And you want to inspire non-voters to come and join in democracy.

If I were advising Democrats, I'd tell them to keep hitting on those three things up there. I'd tell them to pose a simple question to Republicans: Why don't you want to celebrate these accomplishments? Why don't you like seeing your country succeed? That's the message for Democrats: Despite what the right tells you, you can feel good. You've been through enough despair. You don't need to feel terrible all the time. We know it's been rough, and for many of you it's still rough. But we can still do great things. We can still do them, and it's okay to feel okay. 

The Only Thing Disney Is Grooming Your Kids for Is to Buy More Disney Shit

Of all the weird shit I've seen from the nutzoid Christian right (which, to be fair, is really just "the right"), the attacks on the Walt Disney Company over their criticism of Florida's "Fuck You for Being Gay or Trans" bill and the state's slimy, squamous governor, Ron DeSantis, as well as its declarations that its going to be friendlier to LGBTQ kids and adults in its parks and media, is some of the weirdest. I mean, it's conservatives have bitched about pop culture for a long time, but this is just fucking weird. 

It's not like Disney World is gonna feature "Baloo's Buggering Boat" ride or "Ariel's Muff-Diving Adventure" or "Goofy's Groomin' Gang" show. What Disney did was say that they would work to repeal the cruel law after they were criticized for not speaking out before its passage. It's essentially what every single corporation does all the time with legislation. Oil companies try to overturn laws that want to do some small thing about climate change, which, you know, is way, way more important than whether or not a teacher tells his 1st graders about happy gay penguins.

The assholes calling on "woke" Disney to be "canceled" are the usual array of motherfuckers. Fox "news" has gone to threat level 1619 on this bullshit, mentioning the company hundreds of time during the past week. And conservative cockfleas are looking for anything that can be perceived as dirt. For instance, at a Disney corporate Zoom meeting that was recorded and leaked to sentient scum skimmer Christopher Rufo (who caused the whole critical race theory lie to blow up our 2021), Karey Burke, president of Disney’s General Entertainment Content, said, "I’m here as a mother of two queer children, actually. One transgender child and one pansexual child, and also as a leader," which is nice and honest and also means she's evil and satanic and should probably have child services called on her or some such shit, except she's fortunate enough to live in California, which is notably sane.

She said she wanted the company to put out entertainment featuring "underrepresented" groups and "We have many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories, and yet we don’t have enough leads, and narratives in which gay characters just get to be characters." The horror. That a trans woman might actually just be a hero without it being about the fact that she's a trans woman. Oh, no. The terrifying normalization of it all.

And if you wanna know how stupid this goes, they're also upset that Disney parks will no longer use gendered language in its announcements. No more "ladies and gentlemen" or "boys and girls." Instead, announcements will call people "friends" or "guests." To pretend that that's a big deal is to have no sense of proportion in your life. "Motherfucker," I'd say to someone who was angry about that, "don't you have bills to pay or a job to go to or something else to do?"

That's not even getting into all the religious shit underpinning this whole retro attitude towards LGBTQ people. "God’s gift of 'imagination' has been deeply corrupted in this case," writes some fucker for the Family Research Council (motto: "Grooming kids for Jesus's loving arms").

Why does this matter? Why waste our time talking about and thinking about this? I mean, after all, Disney is an over-huge megacorporation that tailors its shit to stay on the good side of vile governments in China and elsewhere. It's not some anodyne movie company forcing more Star Wars down our throats. It regularly dicks over employees. It's too fucking big and should be broken up. It will be fine no matter how many backwards ass yahoos decide to start watching Ben Shapiro's bullshit kids programming that the Daily Wire claims it's going to create with $100 million. In many ways, Disney is everything wrong with capitalism, and I don't say that just because a dear friend lost his job with Marvel after it was gobbled up by Disney, although that's certainly part of it. So why not just let Disney take its lumps and fuck them for being in bed with the fuck ghouls of the right in the first place?

Because it's fucked up. It's fucked up because if you oppose the very idea of "cancel culture," then you should oppose this attempt to tear down Disney (which will fail because see above paragraph) because what the fuck else is this but very real cancellation? Of course, those who screech about cancel culture are really just mad they can't use racist and sexist and homophobic and ableist language without consequences. So fuck anyone who wants to do the opposite.

Mostly, though, this is a very real battle in the Culture War. As I said above, right now, we're going through a whole lot of fearmongering over LGBTQ educators in ways that I really had hoped we were past. Instead, we're seeing a resurgence in the kinds of lies that are going to get people fucking killed: gay teachers are grooming children when they teach about Heather and her two mommies. In other words, those teachers want to fuck your kids and they're teaching them about queer shit in order to make them willing to be fucked. It's some QAnon-adjacent madness, the kind of unreal hyperbole we saw at the confirmation hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson, but it's spreading and it's going to silence LGBTQ teachers, if not drive them out of some states. It's also about stigmatizing transgender kids and their families, destroying them or banishing them. They are going all the way back to the really old days, with gays and lesbians seen as actively "recruiting" kids and molesting them. Like I said, it's fucked up. This retrenchment of homo- and transphobia in this violent age is fucking frightening. 

And in a frightening Culture War, you want a big fucking culture warrior on your side. So, yeah, I want Disney to fucking get active here and support some politicians and destroy others. I want it to threaten to take its entire fucking operation to another state. Florida was a shitty backwater state with NASA, Miami, and beaches before Disney arrived. In order to force Disney to back down, DeSantis is already threatening to take away Disney's self-government status, which it absolutely should never have had, but if it's enough to piss off the giant mouse, then let's go. Sometimes when you're the biggest motherfucker in the room, you gotta act like you are. Wreck these pricks and then Disney can get back to grooming kids to be good consumers of Disney products.

Of course, there is a very simple alternative: if conservatives want to ban corporate money from politics,  then let's fuckin' well get it done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The GOP Put Out "An 11-Point Plan to Save America" and It's Hysterical Hysteria

Perhaps reacting to the fact that the Republican Party has given up on everything to do with actually governing, choosing, instead, to become a cabal devoted to fake outrage and outdated ideas of morality, Sen. Rick "This Fucking Skull of Doom Will Haunt Your Dreams" Scott has put out a pamphlet titled "An 11-Point Plan to Save America." Yes, it is exactly as fucking idiotic and worthless as you already know it is. Perhaps even more so. From its preamble to its conclusions, it's nonstop hysteria over "wokeness" and trans rights, along with policies based on complete lies and nothing about the actual issues facing the country. 

I mean, how do you take seriously any however many point plan to "save America" that starts with (and, no shit, this is number one), "Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them." Oh, it goes way further than that in the explanation: "Kids in public schools will say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand for the National Anthem, and honor the American Flag. We must foster national unity." The only way to assure that this happens is to pass a law and punish those who don't. Is that what you're gonna do, Sen. Skeletor? Are you gonna arrest kids who say, "Fuck you, I'm not standing"? Maybe send them to reeducation camps since the rest of the fuckin' "plan" is all about enforcing beliefs.

There's so much conservative extremist fuckery in here that it reads like porn for the Federalist Society, like a bunch of Hillsdale grads are gonna sit around and circle jerk to things like finishing the stupid border wall and naming it for Donald Trump. "Yeah, that'll own the libs," they'll say as they jizz and then immediately feel shame and then immediately start jacking off again when they read the next line about funding the police.

Look at this savagery in attacking the poor: "No government assistance unless you are disabled or aggressively seeking work" (okay, so are you gonna provide child care?) and "Eliminate federal programs that can be done locally" (sounds good if you're in Massachusetts, scary if you're in Texas) and "All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount" (which is raising taxes on the poor instead of forcing million/billionaires to pay their share). There's fucking nothing in there about poverty other than that "socialism" apparently causes it. Not paying shit wages or corporations dicking over workers in favor of shareholders and executives. 

On it goes, just a steaming shit pile that you'd just have to be a sociopath, and a fucking dumb one, to buy into. In addition to essentially ending the federal government except for the military, the paranoia over "cancel culture" bullshit and the outright terror over trans people is bizarrely overwhelming. In a weird merging of "science" and religion, the plan declares "Men and women are biologically different, 'male and female He created them.'" And "No doctor will be allowed to perform irreversible surgical or gender-altering procedures on any minor child," going against the advice of every major medical organization when it comes to gender dysphoria (and it's something Texas is already on board with). 

And then there's "All social media platforms that censor speech and cancel people will be treated like publishers and subject to legal action," which makes no fucking sense at all. Publishers cancel books all the time. It's their right as a business. But I guess rights only exist to make right-wingers feel good about shit and they suck when they make Nazis sad. Quoting the only thing that the GOP knows about Martin Luther King, it says, "We will be a nation where people will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin." And if they meant, "We need to make sure that laws are applied equally and without current racial disparities," well, sure. But all that means is "I don't like my white kids hearing that white people did bad things to nonwhite people."

Much of it is really just a call to anarchy. "Americans will not be required to go against their core values and beliefs in order to conform to culture or government," it reads, and yet it doesn't define what happens when one person's "core values" conflicts with another person's "core values." This is beyond "reasonable accommodation" and into "unreasonable clusterfuck." Of course, Sen. Voldemort goes all in on the Big Lie, with a section on "voting rights" that is all about how to prevent Democrats from voting and will assure a completely unmanageable electoral system.

Helping them out, the thing says that the police should be allowed to run wild and consequence free as Point 2 is all about "safety" and "crime" and says, among other things, "We will strengthen qualified immunity and legal protections for law enforcement officers to protect them from frivolous lawsuits." But that goes against my core values on holding cops accountable. 

This maniacal shitpost of a declaration is about a nation that simply doesn't exist except in the heated, phantasmagoric delusions of the most MAGA-broken brains and the political garbage humans who exploit them, no matter the consequences. It imagines a country in flames, repressing true Americans, one where the greatest issue facing us is white people not allowed to say the n-word without consequences. It's hyper-Christian, nationalistic, fascistic, and deranged, ignoring all the real problems in this nation, which, to be fair, are mostly caused by Republicans. 

Interestingly, it doesn't mention the Supreme Court. In fact, the only mention of courts at all is the assertion that Democrats want to "pack the courts." And it doesn't call for abortion to be outlawed, usually a central tenet of these fucking weirdo right-wing documents. I don't think that's an oversight, though. It's something that's way, way worse. 

I think it means they know where they already won and are focusing on other battles. And that's scarier than anything in the thing itself.

Coming Out of the Pandemic, Some of Us Faster Than Others (and That's Okay)

Lemme admit something here. I haven't been the most dedicated Covid warrior. I mean, sure, yeah, I got vaccinated and boosted as soon as I could because you're just a motherfucking delusional piece of shit if you don't. And, for a good while, I wore masks pretty devotedly, especially once I found one style that fit my big, bearded face decently. Hell, I started wearing a mask before wearing a mask was cool, before it was recommended. I had people in grocery stores staring at me a long time ago.  I also had Covid really early on, in late March 2020, a mild case, but, still, during the scary period where each of the days I had a low fever I wondered if all that cocaine was gonna finally catch up to me, if I was gonna take the plunge into the depths of the virus's effects, fucking up my lungs and more. It didn't. 

So what I'm admitting is that I've been a bit cocky since I got my second Moderna shot a little over a year ago. My thinking has been that, at some level, you gotta believe that the vaccine works. Early on, we thought it prevented you from getting Covid, but now, with that bitch Omicron, we know now that it prevents serious illness and death, which, you know, still means you're just a motherfucking delusional piece of shit if you don't get it. 

I've been living my life, going to concerts indoors, eating indoors at restaurants, drinking indoors at bars, going to movies, plays, and comedy shows. I've traveled on planes and trains and buses. When I say, "I haven't been the most dedicated Covid fighter," it's because that, in situations where I can take off my mask, I usually take off my mask. And I almost never wear it outside. I haven't for a long time. Shocking, right?

I'm not a dick about it. If a place wants me to keep a mask on, I keep my damn mask on because other people are allowed to want that. I suppose if I felt strongly enough, I could avoid places that demand masking, but why be that person? I hate those people. Those of us who want to get out in the world and do shit ought to have the good sense to know there are limitations. 

It's really not that hard to give a damn about other people. I'm fortunate in that I don't live with a child under the vaccination age or someone who is immunocompromised. I don't even see people in that situation too much. I recently visited a dear friend who had a bone marrow transplant. I took a rapid Covid test before going to see him, as I would before seeing anyone in such a position.  If someone would like me to put on a mask, sure, I'll put on a mask. 

And, yeah, despite what right-wing cumrags say about us, I fucking hate wearing a mask, even if I've found a relatively comfortable one. But my feeling of discomfort for a short period isn't worth being a total asshole to others. What is worth it is acting like we can live again. And if I say I believe in science, then I fucking well should act like it.

I'm not saying we're getting back to normal because that implies that we can ever return to the pre-2020 times. That's over. And our leaders need to be honest about that. It's a fucking lie to say we can ever not take the kinds of precautions that prevent the spread of Covid, even if it's just a buzz in the back of our head when we're in a crowd, even if it's just taking a test before going to Grandma's house, even if it's just an awareness that it could all close down again, that we know what that's like. And it's also a fucking shame that we haven't done all the things that would make everyone feel safer about the lifting of restrictions. 

Let's put aside the danger that antivaxxers are putting everyone in as being incubators for variants or for clogging the hospitals with their failing bodies. I'm talking about the practical things that could be done with some effort and expenditure.

We could have invested a shit-ton of money on new ventilation systems at schools or offices or, really, in lots of places, but especially schools. We know that having upgraded ventilation helps prevent Covid from spreading, and some school systems are using federal funds to get new HVAC systems and HEPA filters and other things that I'm sure begin with H. But it's not enough and not fast enough. The great thing about those kinds of coronavirus mitigation projects is that they're passive enough that even willingly unvaccinated assholes are protected and we're protected from their unvaccinated asses. 

We could have done something about our ongoing horror of a health care system and poured funding into nursing training and salaries and more on a permanent basis, not just as crisis pay. We already had a shortage of health care workers, especially nurses, and now it's a full-blown crisis on top of the crisis of the pandemic. We could have said, "You know what? It's just motherfucking dumb to not have a national health care system. People shouldn't be afraid of their co-pays so they don't go to the doctor and spread the sick around." We could make mental health care far more widely available for all the trauma everyone has suffered. We still get more than 4 rapid tests to households. There are all kinds of things we could do so that everyone could participate in the world again with some amount of caution, sure, but still able to do so. 

A nation that really gave a shit as a whole would have passed a Covid tax on the wealthy to help get us the fuck out of the crisis. We are not that nation. So, instead of roaring into the end of the pandemic, we have a two-tier reopening: a decent level of safety for most of us, an indecent level of risk for those most at risk and for families with young children.

The nation is still ridiculously bifurcated between the places with high vaccination rates and places with low ones. The reason we have 2500-3000 people a day still dying of Covid is because the corpses are piled up in Unvaxxed America. It'll be a while before those numbers decline, as well as the numbers in hospitals (which will also be playing catch up with all the surgeries and other things that were put off because of the Omicron and Delta surges). 

As the nation opens up, even in the unvaccinated places, the people to thank are the vaccinated and the masked. If you're unvaccinated and all of a sudden vaccination card checks go away so you can go back to Chili's again, thank all your vaccinated friends and family and everyone else. It's because enough of us did what we're supposed to do and weren't selfish twatfleas about it like you that you can get your baby back ribs again. It wasn't ivermectin or piss-drinking that got us to where we are. It's because a bunch of us are responsible goddamn people. You're welcome, you pathetic fucks.

(Note: I'm sure some of you will get all pissy about my relatively relaxed attitude towards getting out in the world. But I respect your fear of the virus. I respect your limitations. Mine are just different.)

(Note 2: Obviously, you could respond that "It's not over" and you're right. But it kind of is for a lot of people. We just have to not be cavalier about things, like back in April of last year when everyone went fucking crazy and having orgies in the streets.)

Why Those Saying AG Garland Needs to Act Soon on Trump Aren't Wrong

The podcast Wild Things: Siegfried & Roy is a genuinely fascinating look into the lives of the illusionists who had a long-running Las Vegas show performing magic with their white tigers. The focus of the podcast is the night in October 2003 when one of the tigers attacked Roy Horn during a performance at the Mirage Hotel, almost killing him. Host Steven Leckart talks to the main investigator from the USDA, and the podcast discusses a few times how the USDA was denied the videotape of the attack by Feld Entertainment, the company that produced Siegfried and Roy's show. The magicians and Feld were so distressed by the possibility of the USDA having the tape that a friend of theirs contacted Nevada's then-senators, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign, for help.

The senators probably made phone calls to get the USDA to stop pursuing the tape. They might have reached out directly to the investigator himself. But, as Wild Things discusses, Reid and Ensign went much, much further. They drafted an amendment to the 2004 budget bill that would have specifically prohibited federal money from being used for obtaining the tape "through a subpoena...or any other means." Reid said then and he says on the podcast in one of his last interviews that he was concerned with the privacy of Roy Horn because images from the tape might leak. Agree or disagree (as the podcast discusses, the USDA was pretty lax in enforcing its rules on Siegfried and Roy, a major Vegas money generator), just the threat of the amendment worked. The USDA backed down and agreed to view the footage in a supervised situation. Even then, the investigator was only shown a small clip of the incident.

This isn't really about the truth or lies behind a tiger attack, which was really just a tiger being a damn tiger. It's about Congress's power of the purse and how it can be wielded. Two senators from different parties were ready to make it impossible for an agency of the government to do an investigation in the way it saw fit. While the amendment threat did not shut down the investigation, it sure as hell hampered it. 

Congress has the ability to do that, to target with precision how money cannot be spent. Remember Iran-Contra? That had to do with Ronald Reagan trying to get around the Boland Amendment, when Congress said that federal money could not be used to support the Contras attempting to overthrow the government in Nicaragua. 

The power of the purse is something that has been used to affect policy for good reasons, especially with a bad actor (on so many levels) like Reagan. And it is something that is occasionally used for petty political points. It's also one of those many things that we've learned in the last few years absolutely depends on our leaders actually caring that government functions. It relies on the legislative branch not being jerks. We've seen the fraying of that since Newt Gingrich decided to shut down the government in a hissy fit. We see it with the Republicans' bad faith in the wielding of the debt ceiling as a weapon. 

When some of us say the committee looking into the January 6 insurrection needs to act quickly, it's because there is a decent chance that the GOP takes over the House of Representatives and simply ends the committee. Any referrals to the Justice Department need to happen soon because if the House changes hands, then in January 2023, it's over. When we say that Attorney General Merrick Garland better have charges out there, it's not because we're anxious and curious and need to move the plot forward for our emotional satisfaction and our need for vengeance against the Trump mob. 

It's because the Republicans who will take over the House are motherfucking crazy and don't give a single shit if they blow the whole place up. And I'm not sure I just mean that metaphorically with these insane lizard-brained savages. 

There is nothing that stops a Jim Jordan-led House (you heard me) from passing a budget resolution that defunds any effort by the DOJ from pursuing any case against Donald Trump or his shitty children or the assorted clowns, whores, thieves, and Jared that made up his administration. They won't play chicken with Democrats because the idea with chicken is that both sides have the chance of turning before the crash. That's not the way a House of Representatives with barking mad mongrels like Paul Gosar or Marjorie Taylor Greene leading or in the majority on committees will work. They're not playing chicken. They're playing demolition derby. These America-hating cockscabs will gladly shut down the government. And Democrats will give in because they want the government to function. They will give in with the bullshit hope of fighting another day.

And you might say that the investigations in Georgia or New York would do the trick on Trump. Except the same kind of targeted budgetary action can take place. I'd bet that New York's own shit Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik would sponsor a resolution saying that federal funding for her state is contingent on dropping the cases against Trump and the Trumplings because that's exactly how fucked up Republicans have made the whole fucking political system now. 

And you might say that this kind of blatant fuckery can be taken to court. Except, you know, the Supreme Court has lost its shit, too.

Yes, we don't know what exactly is going on with all the investigations. Yes, they are doing so much work, interviewing so may witnesses, going through mountains of documents, all with no leaks, and we don't know if something is going to drop any day now. All of that can be true, but the motherfucking clock is ticking. 

If a couple of senators can use the power of the purse to protect some rich-ass magicians, a criminally insane political party, freed of the straitjacket of minority status in Congress, is gonna go much, much further and strangle the investigations with the purse strings.

Why I Was Serious When I Said Jailing Donald Trump Until Trial Would Be Good for the Country (Part 2)

Earlier this week, I said that former president and current terrorist Donald Trump should receive the same treatment as the leader of the terrorist Oath Keepers. That is, he should be held in jail without bail, unable to rally his supporters until he's faced trial. Not only that, but it would be good for the country to see an ex-president face justice and treated like other alleged criminals are. Let me list the ways:

1. It would prove to a fickle public that the Justice Department and law enforcement are absolutely serious about this shit. Right now, with very little actual news coming from the DOJ or the January 6 committee in the House, and with this investigation taking so very much longer than it ought to have, the attitude on the right is that all of that shit is just one more thing they'll eliminate should Republicans win one or both houses of Congress. The narrative conservative media and politicians are creating about the Trump investigations is one of boredom, bias, vengeance, and incompetence. I know that doesn't matter should indictment come from any of it, but it sure as fuck is damaging the public image among the majority of the nation that doesn't anally-probe every tweet or statement from Liz Cheney or Letitia James. 

2. I'm not worried that arresting Trump on suspicion of seditious conspiracy will make his armed lunatics go apeshit. In fact, I think quite the opposite for most of them (there will always be a stray lunatic). It would make a whole lot of people fucking realize that they better back the fuck down and/or give up what they know. The delay tactics by potential witnesses is working, forcing the 1/6 committee to postpone public hearings for at least a month, from April to May. If all of a sudden real consequences were in the mix, those who participated in or helped plan the insurrection would be shitting themselves in fear, wondering, "If law enforcement is willing to arrest a former president, what the fuck else might they do to me?" Democrats don't understand the power of fear in the same way Republicans do. So while there are totally legitimate reasons to lock up Trump, the intimidation factor would be a huge benefit to the investigations. I'd bet that at least one Trumpling turns on dear ol' grabby, abusive dad.

3. While bewilderingly roaming free, Trump keeps having rallies and putting out statements that profess support for the 1/6 rioters and promise they will not be punished for crimes that some of them have confessed to. He refuses to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election fairly, which has kept a not-insignificant portion of the population enraged and ready for action, action that Trump has already stated he wants if he's indicted federally or in New York or Georgia. Trump has done nothing to disabuse the armed fucknuts of the notion that he is telling them to lock and load and go on his command. He is unwilling to turn down the heat in the country, preferring to piss gasoline wherever he can. Shutting Trump the fuck up would leave all the troop-rallying to his surrogates, none of whom have a scintilla of the deranged orange juice that Trump brings.

4. Republicans are normalizing the attack on the Capitol. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point. The more distance we get from January 6 without visible progress beyond arresting the ground troops for the coup, the more it will seem like No Big Deal, and that's what the GOP wants more than anything. It's why so many of them can say shit like it was "legitimate political discourse." The GOP has taken the side of the insurrectionists, which means they will welcome this fuckery when it happens again. Whatever shreds of a mask of democracy remained on the face of the Republican Party have fallen off. They got a taste of tyranny, and they fucking liked it. You put Trump in jail and you change the whole conversation and throw off the whole plan. And I guarantee that some Republicans will be fucking relieved.

5. Everything we keep learning points to a conspiracy to steal the election by Trump and the Trumpinistas, including preparing for the possibility before recounts or anything could happen. They tossed around things like sending the military to seize voting machines. They organized the attempt to get the fake rosters of electors accepted. This is on top of trying to get the Attorney General to sign off on the lie of election fraud and the obvious crime of pushing the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" just enough votes to put Trump on top there. A jailed Trump would give a frame to hang all of this on and make it easier to comprehend. 

Look, I'm not a fucking idiot nor a childish naif. I'm in an area of speculation, if not outright fantasy, that this would actually happen. But I'll stand by the idea that Trump should have been arrested on January 6 or even earlier. To me, it's absurd that he hasn't been. 

Because, sure, we can say that arresting a former president would never happen. Except if we're a country that really does want to live up to the ideas of our founding, as so many people on all sides of the political spectrum like to pretend, then no person is above the law. Arresting Trump would prove we are, occasionally, who we say we are.

Jailing Donald Trump Until He Faces Trial Is the Best Thing for the Country (Part 1)

It's genuinely shocking to realize how much of the American electoral process is less about laws and codified procedures and more about elected officials not being dicks. Think about it: The whole idea of a "peaceful transfer of power" is that the loser isn't a dick about it. What we've learned since the 2020 election is that all it takes to start wrecking the entire system is for the loser to decide, "Yeah, I'm gonna be a dick about it" and move ahead with tearing shit apart. And it seems like there's no law that says, "Whoa, whoa, you can't be a dick even if you want to be one."

But the legal system, you know, the whole Law and Order shit, does have a way to put dicks away so that they can't spread their dickishness far and wide. 

Check this out. It's from U.S. Magistrate Judge Kimberly C. Priest Johnson in her decision to hold Stewart Rhodes, the one-eyed leader of the band of feculent-brained loons and goons known as the Oath Keepers, in jail without bail pending his trial on seditious conspiracy related to the events of January 6, 2021. She writes, "It is not unusual for Americans to be disappointed by election results or offput by the functioning of federal, state, or local governments. Indeed, the right for such individuals to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances is enshrined in the Constitution and is core to American freedom and our system of governance. Here, the Court is not faced with a peaceable assembly and petitioning, as Defendant’s extraordinary actions and the ripple effects that followed are outside the bounds of protected activities." She's talking about the First Amendment here, saying that Rhodes's calling for halting Congress's certification of the election results, including planning to actually do it, isn't protected because that's how you get fucking anarchy. 

The First Amendment is not a suicide pact. It's time we stopped treating it like that. There are responsibilities that go along with freedom of speech, assembly, etc. And one of those is not using it to overthrow the government that is protecting your speech, assembly, etc. because you don't like who won the election. It doesn't fucking matter how much you believe an election was actually stolen. Reality isn't negotiable. A guy who tries to burn down his neighbor's house isn't let off because he sincerely believes his neighbor is Satan.

Johnson continues on Rhodes, "The evidence shows Defendant orchestrated a large-scale attack on the federal government with the purpose of intimidating, by violence, federal officials and disrupting official governmental proceedings incident to the transfer of power in the Executive Branch following a national election...Defendant’s authoritative role in the conspiracy, access to substantial weaponry, and ability to finance any future insurrection, combined with his continued advocacy for violence against the federal government, gives rise to a credible threat that Defendant’s release might endanger others by fostering the planning and execution of additional violent events." Now, obviously, Rhodes is a crazed fucknut, armed to the teeth and leading a bunch of other crazed fucknuts. But what about the fucknuts above him when it comes to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and future attempts to overthrow a legally elected government? Like Donald Trump, clearly the fucknut-in-chief?

What Johnson worried that Rhodes would do in fomenting further rebellion is exactly what Trump is doing. His speech in Conroe, Texas (motto: "Conroe: Crazy and Caucasian"), this past weekend was an abject, shameless call to action, promising to pardon the idiot hordes who fight for his delusions of victory. In addition to flat-out committing obstruction of justice, Trump commanded his stormtroopers to be ready: "If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt." Those just happen to be the places where they're investigating his ass. Jesus fuck, he says the intention of his Leni Riefenstahl-ready rallies is to "Save America." From what? Legal elections? In an interview with some fucking bullshit conservative outlet, the only places he's not too much of a little bitch to appear, Trump again asserted that he would pardon the 1/6 criminals. This is not to mention that statement he put out where he said that Vice President Mike Pence "could have overturned the election." 

So, yeah, Stewart Rhodes should be kept locked up because of what he might do and what he might say. I would argue it's even more important for the President of the United States or even the former one to not engage in language that might lead to violence as an intended consequence. And if that former president refuses to back down from calling for an organized attack to put him back in power, then he should be fucking jailed, pending trial for seditious conspiracy. Jail him. Silence him. For fuck's sake, this should have been done on 1/6, and it's more imperative than ever. 

In Part 2: "Wait, you're fucking serious about this?" Yeah. Yeah, I am.

One More Time: Nearly Every Parent Is Too Fucking Dumb to Decide on School Curriculum

In the early 1970s, my mom became the secretary for Gus Sakkis, the Superintendent of Schools in Pinellas County, Florida. Sakkis got the job during an insanely tumultuous period in the school system, what with desegregation, teacher walkouts, student protests, and more. It was enough to have driven several superintendents out after a short time on the job. One of the things he did during his 9-year tenure was give teachers and parents more of a role by creating school advisory committees. While that was mostly a good thing, of course, it also bit him in the ass. 

Now, I don't remember a whole lot about this time because I was a wee Rude Pundit, but I do remember one battle that Mom was closely involved in. A group of parents were demanding that several books, including, as I recall, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, be banned from county school libraries and classrooms. As secretary, Mom had to field all the angry, threatening phone calls and open all the mail from shitty people saying shitty things. They yelled at her, they cursed at her for allowing books with curse words, and they demanded that they knew better about what their precious children should have put in front of their innocent eyes. Sakkis wasn't having any of it. The way Mom told it, he walked into a school board meeting, looked in their stupid faces, and told the parents that he wasn't getting rid of the books and that, in essence, they can go fuck themselves because they're not educators. 

They clamored for his head, Mom said. But Sakkis had them beat before he ever said a word. See, for years, student test scores in Pinellas County had been in the shitter. But once Sakkis arrived and reorganized the district and instituted reforms, the scores started to go up, for elementary school students, for high school students on their SATs. Eventually, the scores were some of the best in the state. He had also brought cooperation and progress to the county's school system, including due process and fairness for students who were accused of bad behavior. No one was gonna fire Sakkis because he had been right about just about everything else. Mom was proud as hell to be working for him.

I've been thinking about that story a lot lately and not as some lesson in history repeating itself, although, surely, that fucker does.  See, here's the problem with all of this critical race theory and book banning and anti-LGBTQ bullshit. We rarely hear about the students. How are the kids doing? Not emotionally, although that matters. I mean, we base everything on test scores and shit. How are the schools doing in actually teaching students? 

Because, see, Loudoun County, Virginia, where some of the most heated, screaming fights about teaching racial history have taken place, is actually a successful school district prior to this whole blow-up. Average SAT scores are higher than the average in Virginia or the United States. On the bullshit tests that we force students to take every year, the kids in Loudoun County are doing quite well, with 85-91% of middle- and high-school students doing their reading and rithmetic at or above grade level. Clearly, like, really, statistically, demonstrably fucking clearly, the teachers are doing something right in Loudoun County. So why the hell would you try to fix something that isn't broken? Whatever is being taught is getting nearly every student to graduate high school. As a parent, you should be supporting an education system that is doing that good of a job and not make the life of teachers even more fucking miserable in the middle of a motherfucking pandemic.

But that's just what so many states are doing. They're empowering parents, the vast, vast majority of whom have no fucking business having any say in how teachers teach shit (and, as I've said before, the only ones who should are those in education themselves like, well, fuck, me), to narc out any educator who teaches anything that makes their kids feel uncomfortable. Or, to be more precise, anything that makes the parents feel uncomfortable because they're racist, homophobic shitheels whose children are on the short road to fucking hating them.

In Florida, the state legislature is considering two bills, both recently voted out of committees: one would prevent teachers from discussing anything related to LGBTQ topics and allow parents to sue a school if a teacher does; the other forces educators to "objectively" teach everything and not do or say anything that might make a student "feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin." Think about that from the perspective of a teacher. You've already got parents screaming at you every time you give their tender babe a grade below A. You've got administrators demanding you do more and more work with assessment and planning. You have to buy toilet paper for the school with your own money. You have to teach so that students can do well on annual tests that lawmakers demand they take. And now you've gotta gauge if talking about Ruby Bridges to your 5th graders in Social Studies is going to cause distress? Fuck that. Why bother? And who the fuck are parents and legislators to tell you how to do your fucking job?

By the way, what if not teaching about, say, Ruby Bridges causes distress to Black students? What if whitewashing that history gives them feelings of anguish? But, of course, these bills are written by people who don't give a shit about the feelings of non-white students or LGBTQ students. They are strictly for parents who think they know better than teachers and they fucking don't. But expertise doesn't matter any more in this stupid country where some troglodyte grunting on a YouTube video or podcast has more authority and sway than people who devoted their lives to something.

It keeps going. In Texas, Governor Greg "Fuck DeSantis. I'm the Craziest Motherfucker" Abbott has proposed a "Parental Bill of Rights" that would amend the state's constitution to give parents more say over school curriculums (and, weirdly, leave it up to parents if a student should repeat a grade or class). In Florida, a parents group (funded by national organizations) is trying to get books like Beloved and The Kite Runner banned from high school libraries for being "pornographic." In Virginia, Governor Glenn "Surprise! I'm a Crazy Motherfucker, Too" Youngkin is taking seemingly masturbatory pleasure in asking people to narc out teachers who dare talk about racism as a bad thing, setting up a "tip line" for offended parents and students (and the email and phone numbers were spammed beyond belief by people treating an asshole like the asshole he is). And, of course, in McMinn County, Tennessee, the school board removed Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus as a text 8th grade teachers can use to talk about the Holocaust. Was it too violent? Too heart-wrenching? Nope. It showed the breasts of a dead woman and some mouse peen, and it had a couple of cuss words. 

By the way, in an opposite way from Loudoun County, Virginia, the test scores of McMinn County, which is a mostly rural place dead in the middle between Knoxville and Chattanooga on I-75, are just fucking pathetic. 31-30% read at or above their grade level, meaning that over two-thirds can't read at their grade level. 40% can do math at or above grade level. Maybe the school board needs to spend a little more time worrying about that shit than worrying about mouse tits. Maybe parents need to get their kids those books that Dolly Parton provides.

I went to public school in south Louisiana in the 1980s. My schools all had a solid mix of races, income levels, and backgrounds (although it was pretty monolithically Catholic because, well, Louisiana in the 1980s). For the most part, my high school teachers were awesome because they were free to teach almost anything that fit into their subject (except sex education because, well, Louisiana in the 1980s). I've mentioned before that my caffeinated, chain-smoking Vietnam vet U.S. history teacher took out a dollar bill on the first day of class and said, "This is what American history is all about," and proceeded to blow our minds by tying everything, the Revolutionary War, slavery, and more, into how the almighty dollar mattered more than human lives. In my English classes, we read Catcher in the Rye and Native Son and other books that were perfect for our age. In my computer science class, I was allowed to create a game where you played as a Native American trying to protect your land from the white people. In the science fair, I had a project on evolution versus creation that had nude dolls in the Garden of Eden display because how the fuck else are you gonna do it. 

Importantly, our parents respected the teachers. Those oil field workers and store clerks and shrimp boat workers didn't try to fuck with the schools just because of their beliefs (and, besides, the Supreme Court had recently slapped down Louisiana on a creationism law). Parents who gave a damn were at-home partners with the schools, helping their kids get their homework done and supporting the efforts of the teachers. And, to be honest, a good many parents just didn't care.

It wasn't perfect. There were conversations and conflicts. There were shitty parents and shitty teachers. But, mostly, teachers got to do their fucking jobs without a bunch of assholes telling them they know better.