Stop Normalizing Trump-Inspired Death Threats

Over on the online version of the conservative magazine American Spectator (motto: "We're batshit right-wingers but also pretentious as all fuck"), Jeffrey Lord, who is what you picture when you think,  "Soon-to-be-extinct kind of old white man," wrote a thing last month titled, "The Trump Gag Order: Corrupt Judge Assaults Free Speech." It's an attack on Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is on the January 6 trial, for the now-stayed limits on the incendiary accusations and lies that Trump has been gleefully tossing like a stink-faced 1930s street urchin cackling as he throws firecrackers at dogs and horses. 

One moment in the "column" (if by "column," you mean, "The pathetic bullying of a bully-adjacent loser") has stuck in my craw. It comes after Lord quotes Chutkan's order. After discussing the truly fucked-up shit that Trump has said, she wrote that "once an individual is publicly targeted, even revoking the offending statement may not abate the subsequent threats, harassment, or other intimidating effects during the pretrial as well as the trial stages of this case." 

And Lord, who I need to remind you at this point is an actual elderly adult, writes in reaction, "To which I can only say: Oh boo-hoo." Which might be the most bitch-ass moment I've seen in a while, and that includes Elon Musk's whiny twerp tweets. Lord explains, "The moment anyone steps into the world of 'public service,' they are putting themselves out there for others to ridicule, scorn, and, yes indeed, threaten them. A situation multiplied endlessly by both the internet and television." Then he asserts that all the public workers who don't want to get nonstop streams of rape and death threats, as well as antisemitism, sexism, and more just because they're doing their goddamn jobs "clearly have no business whatsoever being in public service."

Obviously, being a judge is one thing. You always face the possibility of crazy and violent people taking shit out on you. But Trump's game is not to just go after the people at the top. He wants to wreck the system by hacking away at the foundation of it, too. So, yeah, he still goes after the former FBI agents he regularly attacked while president. He derides the work of election workers. And, more to the point here, he's accused the clerk of Judge Arthur Engoron of being Chuck Schumer's secret lover or some such shit. 

Engoron, who is on the bench for Trump's civil trial on being a big fucking fraud, and the clerk (who I will not name because I fucking won't) have suffered a barrage of constant threats from Trumpist goons and fucknuts. These were detailed in a filing by lawyers for Engoron and the Attorney General's office asking for the reinstatement, fully, of a gag order on Trump. In a children's sampler of the 275 single-spaced pages of transcribed threats and disparaging phone calls and messages, you can see how much shit anyone involved here has to deal with.

Since the transcriptions were done by software, the curse words are just a string of stars. But I'll try to fill in the blanks by using my awesome powers of profanity. Here are just a couple of the hundreds and hundreds of voicemails left for Engoron about him and his clerk, who is a woman:

"Honestly, you should be assassinated.You should be killed...You should be executed. Put on trial. Executed for your crimes. You sick [fucking] pig."

"Arthur, you are a corrupt Nazi and one of the ugliest people to ever walk the face of the earth. And your clerk, who's also a corrupt Nazi, is a fat [bitch] who blew Chuck Schumer and everybody knows it." The clerk is Jewish, by the way, and the number of references to her weight is pretty stunning, like that's the only thing they know how to insult. 

"We are going to get you and any one of you dirty, backstabbing, lying, cheating Americans. You are nothing but a bunch of communists. We are coming to remove you permanently."

"Do you think being a judge changes the fact that you're a pathetic little [fucker]? You little [fucking] dork with little [fucking] Jew girl [fucking] helper [bitch]. You [fucking] stupid [shit]. God, I hope you [fucking] die. I hope they [fucking] come for you and [fucking] string you up."

I know that most of these threats aren't real threats. Nearly every one of these troglodytes is too dumb and lazy to get off their couches to make the effort to kill anyone. But it only takes one, of course. And there's always one.

That aside, why the fuck should the price of getting up and doing your fucking job be getting doxed and maligned? The clerk has said that "she has been receiving approximately 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and approximately 30-50 messages per day." Imagine that shit. Imagine just trying to catch up on your regular email while you're getting a few hundred messages a week telling you you're going to suffer or die and, oh, hey, you're also unattractive. 

Let's not even think about the wave of horror that New York Attorney General Letitia James and her staff must deal with.

So, yeah, despite what Jeffrey fuckin' Lord and the death threat apologists of the right say, this shit is exactly what a gag order is meant for. Trump inspires all of these mongrel idiots, chewing on their own asses until they come up for air long enough to click out some bullshit. Shut him the fuck up already. Stop acting like it's just Trump being Trump and we all just have to fucking deal with that.

And don't fuckin' talk to me about Trump's freedom of speech. That clerk has freedoms, too, and she's not free as long as Trump puts a target on her back. She's not the one on trial. But she's the one who's been put in a kind of prison. 

A Poem for Thanksgiving from Indigenous America

For Calling The Spirit Back

From Wandering The Earth

In Its Human Feet

by Joy Harjo, who is from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that

bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel

the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and

back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were

a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the

guardians who have known you before time,

who will be there after time.

They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people

who accompany you.

Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought

down upon them.

Don’t worry.

The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises,

interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and

those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few

years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and

leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the

thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning

by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call yourself back. You will find yourself caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It will return

in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be

happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and

given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who

loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no

place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

The Media Won't Make Republicans Own Trump's Fascist Rhetoric

You are never gonna put a stake in the heart of Trumpism in this country. That bullshit is here to stay until its followers die of some illness they could have gotten vaccinated for, or from shooting themselves with one of their dozens of guns, or of old age, alone with a red hat faded by the sun and a threadbare "Let's Go Brandon" flag they bought at a rally years ago, like an old Nazi treasuring that handkerchief the Fuhrer gave him after wiping the sweat off his brow. Truly, a Pandora's box was opened once Donald Trump began running for president on an explicitly racist platform in 2015, except in this version, all the curses that were unleashed had beaten Hope to death in there long ago. 

Trump's rhetoric in the last few months has taken the racism and general hatred of anyone who doesn't unabashedly love him and his awful family and amped it into explicit calls to round up and deport or imprison or flat-out murder large swaths of the population. It's not just that he now regularly says some variation of his "vermin" line: "We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." That shit is frightening enough.

But he's broadened his targets. Look at this from a speech on November 11, which starts with a rant against the "deep state," that weird imagined cabal of, I guess, people who are loyal to the Constitution and not Donald Trump: "We're going to expel those horrible, horrible war mongers from our government. They want to fight everybody, they want to kill people all over the place, places we've never heard about before. Places that want to be left alone. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxist fascist. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media until they become real." So the plan is to gut the government by defining, as broadly as possible, the criteria that makes you an enemy to the nation. Along with that, the government will be used to attack the media and destroy it.

What's probably most ironic here is that the "fake news" media Trump is describing is still mostly giving him a pass on this move to openly saying full-on, actually fascistic dictator shit. Sure, they're reporting on it. But they are letting other Republicans get away with not owning Trump or his rhetoric. Today on one of the goddamn Sunday shows, Ron DeSantis was asked about Elon Musk's antisemitism but not Trump's tilt into totalitarianism. Some Republicans have been asked about the "vermin" line, and, predictably, the response is a wimpy half-swat, like 2028 GOP presidential nominee Nikki Haley, who said, "I don’t agree with that statement" before turning to Trump's weird statements about Israel and Hezbollah. Well, groovy, Nikki. 

That's not good enough. They need to be asked if they agree with, say, Trump's desire to end the DACA program and deport 800,000 migrants who were brought to the United States when they were children and are American in every sense except immigration status. They need to ask if they agree when Trump says, "We'll stop the invasion on our southern border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history." According to meth-faced Trump advisor Steve Bannon, that means the deportation of 10 million people. Ask Republicans from farm states how they feel about that. Ask if they agree and will support Trump, and ask the rest if they're okay with Trump opening up giant internment camps for migrants and having no due process. Hell, ask them if they agree with shooting shoplifters, as Trump has also said he'd allow.

Trump promised, "I will immediately restore and expand the Trump travel ban on entry from terror play [that's really what it sounds like he said] countries, which was a big thing." How do you feel about that, Republicans from Texas, where the Muslim population is growing? Or do you also admire Hungarian leader Victor Orban, who Trump praised because "He didn't allow millions of people to invade his country...So he doesn't have crime and he doesn't have the problems that they're having in other countries where millions of people are allowed to go in"? Do they believe that immigrants cause crime? By the way, except for that Orban fuckery, just about every other word here is from the written speech. It's not off-the-cuff. 

Sure, way too many Republicans would say they agree with all this shit because they are, by simply being Republican, shitty people. But you can fuckin' corner these assholes like George Stephanopoulos did when he trapped over-inflated balloon animal Steve Scalise and refused to move on until Scalise said whether or not the 2020 election was "stolen." That's what needs to be done on answering for Trump. And not just whether or not they will vote for him if he's the nominee (although that's a totally valid question).

Republicans right now are losing their goddamn tiny minds. They are in-fighting between the Trump-engorged dicks (like James Comer) and the flaccid dicks who shot their Trump loads and don't wanna go again (like sad insurance salesman Kevin McCarthy). They are pissing away their majority in the House because there are just enough not-completely-bugfuck-crazy Republicans to keep the government functioning. And when they're not losing their shit at each other, they're challenging witnesses at hearings to fist fights, like Senator Markwayne "I totally look like a 'Markwayne'" Mullin of Oklahoma did. It would be hilarious if it weren't fucking terrifying. 

But the reason to keep pushing all these jibbering cuntmites to answer for Trump is that we as a country need to hear that there won't be any checks or balances on him. We need to know the danger, the "stakes," as media expert Jay Rosen has stated, instead of the odds. That's gotta be clear because we also need to know what the fuck is going to happen if Trump doesn't win. It's not just that Trump goes away and it all gets better. 

Another thing that Steve Bannon said recently is that the MAGA movement, such as it is, will continue after Trump. "This movement is ascendant and it’s going to go on long after Donald Trump is even more powerful and broader," Bannon proclaimed, slurping the remnants of a puppy from his lips. "We are far to the right of Trump. President Trump is a moderate in our movement. You’re going to pine in future years that you wished Donald Trump was around."

At least Bannon is admitting that what he wants is for politicians to punish everyone who doesn't grovel at the MAGA altar. Now I'd like to hear if our elected leaders are willing to admit it or deny it so I know how quickly I need to get my Canadian asylum application in order.

Democrats Win Just About Everything Everywhere All at Once

In last night's absolute ass-reaming of Republicans, Democrats proved that the best strategy is just to be fucking Democrats. That means supporting abortion rights without any of the bullshit equivocating that gives credence to anti-choice arguments. That means calling out the culture war shit for the plain idiocy that it is. And it means that polls don't vote. 

A few takeaways on very, very good night, addressed directly to the GOP.

Hey, dicks,

1. You have pissed off the women of the United States in ways you can't even imagine. The last year has been a sequel to the Dobbs decision sending abortion rights back to the states. Call it "The Revenge of Roe" because women are in warrior mode over protecting their bodily autonomy. And you withering cocks have painted yourself into a corner with the blood of women who have been hurt and killed by the Supreme Court's monstrous decision. Who celebrated the end of Roe? Whose likely presidential candidate proudly proclaims that that he appointed the justices who made it possible? You kept telling women that actions have consequences when it comes to sex. Now look who's finding out after fucking around. And this won't stop and won't slow down. Democratic women are coming for you.

2. Another way you pissed off women and all parents is telling them that they don't have the right to take care of their kids. See, your child getting taught at school that slavery was bad or that gay people exist isn't impinging on your "rights" as parents. You can teach them whatever lies you want at home. What does fuck with the relationship between parents and kids is when you fucking outlaw medical treatment that  parents want for their kids, whether it's abortion or transgender care. You pass laws saying what kids can and can't talk about and force them to repress their identities and you are shitting all over parents. That's done. It failed. It failed big time. 

3. And Gen Z is coming after you motherfuckers. I love that we finally have a generation that has no reason to believe the moronic myth of the "good" Republican. They grew up with racist attacks on Barack Obama and then watched Donald Trump turn the joint into a plague-ridden hate camp, and they saw Republicans at every level merrily go along with it. They are woke, and your mocking of their wokeness makes you into everything they fucking despise. They have queer friends, they have trans friends, they have friends of different faiths. They watched the George Floyd video and marched in Black Lives Matter protests and then watched as you lied and said they were violent rioters. And then you banned the fucking books they like and are continuing to destroy the climate, which dicks them over for their futures. Goddamn, you are fucked with this generation. 

You can change. Moderate on abortion. Give up the culture wars. Do shit that shows you understand that science is real. 

But you're motherfuckers, so you'll likely just try to figure out how to suppress the vote. 

Okay, I'm done talking to the conservabitches. Lemme end here with a few awesome races beyond abortion rights in Ohio and the Virginia legislature. 

1. In Virginia, pre-election, on the long list of things that matter to voters, transgender issues placed dead last. That's not because they want trans people to not have rights. It's because no one fucking cares if people want to do something that harms no one. And then openly trans Danica Roem, already in the state assembly, became the first trans person to win a seat on the state Senate, beating a conservative ex-cop supported by giant loser Gov. Glenn Youngkin. That ex-cop campaigned on banning trans athletes from high school sports. And that wasn't enough to push voters away from Roem.

2. All over the country, school board candidates backed by the savage hatemongers Moms for Liberty lost bigly. The Moms want your kids ignorant, crazy Christian, pregnant with no choice, and hiding their true identities while not allowing them to read any books that have kissing in them. They are just the fucking worst and deserve all the scorn that can be heaped on them like piles of manure. But, man, they lost so bad everywhere. In Iowa, they supported 13 candidates. Only one won. In one district, they just had to get in the top four vote-getters to get a seat. There were 8 candidates, 4 supported by Moms for Liberty. They all fucking lost. So they can fuck off all the way back to whatever crusty old bible they crawled out from under.

3. And in New York, Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five who was imprisoned for a horrendous crime he did not commit, on whom Donald Trump once took out a full-page ad calling for his execution, who was exonerated 2002 after 13 years in confinement, won a seat on the New York City Council. Yeah, that's right. Soon, Salaam will be an elected official and Donald Trump might die behind bars. That's karma in a perfect form.

It's okay to feel good today, Democrats. It's okay to ignore those shit polls for Joe Biden (which, c'mon, a year out, who the fuck cares?). It's okay to celebrate that we might just have a future. 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Hates Nearly All of Us

Liquor laws in Louisiana are a clusterfuck. Because of a state supreme court decision decades ago, they are subject to the whims of a community vote whenever someone can get it on the ballot. So a town can allow alcohol sales in, say, restaurants for a while and then, whenever some opportunistic Christian dickflea gets enough people itching, they can vote to overturn the law and go back to being a dry town or county. Or, you know, parish, as they call counties in the state because Catholicism. 

The decent-sized, if generally shitty, town of Minden in the generally shitty Webster Parish was dry in 2003. Minden is 30 miles from Shreveport, which is a decent-sized, if generally shitty, city. The economy of Minden was not doing great 20 years ago, so a group of business owners, with the support of the Chamber of Commerce, wanted to have another vote on allowing alcohol sales in restaurants, hoping that it would attract some chains to town or at least provide a new tax revenue stream. Minden had been dry since a vote in 1974, but after a contentious city council meeting in August 2003, it was decided that the restaurant alcohol sales law would be decided in a special election just a couple of months later. 

The people against allowing alcohol sales were straight out of a 1980s movie about tight-ass evangelicals refusing to allow anyone to have fun. Their warnings were like the lyrics of The Music Man song "Ya Got Trouble." According to one local columnist, "They expanded from simply claiming this was a back-door way to bring about bars and package sales to more extreme connections. They alleged this was an 'end-around' to bring sexually oriented businesses, such as strip clubs to Minden. They also pointed out it could be an attempt to bring legalized gambling into Minden." Churches went into overdrive, with prayer services just to try to get their invisible sky wizard to intervene. They even had round-the-clock prayers just before the election date. 

The anti-fun forces, led by five plaintiffs, tried to sue to stop the election, but they filed their lawsuit too late for it to be heard. Their lawyer was a Shreveport attorney who was making a name for himself as a supporter of nutzoid right-wing Christian causes. And since you read the title of this piece, you already know that it was Mike Johnson, who is now Speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency. That's right. Two decades ago, he was trying to stop alcohol sales in a town.

The voting occurred that November and over half the registered voters went out to the polls. That's how much this meant in an off-year election. And, Lord have mercy, they voted 57-43% in favor of alcohol sales in restaurants in Minden. Johnson's clients considered another lawsuit to question the elections results, but they decided against it, and Minden restaurants and now bars and, yes, casinos can serve alcohol. The nearest strip joint is still about 15 miles away, in the next parish over.

For years, Mike Johnson represented the shittiest fucking people in trying to halt others from having rights or enjoying life in a way that harmed no one. As a dick lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom (motto: "'Freedom' should probably be in quotation marks in our name"), Johnson was on the fucked up side of issue after issue in our bullshit culture war. He fought the city of New Orleans to stop it from offering domestic partnership benefits in the pre-Obergefell days. The law had been in place since 1999, and they sued in 2003 in a case they lost in 2005. He opposed the Obama abortion pill mandate, he sued in favor of various school prayer cases, and more. When it comes to abortion and LGBTQ rights, Johnson is the hardest of the hardcore opposing both. And when he was a state representative, in the panicked days before the Obergefell same-sex marriage decision in 2015, Johnson sponsored legislation that would allow businesses to refuse to serve same-sex couples and, going back to his earlier case, would allow a business to deny benefits to same-sex couples because of "religious" reasons.

And perhaps it's here that we need to pause for a moment and say that Mike Johnson loves God. His version of God, I mean, since, you know, God is made up. But he fuckin' loves God as intensely and loudly as a newly-out Omaha lesbian loves pussy. He leans Christian dominionist, which is as weird and insidious as it sounds. He says that the United States is a "biblical republic," whatever the fuck that means. He told Sean Hannity, "Someone asked me today in the media, they said people are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview, that's what I believe." I wonder if that includes all the rules in Leviticus, but I don't want to ask about beard-shaving regimen.

In his speech before being sworn in as Speaker of the House, he said, "I want to tell all my colleagues here what I told the Republicans in that room last night. I don’t believe there are any coincidences in a manner like this. I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us, and I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment in this time."

I know they don't give a shit what heathens like me think, but that shit sounds creepy as fuck. You're telling me that your imaginary invisible sky wizard contorted all time and space and made everything in the universe move in such a way that you could become the leader of one house of the American Congress. That's fucking insane because, see, first, you believe in an invisible sky wizard, and, even worse, you have no problem telling me what your invisible sky wizard is doing and saying, and, even worser, you demand that I follow what your invisible sky wizard says. You can say that there are lots of people who believe in your invisible sky wizard, but that doesn't make it less creepy. In fact, it makes it way creepier. 

While Johnson talks a lot about "consensus" and shit, he sure has spent his career, including trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, approaching every issue with the clear-eyed resolution of someone who just loves to make shit worse for everyone except those who also hate nearly all of us. It won't be some god who ruins the nation. It'll be a very weird man.

(Quick note about Minden, Louisiana: It sucks as a town. But, man, there are awesome soul food joints there.)

Jim Jordan's Combover Can't Hide the Truth About Who He Is

It's one of those questions you get when you're a man and men around you are going bald: Would you ever do a combover? The question is usually phrased with a sarcastic tone, as in, "You're not so pathetic and insecure that you'd do something so fucking dumb if you started to go bald, would you?" And, of course, my answer is that should the day come when these lustrous locks finally thin to the point of scalp exposure, there's no way I'd do a combover. It looks awful and it's a lie. 

See, the combover is the hairstyle where you let the hair on one side of your head grow long enough to be combed over the baldness like hay on a barn floor. While most men who do it leave the hair flat and dead and plastered over the skin, occasionally you have someone like Donald Trump, who does some elaborate bouffant like a pampered, preening prince at Versailles or something. But most don't have time or stylists to create that kind of luxuriant obscenity. For most, it's just a combover. It's supposed to make it look like you have a full head of hair, but you just look like a jackass because everyone knows you're lying. You're trying to pretend that time isn't having its way with you like it inevitably does with everyone, so you fake it. 

I've got a natural prejudice against men with combovers. I find them suspicious and more than a little creepy, and I just feel pity and revulsion at the same time. You can say I'm coiffure-shaming, but I don't fuckin' care. They chose to do this. They looked in the mirror and said, "I would rather my head look like the center of a crop circle than allow people to think I'm going bald." On an objective level, that's hilarious and sad. 

Ohio Republican and multiple-humiliated nominee for Speaker of the House of Representatives, Congressman Jim Jordan, has the kind of combover that looks plastered down with spit and desperation. It's the sort of style that you associate with a third-shift Perkins manager or the last vacuum cleaner salesman at a soon-to-be closed mall Sears. On its best days, Jim Jordan's combover befits a paunchy used car salesman or a community theatre actor playing Shelley Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross. His hair is absurd, as absurd as his look of faded blue shirts and yellow ties, worn without a dress jacket as if that makes him more a man-of-the-people instead of a lost soul who thinks he can parlay his proximity to Trump into more power than a person like him has any right to have. That he failed so quickly and so spectacularly speaks to the unexpected existence of the last bare germs of self-respect that a scattered few Republicans still possess, that they would rather vomit the Congress into chaos than put their future in the sticky hands of Jim Jordan.

Like the purpose of his combover, Jim Jordan was hoping he could hide reality enough to fool enough Republicans or at least allow them to let their guard down for a moment. He wasn't an insurrectionist who sought to overturn the 2020 election of Joe Biden as president. He was merely someone who believes there were "all kinds of problems" and he just forwarded a letter about it to the proper authorities. He certainly isn't the same asshole who totally supported government shutdowns in 2013 and 2018. Oh, no. He's the man with a [bullshit, unworkable] plan to avert a shutdown in November. And he's certainly not the coach who looked the other way while student wrestlers at Ohio State told him that the team doctor was sexually abusing them. He's got nothing to worry about from the forthcoming HBO documentary about that doctor.

And if you believe any of that, you believe that Jim Jordan has a full head of silky hair and is not trying to hide just how exposed his scalp is. 

Possibly the greatest fucking cosmic joke in Jordan's failure is that the dumb bastard thought he could Trump his way into the speakership. Hell, he was endorsed by Donald Trump, and, to his deranged thinking, that should have put him over the top because, obviously, pleasing Trump is still the only thing that matters to Republicans. So Jordan not only bullied members of his own caucus, but he did virtually nothing except make a milquetoast plea to stop the death threats and other threatening calls and messages that flooded  the phones and emails of those who voted against him and their families. All that did was piss them off because no one really likes Jordan. That's so obvious when you see other members of Congress around him. No one looks like they're enjoying their time smelling his tuna breath and his flop sweat armpits under his polyester shirts. Motherfucker, put on a jacket and spray some Febreze. 

In his pathetic whine of a news conference on Friday, Jordan attempted to make some strange comparison between his fight for the Speaker's job and the advancement in flight from the Wright brothers to Chuck Yeager, like failure leads to accomplishment. It was total cringe. Interesting fact, though. Neither Orville nor Wilbur Wright hid their baldness under a combover. Neither did Yeager. Maybe being honest about who you are is the first step to real success, or else you simply keep failing until you bumblefuck into oblivion. 

I Locked Myself Out of Twitterx and Now Live on Threads, Which Shockingly Does Not Suck

Higher than I should have been after an extra mango- "flavored" gummy, I went on the Twitterx a couple of weeks ago. A few people I trusted were warning of the joint's imminent collapse, so I thought, "Okay, fuck it. I'll download my tweets," which is a thing you can do. I had to enter my password, which I thought I knew, but, apparently, I did not and had not saved anywhere. "Fuck it," stoned brain said again. "I'll reset the password." But, see, because another time a few people I trusted said I should do 2-factor authentication so I had set that up, I needed to enter my super-secret code I had gotten by linking Google Authenticator (or whatever the fuck it's called) to Twitterx. 

I entered that code, which I had saved, except I guess that I hadn't because it didn't work. "Fuck it," my now aggravated and stoned brain said. "Get a new code," which should have been easy because the app for authenticating had been linked to Twitterx, as I already fucking explained. So I opened the iPhone and Google Authenticator decided to update. And by updating it reset itself and fucked off with my connection to my Twitterx account and now I couldn't get a new code and I couldn't get into Twitterx because I had started the process of resetting my password and I couldn't back out of it once I was at the second factor stage and god fucking damnit, I hate everything. 

My timing was perfect because it was right when I wanted to do all kinds of promotional shit for the 20th anniversary of this here blog.

"Fuck it," I thought one more time. "I'll click on Support." And I did. And I described my situation. And I got an email saying they would get back to me in a few days or maybe a little longer and I've emailed every few days to say, "What the fuck, Elon?" except politely because Elon's a little overly sensitive about that kind of shit and, well, he's the overlord, right? 

"Fuck it," I thought for the last time. "I'll just start using Zuckerberg's Twitter thing, Threads." And I have. And it doesn't suck. It's still working on its place in the social media food chain, especially when it comes to breaking news, and it needs direct messaging (I don't give a shit about hashtags or trending topics). No, I don't feel like I have what little reach I have on Twitterx, but the engagement is pretty awesome. The biggest bonus is I don't have to cringe every time I post something because of how fucked up the billionaire owner is. Zuckerberg doesn't hang out and support Nazis, and he seems to have discovered how great it is to get laid regularly and workout and is letting the actual experts work on shit. 

So if Elon's remaining sad drone workers ever get around to unlocking my Twitterx account, I don't know what I'll do. I may go back to using it like a meth addict finding himself at the Sudafed factory. Or I may just tell everyone to come over to my new place.

But it sucks that I can't post this on Twitterx.

Bonus fun that seems ominous for anyone ever getting back to me: The company that is allegedly called "X" still signs its support emails "Twitter." 

We're All Just Watching the Wheels Fall Off the GOP Clown Car

Watching the wheels come off a clown car has its charms, teetering as it does on that tightrope between hilarious and terrifying. It's hilarious because, c'mon, it's a bunch of clowns and you're watching those painted dopes as they get flung around like a dog toy in the teeth of a particularly enthusiastic pit bull, screaming, clawing at each other as they to try to position themselves to not fling out of the car as it flips over and over, wondering why the hell so many of them shoved their way into the vehicle in the first place. Of course, screaming clowns are terrifying in and of themselves, but you kind of feel like they deserve it. Fucking clowns. 

Obviously, it's a completely different story once the clown car comes to a halt, the road coated with a viscous sheen of clown guts and greasepaint and motor oil, stray disembodied feet in giant shoes and red noses, real and rubber, scattered about, and arteries spurting briefly like a gag flower on wide lapel. So many dead and disemboweled clowns. Someone's gotta clean up that mess. I mean, you can't just leave it there. It'll block the road, maybe cause more accidents, freak out the kids. For every pie flung in someone's face, there's someone else whose job is to mop up the pie that hit the floor. For every clown car disaster, someone else has to break out the shovels and scrapers and hoses and get that gore gone.

Sure, it's kind of amazing to watch as the Republican Party is in the midst of its inevitable crash. We're in the slow-motion wreck part of the arc of this story. It's the kind of self-immolation that you usually see in overly-literal protesters. It's quite a sight. You've got former President and current record-holder for most-indicted president Donald Trump, sitting lumpily at his trial for financial fraud, muttering and making noises like a gassy Charles Manson, as the judge repeatedly has to teach him how to act like a human being. You've got House Republicans now scrambling to see which of the various fucknuts, rape-enablers, or Trump penis koozies they are going to elect to wreck the nation by refusing to act on anything that isn't certifiably insane or blatantly destructive or both. And they might go to political war with each other, which would be a shit fight in a crashing clown car. You've got a passel of pathetic also-rans, bumbling around the country in a desperate attempt to get some traction for campaigns that were over the moment they announced, pinning their dreams on the imprisonment of the indicted original shit-lump, who lumbers wheezily to rally after rally to spout madness to a deliriously, gleefully violent cult of racist zombies, and yet, for some reason, the other non-Christie candidates can't bring themselves to say anything truly negative about Trump. None of this even scratches the surface of all the wanton fuckery Republicans are doing to themselves in their Trump-contorted reality. 

Yeah, it's amusing as fuck to watch it happen. It'd be a fuck of a lot more fun if it wasn't a goddamned threat to all of us not inside the information vacuum MAGA freaks exist in. It's impossible to ignore growing violence and threats of violence from that aforementioned cult, and a leading candidate for president encouraging them to be ready to enjoy nonstop vengeance against their perceived enemies if he gets back into office and maybe to be ready to commit that violence if he doesn't. Meanwhile, the allegedly normal news media seems to give more of a shit about who Joe Biden's fucking dog bit than that the former president keeps saying shoplifters should be executed without trial. 

As I said, the problem with the bloody detritus left behind after the clown car is done being wrecked is that you need to get it out of the way and get the road open again. And that's gonna fall to Democrats because we're the goddamn cleaning crew. With an assist from congressional Democrats,  Clinton cleaned up after Reagan/Bush, Obama cleaned up after Bush, Jr, and Biden cleaned up after Trump. The difference now is that Trump and the Trumpians all crawled out of one wrecked clown car and immediately got into another one and now are making a mess again on the road that Democrats just fucking cleared. (Okay, I might need to let this metaphor go.)

Lemme put this simply: The Republican Party is no longer a legitimate national party. It is beholden to one man without whom most of the people who have supported the party the last few years would go back to crouching in their dirt holes, masturbating to murder porn and sending out anti-Semitic memes. I mean, they still do that now, but they also vote because of Trump. No Trump and no reason to vote. And smart Republicans know this, so that leaves them with a choice: stay on that imploding Trump train until the bitter end and hope you'll survive or jump off and have some goddamn dignity without being re-elected. 

Or maybe there's another possibility, especially for the 18 Republicans in districts that Biden won: join the clean-up crew. Go independent and caucus with Democrats or just outright switch parties. It just take a few to switch control of the House of Representatives. Say you did it because you want to get shit done and you're tired of working with people who ought to be institutionalized. You're sick of Marjorie Taylor Greene's protein drink farts and Jim Jordan's flop sweat smell on his polyester shirts. Who could blame you? Otherwise we're stuck with the screaming clowns until at least January 2025.

20 Years of Rude Punditry: This One's Kind of About You

Possibly the wildest thing is when someone says they have been reading this here blog since the beginning or near the beginning and have been following it for the last 20 years. I'll tell you why:

When I was a kid, my demented fuckin' father, who blessed and cursed me with his skewed, angry perspective on the world, especially his general belief that the wealthy were the enemy, used to get a bunch of newspapers every goddamn day: the Daily Advertiser (from Lafayette, Louisiana, hometown paper), the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and two Houston papers, the Post and the Chronicle. What this did was give me access to a bunch of the great columnists of the late-ish 20th century, from Mike Royko to Molly Ivins to Jack Anderson to Clarence Page to Ellen Goodman. I was reading Art Buchwald, Jimmy Breslin, and Anna Quindlen, and it wasn't enough for me to read their work in the papers. I'd go back and read books of their gathered older columns, which gave me a way of seeing history and learning how to fuck with people in power. This coincided with my love of Doonesbury, and I got all of Garry Trudeau's earlier books, learning about Nixon and the Vietnam War through the eyes of Mike and Mark and Duke and Joanie and Zonker. I continued this obsessive engorging of perspectives even after my father died when I was 13. I bought the papers myself or went to the library and read them. For years. For decades, in some cases. I found my beliefs by reading the Village Voice and Nat Hentoff, who was a hero of mine for while in his diehard faith in the First Amendment. I expanded to The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, and the American Prospect. I blew the doors of my mind further open. And when I was able to get online, I expanded that to New York Times columnists, to writers who weren't so white and so male, and, one of my personal favorites who you might not know, Mark Morford from the San Francisco papers, whose loose stream-of-consciousness style while still saying the most savage things about political motherfuckers inspired my approach to writing this shit. I honestly cannot list all the writers and commentators who influenced me, and I haven't even mentioned Hunter S. Thompson, let alone the authors and poets and playwrights and comedians who are part of the verbal gumbo I try to cook up.

So when someone says they've read me for years? It's humbling because it puts me, in some small way, in the category of so many of the writers who were my unacknowledged teachers for years. It's fucking amazing. And I may not have gotten or ever get rich enough for my father to have hated from my writing, but it's just fucking cool to have lasted this long and to have fellow travelers along with me. 

As hard as doing this is, even now, when I do it only once a week here and once a week over at the Patreon, along with all the tweets, yes, it is hard, I can unabashedly say that I am grateful for your eyeballs and your brains and for clicking over here, even if it's just every once in a while thinking, "Oh, yeah, I wonder what that asshole is talking about lately." 

If I've helped keep you sane, as many of you tell me, well, shit, that's a life well-lived. I don't think I have 20 more years of this left in me. But let's ride this weird, crazy train as long as we can and see where the track leads us.

20 Years of Rude Punditry: The AMA Part of It

If yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the debut of this here blog (or "newsletter," if you wanna sound classy), today marks the 20th of the first proper post, which, interestingly, is more like a series of tweets (although I was here before Twitterx. Actually, now that I think about it, I was here before YouTube, before Facebook, hell, before Breitbart). It was a crude version of the crudeness to follow.

Lemme get the money part of things out of the way here. One of the big changes in the last few years is the ability to actually make some scratch on this stuff without allowing advertisers to put bullshit on your website. I do Patreon (for now), and if you subscribe there, you get extra posts, occasional uncensored versions of the videos I've been doing for the Political Voices Network, and other stuff. I'm a bit more personal there, and I do some deep dives into fascist websites and other shit. If you're gonna pay, I'm gonna work for it. 

You can do it at the $1, $3, $5, or $10 levels or even $100 if you're rich and insane (or extraordinarily kind - it's a fine line). And you can pay it monthly or annually. One more extra: a great community of readers who comment regularly on the posts, sometimes offering great takes, sometimes sanely disagreeing. It's way more fun than I thought it would be.

And I should mention that the old Donation button through PayPal is still up here if you just wanna toss a couple of shekels in the bucket and be on your way. 

Okay, let's go to the fun stuff. I asked on Twitterx and Threads and BlueSky for questions, and, damn, nice job everyone. I said AMA, and, goddamn, now I better answer. So away we go:

Since a bunch of you are Steph heads, you asked how I got involved with Ms. Stephanie Miller and her delicious, daily radio orgy. Kind of simple really: In the summer of 2009, I heard she was reading my posts on the air, so I got in touch and said, "Well, shit, if you're using my stuff, why not have me on?" I had to make all kinds of promises to be FCC compliant (which I've only fucked up twice in over 14 years). We discovered on the first time I appeared that the sexual tension between Steph and me was so intense that I've heard listeners spontaneously orgasmed, which made things extra awkward if they were already at work. Thus a long-term relationship was born. (Sincere note: Steph, Chris, Jody, Travis, Sean, and everyone I've met through the show are just terrific and smart people.)

Several of you wanna know what my employer, the City University of New York, thinks about me doing this gig. That's a good question, considering how many professors have gotten in trouble for shit they say on blogs, social media, or comment threads. But I'm a lucky motherfucker: a whole lot of my higher-ups are regular readers. When I did my first show back in 2005, the Provost congratulated me. I got tenure, in part, from the positive reaction to that show. I have a couple of rules: I don't shit where I eat (which means that if I have an issue at my daytime job, I keep it at my daytime job). I don't bring it into the classroom unless it's relevant (like if I teach writing solo shows, yeah, I'm gonna fuckin' talk about my solo shows). If a student has googled me and asks, I'll tell them. In fact, if anyone wants to talk politics because they know I do this, I'm more than happy to get into it.

Every now and then, some fucknut will contact the college president or dean or someone and say that I'm immoral or I'm trying to pervert minds or just that I'm an asshole, citing something I wrote that upset them. When I wrote something against Catholicism, this guy went on the warpath to say I'm bigoted and needed to be fired. The Provost called me and said, "What's this about?" I explained and it was done. It's good to have a strong union. It's good to work for people who actually think professors are allowed to have opinions. 

Here's an interesting question: "Who is the absolute worst person you’ve ever written about?" It might be recency bias, but I truly think it's Donald Trump. I mean, it's tempting to say Karl Rove, who was the architect of so much of our path to political damnation. I could easily say George W. Bush, who bumblefucked his way through crisis after crisis, doing the bidding of truly evil fucks, like Dick Cheney (also in the top five). But Trump has done so much damage to the American psyche, contorting the febrile brains of millions of people into releasing their racist, hateful ids and pushing them to committing or contemplating mass violence. Trump's the most dangerous motherfucker of all the motherfuckers because he's not seen as a politician. He's seen as a prophet, and he knows it, so he's gonna manipulate the idiot hordes to give him their cash and do his vile bidding until he's locked away or dead.

Someone asked if there are any posts where I might have gone too far. Nah. I regret being wrong sometimes. And there are a couple of posts that I think are extravagantly dark. There's the one where Donald Rumsfeld keeps a drawer of the mummified dicks of dead soldiers. Or the one where Dick Cheney masturbated at Auschwitz. More recently, there's the one where Tucker Carlson does autoerotic asphyxiation to images of the war in Ukraine. I guess one I might take back is where I was trying for parody with the "Modest Proposal" title, but it didn't come across as parody and it just sounds like I want Donald Trump to kill himself. But if I started deleting ones where I thought the jokes didn't work, I'd be here for days. 

I'll end here by bringing up something I bet a lot of you forgot about or never knew. When I went to the Bonnaroo Music Festival for a few years, I wrote a series of fictional posts about the event turning into a zombie apocalypse or environmental horror movie. Rude at Bonnaroo was a combination of exhaustion, drugs, and sun madness, and it's about as weird as my brain gets, and, yet, there's still a pretty good zombie story in there. Dive in and enjoy.

More tomorrow to round this celebration out.

20 Years of Rude Punditry: What the Hell Did I Do With My Life?

So here we are, all together again, old friends who once had repeated orgies together, copious nights of copulation under the influence of everything from pure, uncut horniness to delicious-feeling molly (which we used to call Ecstasy which we used to call X), balling madly against the madness of the political realm around us that degraded us and elevated us in unequal measure. Now, in this new era we're damned to live through, we look at each other across the table in this bar with a bit of shame, a bit of regret, and more than a bit of lingering longing. 

Twenty years ago, I started this goddamned blog as an outlet for a rage that I was feeling about the crimes of the Bush administration. As conservatives indulged in a new McCarthyism, this time based on how much you worshipped the war machine and the bullshit anti-terrorist laws. If you didn't sufficiently show deference to authoritarian and imperial impulses, you were labeled an enemy. Fuck that, I thought. And fuck the people involved. 

It was also a time where the writing side of the political and critical internet was reaching its full potential, a democratization of voices who would have never had the chance to be heard by an elitist media. I discovered people like Josh Marshall, Glenn Greenwald (yeah, I know, but he was something early on), Lindsey Beyerstein, Marcy Wheeler, Shark Fu, all the original Daily Kos writers like Steve Gilliard and Billmon, Atrios, and more. I was reading amazingly irreverent, hysterical, and insightful websites like Fafblog, The Onion, and Dumbass and the Fag (which you can't find anywhere but was a hilariously savage movie review blog and don't get mad at me - I didn't name it). Some of those writers are dead online and in real life, some went mainstream, some plug away like me. 

I've told this story before, but I was inspired to finally jump into all this because of how Al Franken was being excoriated on the right for his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. He was being accused of "lowering political discourse," and when I read his book I thought, "Well, that's a funny and occasionally crude attack on conservatism." As far as its discourse, it wasn't anything worse than what Rush Limbaugh had been doing for years ("Radio abortions," anyone?). 

In the 1990s, I had written a Limbaugh parody, "The Rich Flemball Show," for a radio drama program I produced in Knoxville, Tennessee (brag: Radio Free Theatre was the top show on the college station, which had a big audience). I also had written political scripts, like one where pre-inferno Branch Davidians took over the station and forced us to perform a play in rhymed couplets about Bill and Hillary Clinton giving the country over to David Koresh (yeah, drugs are a helluva drug). I could go on, but suffice to say that I had been writing this kind of shit for a long time. 

So I started this because I thought, regarding Franken's book, "You think that's lowering political discourse? I'll show you lowering political discourse." And away we went. 

In 2003, it was the Wild West out here in what I called "Blogsylvania." I staked out a claim as that asshole writing pornographic, scatological imagery as political analysis. And there really wasn't anyone doing things in the way I was: I simply wanted to talk to readers like we were hanging out in a bar, a couple of drinks in, trying to make each other understand where we're coming from. If it involved lots of ass fucking (consensual and non-consensual), well, that's how I fuckin' talked.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that, for a couple of years, if you googled the words "motherfucker," "cocksucker," or "cunt," this blog was in the top ten suggested websites. I even made it to number one a couple of times on two of those words. And, yes, I am proud of that, although I feel bad for the people googling, "cocksucker" and clicking on my blog, only to read about Karl Rove getting head from an imprisoned leather slave. Although I'd like to think you could occasionally masturbate to my writing. 

The reason why the first 15 years or so are in third person (as in "The Rude Pundit believes cocaine gives him superpowers") is that I had thought of writing it like I was Boswell and the Rude Pundit was my Samuel Johnson. Sure, I was taking a lot from my own life, but I was playing with a form (one that Wonkette would also use a few months later). I gave it up during the Trump administration because it seemed insincere, like I was lying to you, and kind of douchey (although it still works for Wonkette). And the reason I'm "Rude One" as the signed name is because this was supposed to be a group blog, with "Rude Two," etc. Except everyone except Two bailed quickly and then Two moved on. But it worked, even if it wasn't the play on words I had meant it to be.

I've been here a long fucking time. I've written nearly five thousand posts, well over 2 million words. I've gotten a book with two editions out of it. A few successful stage shows. An audio version of one of those shows. Media appearances, with occasional surfacings in the mainstream. A podcast or two. A Patreon where those who can pay a little bit for extra rude bits.

And I've had amazing readers come and go through the years (as well as some absolute twatmites), with a whole lot of you weirdly reading this filth for way too long. I'm shocked and grateful as the first time I looked at my readership and saw 10 people had clicked on me. The day I saw I had 1000 readers was like a blow-out-the-back-walls orgasm. Shit, there have been over 32 million clicks, and I'm sure at least a couple stayed and read a thing or two. I still get over 100k a month, which isn't bad now that I just post once a week. Crazy. Really fucking crazy. I can never be grateful enough.

I asked if you wanted to know anything, and I've gotten a fuckton of questions on Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky, and I'll try to answer them all over the next couple of days. Feel free to ask more. 

One that I've gotten more than any other are what are my favorite posts. There are way too fucking many to limit it to 5 or 10. So I'll give you a few from the first couple of years today. 

The one on Reagan's death. It was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's savage takedown of Richard Nixon, and I felt like Reagan was the founding supervillain of my life, and I hated seeing him get lionized like he was anything other than the planter of our seeds of civil destruction.

The one on Bush's re-election. Sometimes, I try for something different. I've always said that "rudeness" isn't just a well-crafted use of the work "cockknob." No, sometimes you have to express degradation in a way that is more artful. Plus, I love quoting John Dos Passos.

The one where I visited New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina. This was as personal as shit gets. The Bush administration's inaction and years of neglect had fucked over some of the most vulnerable people in places where I lived and love. It still staggers me to think about that visit.

The one where Karl Rove's leather slave escapes. Karl Rove's leather slave, who was held in a basment in the White House, comes up all the time for old time readers, like he's a character on a show that left way too early. I'm still not gonna explain the metaphor (even though I think it's pretty obvious). I kept waiting to set him free, and when the Democrats overwhelmingly took back Congress in 2006, it seemed ideal. 

The first one where 9/11 is a person. Because personifying use and abuse of that date just seemed poignant to me. 

Let me answer one more question today: I only post once a week here (and once a week over on Patreon, hint, hint) because of Twitter or X or whatever. As that hellsite demanded more time, I had to make some strategic choices since I have my other career as a professor. But it's interesting: the rise of Substack "newsletters" (which, fuck you, are blogs) has drawn interest back to longer pieces. So we'll see. I've been courted to head over there. I'm thinking about it.

Ok. This self-indulgent shit has gone on long enough. We can toss back some whiskeys at the bar. We can head back to my place after for crazed sheet-rolling after we argue about whether I've gone soft or too cynical or too complacent. And we can get up tomorrow and I'll talk about it some more. 

John Fetterman's Shorts and Hoodie Are Not the Real Threats to Civility

In the discourse around what hoodie and shorts aficionado Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, wears on the floor of the Senate, one theme comes out again and again: we used to expect better from our elected officials. It's led normally not-entirely nutzoid writers to opine stupidly. Kathleen Parker (motto: "Three cosmos to the right of Maureen Dowd") writes in her Washington Post "column" (if by "column," you mean, "A train wreck that's been allowed to just sit there so long that the corpses stink"),  "As little as I have loved Republicans the past few years, coinciding with the rise of our own little autocrat, at least Donald Trump knows how to dress." 

As gut-churningly galling as that sentence is, she follows it with "Clothes might not make the man or woman, but they do tell us a great deal about them." Do they, Kathleen Parker? What did Trump's ill-fitting, cheap-ass suits and ties-down-to-his-dick tell us about him? Then it gets even more fucking childish as she talks about how her father complained about how people used to dress nicely everywhere, and, heavens to Betsy, at Westminster Cathedral, she saw some woman dressed like "she was taking a quick break from the trade" (which I think means like a prostitute). Keep it classy, Kath.

Well, if we're gonna talk about how shit used to be, let's expand beyond clothing. I remember when it would have been a big fucking deal when a former president who is the current frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2024 stated that he believed that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed for treason. That's the message that Donald Trump sent out over Truth Toilet this week, no doubt while dressed impeccably over his diaper and Spanx, in response to an Atlantic article on Gen. Mark Milley, who is stepping down as Chair of the Joint Chiefs. In it, Milley says that he told his Chinese counterparts not to worry about the bluster coming from Trump, who really was the Commander-in-Chief of the entire military, in order to prevent a stupid war. For Trump and others, that was treasonous, while for most of us normal human beings, it was cold assurance that we wouldn't fight this time just so that a man-baby could see things go "boom." 

And, by the way, I remember when it would have been a big fucking deal if we learned the frontrunner for a party's nomination for president shit all over a wounded veteran or disparaged an entire US territory as not being part of the US, both of which are also in the article.

But we're apparently now numb to this kind of umbrage, this flouting of convention, this disrespect to tradition. We're supposed to dismiss it as more Trumpian bluster and pretend it's what we're putting up with until he loses next year. How did that work out in 2016? How did that work out when we were told he would just fume for a bit about losing the 2020 election and then accept his loss? Used to be the media would have relentlessly hounded Trump and his vile supporters to see if they really believed a decorated, celebrated four-star general should face the firing squad. It would have been a dividing line between sane and insane. Instead, it's just Tuesday. And this could go for a thousand other attacks on civility, decorum, and decency from Trump.

You see, when you start mouthing off about all the traditions that Sen. Fetterman is stepping on, you open yourself up for questioning about all the other things we've decided are normal now. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, believe it or not, is a member of Congress despite, to all appearances, being a meth-addicted simian of some kind, called President Biden an "old fart" in response to a Biden tweet. That was on her official congressional account, not her personal one. She also showed a photo that included the genitals of the president's son in a real congressional hearing. What was so important to the safety and prosperity of the United States that Hunter Biden's pretty decent penis needed to be seen by the world and become part of the congressional record and thus archived forever so alien archeologists digging through the Atlantis-like ruins of a sunken Washington, DC can find it and think, "This not-bad penis must have ended it all"? Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. 

Every fucking day we get another indecency from the GOP, another threat of a shutdown or of shooting migrants seeking asylum or of arresting women trying to cross from their brutally cruel state to another in order to get an abortion so they don't die or of George Santos being there. Every fucking day they break all the guardrails of civility and humanity, and then they want us to get angry because John Fetterman doesn't like wearing suits and Chuck Schumer changed an unofficial dress code to allow him not to for quick votes.

Just fuck off. This is another thing that conservatives with one or two rational cells left believe they can control while the out-of-control conservative animals run around thrusting their flag-colored asses in our faces, hooting and happy that they can shut shit down, and telling us that's patriotism. Some on these assholes bitched about Ukrainian President Zelensky wearing his combat-ready outfit to speak to the Senate this week. It's all just an excuse to degrade something that threatens them.

There's one criticism of Fetterman that I think is quaint in its old school hysteria. Barking mad Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins, who looks like a thumb and dresses like he's running a the shittiest brothel in Deadwood, said that Fetterman is "a communist and he’s demonstrating his allegiance to Marxist principles by wearing 'workers clothes.'" I love that idea. Fetterman should wear a Che Guevara hoodie next time.

MAGAism Was Always Terrorism

In a forthcoming book by McKay Coppins, excerpted in The Atlantic, retiring Senator Mitt Romney, who, one should never forget, is an entirely shitty human being and a blithering dickhead, pointed out something that should have been patently obvious. He said that prior to January 6, 2021, "elected Republicans feared a political backlash from their base. But after January 6, a new, more existential brand of cowardice had emerged. One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety." 

And "Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right." They're not talking about crazed leftists going all Bolshevik on their asses. It's the fucking MAGA cretins who are murdery. They're the ones, primarily, who call in the death threats and bomb threats and show up at the houses of Democrats, armed to the tits with guns and ammo because open carry.

Romney himself pays, he claims, $5000 a day in security to prevent those same cretins from 2nd Amendmenting him or his family. And Romney's rich, so he can afford that $150k a month. I don't think I'm taking a particularly brave stand in declaring that it's bullshit that politicians of any persuasion should have to deal with some asshole telling them where their children live and how they're going to be murdered. 

Put this in context: According to Romney (and others), the reason that Donald Trump was not removed from office is because Republicans were scared of the very white people they declare are the heart and soul of the country, the "real Americans," if you will. They were afraid that these "patriots," as more than one obsequious jellyfish has called them, will hang them or gun their children down in vengeance. The terrorists were protecting their terrorist leader. Think of how many decisions have been made because of this fear.

What's most idiotic here is the way that people are acting shocked about this "revelation." Hell, I've been writing about it since at least 2017. This isn't a revelation. It's a confirmation. What we should be saying is how this is pure cowardice, an excuse to make an easy choice to do nothing. The patriotic act would have been for Republicans to say, "Fuck you, you fucking creeps. He's guilty and an asshole. Fuck him and fuck you again." The representatives who did this likely would have lost re-election (like Liz Cheney) because of the MAGA animals, but at the very least you could have said you did the right fucking thing and you didn't cower while crazy motherfuckers wrecked the joint. Except, of course, for the terrorists in Congress who want to see the whole joint crumble. (And let's be clear: if you were happy to go along with things like the bullshit wall and the bullshit Muslim ban and other Trumpian bullshit, you empowered him and his cretins.)

Trump is counting on his terrorists to fuck up any chance of a genuine trial occurring. In his motion requesting that the judge in DC get Trump to shut the fuck up sometimes, Special Counsel Jack Smith (which, despite what Trump says, is his real name) is very clear about the terrorism that Trump has already caused. When it came to Trump lying about election interference, "the defendant engendered widespread mistrust in the administration of the election, and the individuals whom he targeted were subject to threats and harassment...The defendant knows that when he publicly attacks individuals and institutions, he inspires others to perpetrate threats and harassment against his targets." Smith says that witnesses and prosecutors in the case are all now subject to threats because of how Trump is deliberately degrading them. He is also concerned that the threat of being a target of harassment and possible violence by the MAGA terrorists will taint the jury pool. So, for fuck's sake, make this orange shit lump close his asshole mouth.

This is how we live now, and most of us pretend we don't. We live in a time where a large terrorist movement, with just a few active but with millions of supporters, can control how the country is run. And if we don't stop it by imprisoning its leader and his lieutenants, then the terrorists are not going to stop.

Democrats Are Bitch-Slapping Republicans and It Feels So Good

I know we like to insist that Democrats are generally milquetoast and rational to a fault when they respond to the wrongs that are done to them. When Sen. Dick Durbin can praise the absolutely bullshit blue slip rule, which is not a requirement on what underwear Ted Cruz has to wear but is instead a way that a single senator can shitcan a judicial nominee and has been ludicrously abused by Republicans, we're into a realm where Democrats often fight with one hand tied behind their back and one foot nailed to the ground.

But this week, we've had a couple of examples of Democrats fucking done with GOP bullshit. They take off the gloves and just beat the shit out of very specific Republicans while, at the same time, implicating the entirety of the party. They are out of fucks, and it's glorious to see.

First, Fulton County Fani Willis delivered an all-time forced fisting of House Judiciary Chair Jim "I've Already Tried Bleaching the Yellowed Sweat Stains Out of My Shirt's Armpits" Jordan yesterday. Jordan had sent Willis a letter accusing her and her office of all kinds of fuckery with its indictments of Donald Trump and his lickspittles and lawyers for attempting to dick over the people of Georgia. Jordan wrote, "Your indictment and prosecution implicate substantial federal interests, and the circumstances surrounding your actions raise serious concerns about whether they are politically motivated." The letter tried to sound all respectable and legalistic as it basically said that Willis just wanted to make money and get reelected off the case and that, oh, sure, the federal government should conduct oversight. 

It also asked that Willis produce a shit-ton of documents for the committee, including "All documents and communications between or among the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office and DOJ and its components, including but not limited to the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, referring or relating to your office’s investigation of President Donald Trump or any of the other eighteen individuals against whom charges were brought in the indictment discussed above." 

The deadline for those documents was yesterday. Instead, Willis sent Jordan a beatdown. 

From the beginning, Willis accuses Jordan of, basically, obstruction of justice: "[The letter's] obvious purpose is to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous partisan misrepresentations." And then it goes on for 9 pages about what a fucking asshole Jim Jordan is. It's Willis dog-walking Jordan around and showing him all of his failures and stupidity and rubbing his nose in it. She calls him out on issues of federalism, on separation of powers, and more, smacking him with "Your public statements and your letter itself make clear that you lack any legitimate legislative purpose for that inquiry: your job description as a legislator does not include criminal law enforcement, nor does it include supervising a specific criminal trial because you believe that doing so will promote your partisan political objectives." Goddamn, that's how you call the devil "the devil."

But then she gets to directly responding to some of the things that Jordan alleges, and that's when she starts repeatedly kicking him in his tiny balls from behind, making sure he feels that in his taint. Shit gets personal.

"Chairman Jordan, I tell people often 'deal with reality or reality will deal with you.' It is time that you deal with some basic realities," she writes, and, man, as someone who has long said that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is how much they act on things within reality, it's practically porn to me. "Face this reality, Chairman Jordan," she continues, "the select group of defendants who you fret over in my jurisdiction are like every other defendant, entitled to no worse or better treatment than any other American citizen." She fuckin' bold-faced and italicized that, as she did with "Here is another reality you must face: Those who wish to avoid felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia — including violations of Georgia RICO law — should not commit felonies in Fulton County, Georgia." That's pretty much the font equivalent of shoving it up his ass so far that she could squeeze his heart.

Willis makes quick business of the utter nonsense that whether or not Trump is running for president has any bearing on his prosecution. Basically, she writes, "Yeah, fuck that noise." Honestly, it's like she's getting more and more geared up as she goes. She writes, "Your letter makes clear that you lack a basic understanding of the law, its practice, and the ethical obligations of attorneys generally and prosecutors specifically" before explaining the role of a prosecutor. She goes through other ways in which Jordan is a goddamn tool, including specifying how her office uses federal funding on rape cases. And tell me you don't feel a tingle in your nethers when you read, "For a more thorough understanding of Georgia’s RICO statute, its application and similar laws in other states, I encourage you to read 'RICO State-by-State.' As a non-member of the bar, you can purchase a copy for two hundred forty-nine dollars [$249]." Jordan never even took the bar exam after law school, the fuckin' loser.

She saves the biggest middle finger for the end. The letter concludes with Willis making suggestions on what Congress could be doing, which is somewhere between "oh, just fuck off forever, you sad rape enabler" and "go fuck yourself if you're not gonna make yourself even minimally useful." She asks for more federal funding for prosecutors and testing rape kits and programs for young offenders and crime labs. That's all sensible, as is her final suggestion: "As it seems you have a personal interest in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, you should consider directing the USDOJ to investigate the racist threats that have come to my staff and me because of this investigation. For your information, I am attaching ten examples of threats this office has received." 

Then she brings it all home by showing just how sick of this shit she is: "I am providing these examples to give you a window into what has happened to my staff and me as I keep the promise of my oath to the United States and Georgia Constitutions and do not allow myself to be bullied and threatened by Members of Congress, local elected officials, or others who believe lady justice should not be blind and that America has different laws for different citizens." It's gotta suck for Jordan that she's not only not afraid, but she's willing to utterly, publicly decimate him. 

It's just gonna be embarrassing when Jordan decides to escalate this and goes on Jesse Watters's nightly hour of conspiracy theories and pure lies or wherever to perspire and spit about Willis. Willis won't care. She's gonna pants all these motherfuckers and point out how tiny their dicks are.

One more Democrat worth mentioning: Sen. John Fetterman, a sumbitch who has been through hell physically and emotionally and lost his bag of fucks a long time ago, was asked by reporters about Republicans threatening to impeach President Biden. Mincing no words, Fetterman said, "Go ahead and do it, I dare you, If you're gonna keep threatening it, then go ahead, just do it...It would just be like a big circlejerk on the fringe right. Your man has what, three or four indictments now? Sometimes you just gotta, you know, call their bullshit."

Fetterman didn't hold back when asked about a possible indictment for Hunter Biden, saying, "They have a fetish for Hunter Biden. And if they really want to keep going at it, that's up to them, but he's not... on the ballot."

Finally, Fetterman was asked about a rail safety bill that he was supposed to be working on with Republican Senator J.D. "Meemaw wouldn't recognize me" Vance. The Pennsylvania senator said that Vance was too busy working on a bill to ban mask mandates and was "fixated...on silly performance art" that will never pass instead of doing something that might actually help people.

Can we please have more bitch-slappings like this? Can we get it on promoting how Democrats fucking saved the US economy and made it stronger? Can we get it on immigration and trans rights and more? Just shove Republicans against the wall, rhetorically, and bitch-slap them back and forth. Rhetorically. Of course.

A Poem for the Laborers

"I Want"

by Jordan Jace

I want to write poems for construction workers and dreamers

For revolutionaries

For deadbeats and those on the low

I never want to ask please fix us all

I want for us to want

to patch every heart

and pave every road

and destroy every system

that has ever left us

broken. I want to sing

like frank ocean, like wonder

like sonder, like mereba, like the sea

I want to recite the line

Took the wretched out the earth

Called it baby fanon,

I want to call someone baby.

I want to stop smoking because I want to live,

I can only love my comrades if I live,

and I want to clean my room,

I want to clean my room every week

and make my bed and put peppermint in my hair

to stop needing my inhalers

and to inhale solidarity, and to eat the rich,

I want to eat the rich, to cancel the rents,

to know my neighbors

and to know my neighbors

are safe. I want to move like water, to move

from unity to struggle to unity,

to have no perfect world we haven’t fought for. 

They're Killing New College Because They Can

The American right always has some fake intellectual to give cover to the destructive, hateful things it believes. They always find someone who gives the racist or xenophobic or homophobic fuckery an imprimatur of rationality. And then everyone on the right will celebrate that fake intellectual and his (and it's almost always "his") popularity will soar to the point that even those not swimming in the political effluvia we are all damned to drown in will come to believe what the fake intellectual is saying. Then the fake shit the fake intellectual says will become seen as a valid point of view instead of utter garbage foisted on us by a bulldozer shoving bullshit from one place to another without burying it. For years, for instance, we have had to hear from the bare handful of "scientists" who claim climate change isn't "real" when the overwhelming, peer-reviewed, and incredibly well-researched truth is...well, fuck, just watch the Weather Channel for ten minutes. 

Christopher Rufo is another one of those conservative snake oil hawkers gathering up the rubes to watch his snappy patter. He's a fascist ideologue who doesn't actually know shit about the topics he writes about, but because his perspective aids and abets what the savages in the GOP want to do to public education, they cheer him as authentic when he's fake. And dumb. Just so fucking dumb. He's never worked at a college or university until Florida governor and soon-to-be ex-presidential candidate Ron DeSantis appointed him to the board of trustees of New College in Sarasota. Yet he's treated as an expert on the purpose and function of higher education. It's not just that he opposes majors and courses that have been around for decades, like gender studies, queer studies, and African American studies (unless taught in an anodyne, useless way). That's typical of anti-progressive education criticism. No, it's what he believes is the place and function of a public university in the larger governmental ecosystem that makes him more dangerous than your average cranky dumbass screaming about critical race theory (prompted mostly by Rufo): the university is merely an extension of government and thus subject to total government control, First Amendment be damned.

Here's what Rufo said recently on Twixter: "Public universities are not a 'free marketplace of ideas'; they are a government-run cartel with control over 75 percent of the higher education market. They are governed by the laws of the republic, not the laws of supply and demand. Ultimately, the voters decide. Left-wing ideologues spent the past fifty years hijacking the public universities and transforming them into vehicles of partisan activism, not centers of scholarship and knowledge. They want politics? Let them have politics. There is no constitutional right to gender studies departments in public universities. The public gets to decide the mission and priorities of the public institutions—otherwise, it's bureaucratic tyranny."

Lemme just give you the biggest idiocies in this. First, as with most things, universities are funded by many sources, not just the "government." Everything is governed by "the laws of the republic," even capitalism. The "public" when it comes to "public universities" includes the students, virtually all of whom are of voting age, and their say matters, too. And as far as a "free marketplace of ideas," yeah, that's the purpose of a university. Otherwise, it's just a pure propaganda outlet. What is a greater demonstration of a dedication to free speech than to let adults teach and learn ideas that might challenge political dogma? No one is forcing them post-college to have to believe what they learned in any of their courses.

The New College of Florida is a test case for Rufo and his acolytes, as well as the anti-progressive forces who believe that most every university is just a training ground for communist takeover of the United States, a notion that's so fucking wrongheaded, considering half of students major in Business, Health, Engineering, Biology, and Computer/Information Science, that it should be laughed out of the discourse. The New College trustees appointed by future Senate candidate DeSantis were more or less tasked with destroying a small liberal arts college just to show they could, as a warning to every other institution. They fired the president and cut the office of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They got rid of gender-neutral signs on bathrooms. They put Bible verses on coffee cups at the school cafeteria. They shut the Pride dorm and eliminated a learning community for African studies. They have voted to eliminate gender studies as a department and major. They changed commencement, where students used to dress festively and extravagantly, forcing graduates to wear caps and gowns, and made Dr. Scott Atlas, a crackpot adviser to President Trump, the speaker. The students held an alternate graduation as a protest at the Sarasota Museum of Art. 

All these things, big and small, are just the start. They hired a new baseball coach and recruited athletes for a tiny school that doesn't even have a field, literally dumbing down the college to do it. They kicked seniors out of the best dorms to make rooms for athletes. Some students were forced to live in a hotel by the airport with a shitty shuttle schedule because it's an hour's walk from campus. They are, they promise, just getting started in tearing down a well-ranked college and remaking it in their image. A third of the faculty just fuckin' quit, leaving a ton of classes canceled, but leaving a ton of spots for the "right" kind of faculty to be hired. 

Rufo himself hasn't been coy about his goal. He wants to turn public universities into MAGA-humping boot camps for future fascists of America. And he's upset that New College had more women than men, saying it was a "social justice ghetto." By bringing in male athletes, Rufo says he wants to balance things sex-wise because it's good for the culture of the college. If your head just exploded as you screamed, "That's what affirmative action says, too, and you fuckers got that shitcanned!" well, you're joining me in that cry of frustration. 

If these conservatives were actually concerned with the free exchange of ideas, they could have endowed chairs for professors with their point of view. They could have established a Department of Conservative Studies or some such shit. They could have seen how that does. But, see, despite what Rufo tweeted up above there, supply and demand do matter. If a major has no students in it, it will cease existing. Colleges make those decisions all the time. But they're not after competing with progressive and liberal approaches to the, you know, liberal arts. They're not after teaching people to think critically about the world around them and about their leaders. They're after strict adherence to a Christian nationalist perspective on the world. Diversity is just another word for "Satan." 

But what do I know. I've only been a professor for roughly 30 years at public universities. Or maybe I might have more fucking insight than a greedy, attention-hungry dilettante with delusions of intellect.