127 Comments
Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Although the polls still show Harris and Trump neck-and-neck in the race, I'm hoping there's a huge groundswell of women and previously disaffected voters who turn out in force for Harris. Added bonus would be if a crushing Harris victory turns into a massive blue wave that actually does reduce the GOP to rump status!

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico, kill the filibuster, expand the Court....stop, I'm getting too giddy.

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If we keep the Senate, I'd be happy with killing the fillibuster. That would make so many, many things possible.

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"Do the Kilibuster! Do it NOW!"

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I’m hoping a cocaine tree grows in my backyard, and a bunch of hookers move in next door.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm dreaming the impossible dream--the one where I lose 40 pounds.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Cocaine tree, very pretty

Though its growing season is short

And the fruit of the cocaine tree

Is quite enjoyable to snort

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Holy Crap!

Here's the sacka marks – just take 'em!

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I think that I shall never see

A lovelier plant than Cocaine Tree

A tree whose sweat-dewed brow is prest

Against Delorean’s metal breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And, jittery, lifts her arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

Large-pupiled robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Until it’s snorted up again.

Poems are only for fools like me,

But all the world snorts Cocaine Tree

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Gold stars for „large-pupilled robins“

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Sorry pal – Steve's got alla the marks – you'll hafta talk to him about sparin' a couple.

[Note to self: Rattle FedEx cage – where's my overdue complete set of marks??!!]

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Ha, might as well ask Peter Thiel to share some of his lovely, lovely money.

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He's smearin' it around the national park today, apparently. Techbros conferring at Ft Mason about how to dissolve democracy and institute the perfect, AI-infused/enforced corporatism.

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I feel like we’re all your marks

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FFS! Cool it, man! We got 'em right where we want 'em! All set to roll my Cryptomarks By Bern, so you know they're Cherce!

It'll be easy peasy lemon squeezy!

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Bravo!

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Ew

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When I lived in Salt Lake City, there basically was a brothel run out of my apartment complex. Sadly, I did not know that until they were busted

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Sep 5·edited Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Chris Hayes had a bit about the spending by the two campaigns, Trump is being outspent 10 to 1 in Wisconsin, but in Pennsylvania and Georgia he's matching Harris dollar-for-dollar. Hayes pointed out that if you take the red states Trump is all but guaranteed to win, throw in North Carolina (which he won last time) then Pennsylvania and Georgia together put him at exactly 270.

And he'd do it too, that fucker would get exactly the minimum required by law, then go around bragging of his brilliant strategery, how anyone can run up the numbers in the popular-vote totals, but it takes a real GENIUS whose uncle was an MIT professor to game the system and hit the winning number right on the button.

Anyway, that's what motivates me to get out of the house and go knock on some more doors.

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I hear that — he may be spending in certain states, but Trump is all but gone from the campaign trail. A few TV interviews. And the likelihood of him cancelling this week’s debate is still pretty high.

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And yet... Pennsylvania - my new obsession - is within the margin of error and Tubby has a disturbing habit of out-performing his poll numbers.

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That status depends on the voter model used by the pollsters. I do not know if Trump can activate many new voters like he did in 2020. In my red state there is very little Trump momentum certainly as compared to 2016, but Trump will win easily even with abortion on the ballot

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Yes, my own state, Wisconsin, had the highest error in the 2020 election, Biden had a lead in the polls of 8 points before the election and ended up winning by less than a point, only 20,000 votes. Pollsters say they've made corrections since then and that their 2022 results were more accurate, but Tubby wasn't on the ballot then.

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They're already "rump status", if you know what I mean.

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Here's hoping for rump roast on election nite. Stick a fork in 'em!

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And here we are, right back 'round to bacon-deprived transsexuals in the school nurse's office.

Queens Man was right!

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I'm hoping the election results will leave the GOP Whigging out.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

It really is getting harder and harder to believe Jim Dave isn’t some Sacha Baron Cohen type of performance artist, pulling a Borat on the entire conservative movement.

He's out there day after day on the stump, scolding nonstop: “you bitches need to be kept in line, your empty uteri are an abomination that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Vote for cultural learnings of the red states for make benefit glorious Project 2025.”

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

I know, right? JD is almost literally the Mr. C template from Dorothy Thompson’s classic Harper’s essay, “Who Goes Nazi?” https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Thanks, I hadn't seen that before! And this bit about "Young D" is remarkable:

"I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others."

Yep, she even got the first initial right.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

So far my favorite is the one where he condemns the Ivy-League schools who encourage women to spend 90 hours a week in a cubicle at McKinsey instead of pumpin' out the babies. A few observations:

1) So it's OK for men to spend 90 hours a week in a cubicle as long as they keep sendin' home the paychecks? Because that's all men are good for, amirite, guys?

2) My students see a wider range of life choices than "cubicle at McKinsey" and "Baby-pumper." I've got a class this semester where roughly a quarter of the students are CNA's going back to college to become RN's. I didn't ask them about their procreative plans, but some of them did share that THEY ALREADY HAVE KIDS. Crazy, huh?

3) Hey JD, maybe you just went to the wrong college?

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One of the most bizarre aspects of social conservatism is the utter *narrowness* of their vision for human flourishing. Sure, that vision is defined by conservative Christianity to a large extent, but still. Their tunnel vision speaks far more loudly to their adherence to fascistic politics than it does to anything else. Cases in point, Phyllis Schlafly and Amy Coney Barrett. It's fine to go to law school as long as you also have 80 bazillion children and espouse a conservative philosophy.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

It's also another instance of "There must be two buckets" thinking. Didn't go to Yale, and I don't think I even know anyone who did, but I imagine Yale grads do LOTS of things, but NO MUST BE TWO. How else can I sort people out, and sorting people out is my life's work!

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You must fit in the proper little box the Hierarchy has provided for you. Being different is a crime against the Volk.

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These people think "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is an instruction manual.

Periodic reminder that 1948, when "1984" was written, was also the year apartheid became official South African government policy. IOW, they saw the aftermath of the Second World War, concentration camps, and the folly of racial discrimination, and said, "More, please!"

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And the ones who seem to yell "ORWELLIAN!" loudest never seem to have READ the damn thing, much less the context Orwell wrote it in.

The story "Harrison Bergeron" by Vonnegut is dearly adored by Libertarians who're convinced society is being pushed by the "P.C." Left into ineffectual collectivist averageness. I wonder what they'd say if they knew Vonnegut, like Orwell, was a socialist.

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Nineteen Eighty-Four? More like Brave New World. They're the Alphas, of course, you and I are Deltas at best.

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Hey now. South Africa was the site of the original concentration camps, during the second Boer War. The British killed about 48,000 Boers and Natives

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God, Guns, Gluttony

What else is there?

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1) So it's OK for men to spend 90 hours a week in a cubicle as long as they keep sendin' home the paychecks? Because that's all men are good for, amirite, guys?

They also have to send home the sperm

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If a guy's spending 90 hours a week in a cubicle, his wife may not have any problem obtaining semen from a variety of sources, including the pool boy.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

As a native of Columbus, I have always despised the "C-bus" nickname, which was adopted well after my departure and most enthusiastically by douchebags like Vance. Just want to get it on the record.

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I live in a cornfield an hour outside of Columbus. Amongst ourselves we call it " Big City" in hushed reverent tones. None of us have ever been there. A guy I went to school with left out for Columbus one day. Said he was going to see The Man in charge about getting a brain.

We never saw him again.

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Remember Will Geer in "Seconds"?

For some reason that's how I always pictured

Flutchins.

It's not far-fetched to imagine JD Vance ending up as president in a year or two.

Horrifying but not far-fetched. ( Is " near-fetched" a thing? I think I'll try pairing that with " an astute grasp of the obvious" sometime. )

That " The man's a Nazi freak! But he's got a million followers!" Conversation is probably not uncommon.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Yep, they're the same million followers for that other loony-tunes podcast guy you did last week.

These people listen to a LOT of podcasts, it what I'm sayin'.

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Hey! I listen to a LOT of podcasts, and none of them are fash!

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Sep 5·edited Sep 5

I'm sorry, but sacrifices must be made. Kill 'em all, let Pod sort 'em out.

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Sep 5·edited Sep 6

If ya got a dog who chases balls, all of ‘em be near-fetched if I’m throwing’ ‘em, what with the blown shoulder and general degeneration…

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It's an important step in human evolution when the atlatl, forgotten for thousands of years, was repurposed to throw tennis balls at Golden Retrievers.

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Your degeneration

Don't mean a thing to me

Well, actually I hope it works out for you

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Talkin' Bout My Degenerasheeon?

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I didn't die before I got old

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That’s fuckin’ hilarious. And yesterday there was more Vance shooting his mouth off so it’s timely

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

He definitely needs a refresher on the first rule of holes.

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author

That's what inspired me. He just can't stop! You'd think LaCivita would throw a tarp over him or something --

Except maybe the strategy is for JD's ravings to keep the racist incels on board while Tubby does "outreach" by contradicting himself on policy every few days.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

The New York Times covers Tubby's "outreach" to the "Conservative Womens Group" Moms for Liberty, carefully redacts all this most crazy and racist comments, but does find space to mention there were cupcakes and white wine:

https://www.readtpa.com/p/downplaying-their-bigotry-the-new

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Wake me when they report about the lattes and avocado toast – THEN we'll have some pointy talking points!

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Maureen Dowd could get a whole damn column out of the Latte+Avocado toast / cupcakes + white wine divide that is TEARING AMERICA APART.

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Nah, it's the flaky croissants we tear apart...oh, other way 'round...I'll come in again.

Nah, it's the ridiculously-stout and impossible-to-open seal on the chips bags that is tearing us...ah crap – get me rewrite!

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Avocado Klan and the Hollow Toast Points are supposed to be playing Coachella in 2025 if I remember correctly.

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Avocados are more Mexican drug cartels though than the Klan

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

May need to supplement with a view from the upside-down, where the man is regarded with wonderment as a visitor from the shiny future, or so I read. Trump's physical fade may be so pronounced that the impression of active life in the R sector will have to derive from TikToking JD's mossy cheeks and Nefertiti eyes.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

That there are millions of people who look at Donald Trump with awe and respect, it's taken me eight years to come to terms with that. No freakin' way am I gonna believe the same about JD Vance.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

And I'd bet absolutely none of them are Republican officeholders.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

I gotta drop here that those Nefertiti eyes (for which Steve should give you a couple marks) are possibly Jimmy Dimmy's only attractive feature.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

He's got James David eyes...

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Glad you (not me) went there.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Let's wait and see if Randy Rainbow picks it up.

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I’m hearing that down-ballot GOP races are starving for cash, thanks to the New Model RNC siphoning off every last penny for goddess-knows-what. So the plan must be: hope for a TFG win, then dissolve all democratic institutions.

In other news, Baby’s First Beard, podcaster Tim Poole thinks TFG needs to hunt down & execute every Democratic voter in the country, so the Overton window has moved so far towards the Fash that YouTube will still monetize that shit…

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

First, let's kill all the podcasters. Don't tell me there are some good ones, this is an emergency.

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Each case will be handled by a review of ten randomly-sorted episodes. If the fash score = 4 or greater — <gorgeously-manicured finger across the throat>

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

You old softie.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

It's the manicure that makes it work.

Alt.: Ostentatiously-pedicured ninjas with mad toenail skilz.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Fascist Nebbish Tim Pool

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Sep 5·edited Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Some More News DESTROYS Tim Pool! (Am I doin' this right? DESTROY is all-caps, right? Do I get all the clicks now?)

https://youtu.be/uM_zrWT2_bQ

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Here, they are “all of the clicks” counted up nice & tidy

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Nebbish is right. None of these "we're in a civil war" loudmouths walked the walk, puffing out their chests and telling the Feds to come at them. They all meekly posted they'd had no personal knowledge, just as their attorneys advised. "I am but a smol baby bean. How could I possibly know the source my $300,000 monthly income?"

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LOLLLLLLLLOLLLLLLLLOLLLLLLL

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

This reminds me of a Murphy Brown episode I've never been able to forget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAzcHldh62k

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

LOL. I'd never seen this, but Wallace Shawn is superb.

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Tim Poole has bigger problems than the Dems

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Another of JD's Podcast Highlights, the host tells a story about how he went to Minneapolis, and there, right in the heart of the city, there's a place called "Little Mogadishu" and you wouldn't even know you're in America [horrified gasps all around.] He goes on to say people there are "dying in hatchet attacks." JD chimes in, "Yeah, the Left is always calling us racists just because we don't want to die in a hatchet attack." I swear I am not making this up.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

But I bet he's against background checks on hatchets.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Even the sensible dudes that lock 'em in the hatchet safe are too lame for Jimmy Dimmy.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

He would have sent thoughts and prayers to Lizzie Borden's family.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

My first poem that I can recall (for a 7th grade English class):

On August 4th, of ‘92

In old Fall River, Massachu

Lizzie Borden chopped right thru

Her father and her mother too

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

I hope your teacher made a note in your Permanent Record about "Massachu."

Something like, "Keep an eye on this one, likely to be trouble."

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I didn’t have to be a teacher to see trouble a-brewing with that one.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Let's all agree we're just lucky it didn't happen in Hawaii...

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

We in America are one small step away from the kind of berserker racist riots they had last month in the UK, only here we got all kindsa guns.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

"Berserker Racist Riots" have *never really stopped* here. (Heather Heyer's ghost would like a word.)

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Good point.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

"his father insisting the teenager did not have unsupervised access to the family’s guns."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/05/georgia-shooting-apalachee-boy-interviewed

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Apparently Pops (alleged) role modeling of Responsible Gun Ownership was not sufficient to keep his wayward son from carrying on.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Bern should be around later for the proper assignment of the blame.

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Sep 5·edited Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Undoubtedly, but this time he'll be handing out black marks.

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I...I...

I feel so...SEEN!

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No wonder he got charged. He supervised the school attack.

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Holy fuck. Was not expecting that.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

As far as I can tell, most podcasts are produced by people who would otherwise be boring you at a party or talking to themselves in a park.

This has been your old guy comment of the day.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

I think Lily Tomlin once had a joke about pairing up all the people in New York City who are talking to themselves to make it look like they're having a conversation.

So yeah, it's like that.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Nowadays I think people just assume you have a cellphone.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Progress!

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

When cellphones were new and I wasn't planning to get one, I used to joke that I'd buy a cheap phone with no usage plan and hold it up to my ear. I talk to myself a lot and that way, people wouldn't assume I'm nuts.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Ma always said "talk to the most intelligent person in the room" so here I am, forced once again to mumble to myself...

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I had a saying when I saw someone walking down the street, chatting away to no one: "Crazy, or bluetooth?"

Of course, it could be both.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

I must be lucky enough to consistently just happen across the sincerely amusing and interesting ones.

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I always get fooled the people talking on their unseen phones

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

OOF.

And: "We’re not talking enough about fertility in this campaign" suggests Jimmy Dimmy does not notice all the fertilizer that's piling up all 'round him...

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

I want to know why he's not talkin' about the chemicals in the water turnin' the freakin' frogs gay.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Careful now – frogs got agency* too, ya know...

*Kermit never woulda gotta job without the good folks down there at Herps For Hire.

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three marks (with webbed toes)

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Wow, Thanks! It's a regular mark-fest 'round here!

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Questions! A) Is Reiko related to Sneako? and B) can we expect the very pneumatic looking Vance from the header to be pulled down the street by a cadre of high schoolers at this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, as he placidly floats above the crowds?

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

Reality is weirder than your satire. Trump talks to some guy about cocaine? What was that in aid of?

I don't get what's going on with the GOP. Unhinged is an understatement.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

He sure knows a lot about cocaine for someone who famously (supposedly) never did any, not even all those nights in Studio 54 or those days on Pedo Island with Jeffrey Epstein.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

This is a guy who told a Boy Scout Jamboree that if you have a yacht you can do ANYTHING YOU WANT on it.

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

"Have you slept? With a laaady? WHAT'S IT LOIKE?"

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Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

You KNOW how much more I'm gonna say...

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Sep 5·edited Sep 5Liked by Roy Edroso

"What was that in aid of?"

Well, now, if I was one o' them professional pundits, I could spin you a story about how all of this is "outreach to young men."

But who are we kidding? He does this for the only reason he does anything, because it pleases him. In more than 70 years of being pampered and fawned-over, he's never developed the ability to do anything other than indulge his basest impulses.

He likes to talk, at length, to people who will nod and "uh-huh" respectfully and never interrupt. He likes flattery, he likes an audience. This whole business of "running for President" is just an opportunity to indulge himself, he knows nobody would be listening to him if he wasn't.

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