Rough poetry slouching towards substack. Nicely done!
He had to kill a million of his fellow citizens to get voted off the island the first season. We might get lucky. He might just destroy the economy this time.
I occasionally meditate over the idea of Donny inadvertently blowing up finance and the speculator markets without making things especially worse for the little people.
Meanwhile, I occasionally read Barron's, and particularly the annual roundtables with smart people. And I have never over the decades seen so much pessimism -- actually, any great pessimism -- like this year. Even more weird because the capitalist pigs whining have Republicans in maximum control.
American Bankers Association press releases are a constant whine, the most over-privileged and over-indulged group in the country gnashing their teeth and keening about… well, anything that even trivially inconveniences them. Pining for the good old days of total deregulation. What could go wrong? Make the Roaring Twenties great again!
They're whining because Trump is in maximum control, and while Trump is the Republican party, the Republican party is not Trump. Some of them still believe consequences are possible, its just that the consequences (for them) of standing up to Trump are immediate and certain, while there's only a strong chance of an economic crash and/or some stupid war. Playing the odds.
One million dead Americans would be counted as nothing compared to what's coming. When vaccines are banned--and they will be--all the ravages of the pre-modern age will return. When the practice of medicine becomes constrained to only woo-style products and therapies--whatever nonsense lines the pockets of Dr. Oz, whatever hideous insurance is left available to seniors after Medicare is "reformed," whatever food and drug safety standards might be left after Bobby's brainworm outlaws pasteurization--sickness and death will stalk the land for all but the wealthiest.
Which, by Republican lights, is as it should be. The only problem with American healthcare is the fact that YOU get too much of it.
Hoping you're wrong, worried you're right, but does scumbaggery need to have an effect? For example: Trump does some high-profile raids to throw the fear of ICE into every brown-skinned person in the country, but leaves 99% of undocumented immigrants in place because we need them to do the work we don't want to do. In a state of fear, they're less likely to speak up when they lose a hand in a meat grinder, for sure no worker is gonna talk union or even dare to ask for a raise. That's what Republican businessmen want, the rest of the scumbag-voters are happy with the show and won't bother to count the number of deportees, math not being their strong suit.
One thing I know for sure: They're not gonna be sitting at the kitchen table with a calculator and a calendar saying, "Gosh, deportation rates aren't quite what I was expecting!" Trump could do one raid, they could show it on Fox News every day for the next four years, and these morons would be in moron heaven.
They didn't count the number of deportees before the election (Biden deported more undocumented immigrants than Trump) why should they do the math in the future. They hate math
While I’m sure there are those among MAGA who feel helpless and hopeless, my experience is that they’re far outnumbered by scumbags and bullies. So yeah, scumbags and bullies vote for the scum bag bully? That fits.
I’m sick to death of “my childhood friend, who is a really nice person and a good Christian, supports Trump for Reason X, Y, or Z.” Hey, Hitler loved him some puppies.
Bleak stuff, Roy. But hard to argue with. It's like the student body decided to make the worst bully class president. All the assholery is definitely a sop to Trump's most ardent supporters, but I think it's mostly a flex to demoralize and cow his opponents: "oh you think I won't cross THAT line? Watch me!"
Unfortunately, so far most Democrats are pretty much doing what we all knew they'd do in the face of a Trump victory -- moving right and playing nice.
[pushes up taped glasses that were sliding down bridge of nose] “Actually, there are studies showing that left turns slow down traffic and cause congestion. Most left turns should be removed and—“ [several men resembling Beagle Boys descend and begin pummeling] “Hey, stop with the punching and the HURTing and the *flaven*! Hoi!”
My stupid Apple thingie refused to define 'flaven', preferring to force feed me flavin', which made no sense. Neither, tho, did any of the 'flaven' search results from the google thingie. I did find this fun fact tho:
"The most Flaven families were found in USA in 1880. In 1840 there was 1 Flaven family living in Pennsylvania. This was 100% of all the recorded Flaven's in USA."
As I repeatedly say, the MAGAts -- the sick fucks turned on by Trump, the ones who aren't hardcore Republicans just supporting the party's man -- need ever greater insanity for their dopamine hits.
As for their hard ons, so to speak, for old time masculinity:
Alina Habba's hard on for Andrew Tate;
Pete Hegseth in full;
The rancher we met somewhere outside Red Lodge, MT, in 2021: getting so screwed as a small rancher that he needed a full time day job off the ranch, at least some of which he'd likely sell off to out of state sub-1%ers.
The guys with the hard ons for that old time patriarchic BS have been failing for decades.
Not long ago, under a critical Note about world-class crank Curtis Yarvin, I encountered a fellow who maintained that our system kills its workers more efficiently than any before it. (He'd no doubt object to my nutshell, but he was incoherent.) I confined my response to "this is very strange, and doesn't comport with history as I know it."
To give one example, plantation management in the Caribbean involved burning through slaves at whatever rate was most profitable. It was a death sentence; you were lucky to live to the age of thirty. So no.
More broadly, Yarvin and his followers rely on the Definist fallacy, etc. If we would only accept his premises and definitions, we'd agree. And it's a highly self-referential world.
So "Definism" is "If we would only accept his premises and definitions, we'd agree"? Damn, I take it back -- there IS a conservative intellectual tradition!
The last time I drove through Georgia and South Carolina I wanted to take spray paint to every sign that said “Plantation “ and scrawl Slave Labor Camp instead.
I remember the first time a dairy farmer told me he was working out. “Oh, which gym?” naive I asked. “Night janitor at the elementary school.” Working out as in “working outside the farm.”
I disagree about the dopamine trope. What they're doing is testing the limits, and each test pushes the (imaginary) line a bit further. There's joy in getting away with it, sure, but the goal is seeing how much they can get away with. Their Hero Trump preaches they can get away with anything because he can. So they test.
I dunno. I’ll believe he won’t be able to get away with everything he wants when he actually gets blocked on anything important. And any of the kayfabe performative nominees getting rejected doesn’t count. That’s all a show so rejection would be just another part of that.
Yeah. There is no one in the majority party who will vote against anything Trumpists put on the table unless it is some minor thing like renaming a post office in East Phlegm, MS.
"Their Hero Trump preaches they can get away with anything because he can."
They just sentenced the Republican star witness in their Biden Impeachment Fiasco. Guy claimed Biden Pere et Fils were in on a YOOGE Ukrainian bribery scheme, it was all lies, but who cares, right? Well the FBI cared enough to prosecute him for lying to the FBI (Which is apparently a crime? Who knew?) and now he's got a six year federal sentence.
Rudy, bankrupted and disbarred. Pillow guy, just lost a suit by his suppliers because it seems he's not paying his bills, he'll be bankrupt soon. Tucker Carlson, once Fox News highest-rated star, now podcasting from his cabin. There are consequences for his idiot followers, there just aren't consequences for him. They will NEVER understand this.
and my favorite bit about Pillow Guy was when he started listing all the individuals and groups thereof who were actively conspiring to take down the republic via vote fraud, and the list got pretty damn long, and I did a little maths and back-a-the-enveloped that roughly 325 million Americans were in on the conspiracy...question-begging "how many actual Queensman voters do you think there are?"
• Reps elect raving fascisti because that's what they want
• the raving fascisti-elect are not only committed to hoovering up all the money, they are whimpering cowards in the face of Trump; Trump say Jump, they jump
• Trump say "I intend to make you people act in such craven, cowardly ways that the outcomes will make you universally despised, even by your constituents, so that the only thing that can save you is absolute submission to me"
• the spineless worms are then enthusiastically chained to the "Of course we confirmed the fraudulent, sexual predator/deviant fail/up, because without that we are literally nothing"
• their voters say "Huh, guess that fraudulent, sexual predator/deviant fail/up must be a pretty good guy, 'cause Trump say so, and alla our guys voted for him
Thus, the Shining City On The Hill burns to the ground whilst the chorus sings the This Is Fine theme song
As I said back in 2020, I've been in complete agreement with this for decades. Republican = scumbag, old hangers-on notwithstanding. The party itself has only one policy -- massive tax cuts, or really anything that enriches billionaires and the investment class. The rest is no more than chum for the rank and file scumbags.
Unfortunately, the scumbag-in-chief is about to take us all on a wild, terrible ride on the wings of his obvious dementia. As expected, the courtier scumbags are lining up to praise his every hallucination, e.g., Ross Douthat's column on how maybe Trump is right about Canada -- "If I were a young Canadian... I think I would feel this vision’s pull."
Unfortunately, Donnie from Queens will prove most destructive by putting his fellow talk-radio callers in charge of things that will cause immense suffering or worse. I dread watching a moment of the confirmation hearings.
If Douthat was a young Canadian, he'd be just like he is now. He'd be feeling that pull because hypothetical Canadian Ross gets to express what real American Ross cannot.
What I'm seeing is the election was a ratification of the Scumbags: who are going to let their freak flags fly: and I wonder, is blowback or reaction to this is possible when social media is so MAGA primed and contaminated?
Keee-hrist, what an asshole. Well, they should have had forest management (the kind they needed, controlled burns like Native Americans of California did) except that has only become acceptable to the Forest Service in the last few years. Well, they should have had more water. Yeah, Republicans can make the water fall from the sky, as it hasn't done for years (Marjorie Taylor Green notes "They have cloud seeding. Why didn't they use that?). Well, etc, etc, etc. "We're going to need conditions before we give them any money" (Reichstag fire, anyone?). Funny, poor ass red states get shittons of federal aid with no strings, but blue states, oh no. California should (and hopefully will) not pay the feds in equal measure to the funds being denied. Hell, if every blue state did that, those poor jokers would be in the quite the bind, with every red state but Texas (which has its own issues) taking in more federal aid than they give back in tax money.
I loved a Canadian Parlament member make a counter-proposal. "Hey, California, Oregon, Washington State, how'd you like free health care? How'd you like the right to choose? How about no guns, nada, zero? Then please feel free to become the next three provinces of Canada! Hey Donald, we'll take those pesky blue states off your hands. And Vermont, come along too, you're practically Canadian anyway". For California at this moment, with all these flashunnenah Republicans being self-righteous assholes, that ain't a bad idea, not at all.
Suck it, Red states. Pay for your own damn trailer park restoration.
Fox News is full of fire management experts, taking time off from their virology studies, analyzing Gavin Newsom’s appearance, body language, wardrobe choices, etc. I’m guessing he hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep lately, what with having to argue with the Kardashians about the water pressure in their showers or whatever. Fuck em all.
It's a pose, and any idiot can adopt it: I sit here at my computer, the world comes before me in review, and like the Emperor of Rome, I give the thumbs up or thumbs down as I please.
Don't bet on it. People say "they're gonna be mad when they figure out they've been conned." I've been watching them for almost eighty years. Ain't gonna happen.
Sad, but true. I was just going for the gag. As a lifelong native Arkansan, I get it, I grew up with it. "I may not be making much money, but I'm better than an n-word", and yes I've heard that said many times when I was a kid. That's part of it - they are happy to be peon sharecroppers next to the boss man's plantation, but spite conquers all.
Plus they revere that sorry amoral lyin' cheating sack of shit, for reasons known but to God. I saw one ol' boy say "How do you know Trump is lying? His lips are moving". He voted for Trump anyway. Hate and spite rule the day.
I love my native state. I am a fer-real hillbilly, and greatly miss being adjacent to the Ozark National Forest (where we and my crew spent our weekends). Magnificent, beautiful, I love it with all my heart, and could no more move away from here than stop breathing. And in general, on the individual level, some of the nicest folk you'll ever meet. But collectively, racist spiteful assholes. It is a puzzlement.
And Naomi Wolf has gone waaaay off the deep end. People in Los Angeles aren't panicking enough, they seem numb to the devastation. Therefore, that's not fire retardants the planes are dropping, it's mood stabilizing drugs (I shitteh thee not). Coo coo bananas much?
The point was made: If Democrats are behind all this, why the hell ain't we dropping those on MAGA land? Marjorie Taylor Green's district needs a double dose, as does that asshat Tommy Tuberville needs for the whole damn state of Alabama. Sheesh.
Like we would waste perfectly good drugs on California - they're already set up!
And Goddamn Tom Cotton is going to be Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Oy gevalt. He was born just a few days after I graduated high school. I had nothing to do, so I could have taken that leisurely 5 mile drive to the Dardanelle Hospital (yep, checked it, five miles), and whoops-se-daisy! SIDS, man, SIDS, terribly way to go, and he had such potential.
"Paul Polyester" is either a character from Aeon Flux or an actor from an off-off-off 1967 play about a sentient wheel of cheese which falls in love with a Hollywood starlet.
Blame is complicated subject. You can't blame any particular person that a large chunk of Americans are absolute shitheels, because that ratio is probably constant in every nation.
But America's institutions- our special government- was supposed to keep the shitheels in check, especially after a wrenching civil war of basically good v. shitheel and then WW2, the ultimate good v. shitheel showdown.
So I don't blame Obama, but my disappointment with him is bottomless. He was elected at an utter apex of American shitheel performance. Our elite cheered the nomination of a dauphin by the GOP in 2000, and our corrupt Supreme Court installed him. Cheney, asleep at the wheel as head of counterterrorism then massively and guiltily overcompensates by making aggressive war on Iraq and torturing hundreds of helpless captives to death, utterly destroying a century of American soft power. All along nobody slows an absolute orgy of fraud and greed and income inequality driven by a twisted housing market, with the resulting meltdown coming within days of destroying the economy utterly. The nation, finally disgusted enough and fearful enough, elects an apex black man as President and gives him the actual mandate.
What does he do with it? He follows his Reagan Republican instincts and decides to Look Forward, Not Backward. I wanted to vomit when I saw him yukking it up with Trump and W Bush at Carter's funeral. Meanwhile, I can't believe that I have to respect W Bush more as a man because he works out his guilt by painting wounded soldiers more than competently - with a touch of a true artist- and keeps his dignity by just shutting the fuck up.
Which brings us to Biden. A good man, but as Obama warned us, a natural fuckup. He chooses Harris at age 78, putting the Democratic Party in the worst possible position between their deepest values of multicultural democracy and a shitheel racist nation, basically spotting MAGA two-touchdowns.
She almost pulled it off and I have nothing but respect for her performance and character, but here we are. And now we will likely have to face more cataclysms to knock the shitheels back again, and each time, the special ideas of the United States dim further.
Well I'm glad I shat this out instead of watching the hearings for Defense Secretary. I know you read the comments Roy, so it's good to share with one of my favorite writers.
On the left, people oppressed by the current stage of capitalism look to the "system" for help in order to save themselves.
On the right, people oppressed by the current stage of capitalism can't imagine saving themselves, and so look for the "system" to destroy itself, and at least cause others as much pain as they're experiencing.
Seems like most of their pain is two 700 dollar a month car payments and the fact that the family won't be going on a Disney cruise this year because Dad loses 400 a week betting on football.
I think the Right's reaction to the California fires is my last fucking straw; a massive disaster fueled by natural conditions that nobody could possibly have control over, the ACTUAL devastation of an American city, and they're fapping away about DEI and ASL and fish and "conditions for aid" like California needs to be punished for its sins. I thought the GOP were ghouls after 9/11, but this is a whole new level of despicable and they control - what? - something like 3/4 of the American government?
I can't. I really can't. These fuckers haven't even taken office yet and ALREADY they're evil and incompetent and worthless, and they're giving inspiration to a legion of bully boys that make Southern sheriffs look like Cub Scouts. I feel bad about ignoring the news but I figure if I just assume the worst I'll be roughly correct. GAAAAH!
Please don't. The REBID community will fill you in on anything you need to know. Looking forward to Bern's review of the Prison Loaf they're serving in the internment camps!
Rough poetry slouching towards substack. Nicely done!
He had to kill a million of his fellow citizens to get voted off the island the first season. We might get lucky. He might just destroy the economy this time.
I occasionally meditate over the idea of Donny inadvertently blowing up finance and the speculator markets without making things especially worse for the little people.
Meanwhile, I occasionally read Barron's, and particularly the annual roundtables with smart people. And I have never over the decades seen so much pessimism -- actually, any great pessimism -- like this year. Even more weird because the capitalist pigs whining have Republicans in maximum control.
"Please Obi-wan, save us from ourselves!"
Maybe we can once and for all exterminate the myth that businessmen act from rational self-interest.
American Bankers Association press releases are a constant whine, the most over-privileged and over-indulged group in the country gnashing their teeth and keening about… well, anything that even trivially inconveniences them. Pining for the good old days of total deregulation. What could go wrong? Make the Roaring Twenties great again!
Sociopathic fucks.Ike the rest of our leaders.
They were oppressed, but not any more! https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1i18n1w/since_when_are_top_bankers_oppressed/
Updated link since the Reddit thread got deleted, but digby is on the case: https://digbysblog.net/2025/01/14/great-god-almighty-theyre-free-at-last/
The banker in Stagecoach. Just keep him in mind when you hear the word "banker", and you won't go far wrong.
They're whining because Trump is in maximum control, and while Trump is the Republican party, the Republican party is not Trump. Some of them still believe consequences are possible, its just that the consequences (for them) of standing up to Trump are immediate and certain, while there's only a strong chance of an economic crash and/or some stupid war. Playing the odds.
Ohhh….!
Now my heart’s bleeding for them.
Who's gonna clean up this mess??!!
One million dead Americans would be counted as nothing compared to what's coming. When vaccines are banned--and they will be--all the ravages of the pre-modern age will return. When the practice of medicine becomes constrained to only woo-style products and therapies--whatever nonsense lines the pockets of Dr. Oz, whatever hideous insurance is left available to seniors after Medicare is "reformed," whatever food and drug safety standards might be left after Bobby's brainworm outlaws pasteurization--sickness and death will stalk the land for all but the wealthiest.
Which, by Republican lights, is as it should be. The only problem with American healthcare is the fact that YOU get too much of it.
The rabble are sick? Let them fly their private jets to the Mayo Clinic like the Shah of Iran! Stop expecting the government to coddle you!
Let them eat peanuts! From the little foil bag the steward gives them!
Now we know how desperate the airline stowaways truly are...
Stop with the coddlin' – get with the proddlin'!
Hoping you're wrong, worried you're right, but does scumbaggery need to have an effect? For example: Trump does some high-profile raids to throw the fear of ICE into every brown-skinned person in the country, but leaves 99% of undocumented immigrants in place because we need them to do the work we don't want to do. In a state of fear, they're less likely to speak up when they lose a hand in a meat grinder, for sure no worker is gonna talk union or even dare to ask for a raise. That's what Republican businessmen want, the rest of the scumbag-voters are happy with the show and won't bother to count the number of deportees, math not being their strong suit.
One thing I know for sure: They're not gonna be sitting at the kitchen table with a calculator and a calendar saying, "Gosh, deportation rates aren't quite what I was expecting!" Trump could do one raid, they could show it on Fox News every day for the next four years, and these morons would be in moron heaven.
They didn't count the number of deportees before the election (Biden deported more undocumented immigrants than Trump) why should they do the math in the future. They hate math
Biden approved more oil and gas leases in his term than Trump did. Don't see that statistic having much impact on the "drill baby drill" crowd.
The thing about math, it's not impressed by your shouting. Show it your gun, math doesn't care. Of course they hate it.
"Is that a six-gun you're pointin' at me?"
"No, actually it is only a single gun, but it has more bullets than I, strictly speaking, require."
Scumbag voters know an illegal when they see one – that is the scumbag superpower.
Once Bob Brainworm has destroyed HHS, herbalism is going to become very important.
While I’m sure there are those among MAGA who feel helpless and hopeless, my experience is that they’re far outnumbered by scumbags and bullies. So yeah, scumbags and bullies vote for the scum bag bully? That fits.
I’m sick to death of “my childhood friend, who is a really nice person and a good Christian, supports Trump for Reason X, Y, or Z.” Hey, Hitler loved him some puppies.
How done am I with these fucking people? Totally done. Could not be more done. Not just well done, but over-done.
Bleak stuff, Roy. But hard to argue with. It's like the student body decided to make the worst bully class president. All the assholery is definitely a sop to Trump's most ardent supporters, but I think it's mostly a flex to demoralize and cow his opponents: "oh you think I won't cross THAT line? Watch me!"
Unfortunately, so far most Democrats are pretty much doing what we all knew they'd do in the face of a Trump victory -- moving right and playing nice.
Soon, every intersection in America will have a sign saying No Left Turn.
[pushes up taped glasses that were sliding down bridge of nose] “Actually, there are studies showing that left turns slow down traffic and cause congestion. Most left turns should be removed and—“ [several men resembling Beagle Boys descend and begin pummeling] “Hey, stop with the punching and the HURTing and the *flaven*! Hoi!”
Some men would rather destroy the efficient flow of traffic than go to therapy, lol.
Hearted for the flaven.
My stupid Apple thingie refused to define 'flaven', preferring to force feed me flavin', which made no sense. Neither, tho, did any of the 'flaven' search results from the google thingie. I did find this fun fact tho:
"The most Flaven families were found in USA in 1880. In 1840 there was 1 Flaven family living in Pennsylvania. This was 100% of all the recorded Flaven's in USA."
As I repeatedly say, the MAGAts -- the sick fucks turned on by Trump, the ones who aren't hardcore Republicans just supporting the party's man -- need ever greater insanity for their dopamine hits.
As for their hard ons, so to speak, for old time masculinity:
Alina Habba's hard on for Andrew Tate;
Pete Hegseth in full;
The rancher we met somewhere outside Red Lodge, MT, in 2021: getting so screwed as a small rancher that he needed a full time day job off the ranch, at least some of which he'd likely sell off to out of state sub-1%ers.
The guys with the hard ons for that old time patriarchic BS have been failing for decades.
Last time I looked, only 5% of the ranches in America turned a profit.
I never bought into that family farm/ranch hagiography. Nearly all the slaves in this country were owned by family farms.
Yeah, and all the darn expenses just to keep 'em alive long enough fer the harvest – oh, the things white folk suffered!
Not long ago, under a critical Note about world-class crank Curtis Yarvin, I encountered a fellow who maintained that our system kills its workers more efficiently than any before it. (He'd no doubt object to my nutshell, but he was incoherent.) I confined my response to "this is very strange, and doesn't comport with history as I know it."
To give one example, plantation management in the Caribbean involved burning through slaves at whatever rate was most profitable. It was a death sentence; you were lucky to live to the age of thirty. So no.
More broadly, Yarvin and his followers rely on the Definist fallacy, etc. If we would only accept his premises and definitions, we'd agree. And it's a highly self-referential world.
Sorry to digress a bit.
So "Definism" is "If we would only accept his premises and definitions, we'd agree"? Damn, I take it back -- there IS a conservative intellectual tradition!
Isn't this the correct definition of "Begging the question"? Rather than what everyone thinks it means, "Your point raises some obvious questions."
Yes, and they were treated as “part of the family.” Isn’t that noblesse oblige part of the myth of the Confederacy?
That’s some pathological family you got there!
The Menendez family.
or what's left of them
The last time I drove through Georgia and South Carolina I wanted to take spray paint to every sign that said “Plantation “ and scrawl Slave Labor Camp instead.
"Rape Rooms This Way"
You should have heard 'em just around midnight -
I'mo be in SC for about 10 days in March and wonder how I will contain my own very same urge.
Small or all?
Maybe electing the puppets of the people these manly salts of the earth isn’t smart I don’t know.
All. Maybe should review recent data, but pretty much no ranch makes profit off just the cow ops.
Even the Big Ag ranches?
According the the stats I saw when ranchin' was parta my game.*
*Like, 20 years ago...
Great Big Ranch gots solar power an' windmills fer the cash crop.
Maybe 5% of the ranches have 95% of the cows?
Curses, Dammit! Fowled again by Steve's superpower!
I remember the first time a dairy farmer told me he was working out. “Oh, which gym?” naive I asked. “Night janitor at the elementary school.” Working out as in “working outside the farm.”
The modern yeoman: as their world collapses, doing everything but addressing and fixing the problem…
I disagree about the dopamine trope. What they're doing is testing the limits, and each test pushes the (imaginary) line a bit further. There's joy in getting away with it, sure, but the goal is seeing how much they can get away with. Their Hero Trump preaches they can get away with anything because he can. So they test.
I dunno. I’ll believe he won’t be able to get away with everything he wants when he actually gets blocked on anything important. And any of the kayfabe performative nominees getting rejected doesn’t count. That’s all a show so rejection would be just another part of that.
Yeah. There is no one in the majority party who will vote against anything Trumpists put on the table unless it is some minor thing like renaming a post office in East Phlegm, MS.
Pretty much.
HEIL MUMP UND DER ETERNAL MUMP REICH!!!!!!
"Their Hero Trump preaches they can get away with anything because he can."
They just sentenced the Republican star witness in their Biden Impeachment Fiasco. Guy claimed Biden Pere et Fils were in on a YOOGE Ukrainian bribery scheme, it was all lies, but who cares, right? Well the FBI cared enough to prosecute him for lying to the FBI (Which is apparently a crime? Who knew?) and now he's got a six year federal sentence.
Rudy, bankrupted and disbarred. Pillow guy, just lost a suit by his suppliers because it seems he's not paying his bills, he'll be bankrupt soon. Tucker Carlson, once Fox News highest-rated star, now podcasting from his cabin. There are consequences for his idiot followers, there just aren't consequences for him. They will NEVER understand this.
No matter what yer friends tell ya, "podcasting from his cabin" is worth at least 2 marks
and my favorite bit about Pillow Guy was when he started listing all the individuals and groups thereof who were actively conspiring to take down the republic via vote fraud, and the list got pretty damn long, and I did a little maths and back-a-the-enveloped that roughly 325 million Americans were in on the conspiracy...question-begging "how many actual Queensman voters do you think there are?"
The message I get is:
• Reps elect raving fascisti because that's what they want
• the raving fascisti-elect are not only committed to hoovering up all the money, they are whimpering cowards in the face of Trump; Trump say Jump, they jump
• Trump say "I intend to make you people act in such craven, cowardly ways that the outcomes will make you universally despised, even by your constituents, so that the only thing that can save you is absolute submission to me"
• the spineless worms are then enthusiastically chained to the "Of course we confirmed the fraudulent, sexual predator/deviant fail/up, because without that we are literally nothing"
• their voters say "Huh, guess that fraudulent, sexual predator/deviant fail/up must be a pretty good guy, 'cause Trump say so, and alla our guys voted for him
Thus, the Shining City On The Hill burns to the ground whilst the chorus sings the This Is Fine theme song
Adding my own TL;DR: It’s the depravity, stupids.
Depravity, laziness, propaganda, hopelessness—choose whatever proportions work best for you!
I love having options!
This shit sandwich has FOUR KINDS of shit!
Cheesy shit
Meaty shit
Condiment shit
Shit Flambe´!
As I said back in 2020, I've been in complete agreement with this for decades. Republican = scumbag, old hangers-on notwithstanding. The party itself has only one policy -- massive tax cuts, or really anything that enriches billionaires and the investment class. The rest is no more than chum for the rank and file scumbags.
Unfortunately, the scumbag-in-chief is about to take us all on a wild, terrible ride on the wings of his obvious dementia. As expected, the courtier scumbags are lining up to praise his every hallucination, e.g., Ross Douthat's column on how maybe Trump is right about Canada -- "If I were a young Canadian... I think I would feel this vision’s pull."
Unfortunately, Donnie from Queens will prove most destructive by putting his fellow talk-radio callers in charge of things that will cause immense suffering or worse. I dread watching a moment of the confirmation hearings.
Ross " Oh please, don't " Douthat seems predisposed to lick boots.
If Douthat was a young Canadian, he'd be just like he is now. He'd be feeling that pull because hypothetical Canadian Ross gets to express what real American Ross cannot.
Bootlicking with a side of being in on the joke.
Isn't David Brooks older, Canadian Douthat?
Less religious, although I think maybe Brooks is faithing up.
If Douthat is native to Canada I didn’t notice among his other traits.
Less religious
covered under Canadian
"If I were a young Canadian... I think I would feel this vision’s pull."
In short, a tug job for Young Ross.
What I'm seeing is the election was a ratification of the Scumbags: who are going to let their freak flags fly: and I wonder, is blowback or reaction to this is possible when social media is so MAGA primed and contaminated?
Keee-hrist, what an asshole. Well, they should have had forest management (the kind they needed, controlled burns like Native Americans of California did) except that has only become acceptable to the Forest Service in the last few years. Well, they should have had more water. Yeah, Republicans can make the water fall from the sky, as it hasn't done for years (Marjorie Taylor Green notes "They have cloud seeding. Why didn't they use that?). Well, etc, etc, etc. "We're going to need conditions before we give them any money" (Reichstag fire, anyone?). Funny, poor ass red states get shittons of federal aid with no strings, but blue states, oh no. California should (and hopefully will) not pay the feds in equal measure to the funds being denied. Hell, if every blue state did that, those poor jokers would be in the quite the bind, with every red state but Texas (which has its own issues) taking in more federal aid than they give back in tax money.
I loved a Canadian Parlament member make a counter-proposal. "Hey, California, Oregon, Washington State, how'd you like free health care? How'd you like the right to choose? How about no guns, nada, zero? Then please feel free to become the next three provinces of Canada! Hey Donald, we'll take those pesky blue states off your hands. And Vermont, come along too, you're practically Canadian anyway". For California at this moment, with all these flashunnenah Republicans being self-righteous assholes, that ain't a bad idea, not at all.
Suck it, Red states. Pay for your own damn trailer park restoration.
Fox News is full of fire management experts, taking time off from their virology studies, analyzing Gavin Newsom’s appearance, body language, wardrobe choices, etc. I’m guessing he hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep lately, what with having to argue with the Kardashians about the water pressure in their showers or whatever. Fuck em all.
Amen. These damn idiots are just parroting hate speech, with J.D. Vance leading the pack. Hey J.D., what about "thou shalt not bear false witness"?
It's a pose, and any idiot can adopt it: I sit here at my computer, the world comes before me in review, and like the Emperor of Rome, I give the thumbs up or thumbs down as I please.
I think the raking would work! You see, it will take a whole bunch of migrant labor but if you just go down to the Home Depot in the morning.....
Nah, man, vacuum cleaners, like the folk in Denmark do.
Include upstate N.Y. and I am in.
hey! how about us massholes? don't forget us massholes!
Or Michigan! Part of Ontario = our southern neighbors!
Yep. Soon it will be Canada and Jesusland. Which is what the poor fools will say in the end. "Oh Jesus this was a bad idea".
Don't bet on it. People say "they're gonna be mad when they figure out they've been conned." I've been watching them for almost eighty years. Ain't gonna happen.
Sad, but true. I was just going for the gag. As a lifelong native Arkansan, I get it, I grew up with it. "I may not be making much money, but I'm better than an n-word", and yes I've heard that said many times when I was a kid. That's part of it - they are happy to be peon sharecroppers next to the boss man's plantation, but spite conquers all.
Plus they revere that sorry amoral lyin' cheating sack of shit, for reasons known but to God. I saw one ol' boy say "How do you know Trump is lying? His lips are moving". He voted for Trump anyway. Hate and spite rule the day.
I love my native state. I am a fer-real hillbilly, and greatly miss being adjacent to the Ozark National Forest (where we and my crew spent our weekends). Magnificent, beautiful, I love it with all my heart, and could no more move away from here than stop breathing. And in general, on the individual level, some of the nicest folk you'll ever meet. But collectively, racist spiteful assholes. It is a puzzlement.
I was recently in southern Massachusetts visiting relatives. Rural. Solidly Trumpist. Took care of a lot of misguided childhood nostalgia.
In 1972 Rapid City had a flood caused in part by cloud seeding that killed over 200 residents
Wow, that's a new one on me. Thanks Hardrocker, I gotta check that out.
I'm reminded of a commercial (margarine I think) that ends with "Don't mess with Mother Nature".
https://apatheticlemming.blogspot.com/2009/03/rapid-city-flood-1972-and-cloud-seeding.html
Yes, LP, I live in NW Washington. Let's do it. All together "Oh, Canada . . ."
Wouldn't it be great to live in a civilized country? You're lucky. I don't think anybody would take Arkansas - maybe the Somalis will give us a break.
Reminder that the Gilded Age took off immediately after Reconstruction was destroyed (by bipartisan decision).
And Naomi Wolf has gone waaaay off the deep end. People in Los Angeles aren't panicking enough, they seem numb to the devastation. Therefore, that's not fire retardants the planes are dropping, it's mood stabilizing drugs (I shitteh thee not). Coo coo bananas much?
"that's not fire retardants the planes are dropping, it's mood stabilizing drugs"
My home state needs this measure less than fly-over country.
The point was made: If Democrats are behind all this, why the hell ain't we dropping those on MAGA land? Marjorie Taylor Green's district needs a double dose, as does that asshat Tommy Tuberville needs for the whole damn state of Alabama. Sheesh.
Like we would waste perfectly good drugs on California - they're already set up!
Tommy live in Florida
Coke aux Puffs
OK, that's good right there.
Oh, poor Naomi Klein, who will now be on the receiving end of a thousand angry tweets because of this.
Not if my new band name has anything to tweet about it, she won't!
And Goddamn Tom Cotton is going to be Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Oy gevalt. He was born just a few days after I graduated high school. I had nothing to do, so I could have taken that leisurely 5 mile drive to the Dardanelle Hospital (yep, checked it, five miles), and whoops-se-daisy! SIDS, man, SIDS, terribly way to go, and he had such potential.
You could have stolen him and raised him to be a decent human being.
Raising Arkansas
There would have been another Tom Cotton -- Ben Rayon, maybe -- that might have been twice as bad.
Paul Polyester - Wait, didn't he hang out at the Factory with Warhol?
"Paul Polyester" is either a character from Aeon Flux or an actor from an off-off-off 1967 play about a sentient wheel of cheese which falls in love with a Hollywood starlet.
Paul Y Esther were a sibling act doing Mickey & Sylvia covers. Proving that Love Is Indeed Strange.
Point. It was just so damn convenient.
His high school teacher is the wife of my best friend. I asked her how he was then. She said, "Oh, he was a conservative nutjob from the get-go".
or half as bad
Senate Intelligence Committee, never more of an oxymoron
Your characterization of Republicans is spot on, except that it slanders scum and bags.
Hey, ya got some scum, where ya gonna keep it, huh?
Notice how scumbottle and scumbox never made it into common usage. There must be a reason for that.
Sharper Image tried flooding the market with massively overpriced scumduffles, but...
Scumduffles™ is now my product name for my sugar-gritted chocoweevils.
Damn. Beat me to it.
Oh well – now I'm free to work out the final details on my new line of overpriced produce markets: PEARS UBU®
Merdre!
Blame is complicated subject. You can't blame any particular person that a large chunk of Americans are absolute shitheels, because that ratio is probably constant in every nation.
But America's institutions- our special government- was supposed to keep the shitheels in check, especially after a wrenching civil war of basically good v. shitheel and then WW2, the ultimate good v. shitheel showdown.
So I don't blame Obama, but my disappointment with him is bottomless. He was elected at an utter apex of American shitheel performance. Our elite cheered the nomination of a dauphin by the GOP in 2000, and our corrupt Supreme Court installed him. Cheney, asleep at the wheel as head of counterterrorism then massively and guiltily overcompensates by making aggressive war on Iraq and torturing hundreds of helpless captives to death, utterly destroying a century of American soft power. All along nobody slows an absolute orgy of fraud and greed and income inequality driven by a twisted housing market, with the resulting meltdown coming within days of destroying the economy utterly. The nation, finally disgusted enough and fearful enough, elects an apex black man as President and gives him the actual mandate.
What does he do with it? He follows his Reagan Republican instincts and decides to Look Forward, Not Backward. I wanted to vomit when I saw him yukking it up with Trump and W Bush at Carter's funeral. Meanwhile, I can't believe that I have to respect W Bush more as a man because he works out his guilt by painting wounded soldiers more than competently - with a touch of a true artist- and keeps his dignity by just shutting the fuck up.
Which brings us to Biden. A good man, but as Obama warned us, a natural fuckup. He chooses Harris at age 78, putting the Democratic Party in the worst possible position between their deepest values of multicultural democracy and a shitheel racist nation, basically spotting MAGA two-touchdowns.
She almost pulled it off and I have nothing but respect for her performance and character, but here we are. And now we will likely have to face more cataclysms to knock the shitheels back again, and each time, the special ideas of the United States dim further.
Well I'm glad I shat this out instead of watching the hearings for Defense Secretary. I know you read the comments Roy, so it's good to share with one of my favorite writers.
We say it's a death cult, and here's why:
On the left, people oppressed by the current stage of capitalism look to the "system" for help in order to save themselves.
On the right, people oppressed by the current stage of capitalism can't imagine saving themselves, and so look for the "system" to destroy itself, and at least cause others as much pain as they're experiencing.
Seems like most of their pain is two 700 dollar a month car payments and the fact that the family won't be going on a Disney cruise this year because Dad loses 400 a week betting on football.
but but but good old individualist down-home American common sense!
Which parents are you preparing to blame, Pops? 'Cause I gotta real long list already prepared...
I think the Right's reaction to the California fires is my last fucking straw; a massive disaster fueled by natural conditions that nobody could possibly have control over, the ACTUAL devastation of an American city, and they're fapping away about DEI and ASL and fish and "conditions for aid" like California needs to be punished for its sins. I thought the GOP were ghouls after 9/11, but this is a whole new level of despicable and they control - what? - something like 3/4 of the American government?
I can't. I really can't. These fuckers haven't even taken office yet and ALREADY they're evil and incompetent and worthless, and they're giving inspiration to a legion of bully boys that make Southern sheriffs look like Cub Scouts. I feel bad about ignoring the news but I figure if I just assume the worst I'll be roughly correct. GAAAAH!
"I feel bad about ignoring the news..."
Please don't. The REBID community will fill you in on anything you need to know. Looking forward to Bern's review of the Prison Loaf they're serving in the internment camps!