The devolution of the Republican Party has been a sight to behold—but it’s been a particularly fraught experience for ex-Republicans. I know if the Democrats had nominated Charlie Sheen for president in 2016 and then proceeded to abandon all their previously held goals and principles in exchange for a chance...
Soul
He’s got a new book, so a conservative Niall Ferguson appeared on TV this morning whitewashing the Trump administration’s competence, or lack thereof, as if the fault lies with more systemic faults, despite the deliberate Trump sabotage of Obama-era pandemic planning. Catastrophes of politics, in pricey Ted-like talks. As if there no...
For some reason I don’t have complete faith in this vote audit they’re performing in Arizona. For one thing, hardly anyone heard of Cyber Ninjas, the company that’s performing the audit, before this farce commenced. For another, the company is named “Cyber Ninjas.” That’s like going with a wealth management firm called...
No one has ever tried to have me killed before (that I know of), but if someone did, I doubt I’d sing hosannas and paeans to him mere months after he’d sent a mob to my workplace to murder me—or after he’d ignored my plaintive cries for help when said mob...
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Ted Cruz admits he’s a corporate shill but like Matt Gaetz’s procurer, Joel Greenberg, prior crimes don’t count if you can get a pardon, even from the press. But hey Ted, confession is good for the soul because you don’t have to rely on the...
I’m probably a lot closer on the political spectrum to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than I am to Joe Biden—and not just because I prefer a Starbucks triple venti nonfat soy caramel baby’s blood macchiato to whatever low-rent greasy spoon baby’s blood bevvie Biden drinks. Probably has Sanka in it. Pfft. So I appreciate what AOC is saying...
Republicans desperately want you to forget the events of Jan. 6 and their aftermath. Unfortunately, the guy who caused the riot (at least according to Mitch McConnell) is still the face of their party, and so they have to do an awkward little dance where they pretend he’s actually not a...
A new book suggests now the necessity of reexamining the historical materialist project of Walter Benjamin recognizing those moments of historical contact as acts of recognizing the constructed historical object. “Historicism tends to be hermeneutic because it values cautious, rigorous, and contextualized interpretation of information; or relativist, because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental...
I watched the celebration of former police officer Derek Michael Chauvin’s conviction of three various counts of murder yesterday, and my feelings were mixed. No, no, I felt no sorrow for the man who not only took George Floyd’s life away but broke the hearts of countless Americans, both black...
Derek Chauvin has been found guilty on all three counts of murdering George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, knowing that people were filming him doing so, looking at those cameras with his hands in his pockets and no expression on his face. “Depraved...
I thought Schaden-Friday might slip away without a good dose of bad news for a bad, bad person. Ah, but it came through in the end to bite one of the most loathsome arses on God’s verdant vale of tears. Roger Stone may want to grab his blankie, because there...
I’m not even sure what to do with this. I’m gobsmacked. Oh, he was a man, eh? I guess that means it’s okay for the cops to shoot him. What other conclusion can you possibly take from this ribbon of rancid tripe dribbling out the malignant maw of one Sean...
During last year’s second presidential debate, Donald Trump made certain to note how horribly things were going on his watch: “We have to open our country,” the big, dumb adobe mud hut brayed. “We’re not going to have a country. You can’t do this, we can’t keep this country closed. It is a...
Weed o’clock struck early today. Not sure why. Something to do with daylight saving time, I think. Or the Maya calendar? Fuck if I know. It just felt like a day-tokin’ kinda day here in the Pacific Northwest. But this isn’t about me. Because there’s no way in hell I would...
I’m not sure what Matt Gaetz expected. After all, the only exercise Donald Trump ever gets involves golf, languorous coitusTM, and throwing former “friends” under the bus. (Again, Trump has no actual “friends.” He has acquaintances he’s yet to shiv in the liver.) For years, people have filled Gaetz’s head...
As far as I’m concerned, allowing Newsmax reporters into the White House briefing room is a little like High Times asking Mitt Romney to write a guest column on how to score weed at Burning Man, but then the Biden administration is nothing if not fair (Peter Doocy’s Vesuvian whining...
This Matt Gaetz scandal is probably a good thing for our country. If his head got any bigger, it might rip a hole in space-time. As it is, things appear to be getting worse and worse for the flesh-toned Tootsie Pop. He should probably be scrubbing his Twitter account in...
Of course, I’m being sarcastic when I say “popular.” In fact, the provision in Georgia’s new election law banning the distribution of food and water to people in voting lines is so unpopular and indefensible, even Lindsey Graham can’t defend it. And he defended Donald Trump for four years. I didn’t think...
Remember Infrastructure Week? It’s coming back—this time without an infrastructure weakling deflating the promise of a newly rebuilt America. Joe Biden is set to unveil his sweeping $3 trillion infrastructure plan, and according to Axios, top economists are simply “giddy” about its prospects. Of course, Republicans understand Keynesian economics as...
Ted Cruz continued his “Hey, look! I’m not in Cancun!” tour yesterday, traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border in search of a thatch of reeds that in no way made him look like a serial killer floating freshly harvested bodies down the river on jerry-rigged rafts comprised of peat bog residue and...
This is what you call bad optics. Like really, really bad. Oedipus seeing Jocasta bad. (Yeah, my references are really old, but I couldn’t find a way to plausibly work Match Game into this one.) So you know that awful, awful Jim Crow-style voter suppression bill Georgia just passed? Well, the way...
Assuming Jason Miller is a real person and not a failed Soviet-era experiment to cross the human genome with the formula for Axe Body Spray, he appears to be in some trouble. According to The Guardian, the former former-guy spox, who impregnated another Trump campaign adviser while engaging in an...
I’m not in a jovial mood today. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed … because my bed is still in America. If it straddled the U.S.-Canada border, I might have had a puncher’s chance—but no. I had to wake up here—in the land of the mask-free, gun-obsessed asshole....
What’s funnier than Mike Pence being sent to the doghouse after spending four-plus years as Donald Trump’s captive purse poodle? I honestly can’t think of anything—though if Ted Cruz falls down an open manhole while looking at My Little Pony furry porn on his phone, I may have to reassess. Months...
It always seemed absurd to me that hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens have no effective representation in Congress. And I’m not just talking about Alabamans. But to hear some conservatives tell it, that’s as it should be because, you know, D.C. doesn’t have a car dealership. And they already make their...
He’s not the only one, of course. For instance, I’m convinced Matt Gaetz has the largest head-to-brain-size ratio in the animal kingdom and that Louie Gohmert is the lamentable result of a failed attempt to breed a white supremacist lemur with a bowl of beets. Then there’s Lauren Boebert and Marjorie...
It’s Schaden-Friday, folks! Spin the wheel of GOP absurdities! Where oh where will it land? Oh, I know! How about “Donald Trump’s post-POTUS retreat is awash in COVID!” For fuck’s sake, Trump is like Pig-Pen from Peanuts, only it’s not a dust cloud following him everywhere he goes—it’s pestilence. AP:...
Not sure if you remember the infamous Jon Stewart Crossfire appearance in which he basically burned the erstwhile CNN show to the ground. Okay, “burned to the ground” is a metaphor, but it’s not really hyperbole. Just months later, CNN canceled the program, 86’d cohost Tucker Carlson, and actually cited...
These kinds of stories drive me up the wall. There’s nothing heartwarming or cute about this, but it’s the kind of thing people in this country slurp up like syrup. Nothing against the journalist who brought this grotesquerie to light, but my takeaway from this tragic tale is that we...
I’ve been paying only intermittent attention to this weekend’s CPAC event. Not much has changed since they choppered Donald J. Trump out of Washington like a zoo manatee being returned to its natural habitat. Ted Cruz is still awful, and the rest of the Trumpaloompas remain firmly ensconced inside the regal...
Though my spot on the introversion spectrum lies somewhere between Kleenex box-wearing Howard Hughes and urine-collecting Howard Hughes (and as I continue to age, I’m on a bullet train to raw-fish-eating Gollum), I still usually get sick in the winter, at least once. In the past, while grocery shopping or taking...
If you listen to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and conservative media silos, like Fox News, black Capitol police officer Harry Dunn, who was called the N-word a “couple dozen times” by Confederate flag-waving insurrectionists, is crazy to believe the ‘hoax’ that white supremacy exists. The supremacy deniers would also have...
Holy shit. This aged worse than the lost wedge of Camembert that’s more or less permanently ensconced in Donald Trump’s clammy, pendulous moob flaps. Yeah, that was gross, I grant you. But I figured you needed to tighten up your gag reflex before you watched this: ”We will not see diseases like the...
I never thought to hear such snark from someone as genteel as Merrick Garland. And maybe he wasn’t trolling the poster boy of domestic terror and insurrection after all. But, damn, it sure feels like Garland, whose path to the Supreme Court was derailed by a metric fuck-ton of Republican...
Eric Trump appeared on Fox & Friends this morning with Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade. It wasn’t exactly the Algonquin Roundtable. During the conversation, they passed the lone brain cell they share together to whoever wanted to speak next—like it was the tribal conch in Lord of the...
Or maybe I should say “no water,” which is what too many Texans are currently dealing with. After desperately attempting to flee the free-market dystopia he helped create, Sen. Ted Cruz drove his windowless white van down to a Houston locale today to serve Texas BBQ—not lightly braised human flesh; we...
If you’re a Republican and you don’t at least try to pretend the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, you’re likely to be castigated—and maybe even censured—by a phalanx of zombie dead-enders in your own party. It’s a problem for Republicans who know better—and I can only assume Donald...
Good God almighty. Well, this proves Ted Cruz isn’t the Zodiac Killer, because even the Zodiac Killer wouldn’t be sociopathic enough to blame his fucking kids for the biggest asshole move in Texas history. New Statement from @tedcruz: pic.twitter.com/0WMni5O9R1 — Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) February 18, 2021 The full text: Statement...
This is just a knee-jerk answer, right? “I know you are but what am I” is what we used to say on the playground when we were called dorkwads or dinguses or what have you. I’ve been rolling it around in my wee, breezy head for a couple of minutes,...
If you want to catch Sen. Ron Johnson in a lie, just ask him a question. If you merely want to catch him, put a peanut in a box with a hole that’s big enough for him to slide his hand through but not big enough for him to remove...
Kristi Noem, the GOP superstar governor who took one of the least densely populated states in the nation and turned it into a big-city-style COVID cluster*, appears to be Republicaning in other ways, too. In other words, she’s following in the feculent footsteps of her ocher overlord by engaging in...
Yesterday we got a full accounting of the cowardice of the Republican Party. If even half of these craven cockwaffles had been around in 1941, we’d all be eating sushi and playing Nintendo. Or, um, doing more of that, anyway. Also karaoke. Marginally more karaoke. But we’d be paying for it...
Like most of the rest of you, I’m a tad miffed at Democrats’ capitulation to evil. In agreeing to forgo impeachment witnesses and simply read the latest evidence of Donald Trump’s ghastly treachery into the record, congressional Democrats decided to get this all over with lest Republicans delay the proceedings...
Well, this seems significant. CNN: In an expletive-laced phone call with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy while the Capitol was under attack, then-President Donald Trump said the rioters cared more about the election results than McCarthy did. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election...