A Red Carpet for a War Criminal

 

Trump rolled out the red carpet for a war criminal. He did not make a deal. And Putin, formerly of the KGB, apparently amplified the echoes in Trump's nearly empty noggin, because that's what you do when your job isn't to make peace, but to make war by any means at hand. And Trump keeps making himself so handy. Does he really think this is how he gets a Nobel Prize? (Which, being a thirsty little bitch, Trump definitely is politicking for.)

The sad, simple answer is, yes. Trump is a narcissist, and even a failure gives him a supply of attention, which is his oxygen. And all the little toadies he has carefully cultivated to sit around him and applaud him for nearly hitting the potty will continue to applaud Trump even if they are up to their ankles in old man pee. 

As for Russia, they continue to show disrespect to our country, which Trump and his retinue appear to be too stupid to comprehend. (Or if they are capable of comprehending, are too immiserated in Trump's company to still be capable of shame.) 

It was a shambles, and I truly believe we have not heard all of the shambolics involved just yet. 

The Future's So Dark, I Gotta Wear Shades

 

Look, I have to retire some time, eventually, and I'm in my 50's, so I'm not grave-dancing over here about what tomorrow is going to bring. The whole election, despite what people were saying about Trump being a felon and a sex-pest and a danger to democracy had also an undercurrent of "This is a whole damn pudding-brained sociopath who will set the country on fire for giggles," but you what? Bygones. Let's just say some people out there chalked all of that up to Trump Derangement Syndrome and didn't want to believe the motherfucker was crazy.

But here's the SOB now:

Trump: "I spoke to a lot of leaders -- European, Asian, from all over the world. They are dying to make a deal, but I said 'we're not gonna have deficits with your country' ... to me a deficit is a loss. We're gonna have surpluses or at worst we're gonna be breaking even." pic.twitter.com/xnW7jb0u3R

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2025

Is everyone starting to get it? 

The financial deficits he's talking about is just a trade deficit.  We have a trade deficit with Madagascar. They sell basically vanilla. We have bakeries and ice cream factories and whatnot. They have people who are too poor to buy US goods. That's a trade deficit. Botswana sells diamonds. Same deal--we have jewelers and people buy engagement rings and so forth. They don't have the kind of incomes to be buying a lot of US goods. 

It just is what it is. Not everyone is going to be giving us a trade surplus--to think it can be so is just crazy and what you get when you don't know geography, or how anything but particularly trade works--you trade for shit you can't make or get easily. If I'm a pumpkin farmer, I don't want someone else's pumpkins--I want something I don't have. How is this hard to get? 

Juris Doctor Vance, Not So Young, Also Not Credible

 

While we can tell ourselves that part of Karoline Leavitt's juvenile dissembling attempts are sheer youth and immaturity, we know for sure that Vice-Signaling Junior President Vance "tells stories" with a purpose. So, when he condescendingly insults a reporter for not having read a court document--I don't even assume the JD Vance was simply mistaken and responding in a hurry when he got the basic details entirely wrong. 

JD Vance is a Yale Law grad and quite capable of seeing whether or not Kilmar Abrego Garcia was convicted of or merely accused of being a member of MS-13. It seems to me he counts on MAGA not reading, and only superficially noticing a lot of liberals telling Vance he's wrong (which he is) and assuming they are "triggered."

Why Elon Musk Gets Picked On

 

Huh. Where to start?

Musk alleges that another billionaire is handing out checks so that people will protest his and boycott his businesses. Because when you and your little DOGE gremlins are cutting aid to starving kids, Meals on Wheels, costing thousands of people their livelihoods and prancing about with a little chainsaw because BRRRR CUTTING GOOD!, people need a monetary reason to make them mad--right?

This is the kind of bullshit you get when your mama tells you the reason the other kids are picking on you is because they are just so jealous because they are dumb poors and not as bright and handsome as mommy's little man. 

JD Vance Follows Orders

 

There's something people don't like about J D Vance, and my personal take on it is that he's very inauthentic in some ways. Even his inauthenticity feels fake. Yesterday, he tried to make invading Greenland seem plausible by saying that Greenland is necessary for the United States for...reasons, and Denmark is a "bad ally." 

I don't think there is a convincing argument in there, because, I mean, what did Denmark or Greenland ever do to us?  (I'll give you a minute. There you go. Exactly.) 

Anyway, the Second Lady is part of an "aggressive" delegation going to Greenland this week because the idea of taking over Greenland being sort of stupid isn't actually going to stop this misadministration. No one is loving the idea--it's sort of an anti-diplomacy.

But unconvincing as it is, JD's job is telling stories. So, this is his story until Trump or Peter Theil or whoever needs another one. 

The Real Social Security Fraudsters, He Says

 

Howard Lutnick, late of Cantor Fitzgerald, who is not, by any stretch, a poor man, has sorted out who the real fraudsters and abusers of Social Security might be--the people who would complain if they failed to receive a check. If they failed to receive their check, that they were counting on, because they paid into the system during their entire working life? I mean, say what, now?

“What we have to do is stop sending money to someone who’s not hurt, who’s on disability for 50 years,” he claimed. “It’s ridiculous, and they have another job.”

At one point in the wide-ranging, nearly two-hour conversation, Lutnick also said that if Social Security “didn’t send out their checks this month,” his “mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain.”

“She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” the billionaire businessman said.

It's Especially NOT Funny Because It's True

 

pic.twitter.com/ZUeYUHMNjA

— Secular Talk (KyleKulinskiShow@bsky.social) (@KyleKulinski) March 17, 2025

MAGA doesn't care about this. MAGA says these friends of child traffickers say some things we agree with, so we will ignore that they also exploit working class Americans and threaten our retirement, our Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare and so on. Because THEY SAY SOME THINGS MAGAS LIKE.

So, it doesn't matter if they support dictators abroad, want a dictatorship here, support billionaires first, not America, and wipe their asses on the Constitution.

They say some things the MAGAS like. Are they ever true, correct, necessary things? They are just over the shit rainbow and think being along for the ride is winning--even while they are riding on a soon-to be jettisoned sidecar. 

This Man is Certifiable

 

Trump: "To be honest with you, Canada only works as a state. We don't need anything they have. As a state it would be one of the great states. This would be the most incredible country visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it." pic.twitter.com/oxzF3jzLOC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2025

With respect to our neighbors to the north, my god. I am just so embarrassed and sorry about this delusional halfwit. I knew he was a halfwit, but he managed to keep the worst of it under his MAGA hat for the benefit of his true-believers. I hope they understand how extremely messed up this crap is now, though.

And if they don't, well, I guess I am sorry for them, too. Because that is just one hell of a low and dangerous level of stupid. 

Today. Trump made comments that NATO needs to help with the US acquiring Greenland, which is not going to happen and is profoundly ignorant, as well as having congratulated himself for filling Lake Tulare with reservoir water intended for future irrigation and fire-fighting. He describes this as "invading LA" which is not even remotely a description of how any of this profoundly stupid and useless event occurred. 

Comments by Trump and his cabinet suggest that his intentions with respects to Canada and Greenland are real, and also folks are charged with drafting a Panama Canal strategy. 

Submitted for your Delectation or Rue

 

President Donald Trump justified his administration's mass firings of federal workers by claiming, without evidence, that many of them simply were collecting a paycheck and doing nothing, NBC4 Washington reported on Wednesday. https://t.co/mgU8CC9FgA

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 13, 2025

So sayeth the Constant Golfer. But what of ElonWorld? 

Glad you asked: he's made sure he has a gaming system in his big boy DOGE government office. 

These are supposed to be people we take seriously. I don't even know how they take themselves seriously. 

(I've started writing science fiction (again!) over at one of my other places. Because sometimes fiction is easier to take seriously than whatever this is.  You don't have to read it. It's like my poetry, just another thing I turn to when I've got a lot of thoughts and practical outlets feel very awkward.) 

Things Are Going to Slide

 

Giggleheaded Goofus, Elon Musk, has not had a brilliant day. His Tesla stock did a really big slide. His Twitter acquisition, which he wants us to call "X", was shut down a lot because of an apparent DDOS attack. Musk wanted to allege that the IP addresses of the attack were from the "Ukraine area" and this is when, not for the first time, I understood Musk is a dumbass. Because really? Are the haxxors using their IP address and not masking with a VPN or whatever? And wouldn't it be wild if the haxxors were from the exact place kind of depending on Starlink to work, and are kind of mad at Elon, but not suicide-mad yet?

And how isn't the Ukraine area also possibly Russian invaders? Since Russia has competent cyberwarfare capabilities, not that our Department of Justice under Pam Bondi is fixing to bother with it. 

Would it just be a stitch if Russia decided to attack TrumpWorld just when they decided for the worst of all possible reasons it was time to make nicey-nice? 

Anyway, Teslas and their dealerships are being protested and vandalized. 

Almost as if that brand was the clearest signifier of Musk himself, and attacking it was the clearest way to attack him. And it could and probably is organic--even if Elon wants to insist on the idea of astroturfing. ActBlue--blah blah blah. George Soros, more blah blah blah. Musk isn't funny or original. 

Look at Jeremiad Dispenser Vance, Telling Stories

 

One of the things that allegedly happened today was that Jabbering Defendant Vance, noticing that his Munich speech and his sabotage of Zelenskyy in the Oval office and the entire pro-Russia side the current Administration has been taking was a "Bad PR THING", decided to tell stories about taking his three year old for a walk. (Do we walkies our toddlers now to help them toilet or WTF? Because this is what my Boomer parents do for their Boston Terrier. Me and my brother did our toddler doodies in the wee people pot. Like a very long time ago, so maybe I don't know how the millennial parents are managing baby shit right this minute. Maybe we walkies our toddlers to protests because it's never too late to rub your kid's face in your crapulence. I'm not a parent. I'm just saying--bet? No cap? How sway? Or whatever the kids say these days about these things.)

I do know how to manage insufferable political lying dipshits though, because while I never had babies, I have the craziest scruples about people who have Secret Service protection and whose street is closed to keep protesters AWAY who maintain they and their toddler child were so BESET! 

Video of the protest has emerged and it's pretty clear Vance is lying; the protest was at the bottom of Vance's street, which was closed by police.

It would have been impossible for the protesters to "follow" Vance and his family around as he claimed. pic.twitter.com/rTkCCNg6qi

— Jimmy Rushton (@JimmySecUK) March 9, 2025

See--it's a hard thing to think this actually happened, but if it did, it only could have if some father put his kid RIGHT THERE, but I charitably don't think he did that. I think he just crafted a story not thinking it would ever be fact-checked to the satisfaction of the audience he wanted to BELIEVE that "slava Ukrainie" protesters were "shit persons". 

This is Juvenile Damage

JD Vance claims that efforts to suppress misinformation and hate speech "are going to destroy Western Civilization. They're gonna destroy Europe, and they would destroy the United States of America if we allowed them to fester. Thank God we have a president now who believes in… pic.twitter.com/EKIIF4rXoD

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 4, 2025

March 4, 2025

Sometimes I wonder what JD Vance stands for, but to me, the persistent thing about him is that he tells stories. He creates narratives. He likes a good yarn. Jesuitical Dissembler Vance is insisting that lying is good, actually. I guess if you have a problem with it, you are probably "virtue-signaling." 

See what happened there? Lying is good and being concerned with what is true is fatally dangerous. (I personally despise the term "virtue -signaling" FWIW--people have VALUES and CONFESS THEM and LIVE BY THEM publicly if they are sincere in any fashion. Scoffing at the notion means you are basically an amoral putz.)

The Lie Trump is Servicing

 

While people are wondering whether Ukrainian President Zelenskyy needs to do some backtracking to make proper amends and all that and get back to the table with the US, Russian foreign minister Lavrov is out here calling this man a traitor to the Jewish people and basically a "Nazi". This has been a big part of Russian propaganda. It is, for so many reasons, especially disgusting to project this made-up bullshit to this man, who comes from a heroic family that fought against the Nazis, for the very obvious reasons. 

If the reasons aren't obvious to you--get off the internet, read books, touch grass. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you believe stupid made-up shit just because it matches the thing you want to believe? Shouldn't what is actually true matter? 

Trump has proposed that Zelenskyy is somehow the reason, being elected to the presidency of Ukraine in 2019, for the invasion that started in 2014 and which his own good buddy Manafort knows a whole lot about. (I get why Trump faithful try to step around all that. It's messy for them, no?) 

Glory to the Heroes

 

I can't imagine anything more appalling than Jethro Dull Vance being the condescending haughty motherfucker who ended the leadership of the United States in the free world. But he was the one who, with his jumped-up ding-a-ling hauteur, who tried to interject a font of pure RU agitprop, and invoked Zelenskyy's need to set things straight and tell the bloody simple stupid truth, that Russia is never to be trusted, has broken ceasefires, and is the source of grotesque war crimes, at Bucha, at Izium.  Wherever the Russian army has had its way, mass slaughter has been their plan. 

It was always about genocide of the Ukrainian people--why else would Russia say they are not a country, and they haven't a proper language and try to stamp out their history? You can't surrender anything to a genocide. You just can't. The terms of peace are maybe you keep your right arm, except to the elbow-today. Until we don't like the look of your other arm tomorrow. And what about those dangerous legs? Will you defend freedom on stumps? 

President Zelenskyy told the truth--his people are truly being slaughtered. Sure, the odds are bad--but surrender is worse. Because of the rape, the mass graves, the kidnapping of children. And the Trump Administration response is to ask a man who almost certainly has reason to fear assassination from Russia---whose people every day have the threat of a bomb killing them, mothers and children--maybe even especially, since the enemy targets maternity hospitals and schools and all--to consider what if a bomb?! Landed on him?!

They Aren't Serious People

 

Two relatively weird and messed up things (I guess not just two, but these were the ones I was tracking) happened today--the Trump Administration got to pretend they were being "promises kept" about releasing the so-called "Epstein files" and they also seem to have gotten the Tate Brothers extradited from Romania. 

I'm not going to touch on Romanian politics or how President in fact Elon Musk is rooting for the pro-Russian candidate and mad the democratic republic wants a do-over and all that--my bandwidth is limited, and TrumpWorld is messy enough as it is. Per my understanding Cailin Georgescu earned his troubles honestly and you want to keep that between him and the country his dumb ass ran, cheated, and was caught on the verge of insurrection in. 

For a lot of reasons, I don't find that funny, myself. I do think it's very funny we are going to pretend the Tates are supposed to be, adamantly, "innocent until PROVEN guilty" when we just horked them out of the environment people were trying to find them guilty in. And their whole schtick was advertising themselves as successful pimps and human traffickers and admitted to being all the bad things they are accused of. 

Trans de Agua

 

Pam Bondi calls Tren de Aragua "trans de agua" pic.twitter.com/2wLfuhKPHq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 20, 2025

February 20, 2025

So, a funny/not funny thing happened in Colorado, where conservatives made up a thing where Venezuelan gangs were taking up whole blocks of apartments. Which meant of course, if that were true, the first place ICE would have to raid would be those occupied dangerous gang apartment scary no-go zones, right?

Right?

Well, they did! And SOMEHOW, everyone and their mother found out about it, and the op was even delayed for a bit? (Even though ICE raids are basically, just like, Tuesday, even during the Biden Administration.) But then they did the thing, with hundreds of guys. Like, a whole multi-agency thing. 

Anyway, I guess everything was very disappointing for the Trump Administration, because maybe there weren't as many arrests as they hoped? So they sacked the experienced acting head of ICE. People figuring out there would be a stepped-up ICE presence out there was definitely the result of "leaks". And Kristi Noem is ready to get out the polygraph tests to sniff out the real problem in why deportation preparations have broken down, promising to get you and your little dog too if you were a DHS employee responsible for leaking. (I may have made that last bit up.)

Doesn't Anyone Have a Price?

 

This one is just for the slow kids: the thing where Elon Musk supposedly doesn't have a price? I'm skeptical because why did this guy get "so rich"? What are his goals? What does he love?

One metric of stupidity is the lack of imagination. Stealing jokes or posts to get laughs is a sign of not being creative or imaginative. Carrying a sink to meme-ishly say "Let that sink in" is way dumber than anything Carrottop or Gallagher does, for example.  Even if you respect their brand of comedy--it's weak. Doing a chainsaw thing like Javier Milei is sort of clownish. 

All kinds of people are losing their jobs under this indiscriminate and dumbass regime. Dedicated public servants, veterans. Look--he might know something about cars or rockets or social media (He doesn't! That's the joke!) but clearly, he is supposedly sharp enough to pass a US citizenship test (also no!). 

Stupid people with money do stupid things with their money all of the time. Don't assume because Musk has billions he is SATISFIED with his life.

Big Men in Kids' Pants

 

Anyway, last night I didn't blog about Trump possibly referring to himself as a king over interfering with New York local politics over "congestion pricing" or with his daft, ahistorical and ignorant ravings over whether Ukrainian president Zelenskyy is a "dictator" (while Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for a quarter century, and no, the temporary interregnum of Nukesy-Pukesy the Drunken Hate-America Elf does not count). I wrote a short science fiction story instead because it gave my brain a rest from what can only be described as imprecatory cursing bordering on being entered on several watchlists, from Homeland Security to St. Peter's. 

But my problem coalesced for me in the above picture of our US Vice-President, JD (Jimmy Donuts?) Vance, sitting there with his Little Lord Fauntleroy awkward short-looking trousers. Jello Dildo Vance never learned how to buy pants. When I say "Big Men in Kids' Pants" I am not talking about in a Matt Gaetz way or a Tate Brothers' way--although their pants truly also don't fit and make them look stupid and juvenile. Also, they fuck underage girls. (That's called "statutory rape" in law-and-order world.) 

I mean they have never learned to pull up their big boy pants and pretend they have a "crisis of manhood" when they have a crisis of not figuring out --not the "man" part--but the "adult" part. 

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the real machers, so I will leave Vance alone for a minute--and he's used to it! And they never earned a callous between them. Billions of dollars, yes. Did a 70 hour week of physical on your feet pallet jack and register banging work-no. Never climbed poles, fought fires, worn a hardhat but never used the equipment but for show. Their work is investing. 

Cowardice Chasing Stupidity

Welcome to a stupid enterprise--emissaries from the Trump Administration appearing in Riyadh ready to deal away things they have no control over to appease Russians who our best intelligence indicates have no intention whatsoever to end the war in Ukraine.  They sat there and discussed what we were willing to stipulate without Europe or (and ESPECIALLY) Ukraine there, like their input would not matter. 

Because what the hell is the country that was actually invaded even doing in the picture, right? Let alone our NATO partners, huh? Like, what ABOUT Poland?

The picture above is a portrait of "cowardice chasing stupidity". Collectively, they might know what they are doing has no fucking chance in the world of leading to anything productive because of course not--but they are all dancing to Trump's incredibly foolish tune. 

Acknowledging President Musk

 

There are tens of millions of people fraudulently receiving Social Security payments according to the genius minds of DOGE, led by our Dark Shadow President, The Elon. Or not. Actually, it could be that the CoderJugend and Musk himself are basically innumerate with regards to government processes and legacy computer systems that are basically a palimpsest of changes in technology and law going back decades. 

They could have requested some sort of agency-related sherpas to guide them through the mountains of data they were reviewing to not seem like hot messes, but somehow Trump was compelled to fire various inspector generals who would be those exact people, except they were kind of investigating Trump and Musk variously for just being all kinds of fraudulent little billionaire monsters.