A Very Ugly Truth

 

Despite the dark horizon envisioned Sunday evening, there was a momentary market rally on Monday based on, of all things, fake news, possibly furthered in part by a single optimistic Tweet that there would be a pause on the tariff scheme. Despite the various iterations from Trump that yes, the tariffs were going to happen anyway, there was a wonderful rally Tuesday, based on I don't even know what. Wishful thinking? 

People still seem stuck on the idea that the tariff thing is a bargaining position, not a structural reorganization based on, as near as I can tell, a near-total misunderstanding about how everything to do with the economy actually works. 

But at some dark, terrible point, you have to stare into the tan Shinola'd visage of the aging dumbfuck pictured above who did that to his hair and went out in public, as he has done for decades, and realize the simple truth. 

He's really very stupid. He's not taking some deal, even though all manner of countries have been trying to get hold of him. (70? All of them?) He's already got the deal he wants.

They are literally kissing his ass, he says. And I have told you about his relationship with ass-kissing.  It's his life support system.  He has every eye on him. People are telling him he's wrecking everything--and like a toddler wreaking havoc, he's loving it.  And he gets to prove something--he was right, and all the smarty-pants people who said otherwise will find out.

Congratulations to the Viral Community

 

I know I've never had a really good word to say about Covid-19, HIV, Ebola, any of the avian flus, but I have got to hand it to them--somehow their guy Bobby wound up getting confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. I mean, measles, mumps, and rubella? We thought you were down and out, but it looks like you're tipping champagne bottles tonight because we've got us a Wakefield truther. 

Who knows? Maybe smallpox or polio can come on in for a bow, because conspiracy theories and barely informed opinions have just won the consent of the GOP Senate--except for Mitch McConnell, who knows first-hand what polio is about.  But couldn't seem to convey that reality to his GOP brethren and, um cistern (is that what we call Murkowski and Collins? I forget).

I think it's great if people eat more healthfully.  I, unlike RFK Jr, can admit to not having eaten fast food for a very long while. My version of the Mediterranean diet includes a little salumi, though. My oil of choice comes from the olive pit. Good luck on weaning Americans off canola and high-fructose corn syrup (there is a lobby against you). 

But here's my very important problem with RFK, Jr. He's a dumbass who just implied Trump was sent by God. Because Trump had the courage and intelligence to put RFK Jr. in charge of something to do with health. And you know, hearing that, I could almost believe Bobby was born in a manger. 

And raised outdoors his whole life like an ignorant animal. 

You Are What You Eat

 

You know, I would have bet anything that being Donald Trump's vice president, if nothing else, would involve eating a lot of shit. After all, he did try to get the last guy lynched. That said, I realized that JD Vance was just the guy for the job. Try to spin Trump's oddball pronouncements into something normal. Be willing to do anything for love of Trump. It's not that I like JD Vance--far from it.  

It's just that he has a very particular set of skills. 

So when Elon Musk has a racist manboy resign over making some very racist social media posts, we can see JD Vance fix his purty mouth to do that thing he does:

He "obviously disagrees" with the idea that marrying outside of your race is abhorrent and anti-Indian hate should be normalized--I assume? So says the JD Vance bio. But this is a kid, and his social media activity is "ruining a kid's life?" 

A 25-year-old posted that last year, player. 

Remarkable! Or, The Perpetual Trump Gluteal Osculation Machine

 

Sean Duffy, a reality TV star, Fox News guy, former US Congressman, now Department of Transportation guy, said Trump's leadership has been "remarkable".  Being on "Road Rules" qualifies you for DOT because "roads". It is known. And "remarkable" certainly is a word. 

It doesn't have to mean "remarkably good"--and it doesn't. Maybe he meant it that way.

But it was "remarkable" in the sense of being appallingly racist, sexist, stupid and self-inflating. A projection of blame onto other people as both a deflection and a cover-up for suborned insecurity. Duffy has his ass to kiss, and he did fine. 

And I don't care, because what followed was astonishingly typical and horrific. Trump blamed DEI (which seems to mean "people of color" in Trump's mind) and Biden for what happened, because he wants to speculate about who to blame and is uniquely incapable of either knowing his role or shutting his hole. 

On behalf of Generation X, I apologize for Sean Duffy. Being a sell-out Boomer ass-kisser was certainly a choice, and one he didn't have to make. I guess that's just the way the Reality Bites. Some of us still keep it real, though--and here's my opinion on Trump.

Kash Patel Is Incredibly Disqualified

 

Antisemitic far-right broadcaster Stew Peters responds to Kash Patel claiming that he is not familiar with Peters, despite appearing on his show multiple times: "Clearly, Kash Patel is lying. He absolutely does know who I am." https://t.co/gc5MlT7NVs pic.twitter.com/UqX9mAFFlE

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 30, 2025

He straight up lied. There's no beating around that point--he also lied about the 1/6 choir--he bragged about producing their single and now wants to pretend he doesn't know much about that "community".  He pretends he disagrees with Trump's clemency for the violent offenders sentenced for their 1/6 activities, but that doesn't square with his broad, conspiracy-theory based defense that the FBI (the agency he wants to lead) was behind it--

When what was behind it was Trump inviting these people to "Stop the Steal", a slogan based on a whole-ass lie, and Patel himself can't even admit Trump lost the 2020 election. 

We're Gonna Nuke a Hurricane This Time, Aren't We?

 

So, last night I posted, then pulled, a blogpost about Rep. Andy Ogles' proposed Amendment to have Trump serve a second term.

That man's brains are going to be banana pudding with no vanilla wafers by then, but ok. https://t.co/XzTnGe2lts

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) January 24, 2025

I was expanding a little on the idea that Trump is very old, actually, and manifestly not as competent as he was even during his incompetent first term. So, what the hell would be left to re-elect?  When I got up the next morning, I realized how ill-conceived that idea might be. Trumpism is juche. It is revolutionary and divorced from typical Republicanism and seeks independence from reliance on other nations by just like, taking whatever it is they have we rely on. You know, capitalist juche. No allies, just a little bit of taking hints from Russia and China. And constant propaganda. 

It wouldn't matter if Trump's mentis was compost.  The GOP has gotten used to ignoring that Trump is, in fact an idiot. Only a really bad fuck up might save us. 

The problem is--how bad? And tonight, the GOP confirmed Pete Hegseth, a white knuckle black out drunk and possible rapist and spousal abuser, with nowhere near the experience he ought to have, for Secretary of Defense. 

Because what could go wrong? What have we got to lose? 

Oedipally Wrecked

 

Charlie Kirk presumably has a biological father who molded him and his big head into whatever you would call him now, and I believe he is honestly straight married and isn't, in fact, closeted in any way. Also, he would play the mouth harp if the droopy-eyed SOB, lit from below as if telling a scary campfire story, in an angle reminiscent of his Georgia mug shot, depicted above, told him it was necessary to soothe an old man's slumbers.

(Get your mind out of the gutter--that's from the Bible, it is! )

There are big men, manly men, men who have never shed a tear in their lives, who want this apparition of bad-assedness in office, not because he is good at anything, but because of images like this. His followers can tell one another he wants vengeance and is a Bad Spanking Daddy because the "Russia Russia Russia thing" was his villain origin story, and they want him to be right. 

Like little kids who love their Daddies, they can't see he didn't need an origin story, he's just kind of generally dumb and bad. He wants to punish people for noticing what he did and "disrespecting him". 

In short, they want a motherfucker, and here he is. And this photo is looking pretty damn motherfuckerly. 

The Cruelty is *Almost* the Point

 

NEWSMAX: Why should other states be bailing out California for choosing the wrong people to run their state?

TUBERVILLE: We shouldn't be ... they don't deserve anything to be honest with you unless they show us they're gonna make some changes. pic.twitter.com/SUvVPRDgKm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 13, 2025

There's some good conversation in the comments in the last post regarding MAGA attacks on sign language interpreters--it's about punching down and divisiveness. I recall during the pandemic, the Trump administration pit blue states vs red states for access to resources.  Also, some conservatives fairly openly wanted to sacrifice elderly and disabled people for the sake of the economy (even though that would have been a box of horrors--and we have alternative ways of thinking). We should by now understand the America First problem.

In TrumpWorld, there are only things that serve Trump's (MAGA) needs. If there is a crisis, people just have to figure out how to serve Trump's needs with it. Maybe that means "punishing" a blue state in the hopes the fed-up citizens will just elect Republicans next time around. If Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security have to get cut for Trump's budget to make sense--so be it. 

Who thinks they deserve their promised benefits, anyway? (They have deluded some folks into thinking it's all a Ponzi scheme.)

Ask Not for Whom the MAGA Bell Tolls

 

When Catturd et als on the Twitter are planning for Speaker Moses to step down or get stepped on, I guess I'm going to be pretty basic to the Asics about it--THE GURLS ARE FIIIIIIYYYIIYIIYITINGGGGG!!!! I am so glad I did my nails for this. Park me in the front row, let me see! I got my fan in my bag because this church is heated. God is GOAT and prayers are heeded. 

But no, actually this is really bad. Somehow, we have stupid little children at the wheel of the shortbus that is GOP-led Congress, because there is no adult running the show or at the wheel. Musk encouraging maximum returns to wealthy shareholders and fucking up plans for actually doing good things for people like funding cancer research and all that IS this administration's actual ethos. Trump the King, and his Regent, Elon, chose this kind of legislative ain;t shitness. Musk lies and tries to manipulate the process because he is a dumbass. This is real work that shouldn't be SPUN.

And they think somehow, some way, Democrats are supposed to get in line and save their pretend-mandate asses to preserve the economy, so Trump gets into office under ideal conditions that he absolutely did not create?

Huh!

Have you seen what happened to the stock market since Trump rang his little bell:

So, What is Going on on Twitter?

 

You can actually make all of this up and somehow keep your account. pic.twitter.com/quGzcoCMbw

— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) December 16, 2024

No nano technology was used to post this reply, but without RNA, our DNA would not still be here. It didn't need nanotechnology to get us here and never will. MRNA vaccines are made with messenger RNA--biological code.

 We are not being linked by our cell phones to a super collider connected to Satanism for some weird reason. Not sure who we have to explain this to. (But for the love of all that makes sense, 5G is just what comes after 4G which comes after 3G--the "G" is for "generation.")

These are the kinds of people who reject vaccines. 

No, We Most Definitely are NOT

 

Senator-elect Jim Banks on RFK Jr: "This country is ready for a big debate about vaccines." pic.twitter.com/UAxv6pMmvf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 13, 2024

This country is not ready for a debate on vaccines. Vaccines are not a debate topic. This is like debating whether the earth is round. They aren't political. They aren't something any jackaloon with a big old opinion should have a dopey say-so about. They are being made political by chiclet-heads.

Wait. I take that back. That's needlessly insulting to gum. 

RFK. Jr. is working with a lawyer who petitioned to "revoke approval of the polio vaccine."

The polio vaccine. When I was growing up, if there was a medical Mount Rushmore, Jonas Salk would've been on it. It's safe. It virtually eradicated a genuinely terrifying disease. 

Nancy Mace in a Brace

 

Rep. Mancy Mace of South Carolina apparently experienced the "Handshake from Hell" at the hands of a foster care advocate who was (checks notes) concerned about trans children. The man was arrested, and our fearless Potty Protector is now seen wearing a brace. Some people who were present at the alleged arm-spraining fracas claim they observed nothing unusual about the vigorous handshake. Other observers suggest Mace might avoid injuries by eating something containing calcium (like food). 

(Me. I am a concerned bystander who thinks ravioli and chicken cutlets might make at least some of her problems less so.)

Am I claiming bullshit on her claims of assault? No, I was not there and there is no video that I know of, so I am only saying, based on eyewitness testimony, it might not have happened. And she may very well have received death threats, last month, too. And of course her house was once grafitti'd by antifa:

Hey remember that time that Nancy Mace claimed "Antifa" graffitied her home & then people pointed out the graffiti was all in *HER* handwriting....and then she just never mentioned it again?

Seems like there's a pattern to ol' Nance's behavior. https://t.co/HpuaPByReT pic.twitter.com/J4CDGh8ZCq

— Kendall Brown (@kendallybrown) December 11, 2024

TWGB: The Farce of Law

 

Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked for the dismissal of the election interference case against Trump (without prejudice) and has dropped the challenge to Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents (espionage) case--with respects to Trump, not with respects to his accomplices. 

People are pointing fingers. I see a lot of shit being shoveled Merrick Garland's way. I remember the disappointment folks had with Robert Mueller when Barr terminated his investigation and called for the report, which never did exonerate Trump, except in the eyes of TrumpWorld--and people who hadn't been paying attention. Look--I am not a lawyer, and I don't know what all goes into grand juries, planning a case, and dealing with the sheer firewall of money and privilege that comes with a guy being a former president. like Trump's lawyers were able to throw a lot of chaff up in the sights and gum up the works pretty nicely--no matter what the evidence was. 

There was a pretty damn serious PR game going on, too. And it looks to me like the clear news aspects of what Trump had done, and what those around him had done, got lost.

It seems like a lot to reckon with in a short time. I defer to the expertise of people who are experts about these things, and don't confuse my disappointment with a valid criticism--it truly is not my place to judge that part. I know my limits. 

On the other hand, the political aspect of this farce and who to blame for it all is something I feel competent to judge:

I blame Republicans. The Republican party is without honor. Since the Bush years, I have never gotten a fix on which part of them was dishonesty and which part ignorance, and I have long since stopped caring as both attributes are disqualifying. 

Nancy Mace and Her Personal Space

 

Nancy Mace would like to not share a bathroom with Sarah McBride, who is the first transgender member of Congress. I truly don't know how much time pick-me pygmy Mace spends in the bathroom at work, but because there are stalls in public bathrooms, McBride would never see Mace's ladybusiness in a shared bathroom and Mace would never satisfy her probable curiosity about trans bodies. 

I would prefer not to share public bathrooms with those weird people who, in a bathroom with several empty stalls, have to sit in the stall RIGHT NEXT to mine. I don't want to share a bathroom with those bitches who can't sit their ass down and pee on the seat. I hate those heifers who assume automatic flush is going to zhush all their mess away--and it does not when you are that messy! Hit the button, nasty!

What if We Declined the Decline?

 

Reporter: A brand new analysis finds that Social Security would run out in six years if Trump's agenda is enacted pic.twitter.com/eLiOZPpvfb

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 21, 2024

Generation X people have never taken Social Security for granted, actually I think a lot of us came up thinking the rug would be pulled out from under us because that was how our generation experienced everything--as a recession. I mean, I definitely feel like at some point, someone in my lifetime said out loud with their whole chest that Social Security was the third rail of politics, but I never equally also felt it applied to me, because it felt like someone, somewhere else, was going to wind up the ladder I was supposed to retire on. 

Like, they were going to move up the age I could even get Social Security to an age where I wouldn't even be competent to apply, Like, I would have worked to my late seventies and be trying to sort out how Medicare Part D shit was going down. And just have new technocrat hoops my elderly ass would have to jump through. And a canyon my elderly ass might fall through. 

I'm in my 50's still wondering about that rug pull. Kamala Harris is eight years older than me and wants to save the thing Trump's economic plan would destroy--I guess none of his friends are counting on SS. They count on his tax cuts, though.  

TWGB: I Deserve a Break Today

 

Have you ever disassociated so hard you imagined that your parasocial enemy was suddenly some fat senior citizen cosplaying a service job because he wanted desperately to snow people into thinking he wasn't an elitist silver-spoon buttercup but could totally ball behind the french fry thing at a fast food restaurant because he had poor people job FOMO? and ...

What the whole entire fuck? 

Sorry, Lying is not a Superpower

 

For more than half a century, the major party candidates for president have sat down with 60 Minutes. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump accepted our invitation. Unfortunately, last week Trump canceled. https://t.co/7t5jr5nyFJ pic.twitter.com/VDJDDNYFab

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 8, 2024

Trump is the only candidate in half a century (my lifetime!) who cancelled like a little bitch. The good journalists of 60 Minutes are not Blog-Standard so they don't call him a little bitch. But you know what?

I feel like it was implied. 

Let's talk about Trump and lying--he does do that. He calls the press "liars" because they fact-check him and he can't handle the truth because he is, in fact, a little bitch.  He wants people to think he is being persecuted by the lying press so people don't trust the media and only hear what comes out of his lying mouth. It has worked on people situated in the Fox News Mushroom Farm because they are used to being kept in the dark and fed shit. They have been told to sneer at the elite liberal media apparatus and see fact-checking as a dirty trick. 

But I just want to direct your attention to something Trump said in a very friendly interview with Hugh Hewitt. Sure, he said a lot that suggested that he thought melanated people coming across our border were more genetically murdery--which is some really wild and racist stuff. But he also implied that Kamala Harris wasn't intelligent because she couldn't tell complicated lies. 

Trump to Hugh Hewitt on Kamala Harris: "She doesn't lie in a complicated way because her mind doesn't work that way. She's not a smart person. She's a low IQ individual ... She's a stupid person. We can't have a stupid person as our president." pic.twitter.com/7RPRErqk7O

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 7, 2024

Vice-President Harris not lying is somehow a bad thing? Like, lying is good? 

Nailed It!

 

A Trump statue of made up of nails and Trump’s Butler rally pic.twitter.com/tdy05dL3uX

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 5, 2024

The triumphal return of Trump to Butler, Pa, the scene of his would-be assassination, is best understood through kitsch. Everything about him is. He is a Lord of Misrule, and  his feast days are necessarily cringe. They feature things like a description of how he died. 

Yep, he died. The songless Joe Hill of the owner class entirely died at Butler, PA. 

Witkoff: That is the kind of leader he is. The kind we needed now more than ever. The kind that came here today even though he lost his own life on this stage. But he wasn't going to be deterred. pic.twitter.com/xmFGcDGnI6

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2024

Miraculously, he was shot in the head and the bullet struck exactly nothing that Trump ever used or needed. Halllujah and maranatha! 

This is Not Helping Anyone

There is quite a lot of stupidity on the internet, these days and there's just something about a human tragedy--like a hurricane, to bring out both the best--and the goddamn worst in some people. I guess pictures like the above might seem harmless enough (this was apparently made in response to some AI slop accompanying plaintive disinformation trying to outrage farm folks into believing and possibly acting on the idea that no one is getting assistance after Hurricane Helene). 

It would be great if people had any common sense and just--didn't do that. The same goes for pick-me pygmies who insist that their wife's cousin's ex-husband, a retired brigadier general from the Idaho Coast Guard, went down in his crop duster to deliver a pallet of Diet Mountain Dew but was called a racist and sent home--who knows what motivates people like this?

But when agencies like FEMA, local officials, and the American Red Cross have to fight misinformation as well as do their jobs--that isn't helping anybody.

When elected officials share this kind of thing--it's embarrassing for them, for the most part. When absolute weirdoes like Marjorie Taylor Greene insist there's a mysterious "them" with a weather machine attempting a land grab or election interference, or whatever she's on about, it is dangerous and unfit. It certainly doesn't help that the billionaire owner of a certain social media outfit is happy to distribute false talking points. 

The GOP and Cheap Grace

 

Johnson: Clay Higgins is a dear friend of mine and a colleague from Louisiana, and a very frank and outspoken person. He's also a very principled man. I didn’t even see it but he tweeted something today about Haitians.

Reporter: He told them to get out of the country by Jan 20th… pic.twitter.com/Y0oFz727WO

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2024

There's a formula here that the GOP employs again and again: the Tweet/statement/activity was terrible, but this is a good person (because I said so), and while I didn't see the Tweet/know all the details, I will forgive/absolve this person, even though I was not the person hurt by the activity.  Because it's the Christian thing to do. 

It's a lie. They aren't forgiving a "real" transgression (to them), and they don't care if the person is a good person--that person is "good enough for the political moment" and requires a permission slip. The permission slip has been pre-written, and we are only really just viewing what the in-group's tolerances are.

This type of cheap grace applies to Higgins, to Mark Robinson, to JD Vance, and entirely explains Trump. 

Instead of this statement vouching for Rep. Higgins, who is not noticeably repentant, I would throw it back to Speaker Johnson--why do have such a nasty racist for a good friend?