Every Picture Tells A Story

 

https://t.co/4WcVZ6oW4w pic.twitter.com/RvHmjuyWIN

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) March 22, 2025

I am trying not to see Steve Witkoff's interview with Tucker Carlson in the worst possible way and there is not actually a not-bad way to view it. First of all, Tucker Carlson? Second if all--we are just going to pass on with a straight face that the former KGB agent prayed after the Butler incident as if that is not serious applications of narcissist lube?

And of course we are, because Witkoff is another fucking significance-junky looking to get high off ego strokes. This is a personality the Kremlin is totally aware of. But what sends me is the idea of a portrait.

Trump's "charity" slush funds was all about Trump portraits.  All Trump ever wanted to know about himself was that he oughta be in pictures. (Can someone help me with a thing where I wonder why Trump sees himself as Norma Desmond, Grizabella and Evita?) He's a just a diva. And Witlesskopf is playing very stupid and credulous, too.

And it doesn't appear to be an act. 

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering if anybody knows how to play this game? Look, stupid rich fuckboys, I THOUGHT, at least were sent out in the world with some idea that the world was going to try to blow smoke up their skirts and to be careful of being rolled. Ane here these putzes sit, heaven's own bocce balls. Innocent as little fawns in a sunlight-gilded bower in the eye of a sniper rifle. 

Playing a Weak Hand of Trump Cards

 

Trump has been saying that Ukraine "doesn't have any cards" but I've noticed that Trump kept publicly sweetening the deal (no NATO for Ukraine? cede territory?) just to get Putin to this point--a phone call, as if suspecting Putin is the actual harder person to bring to the table and hoping he could do it with an "all carrot, no stick" approach. 

People sometimes ask what Lincoln or Reagan would have made of the peculiar character who leads their party. Today I'm thinking of Theodore Roosevelt, who said, "Talk softly and carry a large stick." Trump might talk loudly, but who knows what "big stick" he would ever use on the one man he never criticizes? 

 He got his phone call, though--after being made to wait and being cut up by Putin amongst his real homies. His 30-day ceasefire was pretty much rejected, as Putin heaped thoroughly unacceptable conditions into the mix. Trump seems unfazed that he has been disrespected, again. 

Trump, the irascible, the petty, the critic of or his critics--he doesn't feel any need at all to respond to Putin? What gives? 

Trump's Ukraine/Russia Delusions Do Not Go Unnoticed

 

Ukraine: *exists*

Ukrainians: literally just sleeping in their beds at 4 AM.

Russia: invades, bombs,kills, destroys, rapes, lots, kidnaps

Trump: "You don't want to pick on somebody that's a lot larger than you."pic.twitter.com/R9uDjR487G

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) March 14, 2025

Trump's kiss-up, punch down bully philosophy really shows in this nugget from Friday--but it's pure Kremlin propaganda. A few years ago, we were hearing from Tucker Carlson that Russia just wanted some space because they were feeling threatened by their neighbor, whom they already been at war with. In what way is Ukraine "picking on" Russia? By defending itself? By having done so successfully? 

But this is just a little bit of this week's weird double-speak--here's part of Trump's social media stupidity:

It's not actually true. At a point when, if there were about to be honest negotiations, it would be extremely important for this Administration to be clear on the intelligence regarding Ukraine's actual military situation--Trump has, essentially, got the matter fucked up. 

For obvious reasons (I think Russia has owned Trump for years and he made Tulsi flipping Gabbard his DNI) I think this is a horrible sign.

Maybe I Have This Twisted

 

Last night, I had the stupidity to forget how kiss-up, punch-down hierarchies work because I have never actually lived in a fully corrupted banana republic before. My dumb ass posted: 

And DOGE undermining the social safety net and intimating that Medicare and Social Security need big cuts is actually very bad? 

Because of course that is--but his antipathy to democracy at all is also really bad. 

I think it gets worse from here for Musk.. And I think I like it that way. As he starts to sink and stink, Trump will cut ties, because that's how he rolls. 

Except that was dumb, because if Trump truly believes he is post-"elections matter", well, he no longer has to care about whether people hate Elon. He just has to protect the guy who can easily dump $100M into his PAC (slush fund). 

Joe Six-Pack with the retirement fund and a MAGA hat isn't his main concern. Elon SuperPAC donor is.

Ergo, he turned the front of the White House into a sales lot for Tesla and cut a promo. They are cutting the Board of Education, Veteran's medical access, Social Security functionality as a whole thing, IRS (the revenue-finders!) and so on, but the White House had to help rescue one stock today.

The DOW lost many points. Tesla had a little unreality rally. Also, too, Trump declared folks vandalizing Tesla dealerships were "domestic terrorists."  

Let me get this straight. Pardon the idjits who attacked the Capitol with great violence on 1/6/2021 but the people protesting Tesla are the real villains against the US? 

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?!

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. 

What is Intelligence, Anyway?

 

 

Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed for Director of National Intelligence and sworn in and we're just going to see about that, aren't we? 

Does it sound like I have issues with this? Well, yeah. I was a little surprised that Sen. McConnell was the only Republican who voted against her, but it seems that the Senate GOP have decided that they aren't picking these fights with Trump and are just going to let him have what he wants. I do not think they are being honest with themselves about what he wants or what the results will be of giving it to him. 

The position of DNI was created in response to intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. The point of the office was to coordinate our various intelligence agencies and correlate the information into more cohesive overviews. But intelligence is only as useful as the people looking at the products. 

And I simply don't have faith in Tulsi Gabbard's judgment. 

TWGB: Terminal Main Character Syndrome

 

A young DOGE staffer has left because the Wall Street Journal had some questions, as in, "Is this racist account you? " I'm sure Elon Musk is shocked--shocked! That there are little racist pishers in his Kekistanian domain.  Wow. So exotic and not-vetted. 

What's really funny about this is, when our actual confirmed Secretary of State, former US Senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, made a big statement about not going to the G20 in Johannesburg:

I wanted to ask the Real President (tm) Elon Musk if this was the result of his bitch titties being in a wringer over the concept of the US confronting the Woke Mind Virus on what used to be his terf. I mean, "turf".

Of course, I do. I was just confused because the US is obviously in a transitional period and our pronouns stopped being US and seem to be he/huh! regarding Astroboy. 

He's not the president that MAGA voted for, but he's what they got. Up in our databases, taking our numbers, deciding the size of the government HE thinks we deserve. Regardless of what any vetting into him might show, or what his conflicts of interest might be. 

Here's What I know

 

.@ABCWorldNews reports there is not a single other case of someone being brought to trial like Hunter Biden for lying on a gun purchase form without there being either multiple guns involved and/or commission of a crime with the gun(s) purchased. In a country of 500M guns. pic.twitter.com/J8JLRv6flW

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) June 11, 2024

President Biden loves his son, hasn't criticized or interfered with the investigation of his son that opened up  during his predecessor's administration, and says he will not pardon him. There has not been another case of someone being brought to trial for lying on a gun purchase form without some other, greater crime also being charged--there was no such crime here. He was found guilty by a jury, and a few of those people were now comfortable talking with the media.

Trump screams "rigged" about everything, and jury members of his trials are cautioned to stay anonymous for their own safety. These are not similar situations at all. And yet the real victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome (MAGAs) are already saying that Biden rigged a case against his own surviving son, just to distract from Trumps own supposed railroading.

There are some people you can't and really shouldn't try to reach. You could explain this to them all day and they wouldn't see it. It's like their paycheck depends on it (Fox News) or their sense of worth depends on it (losers). 

I really, truly, deeply believe you can only tell such people to go fuck themselves. Truth is for people who can still see truth. 

The Steaming Manure of 2000 Mules

 

Pardoned felonious dirtbag Dinesh D'Souza wrote a genuinely fraudulent book stating that the 2020 election was stolen, and absolutely everything was wrong with it. Now Salem Media Group wants nothing to do with it or the film made from it because they do not want their whole ass sued off of them. 

This is a very clear stance largely based in the very real situation that what D'Souza posits is indefensible and that he used bad false data to defame real people. You know, the same way Rudy Giuliani defamed real election workers with his false claims, and for which he is now being disbarred and bankrupt because he decided to use fraud to do treason.

(Look, you can say I'm over the top to call this "treason", but when Russian active measures support Trump, I don't equivocate about that--why? Why do they want this senile indebted corrupt and easily blackmailable asshole for president? Because he is the entire handbook of "people you would never give top secret clearance to" and there he nonetheless was. Scooping up boxes to take to Mar-a-Lago and by some accounts, having scooped some off to Bedminster while he was at it. Given his Oval office performance with Lavrov and his little gimp act at Helsinki, you want to bet he never sold assets out to his lil' friend Putin? Therefore, if I were a patriot, I would simply not accept their witch hunt intel about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, because how in the hell is that the American Way? And I would view his Mar-a-Lago docs case way differently from how blindfolded hostage judge Aileen Cannon seems to have . Are you okay Aileen? Blink or something!) 

Happy St. Pats to Everyone but RFK Jr.

 

Sometimes an entire family is needed to properly slap a cabbage-headed man into something like reality, but also, it hardly works when he's long been away with the fairies. Some people have noted that despite the talk of anti-vax RFK. Jr. selecting anti-vax sports figure Aaron Rodgers as his running mate, he's liable to declare some wealthy idiot named Nicole Shanahan who has enough money to maybe get him on some ballots as his running mate. 

I guess I don't know for sure she's an idiot. I guess it depends on whether she agrees to be the Kennedy idiot's running mate. For all I know, the idiot he runs with is Jesse Ventura, although, despite his lad working for RT, I never thought Ventura was quite that kind of idiot, except possibly in the "fire doesn't melt steel bars" kind of way. 

Anyway cheers to St. Pat, who got the snakes out of Ireland. I truly would love it if there was a saint who would ger the sheer idiots out of politics. But I am proud to support Joe Biden because of his anti-malarkism. 

It's a brilliant start. 

This is TDS in a Single Screenshot

 

I tried to find the thread where the above comment came from or to sort out whether it was a not-particularly funny parody of ultra-MAGA thought, but deep down, I have a feeling this is where some of Trump's followers really are: they may know perfectly well he lost 2020, they may know he incited an insurrection, they may completely be aware that he had taken top secret documents for which he had no good purpose (and a lot of bad ones), and he may even be a rapist--and he's still their guy. 

I know this because when asked in man-in-the-street interviews whether there's anything Trump could do to lose their support, you can see the little tumblers flipping behind their eyes and no combination matches rejection. Even though a poll in summer of last year showed that over half of Republicans might balk if Trump was in prison, Fox News Propagandists are going after normalizing convict candidates.

This is the real definition of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" in action: the literal cultists who would watch him shoot a man on 5th Avenue and declare it was good thing he did, and he should have immunity for it, anyway.

How many people are ACTUALLY this cultish, vs. how many are just saying they are? 

It totally beats me--and I guess that's the disturbing part. Just how big is that "basket of deplorables" anyway?

"Hungary" for Turkey?

 

Trump: I was very honored, there’s a man, Viktor Orbán. He’s the leader of Turkey pic.twitter.com/h3vrIESVrF

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 23, 2023

Perhaps it's a little petty of me to note that Trump should know better and doesn't it seem just a little like he's...losing it? But--oh heck, This isn't the first time that I've pointed it out, and it won't be the last. He's not a stable genius. He's met both Erdogan and Orban. 

He also said in his recent rambles that he just realized that the "US" is also "us." Aw. He compared himself to Nelson Mandela and said he was never indicted? He's claimed Sidney Powell was never his lawyer.

He thinks the United States could also use an "Iron Dome". (This isn't a new one for him. He's obsessed with "the nuclear" and I think wants something like Reagan's "Star Wars" program. I firmly believe Trump knows more about STI's than SDI. Also, I want to speculate again that it's possible that somehow, some way, secrets about penetrating Israel's Iron Dome got around...hm? Trump is always projecting and telegraphing. He's the Edison of inventing his own reality.)

Oh, that's right, and he also wants to pull out of NATO. I know, it isn't entirely new, but it feels like he's trying to get Daddy Putin's attention again. 

The man ran for office unprepared and ignorant of what was expected of him, served for four years, and LOST GROUND in understanding what the job entails. Isn't it time that the media focuses on that? Sure, he's criminally deceitful. But damn.

Sometimes I think he's also just dumb.

The Water's Edge and the High Road

There's an idea about foreign policy regarding presenting a unified face. What President Joe Biden did today was give full support to Israel, denounced the actions of Hamas as evil, and pledged support to our regional friend. His statements were a profound statement on the ties of the US and our ally, Israel, against terror and a straightforward denouncement of terrorism. It was well-received by our allies. It was a clear message about our support of our ally and as with his great support of Ukraine in their resistance against Russia, he has made clear: we will support the ability of democratic nations to endure. 

I know we don't talk about that water's edge so much. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. There is a time to stay silent, and also a time when one must speak. 

But when human lives are at stake, the idea of being the guy who lays culpability for others' actions at one's opponents' doorstep just because is profoundly shitty, because it means you want something solved not today, but when it benefits you best.  And here's Tim Scott:

  

This Was Not Resistance

 

“And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters” Speeches held at the ‘All Out For Palestine’ protest outside the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/JXLpPIvW6A

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) October 8, 2023

Hundreds of young concert-goers were killed, survivors were raped. They were young people: not the oppressors. Resistance discriminates. It uses necessary force. This was blood lust. This is why I don't feel a part of the far left: they suck. The DSA constantly uses division and smug up-fuckery to fail to accomplish even the merest goals. I noticed fucking PLO posters carried during the anti-Iraq war march 20 years ago. Fuck, people. Concentrate on one clear atrocity and stop being fellow travelers with bullshit. 

For example, Codepink dressed in weird costumes and played Pick-me Progressives and did nothing to end the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars because no one took them seriously. They protested against striking on ISIS. Also against striking Assad for the chem attacks, which I in retrospect wish Obama did. Because fuck that guy.

And here's Code Pink seen just recently snuggling up to Marjorie Taylor Green's gym-sweaty armpit:

The war in Ukraine must END!

Today, I met brave @codepink activists who protested for peace in Bernie Sanders’ office. He had 11 of them arrested!

Peace & free speech shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

We don’t agree on most things, but we do agree Congress should STOP fueling the… pic.twitter.com/uFzenFyMNn

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) October 4, 2023

Being exactly who one might expect:

Palestinians have every right to resist with force up to and including the murder of civilians and rape currently being committed by HAMAS, but Ukraine does not have the right to resist the murdering and rapist Russians who are hell-bent on occupying them? Ok. That's certainly...a take. 

Musk is a Dangerous Prat

 

There was a moment when I almost liked Musk. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, realizing climate change was a problem, wanting to spread our species across at least the solar system. It felt idealistic to me in a way--maybe I saw in him a touch of D. D. Harriman, I don't know. 

But then I realized he was a prat. 

It's the anti-woke stuff, you know. The idea that the "woke-mind virus" or diversity is going to prevent us from being a multiplanetary species is sheer twattery. We aren't actually going to be able to do it any other way.*

But anyway, Apartheid Clyde recently achieved a new low in a recent accelerating downward trajectory--no, not the thing where he's blaming ADL for his losing the multiple billions of dollars of value in Twitter that are actually his own stupid fault for letting the fascists and fucking child porn people back on his platform, but also destroying functionality (like analytics) and making people senselessly pay for things that were free and actually increased productive engagement. 

No, I mean the sabotage of a Ukrainian naval mission because he's a prat. 

Imagine being a contractor who decides to go so entirely outside of one's lane as to contact Russian authorities having been apprised of Ukrainian intent to do anything, and then believe the war criminals and just shut down the service they were contracted for. 

Do you think the heads of Lockheed Martin for a moment ever stop and go "You are using HIMARS for war stuff?! WTF!?" 

We Hate Coups, Don't We?

 

So, this was the day I was supposed to talk about the Republican GOP primary debate, but it got overshadowed--not by Trump and Tucker Carlson's little thing, because Trump is a mental case and just recounts the same stories, so Tucker Carlson just looks like he's shepherding Grampy through his one-sided and possibly delusional reminiscences, but by news earlier in the day regarding the slow art of vengeance wrought on the coup-plotter in Russia: Yevgeny Prigozhin.  

No tears here from yours truly, because while Putin was clearly looking for a coup, Prigozhin was nonetheless the guy driving the US election interference that got us Trump.  And that's obviously not something I love. He was a dirty merc war criming SOB. And while it isn't exactly corroborated, this looks like a cowboy job from Putin. A two-months to the day sentence to let us know where it came from, through straight up explosion. It's out there reverberating and sending a message to people who were still in the field for Wagner. 

What else would we suppose is up with that? The DNA says Prigozhin is dead, and so is his very-Nazi looking associate, who looks like he can't even be dead because he was started in a mad scientists' lab. 

So um. Russia showed what can happen to people whose reach got beyond the grasp of an actual strongman. It's worse than a little old surrender to the jailhouse, right? They might not be able to do all the things they used to (lunar landings, invasions), but there's one thing they still are fine at. 

And we just had a debate where a whole US party failed to clean up after the obvious coup guy they should have had in their sights. 

Just saying. 

TWGB: Many Whistles

 

I think tomorrow if things go as scheduled, Trump's lawyers will be discussing whether there are things that Trump should just shut the fuck up about, but the picture I've used is a sweaty man, a saline-injected rotisserie chicken, suddenly finding himself turning on a spit in the supermarket of justice alarmed at the constant heat. He's not going to not talk. He projects, he rages, he confesses. He's a tea kettle on boil. He seethes. 

He whistles. 

Who else whistles? Whistleblowers. We have one recently, an FBI agent who maintains that investigations into TrumpWorld were suppressed, especially the ones involving Rudy Giuliani (who I think foreign ops used like a human dead drop since he's basically just a hollow dignity wraith wandering the earth looking for relevance), Russian money, corruption. things that didn't make TrumpWorld look good. And Charles McGonigal is implicated, which makes nothing but sense to me. 

On Name Recognition and RFK Jr.

 

Hey, just want to add for the benefit of the RFK Jr. Curious that he's always talking in front of crowds that include antivax neo-Nazis now. He doesn't care that his crowd includes neo-Nazis. He's doing lil-bitty labor schtick but he hasn't the least fucking clue. https://t.co/wRe311tlEb

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) May 23, 2023

A certain nepobaby running (at the behest of Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn, because why not?) in the 2024 Democratic primary has insinuated the CIA might kill him.  Me? I think who you hang with matters.  And if you're an anti-vaxx dipshit who hangs with white supremacists, yeah, I have a huge problem with you. But I doubt that the CIA would need to bother, because this man is a danger to himself and others, but not in the way that gets you un-alived by spooks. 

Even though he's a fountain of Russian propaganda about US officials doing bioweapons. He thinks psychiatric drugs are the reason for mass shootings. 

He was certainly named for his father, but other than my belief his mother was an honest woman, I'd be hard-pressed to see either his father's intelligence oR compassion anywhere in this privileged puffed-up twit. I guess what I'm trying to say is--

He's not offbeat or contrarian or beating his own drum or whatever. He's an idiot. He's an idiot with name recognition because he got named for his dad. It really isn't deeper than that. And that he might get any penetration based on the name recognition from his ancestral betters, gone these many decades, is a thing shocking to contemplate.

And yet, can we doubt that if a certain former president were not part of a successful reality show for several years, he might not have done so well electorally?

(Read my Twitter thread. It has links.)

Ron DeSantis is Not Your Challenger

 

This is a man about to get reamed by the House of Mouse. and their case is pretty good because the petty Napoleon who started the fight between the tourist main event in his state basically telegraphed why Disney was being singled out.  He is unannounced as a challenger for the 2024 GOP nomination--I think not. Nothing that is happening right now says that Ron DeSantis is in contention. Oh he can run. He just isn't going to be really in contention.

He is on a book tour while Ft Lauderdale has been under water. He's cruising around various countries getting a first class experience of VIP -dom while his state is being left behind--underinsured and overcharged. He's this guy:

Prepared to do anything but actually run for the office he probably very much wants.  Because he's a prickly pudding fingers and is not actually a great governor.

I think he's bad for Florida, but if Florida thinks he's okay by them, I am still not seeing it for the rest of us. 

UPDATE: I was supposed to get to this last night, but his surgeon general apparently personally committed a fraud regarding COVID-19 findings.  This matters, because Ron DeSantis picked this guy specifically because he wanted to be a culture warrior about masks and vaccines and when you do that, you have to accept shoddy science. This fraud is a Qanon guy  and DeSantis knew that was what he was going for. 

UPDATE: 

Aw shit. The above hat is real swag existing in the world and since DeSantis is as-yet unannounced, this better not be connected to him, because Disney is already fixing to sue his ass and they are really, really protective of their intellectual property. They will build an animatronic display of "Bitch you tried it" over the sandy wasteland Ron disappears into. 

UPDATE: In Jersusalem, Ron DeSantis takes credit for Trump's moving the embassy there and is typically GOP-style wrong about the JCPOA because he's a) a Republican and b) doesn't know shit about foreign policy. He expects no blowback from either thing. Also his voice goes waaaay up when asked about GITMO so that's obviously a great experience for him. 

Ron DeSantis had a complete meltdown when asked about a former Guantanamo detainee who said DeSantis observed his torture. Ron DeSantis for too long has been the boy in the bubble. Shielded from constituents and press in safe spaces within Florida. pic.twitter.com/BZLagMS0r6

— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) April 27, 2023

He isn't ready and he isn't gonna get ready.  And unlike Haley or whoever else, Trump is fixing to run as Florida Man, so DeSantis is disqualified from running as VP. Also too, this man will not be more viable in 2028, either. Sorry to this man. But not really.