Congress

A couple of days ago I sent out a tweet that has been on my mind, and events tonight just kind of brought that tweet back into a clearer focus for me. In the tweet, I espoused that I found it not only slightly amusing, but hil-fucking-larious that while El Pendejo Presidente can pack in 15,000 mentally vacant fools into an arena to watch him lick his nuts for an hour, he can’t get more than 300 of them to show up to a protest in his name. But it turns out to be just a bit deeper than that. And right now I want to look at two different protests, and the wider social message that can be gleaned from them. The first protest took place in Wisconsin on April 7th. Oh sure, you can call it a special election for a state Supreme Court seat if you want to, but in reality it was social protest of the finest kind. The state GOP did everything that it could to suppress the vote in order to retain the seat, even going to court to stop the Democratic Governor, Tony Evers, from delaying the vote. And remember this, this wasn’t something that directly affected voters, the result wasn’t going to make or cost them any money, or have any immediate impact on their lives. And yet they came, each wearing the required masks, largely self policing to maintain the 6′ social distancing limit in lines, and they voted. And some of them may have turned out to have contracted the coronavirus for their efforts. Yet the GOP is still putting ice bags on the black eye they got from the coverage, but more importantly from losing the damn seat anyway. For the second protest, you can take your pick. Michigan, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Minnesota. You have protesters coming out to rally to force the sitting governors to rescind their stay at home orders so that they can go back to making a living again. Since the aim of the protest was to get the governor to lift the Stay-at-home orders to let people get back to work, you’d think this was critical to their well being. We’re talking about having the ability to keep a roof over their heads, pay the bills, feed their family. And yet, while tens of thousands of Wisconsinites showed up to vote, I have yet to see a pro Trump protest rally that was projected at a measly 500 people. Which should tell you something about Trump’s true hold over his base. But let’s look a little closer to the actual crowds themselves. While tens of thousands of Wisconsinites stood patiently in line, wearing protective gear, and at least attempting to maintain the social distancing guidelines, in all of the other protests, you had a mere tiny fraction of that many people, mostly between 300-300 people, easily capable of maintaining social distancing guidelines, all hammed together, proudly wearing their idiotic MAGA hats, waving their Trump 2020 placards, fist bumping and shouting into each others airspace. At the rally at the Michigan state house today, pro 2nd amendment puddleheads stood around with their AT-15’s slung over their shoulders, a veiled but implicit of what could come if they aren’t acceded to. Now, let me ask you a question. Look at […]

Hola my padawan learners! I’m going to impart a brief horror story here. This horror story is going to sound familiar to a whole lot of you good and gentle readers, if not the precise situation itself, then the similarities to a situation you might personally be going through right now. And at the end is a possible fix for your conundrum. Y’all know that Teri is on furlough. She filed her claim with unemployment online on March 31st. Six days later, she got an envelope in the mail with her BofA debit card from the unemployment office, for her use once she started receiving payments. The next week she filed her first weekly claim online. Wow! Think of it, a government program that actually works as designed, what a concept! Except not. The last thing we heard from unemployment was getting that debit card. It is now three pay cycles later, and not a penny has been deposited in the account. Not only that, but we have received no communication regarding any issues with her account. So much for efficient governmental processing. Last Friday we started calling then directly to the unemployment office to try to resolve the situation. Since Friday, we have logged a combined 8000 attempts to talk to someone, without even being able to get into a hold queue for a representative. It’s always either a “all circuits busy” signal, or a “your call cannot be completed at this time.” Kind of hard to correct a problem without making contact. Today, out of desperation, I called the district office for my representative, Dina Titus. The staffer who answered the phone was polite, energetic, and helpful. She advised me that as of last week, their offices had begun actively assisting constituents with there unemployment issues. Teri gave her the necessary information, and she assured us that they would call us back with either a resolution, or more information. It was that simple. The title of this article says it all. With the disruption of the pandemic, people are running into roadblocks for all kinds of things. And because of the crushing influx of contacts due to the conditions, both state and federal response systems are being overwhelmed. But you know who’s not being overwhelmed right now? Your duly elected member of congress. At its base, this is exactly what your MOC is there for. You elected these ballot mice to look after your interests, and now you need help. And you’ll get action too. This isn’t an “opinion” call, where you’re just making your voice heard to your representative, this is a call for action. And what is a United States Representative if not a customer service agent for their constituents? People have friends, neighbors, family and colleagues. And if they don’t get a respectful response from their congressional office when they have a legitimate problem, their representative may be updating their resume come next November. That’s my advice to you all. Lots of people have lots of problems right now, brought on by the coronavirus, and most likely they will be state based problems. But you have a US House member, and they can force action at the state level if you just turn the loose! Try solving the problem through the normal, accepted channels, but if you end up banging your head against […]

Alright motherstickers, this is a fuck up!   Trump’s FBI One of Trump’s original selling points as a candidate was his ability to bring his unique, non political business management style to the White House and the federal government. And of nothing else, he has kept that promise. But you have to remember, Trump’s unique management style was to ceaselessly play senior executives and advisors off against each other, in a Machiavellian vipers nest to keep them from trying to oust him. And that is exactly the management style he has brought to Washington. Since my initial outrage when Rachel Maddow first broke the story, I have put significant time into loudly complaining about Trump’s use of federal assets such as the FBI and FEMA to literally hijack shipments of desperately needed medical supplies purchased by private hospitals and individual states, after Trump had already advised them that they were on their own in terms of procuring them, just so that they could be added to the national stockpile, so Trump could brag about handing them out like Halloween candy. With Trump now largely sidelining the actual medical professions from the alleged daily coronavirus briefings so as to not trip him up with stupid shit like facts, it is long past time for the media to begin grilling him on this. But now apparently His Lowness has brought his inimitable management style to the arena of grand theft as well. Rachel Maddow broke last night that the Veterans Administration, an actual branch of Trump’s own government, found itself in the same positions as the hospitals and states. Neither FEMA nor any other branch of the Trump administration was making the slightest effort to properly supply the VA with the necessary equipment, so they had to hit the private market and compete against the states. After negotiations, the Va managed to secure an order for 5 million masks to supply their facilities with. And you guessed it, during transport FEMA and the FBI showed up and hijacked the fucking order. This is a true life example of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The stupid shit is literally stealing from himself! Not that it should be any surprise, but it is yet another shining example of the shortsightedness of El Pendejo Presidente. Since day one, Trump has hammered home his love for the military and veterans. He showed his love for the military by letting their kids sit in crumbling classrooms while he stole allocated school construction money for his vanity wall. And he showed his tender feelings for veterans by removing VA Administrator David Shulkin, an able administrator who was trying to drag the VA kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and let it languish instead. Traditionally, active service members and veterans have been staunch conservative voters. But since, unlike most other voting blocs, they have literally sacrificed for the common good, and at great personal risk, they tend to demand action more often than words. And because of their status, they get at least a passing toss at it. But if actions speak louder than words, veterans and active duty personnel can only feel casual disdain pouring out of their commander in chief. So go ahead numbnuts, keep right on doing what you’re doing. The VA has already pitched enough of a stink about this for […]

Everybody knows hamsters, right? They look like fuzzy plums, with paper clip legs, and they run around at 800 mph. Their most endearing physical characteristic is jamming their 4 little razor sharp teeth into the pad of your thumb, and then just hanging there while you run around the room, shaking your hand and howling in pain. Adorable little shits. The dominant feature of owning a hamster is the wheel. They hop in the wheel, and go 800 mph without moving an inch. This cute little toy actually led to a phrase for abject futility, Like a hamster on a wheel. I don’t know of a single person who hasn’t both said it, or done it at some point in their lives. But I have an alternate theory for that. I like to call it The Stupid Hamster Wheel. When the hamster jumps on the Stupid Hamster Wheel, it’s locked in place, the wheel never moves, leaving the hamster to run in endless complete loops, like some dipshit car daredevil at a county fair. This phenomenon is most prevalent in GOP politicians and the conservative news media. You see stupid, it disappears, and then comes right around back into your lap again. I just came across the latest political iteration of The Stupid Hamster Wheel. I was just making one of my obligatory swings through Cluster FUX, wanting to see what the under fives were up to today, and they were just going to a break. The host said something like, Will China ever be held personally liable for global restitution for the coronavirus that they unleashed on the planet? That story after this break. And I thought to myself, Oh, shit! More Trumpian China bashing to gin up the base. And then came the commercial. It had a guy clad in what I like to call Kushner weekend attire. It was a tall, skinny geek, with a face made to kick sand in, a white shirt, black tie, and a sweater with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He came straight to the point; The communist government of China created the Covid-19 virus in a secret lab. They’ve been lying not only to their own people, but to the world about their complicity, blah, blah. It went on for almost 30 seconds, reams of hackneyed political gibberish. But then came the McGuffin, If you’re looking for straightforward, honest reporting on the coronavirus, and China’s shameful role in it, then subscribe to The Epoch Times! And the words screamed through my head, Oh Fuck! The Stupid Hamster Wheel again! Y’see, I’m somewhat more than passingly familiar with The Epoch Times. It’s an anti PRC rag, available by subscription both online or in paper, which lives to bash the PRC. It’s actually run by a legal arm of Falun Gong, an anti communist China group banned by the Chinese government decades ago as an outlawed religious cult. They have been a pain in the ass for the PRC for years, actually getting one of their “reporters” a press pass to a Rose Garden shindig with Bush Lite and the President of the PRC, where said reporter interrupted the Chinese President for almost 5 minutes before finally being led away by the Secret Service. It turned into an international humiliation for the Bush White House. But I’m even more familiar with them thanks to a deep dive done on […]

When I was a middle school teacher, I had to take several months off for spinal surgery. The doctors literally “cut my throat” in order to go in and work on my cervical vertebrae. When I returned to school, the kids asked me about the Frankenstein scar on my neck. My answer: the doctors cut my head off, put it in a pan, worked on my spine, sewed my head back on, and sent me home. The ten or fifteen seconds of stunned bemusement before someone yelped, “No, they didn’t!” were priceless. (And yes, I am a Bad Person for lying to my students. I did fess up after they called me on it, so there’s that. Also, the scar healed beautifully. Too bad, really. I loved telling people that story.) Kids are credulous and gullible, but not stupid. Most — not all, but most — Americans are the same. It didn’t take long for people to react in horror to Trump’s bizarre exhortation to inject themselves with disinfectant. (If you’re an inveterate Trump defender who believes that bad old liberal media is lying again about The Wonder That is Donald, check the link above. There’s video and everything. Of course, you won’t believe it, but I can’t help you with that.) Here’s what Doctor Trump advised the American people. The setup is a set of comments by someone with actual, functioning intelligence, DHS’s Bill Bryan, spoke about the virus not doing well in warm, humid temperatures. Bryan said, “The virus dies quickest in sunlight,” which triggered a series of speculations in what passes for Trump’s mind. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked because of the testing. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Why yes, Doctor Sooper Genius, I’ll shove a halogen flashlight up my ass right away. That’s do the trick. But wait, the Doctor is still in da house: I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that. Because, you see, it gets on the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds — it sounds interesting to me. Absolutely, Doctor Giggles. This is an awesome idea. I’m making a cocktail of Lysol, Clorox and Scrubbing Bubbles for myself. Maybe I’ll have it for high tea. What do your fellow megaminds think? Actually, they’re not on board. Dr. Vin Gupta warns: This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible and it’s dangerous. It’s a common method that people utilize when they want to kill themselves. … Any amount of bleach or isopropyl alcohol or any kind of common household cleaner is […]

El Pendejo Presidente is charging full guns forward towards his Reopening America Sale for May 1st, and although someone in the administration talked him into taking some ground cover by leaving the ultimate decision up to the Governors, he’s sure to Twitter praise the twits who rush forward unto the breach at his command. But there’s a couple of problems here. The first problem is that the con is collapsing, for the simple reason that it has gone on too long. If you’ve been watching CNN or MSNBC the last couple of days, or caught the right newspaper article, there are just a trickle of stories, likely the shower before the deluge, that are markedly different. They’re from survivors, or family members of victims of the coronavirus, and they’re laying some very specific blame that is going to have them ordering Maalox in tanker trucks at the White House and FUX News headquarters. These angry and heart broken family members are starting to blame Trump himself as well as FUX news. And these aren’t Democrats either, either they, or their family member were solid Trump supporters, and that’s what makes the anger more terrible. Trump and FUX spent months ridiculing the virus as nothing more than a bad case of the flu, and a hoax, and supporter bought into it. As one family member told a reporter, If FOX News had just stopped making a joke out off it, and if President Trump had walked behind that podium wearing a mask, and said that this virus was nothing to joke about, I know for a fact that my father would not have boarded that cruise ship. That cruise ship was bound for Spain, and her father died of the virus last week. It has gone on too long. One of the things that Trump and FUX seized on, a vafary of chance, was that for a long time the circus seemed to be restricted to the coastal, more liberal areas. Places like Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and New Jersey. FUX hosts played on the fact that it lagged in their base heartland, regularly asking people, Do you actually know anybody who has died from the coronavirus? Do you know anybody who has even caught the coronavirus? Those salad days are now long gone and over. As time spread, and the virus with it, into the GOP stronghold heartland states, more and more frequently the answer to those snide FUX questions is becoming a resounding YES! And the more common and widespread the virus gets, the more resentful people become at the intentional misrepresentation as it begins to hit home. But as bad as that is, it isn’t the worst thing that Trump is facing with his nudge-nudge, wink-wink May 1st reopening date. There is dissent in the ranks at two levels. On the broader level, GOP Governors such as Larry Hogan of Maryland and Mike Dewine of Ohio are signalling that they have no intention of taking precipitate action just to please The Pampers President. And even Trump friendly Greg Abbot in Texas is taking a more incremental approach, and has already stated that if the virus begins to rebound, restrictions will snap back into place. This is not the kind of unified front that Trump was hoping for, allowing him to put the blame of […]

So, you say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world   The Beatles The music clip above was perfect in my mind to start this article, because I am at heart a product of the “flower power” age. Not the mainstream, I was something more like midway along the tail. But still, more than old enough to have been exposed to the culture of the times. And the reason that struck me so hard was because I also thought of an iconic image of the times. It became almost a mantra slogan of the times, it appeared on both bumper sticker as well as t-shirts. Hell, I had one of the t-shirts myself. The message was both simple and beautiful, What if one day they threw a war, and nobody came? And that hit me because Donald Trump is planning a war. He’s planning a war against the media, and against the Governors of the United States. He is rock firm in his belief that he has to get the national economy reopened for business as quickly as possible, in order to reassure the stock market into going back up to a level that will help his reelection campaign. I can almost see the signs and posters, By Executive Order, Friday May 1st, 2020 is officially proclaimed to be National Economic Reopening Kegger Day! There will be a band in every park, and a parade on every street! Campaign contribution drop boxes will be located on every corner. All of which leads me right back to where I started this piece. Maybe that time honored, much beloved slogan needs to be updated to What if they threw an economic revival, and nobody came Because, nobody will. At least nowhere near enough of them. In two recent polls, 58% and 55% of the American public say that they fear that the country is going to try to reopen too soon, and expose the country to a second deadly wave of the coronavirus pandemic. But you have a GOP Governor like Larry Hogan who told CNN today what he had no idea of what President Trump was talking about in terms of testing, and Governor Mike Dewine of Ohio stating that their return to “normalcy” would be a protracted one. Even Trump toady Greg Abbott of Texas has said that their approach would be “science driven” and quoting Trump’s own criteria that no state could currently match. To be sure, there are governors stupid and senseless enough to follow Trump down the rabbit hole to some pyrrhic Jonestown over the virus, but even in those places there is trouble in paradise. Despite the governor’s intransigence, the mayors, sheriffs, and county commissioners are begging the governors office to strengthen, not weaken the restrictive orders for public safety. Which means that the people in their communities are scared. What if they threw an economic recovery, and nobody came? The dipshit governor of Nebraska is talking about reopening some mega mall on the interstate on Friday, this despite pleas from almost everybody that can open their mouths. The excuse is that reopening the mall will show retailers the best practices for reopening across the country. But employees of the mall and its stores aren’t buying into this bullshit. And what self respecting national chain wants to reopen just one store just to see […]

No, no, no, no, NO! Now the media is really starting to piss me off. Why is it that every time there is a blatant act of rampant stupidity out there, there ends up being a small faction in the national media that seems incapable of understanding the concept of stupidity, and seeks to create an alternate explanation for it instead? The topic when I turned on the television this morning, to MSNBC, was these anti quarantine protests that are beginning to pop up around the country, kind of like dandelions in your front yard. And right now, that’s all that they are. The secret is to deal with them effectively, before they take over the whole damn yard. And part of that is denying them the attention they seek in television in the first place. Katy Tur’s remote guest was Dr Redlener, an expert and pretty much daily staple on MSNBC, but for once he got out over his skis and started talking about something he knows nothing about. He started innocently enough, saying as to how we had to break these crowds down to understand them properly. He started with something like; Well, first we have to separate these crowds into groups. For example, some of these people who are protesting are protesting exclusively to reopen the economy, because they are dependent on it. The assistance programs that are in place are not helping them sufficiently, and they need to get back to work to survive. OK, I can cop to that. I can see how there are people like that out there. Say, people who work two jobs, and can’t file for unemployment on both of them, or similar circumstances. I have a problem conceiving as to how reopening the economy to put them back to work accomplishes anything more than assuring that their coronavirus inspired funeral is fully paid for, but I can understand their position. But then Redlener fell flat on his face; And then, sadly, there is a group out there that are misinformed. They’re being misinformed, mostly by the conservative media, and their own President, and they simply fail to understand the actual gravity of the situation. No Dr Redlener, that is not correct, and you sir, are a moron. While a child may really, really want to go outside to play in the rain, it instinctively understands that the lightening is dangerous, and stays inside when Mommy tells him or her to. While the science of the coronavirus may be complicated, the reality is not, this thing kills, and that’s all it does. These are not the sad, deluded souls of 2016 who were so sick of the current political atmosphere that they honestly thought Hey! Maybe a total outsider really can shake things up. The scales fell from those peoples eyes long ago, see the results of 2018. No sir, what you have yourself here is, what in days gone by would have been referred to as a bunch of flat earth motherfuckers. These people are not being force fed illogical, anti science information. What they are being fed by Trump and FUX News is exactly what they want to hear. Stone cold Trump supporters regularly brag to the media that one of the reasons they love Trump so much is that he drives us fucking libtards absolutely crazy. And they’re trying […]

Rachel Maddow has a rule of thumb for dealing with the Trump cabal that I like repeating, Don’t pay attention to what they say, pay attention to what they do. But after 5 1/2 years of living in Trump’s slum tenement brain, I have my own rule of thumb that has yet to fail me; When Trump does something stupid, to understand, first ask how it benefits him personally. You have to remember, Donald Trump is purely transactional. I once described him as a geometric figure, he doesn’t exist without an angle. In anything Trump does, he sees a benefit in that action for himself. It may well be a purely delusional benefit, but he still sees it as a benefit. Trump looks like a complete moron, and a third rate hood for sending the FBI and DHS out to hijack privately purchased medical supplies from hospitals and states. So how does he gain? Simple. Trump has a supply problem. He never used the Emergency War Powers Act effectively to increase production, so his national stockpile is dwindling. But Trump’s overpowering ego demands that he go out every day and brag about the massive amount of supply relief he’s giving to the states and hospitals. And the easiest way to get rid of his stockpile shortage is to steal everybody else’s shit, put it in the stockpile, and then take personal credit for distributing it. Because this is actually an evolving story, with still-moving parts, I want to start with a brief timeline, so that we all end up in the same place when we discuss the above promised hypocrisy; On March 30th, at the end of her show, Rachel Maddow had a brief Doctor Feelgood segment about the California Service Employees International Union taking the bulls by the horn, and locating on its own a cache of 93,000 N95 surgical masks that it was in the process of purchasing for distribution to California first responders and medical personnel On April 3rd, Rachel followed up on the original SEIU story by reporting that the FBI had actually determined that the cache of masks was nothing more than a con job. There was an active criminal investigation into the matter being run by the Pittsburgh US Attorney’s office On April 10th, I wrote a largely laudatory article concerning how Las Vegas gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson had picked up the phone, placed an order with a Chinese company for 2 million N95 masks, sent a company freighter over to China, and dropped off 1 million masks in Albany, New York on the way home to Las Vegas with the rest of them On April 10th, Rachel again updated the SEIU story, this time with the bombshell information that the whole reason that the FBI had discovered the scam in the first place was that it was investigating the shipment with an eye towards hijacking the shipment on delivery. Apparently the FBI and the DHS were now actively involved in felony hijacking or privately purchased medical equipment On April 17th, Rachel had Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on her show, and Pritzker related some of the 007 bullshit he had to go through to ensure that a shipment he had ordered wasn’t hijacked at the airport by federal agencies OK, so there’s the basic timeline. Take a quick […]

US Representative Justin Amash (I-MI) is considering a run as a third-party independent. You’d be forgiven by asking, “Who?” You’d also be forgiven for adding, “Why should I care?” Well, the answer to the second question is, “Maybe you shouldn’t, but…” Amash is a former Tea Party darling who entered Congress as part of the sewage tsunami that overran Congress in 2010. He’s more libertarian than most of the right-wing bottom feeders, and in his own way, he has some integrity about him. Position-wise, he’s hard to pin down. He’s 100% against abortion in any form, but is also against the death penalty in federal prisons. Then, in February 2020, he was one of the four Congressional members to vote against a landmark anti-lynching bill. He opposes the EPA, doesn’t believe the government should take any actions to mitigate climate change, and even voted against providing funding for water provisioning to Flint, Michigan. There’s more, but you get the idea. He encapsulates the ideal of the far-right libertarian, actually better than libertarian darling Rand Paul (R-Thug), who is just a white supremacist who has Atlas Shrugged downloaded to his Kindle app. At any rate, we don’t want him in government at all, even if he does have a sense of integrity that most of his (former) GOP colleagues totally lack. His ideology and policy stances are 175.2 degrees away from ours (that figure is a rough estimate, of course). But he did win some fans when, in mid-2019, he began telling anyone who would listen that he believed Trump had committed impeachable acts. No one in the GOP was surprised: Amash was always a Never Trumper, and has been targeted as one of Trump’s innumerable “enemies” since at least 2017. Amash supported the conclusions of the Mueller Report, and left the Republican Party shortly thereafter. He was the only non-Democrat in the House to vote for impeachment. At least five Republicans are running to unseat Amash, so it’s no surprise that he may want to do something to either revitalize his House campaign or step away from Congress altogether. On April 13, he tweeted that he was considering a run for the White House because “Americans who believe in limited government deserve another option.” Americans who believe in limited government deserve another option. https://t.co/c7P2vOTyOe — Justin Amash (@justinamash) April 13, 2020 Well, Americans deserve better than Trump, that’s certain. But they also deserve better than Amash. Regardless. It’s pointless to analyze Amash’s potential for good or bad as president, because he won’t win. He may not choose to run. Certainly the Never Trumpers at The Bulwark (the conservative site headed by William Kristol and Charlie Sykes, among others) don’t want him to. They are very clear on their reasoning: they love everything about Amash and would wet themselves in glee if by some electoral miracle he could gain the White House, but since that won’t happen, his “run could help reelect Donald Trump.” Yup. Authors Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller are very clear: This isn’t an easy call. On one hand, we want to be for him — to have the joy and satisfaction of getting behind the constitutional superhero of our dreams. But on the other hand, there is a downside risk to his running and the price of a second Trump term […]