ICE Strikes Again

Another person shot and killed by ICE goons or immigration authorities. We don't need more information. They have no business being in Minnesota in the first place. Or anywhere else. This is on them. They need to get the fuck out. 

Consolidated Everything

Republicans want to consolidate everything. They like shit big. Monopolies, you name it. They think it's that or chaos. It is, but only in their brains. What's in their brains can be made manifest, however, as it has with Trump. They create the chaos. Because they're sick fucks. 

Immigration or Intimidation

Minneapolis. Now Maine. Other places before them but maybe not as bad. This has nothing to do with immigrants. Nothing. Obama and Biden, especially Obama, did what Trump said he was going to do, deporting people who deserved it. This is about intimidation. And building a capability. It's all practice for some form of tyranny. So it is tyranny, but not at critical mass. 

Cheers

I just wanted to say to our friends in England hooray for waking up to the full horror of Trump. Now how about waking up to the full horror of yourselves. 

Choose Your Side

Democrats want to send a message that an ICE agent shooting someone in the face and killing her, illegally since she was not a threat, is bad and to be discouraged apart from being illegal. Republicans want to send a message that it is fine. Choose your side. 

Blessings and Beatings

Don't forget ICE is on God's side. You're not only being beaten you're being blessed by being beaten. Isn't that cool. You should be appreciative. 

Archdick Donald

Trump is royalty alright. Asshole Supreme and Archdick Donald. 

The Real Discontinuity

The real American discontinuity is not Trump or anything that's going on now. The real discontinuity was in the push for racial justice. We're returning to our roots in racism and injustice. 

An American Consensus

Democrats dislike Trump because he's a destructive piece of shit. Republicans like Trump because he's a destructive piece of shit. There's a hidden consensus. There's a hidden American consensus that Donald Trump is a destructive piece of shit. 

Professional Losers

Democrats are professional losers. We can count on them to find a way to lose. They're waiting around for another political prodigy to save them, indulging in assorted fantasies because they're so convinced they're right, but it's too late. 

Woke the Military

One can fantasize. That Democrats will have the opportunity to set it all right. That they will have the opportunity and act with the decisiveness and determination of Republicans. Fuck things up, but in a good way. Go beyond Trump, or where he is now. Declare a national emergency and martial law. 

Shut down Fox News and reactionary radio. Close every right wing, Trojan Horse 'think tank' and get the money, all of it, out of politics. Jail a whole bunch of people until things can be returned to a state of principled legality and constitutional observance. Nice jails not their shit. No killing or cruelty.

We can never do that. Do you see the problem? We will need enforcers and those people are inclined to be right-wing authoritarians. They'll comply with any kind of illegality and Trump abomination. They'll probably do it for Vance if Trump dies. They're authoritarians first. And tribal, identity types. 

So any Democrat that tries to do anything remotely like what's Trump's doing but in accordance with the law, not in spite of it like Trump, will have problems with compliance. Problems getting the people who will do any crazy, illegal shit Trump asks will resist doing legal shit for Democrats. 

Because lunacy is more authoritarian. 

Lunacy is like God, the final repository of everything. Fuck the law if you have access to God because God is the law, whereas Democrats don't claim this level of authority because we're not nuts. So we need a woke military. That isn't indoctrination or, if it is, it's indoctrination in respecting the law.

Indoctrination in not being a criminal. The kind of woke we need, not firing people at universities for violations of language purity or whatever, which I always understood as an overreaction out of the frustration at being defeated. When I simulate what Democrats need to do this is where I end up.

And it's not reassuring. 

a posteriori

Republicans arrive at judgments a posteriori or 'from the asshole' which means depending on observation and they're both fixated on assholes and looking out from the perspective of assholes because they're assholes. Lots of assholes there but that's where we are courtesy of Republicans. 

Rich People Can Do Anything

One of the rich guys in my area, a tech dude, moved to New Zealand. I don't blame him. I envy him. I want to get the fuck out of here. 

Honorary Aryan Award

Donald Trump has announced the Honorary Aryan Award recipient for 2025 and it is Stephen Miller, for services performed in the cause of racial purity and refinement. 

Not the Zit Joke Again

President Bluto did the zit joke again, demanding attention by being a pig, this time with some shit in Nigeria. He's done it many times before. It never works. The truth is just under the surface, that the President is a nasty infection and a pocket of pus. 

Money, Money, Money

Money was already way too great a determining factor in American life. And it's getting worse. 

How Trump Destroyed Christmas

No Christmas mood at my house this year. I've tried but I'm not feeling it. Trump and his enforcers have made it impossible, spreading their evil about as fast as they can. Good for you if you can do it but I just can't. Their evil has overwhelmed all the goodness for me. 

DEI at the NYT

Ross Douthat is the face of DEI. At the New York Times. And Bret Stephens. The Times feels it has to have 'conservatives' in the mix. Because they believe in inclusion. DEI, in other words. So they have Douthat and Stephens. Who are radical bigots and authoritarians. That's what it means to be conservative in America -- a culture warrior. Douthat just wrote another piece outlining how 'woke' is a real thing that did damage. Meanwhile our 'conservative' government is on a killing spree like the last batch of Republicans. They don't give a shit about anything. Except themselves. And winning. 

Is there any Republican in Washington that isn't a piece of shit?

Any integrity out there? 

Feckless Endangerment

How are we to understand the interplay of Donald Trump's malice and his incompetence? I think the malice is a function of the incompetence operating through insecurity, assuming his defining trait is fecklessness in relation to worthlessness. He's so scared. In his bones he knows he's an idiot. He knows he's a piece of shit. He knows there's nothing there. 

The aggression and the need to constantly belittle, degrade and dominate everyone is meant to disempower them and reduce the threat because he knows he's inferior. He can't feel powerful. If he could he would. But he's trying. By belittling others because power is relative.  Being below Trump means being utterly degraded and inhuman, the complete loss of freedom a self-determination. 

The Pyongyang Playhouse

The Kennedy Center is all praise for the Trump regime and dedicated to portraying of the world as fearless leader sees it. Above all fearless leader must not be criticized. Fearless leader embodies all that is good and beautiful and just. All hail fearless leader.

Your Attention Please

I hereby proclaim that anyone who continues to support the piece of shit Donald Trump is at this point also a piece of shit. They share in his shithood, which is vast and unrelenting. 

Cyclops the Second

Rod Dreher has tracked back to his roots. He's a racist, a bigot, a eugenicist, an imperialist and a fascist. He thinks he should be paid and supported for being Rod Dreher, the thing that defines conservatives, an attachment to privilege. They think some people are mysteriously, irreducibly, existentially better than others -- them. And God is on his side, for good measure. 

Well I'm Glad That's Over

I've had a reckoning late in life, involving a mass of shame and regret. I never hit my stride, to put it mildly, and have misrepresented myself, or not been true to myself, for virtually all my adult existence. 

The truth of that was apparent and unmistakable to me once seen. There's comfort in the certainty. The comfort presents as compassion, firstly for myself and then it sorta spreads. Who am I to judge anybody?

Given the way I view my own life, I mean. With the world going to shit all around compassion helps, but it's still a struggle. Sadness on both fronts. But it's honest and there's truth in it. Shame is hard, though.

It's a Jungle in There

I mean the conservative mind. Look at America, probably the most fortunate people in the history of the world. Good candidates, anyway. And conservatives rise up and destroy it. Out of nowhere. No reason. 

They can't help themselves. There was nothing wrong. Or, to the extent there was, it was the fault of conservatives. Take the Great Depression, the exact result of laissez-faire, attack economics and ideology. But they never gave up on those ideas because they made them rich. And a lot of people poor.

Fuck the country. Fuck the poor. Fuck everybody but them. 

They tried to pull off another depression in 2008. Obama had to drag us out of it and clean up their mess, the usual pattern. They obstructed that, except the part where he bailed out the rich people. Bailed out conservatives, which some Wall Street guys argued was necessary or the world economy would implode. 

Blackmail. And they're back at it under Trump. In spades. Unprecedented stuff. There was a time they might have believed their own bullshit. Maybe that makes it not bullshit, I don't know. Supply side. Rising tide. Boats. 

Whatever. Hard to make a case for that now. Incomprehensible inequality. Literally incomprehensible. Try to comprehend it, I dare you. Double dare and stand behind Trump when the Big Mac farts blast out of his ass dare you. Instead of doing illegal shit they're making corruption legal. 

Kidnapping, rape, murder, you name it, no problem. If you're a conservative. White collar crime? See under corruption. They were always all-in on that, rolling the dice on the legality. That Bush recession, the '08 thing, taught them something. They were basically immune. We were insuring their depredations. 

So, here we are. Conservatives are on the attack like never before. 

Never before in American history, anyway. Because of intolerance. They have to attack. Attack something. Someone. Anyone. Hispanics will work. Democrats. Children. Old people. Targets of opportunity. Boat people and fishermen, they don't know. They don't care. 

They attack without real cause, but because it's a jungle in there, in the conservative mind. 

Follow the Money

Follow the money. Find the money. Take the money. Documenting the plundering and crimes of the rich isn't enough. We must shut their asses down. 

What Did We Expect to Have Happen?

People are getting paid for subverting our government. They're getting rich subverting our government. What did we expect to have happen? 

The World Exists to Kiss Trump's Ass

I'm not kidding. Republicans are mapping godhood onto Trump. Not that they think he's Jesus, consciously, but the effect is that. It's the unconscious that's running the show. Ever been to a Baptist church? The experience lacks, let's say, artistic immediacy. Comes up short on beauty. Fails like fuck, really. And extreme Calvinists crave closeness to Jesus more than anything. 

It's their entire purpose. 

But there's that annoying wait, called 'life,' the prison sentence which we serve and to which we are sentenced by God. Life is not supposed to be nice. Suffering brings people closer to Jesus, especially Democrats, those fucking apostates, so let them suffer. If they die that's fine. They get to see Jesus, not having been saved. Catholics used art to feed that need for immediacy. 

Music, images, statues, incense, all that. Calvinists called them idolators. Said Catholics were superstitious and such. But Baptists blew a fuse. Their craving for a less abstract (you as your immortal soul) and experiential form of religious rite has taken them to Trump (and snake handling, a close parallel) as the human embodiment of holiness and a personal connection to perfection. 

Something more emotionally satisfying. We can debate the appropriateness of Trump. But I will point out that strict Calvinists have a big problem with 'good works' as part of the straw-man stereotyping of Catholics. Fear is part of the Protestant package at the extreme end because they're dualists. Good and Evil they're sure of, not much in between. Good works are a bad sign. 

Trump has never done a good work in his life, a higher, more uncompromised form of holiness, so there's that to chew on. Add in Calvinist fatalism which, in one of its manifestations, means being rich is a sign of God's favor, the result of having lived a disciplined and godly life. Then add in authoritarianism and the arbitrary nature of salvation and so the arbitrary nature of authority. 

Voilà, the cult of Trump. 

So much is said, and so much is true, of that shitbag. Democrats are beating their heads against a wall trying to understand it within their model of reason and belief (not to rule it out) that they thought characterized both Christianity and Americanism. They were right but that's not where we are. We're in another world, of the idolatry and superstition Calvinists sought to avoid. 

They're seeking beauty in Trump, through its opposite because they blew a fuse craving an immediate experience of Jesus. And there's another avenue, seeing Jesus through the coming of the end times, the apocalypse. I don't deny Trump is the man if you want to see the world go up in flames. So there's that. And go in peace now to love and serve the Lord, as religious people like to say. 

Active Shitter Alert

An active shitter alert has been released for the White House. Trump is shitting on everything. It's completely out of control. 

Dog Eat DOGE

The dog has eaten Trump's DOGE. I require more of an explanation. Some accounting. Bring it on, big boy. The government is ours, not yours, after all, you fucking idiot. 

Feeling the Vibes

Bear with me. I think it's possible some Republicans have implants that deprive them of free will. That make them drones and automatons, unable to act independently. It appears that way. I think Mike Johnson, for example, might have a vibrator up his ass that rewards him for doing Trump's will.

That look on his face ...

Is that an outrageous suggestion? Hell, they reelected someone who trashed everything he's ever touched and can't run anything. Maybe a crime family. He caused some goons to storm and sack our Capitol and watched the results on TV for over three hours doing nothing to stop it. He enjoyed it.

I'm not arguing an anal stimulation hypothesis isn't nuts. Rather, that it is. Rectal stimulation as a means of control is no less ridiculous than a raping, killing, robbing, drooling, idiot felon president inspiring slavish devotion. If that's normal, I'm within parameters. The new parameters of degradation.  

Another two likely candidates for anal stimulation are Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. Lindsey is obvious. McConnell less so but he came through for Trump when it counted. He's a shithead but with gravitas and and a sense of self-importance. Pride, of a kind, if that doesn't bend your mind.

He's a pro and old hand at ass activity. He would take it up the rear whenever a big money guy walked through the door. These are southern white men. The 'Rape of the South.' Remember that shit? They weren't raped. They were rapists who got called out and lost. Hence their anal fixations, I suspect. 

Hypotheses can be tested. Guess what. Full body searches without due process and reasonable suspicion have been made possible by these punks. De rigueur. Drop trou and bend over, boys. Spread those cheeks. They're accustomed to being on the other end of this, with Trump. Anal gazing. Whatever.

All that massively bad shit they're doing to potential deportees, which now includes about everybody, is another Trump innovation and security measure. Who knows what they do. I don't want to think about it, but I'm not the one who made this happen. And an anal exam never hurt anyone. Or shouldn't.

Dog Eat Dog

Then there's another play I have in the works, DOG EAT DOG. That's the name of a PAC, man. Who knows where the money came from -- the Koch cloud financing program, probably -- but their lawyers are the best out there. The SWBs (Southern White Boys, a chorus dressed in drag) are thrilled. Gonna sue. Ain't nothing in the Constitution says you can't fight dogs. That's in the articles, in the brief, that exact language. Powerful stuff. Convincing on the face for those that knows, the Real Americans. 

And it goes to the Supreme Court -- of the US -- and they're hung, four to four. Clarence is on medical leave. But, lo, he's lowered, magisterially, slowly, down in his chair, from above, center stage, his crotch bandaged. Clarence will decide. He will even speak. And he does. Dog fighting is legal, he decrees. 

As the patriotic music wells up, Clarence orates: Dog fighting is the most American sport and the real national pastime, a game that embodies the genuine ethos of America, the Randian competition that makes us great. Do or die -- in the ditch. Makers and takers. The strong and the weak. Supermen and scum. And the dogs? They're valuable assets, Clarence argues, and therefore very well treated.

Like to see you make this into a Capra movie. The chorus provides sound-effects (lots of growls), and is rife with assorted subplots. Butch in the chorus is gay, it turns out. And the others are all having anal sex with someone, mostly their wives. 

Clarence, by the way, if you were concerned, has had plastic surgery. To shorten his dick. A mechanical phallus is employed. Okay, I like them. Saw one used in a presentation of Aristophanes' THE CLOUDS, at UD (Dayton), back in the day. Great production. And we think "the cloud" is new. The Greeks discovered it all. Eureka!

Who Did It?

There's no mystery about Trump. He's a piece of shit, a criminal, and he did it all.  

Republicans Are Coming for Everything

Republicans are coming for things you didn't know you had or didn't think you could lose. They're going to take it all. 

Trump Terrorizes the World

Donald Trump, with a shocking level of continuing support from Republicans in the United States, is terrorizing everyone he can. Be grateful if you're not a target. His appetite for destruction is apparently insatiable.

Death of a Salesperson

Trump is a salesman. Selling nothing. A person who sells you nothing for something is a crook and a conman. And maybe he's finally about to get found out. 

Karma Conscientiousness

Maybe karma is conscientious in the end, and Trump is about to get his.  

No Food, No Healthcare

Republicans are fighting like hell to ensure more Americans suffer and die. 

China Wins Trade War

But Trump got to yank them around a lot and grandstand it which is all he cares about so I guess that's a win for him and it's all he cares about.

Who Knows Where the Time Went

I don't know, but it feels like it's irreversibly gone now. 

Jesus Christ, Supersized

Republicans turned Jesus into a meme and a marketing gimmick. For the wealthy. For warfare. Against feeding children. Against caring for the poor. The fuckers have rebranded Jesus. 

Capitulation to Force

Trump doesn't care about outcomes but means. That's how you go bankrupt every time, in Trump's case because all he cares about is feeling like a big man. So everyone must bow down to him. What happens after that, apart from more bowing down, he doesn't care. 

Fortified Bubble

 What's a bubble if it never pops? An economy, I guess ...

Kill Dad, Marry Mom

Republicans are so Oedipal. The government is the nurturing mother and inexhaustible source of sustenance. They deny the attraction but can't stay away, wanting never to grow up. Daddy must be supplanted but no big deal. Daddy will be dealt with by subterfuge and the usual tools of little people. But then what? They will fall because they are false daddies, irresponsible, incompetent and useless.

De Facto Dictatorship

The United Stars is de facto a dictatorship. 

Stupid, Evil People

Listen to Vought talk. Listen to Miller talk. These aren't just evil people, they're stupid, evil people. 

The Deep State is Real

And it's always been conservative. How do we know this? Because, when some of the justification for the ruthless, behind-the-scenes antics went away, or lessened at least, with the end of the Soviet Union the 'deep state' turned on Democrats. So we know, but the bad stuff had a conservative cast to it all around -- violent, stupid and needlessly alienating. McCarthy was the deep state. Dulles was the deep state, and Rumsfeld and Cheney. 

These were arrogant, lawless characters. We finally got caught out, publicly, in Vietnam but it didn't stop. Republicans played fast and loose with people's lives, international stability, and the law and nuclear holocaust, with the complicity of cowardly Democrats, and most were cowardly. Republicans held them hostage over defense. Cheney and Rumsfeld were particularly important in this. Republican ideology, for what little it was worth, went out the window. 

Deficits? Pshaw. This paranoid deep state has done plenty of horrible stuff, most suspiciously when business interests were near at hand. Any excuse would do, however. Republicans are doing it now. Trump blowing up boats. Kennedy might have been about to back away from this shit when he got killed. Johnson, I don't know, but he had unsuspected depths of idealism, if only because he wanted not to be remembered as a bad character. 

Nixon was classic. How many Americans got killed while yet another arrogant, lawless Republican played politics while people died? So never say Trump is anything new. We've been doing this shit forever. Trump is just open about it. And more stupid about because he is stupid. More carelessly destructive because he's a fucking louse. He's dong to America what he did to his business empire, running it right into the ground. We've always had these assholes.

A lot of good, responsible citizens would have resisted the evil, irresponsible stuff if we'd known. We had opportunities but let them pass. We were good Germans to a degree but our baggage has caught up with us. We were good Germans but not in a full-blown Nazi regime by a long shot. That has changed. Trump has changed it. Republicans have changed it. But don't think we were so pure before because we weren't. We had our shit just like everybody. 

Madman Loose

Trump gotta go ...

If Kristi Noem Were a Dog ...

she would shoot herself. 

They're Killing the Hostages

After decades of holding the American electorate hostage and only killing some of them offhandedly and indirectly, not to say there weren't quite a few, Republicans are really going after them in response to the defunding and shutdown of the government they caused. No, that's not right unless you think the distinction between manslaughter and murder matters to the victim. 

Because of course the killing was darn aggressive even before the shutdown they created and engineered when you consider the bill it was supposedly about, for example, which is a death bill. Death to the country, death to its citizens, and death to anyone else they feel like killing. Kill! Kill! Kill! Watch some ICE videos if you doubt what lurks in the souls of Republicans. 

What lurks there is murderous cruelty. The shutdown is part of a shakedown but, again, nothing new there it's just become more obvious and undeniable. Undeniable unless you're a dehumanized MAGA scoundrel with less analytical capacity than the family pet which has the sense to like to be fed and cared for and not be tortured and killed. Those pets don't know Jesus, I guess. 

Which explains their perplexing humanity. When your dog is more human than you are you would think that would be a wake-up call but dogs can definitively be shot with impunity as we know from the escapades of a certain very high-level government official involved in a lot of unnecessary cruelty apparently as a message or for the sheer sadistic enjoyment of it.

So, hooray for death, I guess, but I would have chosen a different path. I used to worry about my old Beatles' albums in the event of a Vance presidency but I'll worry more now about incarceration, sickness and death. I don't know what Republicans want. I don't understand them. Maybe I'll get a dog to stay connected with humanity. I haven't had the heart to since my last one died.