Thursday Tiedrich

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once again, everything in the news is so unbelievably stupid that I don’t even know where to start. so today, I’m just going to spin the Big Wheel of Moron™ and see where it lands. ready? here we go.

“as we all know, the natural habitat for the Earth is actually water.”

that was Donny Convict’s Secretary of Moneygrubbing, Soybean Scott Bessent, pooh-poohing the idea that climate change is bad. as Bessent tells it, no one should worry about the rapid melting of the polar ice caps, because ‘the natural habitat for the Earth is actually water.’

dear lord, this shitwit is seriously advocating for Waterworld, one of the dumbest fucking movies ever.

Scott Bessent is so smug and pompous — and supremely self-assured — as he farts out one of the most imbecilic things you’ll ever hear in your life.

do you know why Soybean Scott is so confidently idiotic? it’s because he suffers from the heartbreak of fuckbrainoligarchosis, a malady where just because a person manages to accumulate a pile of money, they imagine they’re super-geniuses about everything.

in that clip above, Soybean Scott was speaking at the Institute of International Finance, which is sort of a support group where those afflicted by fuckbrainoligarchosis can get together and share their delusions of intelligence.

basically, the Institute of International Finance is what would happen if Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch became a real boy.

oh, and fact check:

apparently, water isn’t the only liquid on Soybean Scott’s mind these days.

“as President Trump said this morning that he thinks we’re nearing the end. the US kept their side on the cease fire. we’ve stopped firing. the Straits of Vermouth have not been completely reopened.”

the Straits of Vermouth! I fucking love that. that is a Freudian slip for the ages. I’ll bet that’s what Piss-Drunk Pete Kegstand calls it, too.

that’s not, however, what Preznit Fuckwit calls it.

“Italy gets a lot of oil from— the— Strait. you can call it the Strait of Hormuz or the— Hormuz Strait. I said ‘which is better?’ they said ‘either is okay, but you can call it either one. the only thing you can’t call it is the ‘Trump Strait.’ they don’t like that idea.”

wait a minute — who are ‘they’, who Donny’s been in deep conversation with about ‘what to you call that watery thing next to Iran’? has he been talking to the random shrieking noises in his head? or maybe the family of raccoons that live up there?

and believe you me, Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is dead serious about wanting to call it the ‘Trump Strait.’ he doesn’t crack any smile whatsoever when he says it, and then he goes on to brag about —

“by the way, speaking of that, I did a thing that people like very much, except for Mexico. I took the Gulf of Mexico and we now call it the Gulf of America. it’s not bad.”

the deteriorating old shit can’t even focus for five second on the subject at hand — his disastrous don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war on Iran — without his demented mind wandering to his Glorious Victory in the Great Renaming War of 2025.

oh, and pro tip: it’s not the Gulf of America. it’s the Gulf of Release the Full Unedited Epstein Files, You Fucking Liar.

well, that was fun — so let’s take another spin on the Big Wheel of Moron™. here we go!

because Dear Leader is mad at the Pope, now the entire Presidential Ass-Kiss Industrial Complex has be mad at the Pope, too.

Holy Mike Johnson, the limpest dick in Congress, knows what I’m talking about.

“a pontiff or any religious leader can say anything they want, but obviously if you wade into political waters, you should expect some political response and I think the Pope has received some of that. you know, I was taken a little bit aback, just honestly, frankly, by something that was said, I think he said it several days back, something about ‘those who engage in war, Jesus doesn’t hear their prayers’ or something. you know, it is a very well-settled matter of Christian theology, there’s something called the ‘just war’ doctrine.”

oh look — just like Couchfuck McGee, Holy Mike Johnson knows more about popery than all the popes.

I have a question: what sick pleasure does it bring Holy Mike to neuter himself on a daily basis, in service of Dear Leader? it’s like the guy never allows himself a single independent thought. whatever Donny decides on any given day, that’s totes aces with Mike. doesn’t matter if it’s a complete one-eighty from whatever Commander Crazypants said yesterday.

hey, Holy Mike — is this you?

it’s so galling, watching all these hypocrites telling the Pope to zip his fool mouth about religion, if he knows what’s good for him. these are the people who have never once shut the fuck up about how there needs to be more religion in government. these are the same loudmouth zealots who are so horny to force their vision of prayer in the schools — and the Ten Commandments in every classroom — on We the People.

but the second the Pope is all ‘maybe sometimes war is bad and stuff,’they’re all WAIT A MINUTE, WE DIDN’T MEAN RELIGION LIKE THAT.

and so now — just because Pope Chicago Bob was mean to Dear Leader — suddenly it’s open season on Catholics in America.

The Trump Admin has abruptly canceled an $11M contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone, ending a relationship between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government dating back to the first arrivals of Cuban exiles in South Florida.”

lovely. Donny — the swindler who set up a bogus charity so he could steal money raised in the name of cancer-stricken children — is now punishing a legitimate charity that does actual good work, all because he’s a thin-skinned, vindictive piss-baby prick.

welcome to the United State of Eternal Fucking Embarrassment.

okay, let’s give that Big Wheel of Moron™ one final spin.


“we got these third-world people coming here, these Muslims. you know, they call it a religion. what religion do you know that says ‘if you’re not in our religion, we’re gonna kill ya. and we want you dead’? that’s not a religion. that’s a cult. they took over Europe. it’s gone.”

hey, Tom-Toms, you want to about a cult? because oh boy, do I have a cult for you.

‘the Muslims took over Europe, and its gone? what the fuck is Terminally-Concussed Tommy talking about?

now, because I’m a responsible journalist and everything, I googled ‘the Muslims took over Europe’ and this is what I learned.

In 711, a Berber-led army under Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded and conquered most of modern-day Spain and Portugal in a seven-year campaign. Muslim rule flourished there for nearly 800 years until the fall of Granada in 1492.

bro, relax. that was thirteen hundred years ago — I’m pretty sure Spain and Portugal came out of it just fine.


fuck all that noise, because it’s time for our hero of the day: New York’s Islamo-communo-marxo-anarcho-fascist Mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

yesterday was April 15th — and in honor of Tax Day, Mayor Mamdani posted this vid to social media.

“when I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. well, today we’re taxing the rich. I’m thrilled to announce we’ve secured a pied-a-tierre tax — the first in New York’s history. this is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more then $5 million whose owners do not live full-time in the city. like this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million. this pied-a-tierre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich. those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don’t actually live here. and most of the time, these units are sitting empty, since, again, they don’t actually live here.”

I fucking love Mamdani. he’s so charming and charismatic — and he’s so freaking good at messaging.

no wonder the oligarchy hates Zohran’s guts. boo fucking hoo, oligarchs.

the morbidly wealthy call this luxury tax a nightmare. I call it a good start — because taxing billionaires out of existence is one sure cure for the heartbreak of fuckbrainoligarchosis.


this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

Midweek Tiedrich


United States Vice President Couchfuck McGee has been on quite the roll lately.

he spent an entire week in Hungary, campaigning for Dear Leader’s despot bestie Viktor Orbán — only for Vik to end up getting crushed in a historic landslide.

his attempt to wangle some kind of peace deal with Iran was a clownfucktacular disaster. after just one day of getting his smug, insufferable ass handed to him, he bailed and went home.

the latest stop on the JD Vance Worldwide Self-Humiliation Tour was the Akins Ford Arena in Athens, Georgia, and — well, you can see for yourself just how swimmingly that debacle went.

ooof. that is pathetic. look at the sections upon sections upon sections of empty seats. it’s a ghost town.we definitely need to gif that shit for posterity’s sake.

whoever had the bright idea to book an 8,500-seat hockey arena for an evening with the most-repellent person in American politics really deserves the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Completely Shat The Bed Prize.

for fuck’s sake, they could have held the event in any one of Athens’ numerous doughnut shops, and it would have been a more appropriately-sized venue.

‘so, how long have you been coming to see me speak? HA HA, THAT’S GREAT.’

but it’s a shame that more people didn’t show for the event, because they really missed out on a crowning moment of supreme arrogance. hey, did you know that Couchfuck McGee knows more about popery than all the popes?

it’s true!

“I think it’s very important [for the Pope] to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

‘the Pope needs to stop mouthing off about religion’ is a bold strategy for Vance. let’s see if it pays off for him.

even The New York Times was forced to commit a journalism.

that’s a hell of a headline, isn’t it?

you know, it’s kind of inaccurate to frame the piss-baby bellyaching that Donny and Couchfuck are engaging in as some kind of ‘feud’ they’re having with the Pope. it’s not. these dumbfucks are mental pipsqueaks. they’re not operating on the same level as Pope Chicago Bob.

it’s only a feud in the same way that you or I might ‘feud’ with two annoying gnats buzzing around our face.

the unearned arrogance of Donny and his sewer clowns is stunning.

with every single member of Preznit Fuckwit’s administration, it’s as if Dunning and Kruger had a baby — and then dropped it on its head. not one of these shitwits has any idea just how totally fucking brainless they are.

Piss-Drunk Pete Kegstand, a Fox News weekend chat-show dunk-tank clown, imagines he knows more about warfighting than all the generals who have studied military strategy their entire lives — and look where Pete’s unwavering faith in his own nonexistent genius has gotten us: bogged down in an unwinnable don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war in Iran.

chainsawed-whale-head enthusiast Bobby Brainworms Jr. believes he knows more about germ theory than all the actual scientists. in reality, he’s the Marvelous Mister Measles.

Donny, of course, lives in a magical, enchanted fever-swamp fairyland where he knows more about everything than everybody. anyone who falls for this patently ludicrous nonsense has been licking toads.

and now, the repulsive furniture fucker JD Vance has the temerity to lecture the Pope — the person who Catholics believe is God’s infallible representative on Earth — on theology.

the unearned and serene confidence of mediocre white men like Couchfuck McGee is stunning. if only there were some way to tap it, it could be an infinite source of cheap, renewable energy.

hang on — Captain Obvious has something else he needs to get off his chest.

“people don’t have any idea how bad the corruption is in Washington DC.”

of course, Couchfuck want you to believe that corruption in DC is a Democratic issue. fuck off, JD — We the People know exactly where the corruption in DC is. we see it every day. we see it when the Republican-controlled Congress abdicates their Constitutionally-mandated responsibility to act as a check on a power-mad president.

we see it when the Republican-controlled Supreme Court declares that Dear Leader is a Very Special Boy Who Gets To Crime All He Wants.

we see it when Donny’s own Department of What Used To Be Justice uses its power to suppress the Dead Pedo Bestie Files.

we see it when this wine-guzzling cow-cosplaying weirdo imagines her job is to prosecute all of Dear Leader’s political enemies.

we see it when Tom Homan gets caught on video accepting bags of cash from undercover agents, and then the whole thing mysteriously goes fuckity-bye.

and we see it when Dear Leader uses the power of his office to enrich himself, selling everything from access to pardons to fucked-up trading cards of himself as a super-hero.

so fuck all the way off, JD Vance — if that even is your real name — when you get all high and mighty about ‘corruption in DC.’ go clean up your own house first.


you know what? I think the time has come for someone to 25th Amendment the shit out of Donny, and replace him with Couchfuck McGee.

think about it: a Vance presidency would be an immediate failure. he’s repulsive. nobody likes him. he’s boring. he’s impotent. he holds no sway over the media. nobody in Congress fears him.

he has no violent army of deranged cultists willing to break the law for him.

and we’d never have to worry about JD Vance ordering a nuclear strike on someone because he woke up in a bad mood.

he’d simply be a placeholder until the next Democratic president.

seriously, 25th Amendment Donny and bring this guy on.


and speaking of the 25th Amendment

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill on Tuesday that seeks to kick-start the removal of President Donald Trump through the 25th Amendment — a long-shot effort that, while unlikely to succeed, aims to put renewed focus on the president’s mental fitness and recent rhetoric.

The legislation, which was offered with 50 Democratic co-sponsors, would establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office. That body would be composed of 17 members tasked with determining whether the president is incapacitated — “either mentally or physically” — and unable to discharge the powers and duties of office, as called for in Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.

I’m not being sarcastic when I say that more of this is exactly what we need right now.

of course, we need be clear-eyed about it. you can’t even call Raskin’s proposed legislation a hail-Mary shot. it hasn’t a snowball’s chance of passing in a Republican-controlled Congress.

but it’s important for Democrats to keep raising the issue of Donny’s steep mental decline, and keep it in the public’s consciousness — especially right now, when Dear Leader is acting so erratically — and fucking up so shittacularly — that even the the hardest-core MAGA cultists are beginning to be all ‘dude, what the fuck?’

it’s all about optics.

it’s necessary for the good of our nation — and the world — that people keep talking about how completely bugfuck nuts Donny is.

and — oh my — look who agrees with me for once: the NY Times.

Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate

As President Trump threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”

welcome to the dark side, Grey Lady. it only took you shit-kazoos ten years to figure out what rest of us saw on Day One.


this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.


 

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts

All fake. Just like everything else with Cankles.

Beast

If you recall, back in December I acquired a new (old) CD player, the same model I’d owned from 1990 until it just disappeared from my memory as well as the photographic record.

When I started rebuilding my CD collection, I couldn’t find that exact model to replace it. I settled for its little brother that soon proved very reluctant to work consistently and I replaced that with a brand new Yamaha CD-S303 player and donated it to Goodwill.

I was happy with the S303 (I still am, truth be told), but I still longed to get another Yamaha CDX-730. As I’ve written several times, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

When one in good condition finally showed up on eBay, I secured it. Initially very happy with it, but then one day I put on a CD and it refused to play the final tracks. I performed due diligence and popped the cover, doing a clean and lube of the mechanism. Unfortunately the problem remained—and strangely only with the discs of that particular two-disk set as well as come random self-burned CDs.

I finally gave up and removed it from the system and reinstalled my new player which played anything you threw at it.

What I’d forgotten about was that I set a trigger on eBay to notify me when any 730s came available. The eBay algorithm  casts a wide net on these searches so often I get a notification that doesn’t actually match exactly what I was looking for.

That happened about three weeks ago. I got notice that a CDX-930 (the 730’s big brother) was available. Now I have to admit I’ve kept an eye out for this model, but while they are available in abundance from Japan, the US 120V model is pretty rare. So when I got the notice that one had just been posted, I had to take a look. It wasn’t an auction; it was a buy it now listing, so I made an reasonable offer to the seller and he accepted. According to the listing, it was fully functional. There were the usual scuffs and scratches on the top case, but he said it was working.

I immediately listed the 730 to cover this expense. Lots of interest, but no takers just yet. (I just sold one of my other pieces of gear, so it’s covered in any case.)

The player arrived the day I went into the hospital. Because, you know everything is fucked these days.

I picked it up yesterday from the neighbors, who graciously removed it from our front porch to avoid losing it to porch pirates.

I got it unpacked and plugged in. I hit the open button and the tray slowly slid out—and then was immediately sucked back in. To its credit, if I got a disc in there fast enough it did play fine, but obviously this behavior was unacceptable long term.

Thankfully, over the past year I’ve watched more than enough YouTube videos that deal with this exact same problem from a variety of models and manufacturers, and I knew what was needed: replace the drawer belt and clean the limit switch that tells the drawer when it’s open or closed. It’s a task I knew I could handle without further fucking things up (as I am wont to do).

Sure enough, after some disassembly it was obvious the belt had gone sloppy. I didn’t have the exact size it needed in my belt collection, but slapped on one that was slightly smaller and it’s worked fine.  I ordered the proper belt today and will tear everything apart again when it arrives.

I squirted some DeOxit D5 on the limit switch and moved it back and forth to make sure the solution hit the contacts, cleaned the laser lens with some IPA, plugged everything back in and tested. The drawer now behaved itself.

I mentioned that the CDX-930 was the 730’s big brother. That was an understatement. The 930 is a completely different beast—and I don’t use that term lightly. Full metal construction throughout, including the disk tray! The 930 also has a different laser assembly than the 730 and uses magnetic rails to move that assembly—versus the motor-driven gear setup on the 730.

I mean, look at that. They don’t build them like this anymore!

As you can imagine, the 930 also weighs substantially more than the 730. The 730 was also full metal contruction—albeit with a plastic disk tray—but of a much lighter gauge aluminum than the 930.

But I know you’re wondering: did my problematic disks play? Without so much as a hiccup!

The CD-S303 went back in its box and into storage. Not getting rid of that because I want to keep it as a backup—just in case. Because you know everything is fucked these days.