Dear Democrats In Congress

Jefferies & Schumer are not meeting the moment.

Now is not the time for “sternly worded letters” and disappointed dad speeches.

Now is the time for naming and shaming.

Now is the time for fire and brimstone.

Now is the time meeting fire with fire and if you are not up to then make way for those that can!

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Health Update

WARNING: TOO MUCH OVERSHARING AHEAD


Just kidding.

4 weeks post surgery.  Healing continues. Left side of my jaw and chin is still mostly numb, although sensation is definitely coming back and it’s better than it was three weeks ago.

The left side of my face is still a bit swollen, but at least I don’t resemble American Dad like I did when I first got out of the hospital.

(That was no exaggeration. Again sorry, no pictures!)

Despite one side of my jaw and lower lip being numb, my speech is still understandable and everyone says my voice is still pretty much the same as it was prior to surgery. At first it felt like I was speaking with a mouthful of cotton, but that’s dissipated over the past few weeks either because I’ve grown used to it, or because of further healing.

I’m supposedly still NPO, but who am I to follow all the rules? I’ve had swallowing issues for years and have learned to deal with them. Even my doctors say, “Well, you shouldn’t be eating, but since you have developed ways of dealing with the swallowing issues you had before and you feel confident you’re not going to choke…wink wink nudge nudge.”  So right now I’m in a kind of hybrid space. Swallowing is still an issue (as is opening my mouth wide enough to get any normal amount of food shoveled into it), but I know my limits. I have been eating soft foods and drinking, but also continuing to use the feeding tube for medications and the tasteless formula I need to ingest to keep my calorie count up. (Sorry, no pictures.) I’ve also shed the easiest 20 pounds I’ve lost since my last cancer—something I’m not upset about in the least.

The area on my wrist where tissue was harvested to patch the hole left where the tumor was removed from the back of my tongue—while looking awful—is exactly where it should at this point in the healing process according to my surgeon. I keep telling myself that six months from now everything will look normal…or at least close to it. The area on my thigh were they harvested skin to patch my wrist is completely healed although still bright red. (Again, totally normal.)

The back of my tongue on the other hand, looks great. I failed to ask for a photo when he scoped me a week ago. I will remember to do that when I see him next month (and will share it).

My energy level isn’t yet back to what it was prior to all this happening, but again, that’s to be expected. I spend most afternoons napping and then regret it in the evenings as it leaves me feeling more worn out and generally “sick” than I did beforehand. Night time sleep has also been a mess, although last night was the first time I’ve slept longer than in hour-long increments.

The good news in all this is that the surgery got all of the cancer, including the bit that had “nerve and vascular involvement.” No evidence of it spreading to any lymph nodes or anywhere else. Still, my ENT wants to followup with further therapy “just in case.”

Since I went through radiation for my previous cancer, I flat out refused that as his recommended next course of action. I’m not going to put myself through that again and working in the same area as twenty years ago carries—per my radiation oncologist—the very real danger of “blowing out my carotids.” So…

Keeping that in mind, my ENT then suggested Immunotherapy, so that’s my next stop on this journey.  I meet with that oncologist in a couple weeks.

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Monday Tiedrich

An increasingly popular conspiracy theory falsely centers around the existence of “med beds,” a fabled medical instrument that does everything from reversing aging to regrowing missing limbs. The theory has grown in popularity among followers of far-right movements like QAnon, some of whom claim to be urgently awaiting a med bed to treat severe health conditions.

that’s right: after spending a hard day trafficking children out of the basement of a pizza parlor that has no basement, Hillary Clinton returns home to Chappaqua, lies down on her medbed, and regrows all her missing limbs.

and it’s not just the email lady who’s benefiting from this mythical tech — so is Bobby Brainworms’ uncle Jack.

The group falsely believes that John F. Kennedy is still alive and youthful, and attributes his remarkable longevity to the curative powers of med beds.

as with all things QAnon, it’s dumb as fuck and makes no sense.

if there really were a medbed, wouldn’t Joe Biden have been using one all along? wouldn’t Donny? wouldn’t Glitch McConnell and the seven-hundred-and-fifty-eight-year-old Chuck Grassley? wouldn’t everyone at the top level of government be running around youthful and getting up into highjinks, as if they were in the movie Cocoon?

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!IVG8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcba21d99-3ee4-41a7-98b0-f29b2c0a44b1_400x222.gif

it’s all so obviously bogus, and yet Donny was fooled by a fake video of a fake himself, doing fake things. he saw himself doing things never did, and accepted it without question. holy fucking shit.

Sunday morning, one of Donny’s handlers deleted the video — but the internet never forgets.

folks, this is some crazy fucking shit. we should all be alarmed that the president’s brain has gone fuckity-bye.

none of this is normal.

and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Donny’s own sewer clowns are aware that Dear Leader has gone Full Nutso. they work around him, and feed him disinformation and feel-good stories — and they’ve cut him out of the loop. they don’t even bother to clue him in to their own fuckery any more.


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Released 38 Years Ago Today

Depeche Mode: Music For The Masses (1987)

Many a heated discussion occurred between myself and a colleague in that little architectural office as to whether Depeche Mode or Pet Shop Boys were better…

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Happy Friday, Y’All

after three days of enduring President Rottinghands McRagebaby’s infantile whining about his harrowing battle with the UN’s Moving Steps of Death, Donny’s handlers finally figured out a way to get him to shut the fuck up about it. they did that thing where they brought in cameras, gave him a bunch of meaningless papers to sign, and then let him blither incoherently to the assembled press.

Donny was as happy as a pig in shit.

when it came time for the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media to ask their questions, one thing everyone wanted to know was who will Donny be persecuting next?

“Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing. I don’t know, but Soros is a name that I hear. I hear a lot of different names. I hear names of some pretty rich people that are radical left people. maybe I hear about a guy named Reid Hoffman.”

‘maybe I hear about a guy’? this isn’t how presidents talk. this is how mobsters talk. this is the kind of thing Tony Soprano would say — and we know what happens when Tony ‘maybe hears about a guy.’

you gotta love the way Donny pretends that all this political witchhuntery is going on around him, and he’s got nothing to do with it. he’s just hearingthings.

it’s called plausible deniability, and it’s the one thing Roy Cohn and Donny’s own tyrant Klansman father taught Donny well. if it’s something that could one day come back to bite you in a court of law, shut the fuck up about it. never talk about it directly. you. know. nothing.

it could be anything. it could be something, like, let’s say, oh I don’t know — bringing the full weight of the government’s legal apparatus against people who’ve pissed you off.

which brings us to the huge story of the day.

Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted by a federal grand jury, an extraordinary escalation in President Donald Trump’s effort to prosecute his political enemies.

Comey, a longtime adversary of the president, is now the first senior government official to face federal charges in one of Trump’s largest grievances: the 2016 investigation into whether his first presidential campaign colluded with Russia.

oh great, we’ve finally reached the Prosecute Political Enemies On Bogus Charges phase of Donny’s Five-Alarm Fascistopia.

lucky us. we’re really living in the dumbest police state ever.

Comey has been charged with giving false statements and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, and he could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

Comey was basically indicted because reasons — because fuck James Comey, that’s why. remember, one prosecutor already quit-or-was-fired because he said there was nothing legit with which to charge him.

I’d love to get into the nuts and bolts of charging documents and notice pleading and bills of particulars, and explain exactly why this is a janky indictment, but I can’t. I’m just a guy who types cuss words into his laptop. understanding all this law shit is way above my pay grade.

for that, we have the indispensable Joyce Vance. be sure to read her thing.

what I can tell you is that this is some bullshit.

I can also tell you that even AG Pam Bondi knows that this is some bullshit — because she was against indicting Comey before she was for it.

attorneys from the Eastern District of Virginia sent a memo to Bondi, where they were all ‘we can’t indict Comey, this evidence is flimsy as fuck,’ and Bondi nodded her head in agreement. but then Donny got his brand new rent-a-prosecutor in the Eastern District, Lindsey Halligan — whose previous job was being a member of Donny’s team of ace parking garage lawyers — to drop the hammer, and Bondi had no choice but to change her tune. she has always been at war with Eastasia.

Late Thursday, Bondi replied to CNN’s reporting, stating, “That is a flat out lie.”

lying liar says what?


hey, remember what I was saying earlier about plausible deniability?

listen to Donny trying to dodge responsibility for Comey’s indictment. what? James who?

reporter: “there could be an indictment on James Comey. Do you know if there is an indictment?”

Donny: “I don’t know. I know it’s going on, because I read the papers just like you do. so I don’t know. [turns to Bondi] do you have anything to say about that?”

Bondi: “we can’t comment on that.”

right, Donny hasn’t a clue what’s going on. all he knows is what he reads in the papers sees on Fox News. all this Comey business, it has nothing to do with him.

fact check: fuck straight off.

we all saw that thing Donny posted by mistake on his crappy app, where he ordered Pam Bondi to indict Comey, and told her that if she didn’t do it, he’d find someone who would.

Donny posted that on Saturday, and five days later, Comey ends up on the wrong end of an indictment.

plausible deniability just went fuckity-bye.

oh, by the way, Donny — your rotting hand can run, but it can’t hide.


Comey posted the following video to social media. I detest this guy for what he did to the email lady in 2016 — but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all stand with Comey when he’s the victim of fucked-up fascism on steroids.

“my family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. but we … will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant, and she’s right, but I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does. my heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I’m innocent. so, let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

I don’t have to tell you just how monstrously evil all of this is. I don’t have to tell you that in just nine short months, a loathsome bully has turned our country into a mockery of what America is supposed to be about.

but what I do need to tell you is not to give in to despair, and to never give up hope. all this will end someday — and, in that regard, let’s give what should be the final words to Eric Swalwell.

“and by the way, the president is saying he has no control here. he has all of the control here. he’s the one who has been tweeting to the attorney general that Comey needs to be indicted. he’s the one who fired the US attorney who would not indict Comey. this is a very corrupt, corrosive act that the president is taking — and what I would just say to any prosecutor at the Department of Justice is that it’s not going away. as a member of the Judiciary Committee, I promise you when Democrats are in the majority we will look at all of this and there will be accountability and bar licenses will be at stake in your local jurisdiction, if you are corruptly indicting people if you cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

please hear what Eric is saying, because when this authoritarian nightmare that is our current timeline finally runs its course — and it will — there will be accountability.

it just can’t come fast enough.

oh wait, hang on — we’re not quite finished. the corrupt hack who runs the Department Of What Used To Be Justice wants to pelt us with some vapid mouth-noises.

“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”

oh, please. get out of here with this nonsense. no one is above the law? then release the full, unedited Epstein Files, you fucking fucks.

and release the Tom Homan tapes, while you’re at it.


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.

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Boys Will Be Boys

Monthly bro-bating night, when the wife and the fiancée have a girl’s night and talk wedding talk. This the first time they’ve ever got touchy like this, balls to balls. Or looked at each other so deeply. They know that some session soon, they’re going to graduate to sucking, but they’re not there yet. No, this is perfect.

[via Tumblr]

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