‘wake up, babe — a new trade war with Canada just dropped.’

I’m sorry, a new what with who?

‘a trade war. with Canada.’

why the fuck would we want that? Canadians are the nicest people in the world, and Canada’s been our closest ally and trading partner since like forever.

‘because our president is a fucking idiot, babe. he’s a malignant toad who can’t imagine a world where people — or countries — have mutually-beneficial relationships. everything has to be winners and losers. so he ginned up some bullshit story about Canada being so unfair, because reasons, and smacked them with a fifty percent tariff.’

so how did Canada respond to that?

‘they pretty much told Donny to eat an entire bag of dicks.’

Canadian PM Mark Carney: “last evening, I instructed our negotiators to return to Ottawa. we cannot accept what they’ve offered, and we will not give what they’ve asked.”

holy shit, is there any relationship that Donny can’t screw up?

look who he sent to negotiate on America’s behalf: that out-of-touch, granny-starving plutocrat, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — the dude who actually said that if your Social Security check doesn’t show up, suck it up and don’t be a whiner.

sending an uncaring dipshit like Lutnick to negotiate trade with Canada makes about as much sense as sending those two dumbfuck slumlords, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to negotiate peace with with Iran — and it looks like Lutnick sure did a bang-up job.

reporter: “was Howard Lutnick’s involvement in the last days an impediment to getting a deal?”

Carney: “it’s a question for the US administration… but I will say this, which is that the Canadian team, unified — the individuals you see here, their team members, our ambassador in Washington, my chief of staff, unified, talking together, everyone in the loop, everyone knows what our objectives are. you cannot say that about the United States administration.”

sounds like it was a real clown show, doesn’t it? why am I unsurprised that the US negotiating team couldn’t get their act together? 

as always, the incompetence starts at the top, with Dear Leader. Donny has the attention span of a flea, and the impulse control of a coked-up squirrel.

he changes his mind as often as Nurse Natty changes his diaper. he was probably on the phone with Lutnick every half hour, with a new set of demands.

Carney says last minute demands from U.S. included language to restrict Canada’s ability to make other trade deals, which is of course nuts and Ottawa was right to walk away.

why the fuck would Canada agree to a deal that limited their ability to make other deals? that’s absolutely crazypants — and that’s the kind of shit Donny was trying to force on them, at the last minute.

come on, Canada is like the politest country in the world — and now even they loathe us. 

look at this chunk from a statement issued by Prime Minister Carney.

We have recognised from the beginning that America has changed, and that we will not return to our old relationship.

ace job, Donny. you haven’t just screwed up your relationship with Canada — you’ve screwed it up for future presidents. why should anyone trust us any more?

it takes years to establish trust with a partner nation, and only an instant to destroy it — and once you fuck that up, it’s gone. game over, man.

you can add our once-genial neighbor to the north to the long list of countries that have farted in Dear Leader’s general direction, and then told him to fuck straight off.

France. Italy. Germany. Denmark. Greenland. all the NATO nations. South Korea. and, of course, Iran.

Donny’s gone out of his way to antagonize Canada. why? because they won’t roll over and become our 51st state? why the fuck should they, what’s in it for them?

so now, Canadian goods coming into America will be tariffed at 50%, and, beginning September 8, American goods coming in to Canada will be tariffed at that same 50% rate.

and, as always, We the People will bear the brunt of this clownfuckery. everything will become more expensive, and we’ll have one fewer friend in this world — all because Dear Leader is a colicky piss-baby who explodes with rage if he doesn’t get his way.

oh look, here’s another member of Donny’s ace team of parking garage negotiators. it’s trade representative Jamieson Greer, speaking in classic abuser language, as he tries to cast the United States as the real victim in all this.

Fox News bobblehead: “so, what do you think will happen from here? will trade talks get back on track?” 

Greer: “it’s hard to say. we don’t have new talks planned. we’re moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.”

dear lord. it’s a trade war, but with morons.

oh, so this is all Canada’s fault. how dare they retaliate. how dare they object to being our fifty-first state. how dare they ask for coherent tariff policies. how dare they expect Donny to be a reliable trading partner who doesn’t go back on his word, over and over. 

look, Prime Minister Carney — if that even is your real name —that’s not how the Mad King and his Royal Court roll, bro.

oh, and here’s Donny, having a perfectly normal one at 1:06 this morning.

Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!! They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No more!!! President DJT.

what does that even mean, ‘Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one’? I’m sure that somewhere inside Donny’s worm-chewed pudding-brain, there’s a point he imagines he’s making, but he’s too cognitively-collapsed to express it.

he’s such a fucking embarrassment.


here’s your hero of the day: the homey who showed up at a San Diego City Council meeting dressed as Darth Vader, to explain that the Emperor is a huge fan of Flock cameras, the janky, six-fingered surveillance devices currently being abused by police departments coast to coast.

“the Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium — because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers, they are following children. they are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this. I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend.”

I don’t know who this dude is, but he’s perfect. Flock technology is an evil tool of oppression, and having Darth Vader endorse it is ten out of ten. chef’s kiss. no notes.


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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Not All Heroes Wear Capes


A Texas constable has personally unplugged or covered every county-operated Flock camera, declaring that mass warrantless tracking has no place in a free society.

Hood County Constable John D. Shirley took physical action over the weekend by disabling and covering all three county-owned Flock Safety automated license plate readers.

The defiant move followed a unanimous decision by the Hood County Commissioners Court to terminate its contract with the tech company amidst rising citizen pushback and contract performance issues.

In a public statement on social media, Constable Shirley shared photos of the covered devices, telling the surveillance company to ‘come get your garbage out of my county’ and asserting that the protection of everyday privacy must come before indiscriminate data collection.

Flock Safety cameras, which automatically photograph vehicle license plates and build searchable records of where drivers travel, have become a polarizing issue nationwide. While law enforcement agencies advocate for the systems as indispensable tools for locating stolen vehicles, missing persons, and suspects, civil liberties advocates argue they facilitate continuous, warrantless government surveillance. As Hood County requests a $126,000 refund from the company, the local shutdown has reignited a fierce national debate over where to draw the line between public safety and personal liberty.

source: MyParisTexas. (2026). ‘Completely Unplugged’: Hood County shuts down Flock camera network.

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All The Usual Suspects

How each state is viewed on LGBTQ Issues (Currently as of 2026)

State by state classification of LGBTQ policy environments in the United States:

Pro LGBTQ: Strong legal protections, expansive anti discrimination laws, support for gender affirming care, generally supportive political climate.

Moderate: Mixed or evolving policies; protections may exist but with notable restrictions or political division.

Anti LGBTQ: Major restrictions on transgender rights and/or weak statewide protections, socially conservative political environment.

Pro LGBTQ States
These states generally have:
– Strong anti discrimination protections
– Broad LGBTQ healthcare protections
– Supportive state governments
– Strong protections for transgender rights

Moderate States
These states usually have:
– Some statewide protections
– Mixed court/political battles
– Urban rural divides on LGBTQ issues
– Competitive or divided electorates

Anti LGBTQ States
These states generally have:
– Restrictions on transgender healthcare or school policies
– Limited statewide anti discrimination protections
– Conservative legislatures/governors
– Strong religious conservative political influence

Hardest States to Classify
Utah: Conservative culturally, but has occasionally supported compromise LGBTQ protections.
Georgia: Atlanta drives a much more LGBTQ-friendly culture than rural Georgia.
Florida: Historically moderate/libertarian on gay rights, but recent state policy has shifted more conservative.
Iowa: Once a Midwestern leader on same-sex marriage, but recent politics moved rightward on transgender issues.
New Hampshire: Libertarian political culture creates unusual crosscurrents.
Michigan: Strong recent Democratic shifts on LGBTQ protections despite competitive statewide politics.

The West Coast and Northeast are overwhelmingly Pro LGBTQ.

The Deep South and much of the Great Plains are more Anti LGBTQ politically.

The Midwest and Sun Belt suburbs are the main battleground regions on LGBTQ issues.

Do y’all agree or disagree based on where you live?

[source]

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An Apple AirTag just tracked a shipment of rare books to a secret Amazon AI facility in Las Vegas, where texts are cut apart, scanned, and destroyed to train AI models.

A groundbreaking investigation has exposed how tech giants are quietly acquiring physical books to train artificial intelligence models—by literally tearing them apart. 

Suspecting that bulk purchases of rare and obscure books were destined for AI training, journalists at 404 Media teamed up with an independent bookseller to plant an Apple AirTag inside a volume shipped as part of an anonymous 1,000-book order. The tracking device traveled across multiple states, eventually terminating at a high-security Amazon facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Inside this warehouse, a specialized unit code-named VGT3 systematically processes incoming books by slicing off their bindings, scanning the pages for digital intake, and destroying the physical originals.

This aggressive scanning pipeline highlights the extreme lengths to which tech companies will go to secure high-quality training datasets, particularly pre-2022 literature that is completely free of AI-generated content. While independent booksellers watch their inventories get shredded, legal and ethical questions are mounting over the practice of turning physical, copy-protected books into digital training data before disposing of the evidence. Amazon defended the operation in a brief statement, claiming it purchases books through commercial channels to improve its products and services, but the revelation has ignited intense debate over the systematic destruction of physical human knowledge to fuel artificial systems.

source: Maiberg, E. (2026). We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility. 404 Media.


We are long past the time to eat the rich. Just chuck ’em into their own shredders and be done with ’em.

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Bear With Me Here

I don’t actually want Trump to be impeached. Impeach him and he’s just a victim again, a martyr to MAGA. I want to see the House and Senate flip and make him a complete lame duck. Then I want to see the impeachments. Start with Blanche at the DOG. Then Patel at the FBI. Then Hegseth. Strip all his lackeys of power. THEN go after Trump and make sure he’s convicted and removed from power.

Then I’d like to see the Epstein files fully released while he watches helplessly. Force him to watch his name dragged through the mud while he screams and rages impotently. Watch as any legacy he though the may have goes up in flames (or under the wrecking ball). Watch his name become synonymous with pedophilia; enough to shame him and his children so that none of them will ever live it down for run for office.

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oh fucking boy, there’s nothing more in this world that the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex loves more than a good manufactroversy.

I mean, let’s face it: tackling actual issues that matter is hard work. you have to have facts, logic and reason on your side. you have to have a coherent point of view — one that you can defend without having your flimsy argument go all explodey in your face.

none of that is in the wheelhouse of your average MAGA screech-monkey. 

but give them something really stupid and petty to get all worked up over, and they’re happier than a pig in shit.

no, strike that. they’re happier than all the pigs in all the shit.

welcome to day three of the dumbest fucking manufactrovery yet: the over-the-top performative meltdown over Jon Ossoff’s perfectly normal observation that Preznit Fuckwit and his weird stalker-slash-diaper-nurse travel together.

the usual gang of hysterical suspects have been shitting their faux-rage all over Elon’s Nazi Bar and Child Porn Emporium, and it shows no sign of abating.

oh look, Little Miss Fear Of A Black Santa has entered the chat.

Ossoff was clearly implying that Trump is having an affair w/his staffer. He was so determined to disparage Trump, he didn’t give one thought (or worse, he did) to how this would affect Natalie. Forever. Don’t let the Democrats tell you they are for women. It’s a lie.

sigh. okay, once more, with feeling: what Ossoff said was that Donny and Natty travel together. that’s all. nothing more, nothing less.

but Megyn Kelly is, of course, a bit of an expert on accusing people of having affairs.

here’s the thing, though: what these dumbfucks should have said was nothing.

congratulations, stupids, for putting Diaper Nurse Natalie on the map.

if the outrage machine had simply ignored Ossoff’s remark, and let it pass without comment, it would have been a non-story. no one would have noticed it. Natalie Harp wasn’t part of the national conversation. the average American had no idea she existed, much less that she was some member of Dear Leader’s inner circle.

but now, thanks to these histrionic howler-monkeys who have no idea what it means to shut the fuck up, everyone and their sister knows that Donny has befriended some weird stalker lady who carries around his diaper bag.

come on, that shit is irresistible. now everyone’s paying attention.

look at this, she’s all over the news.

and now that the press has taken an interest, we’re finding out that Nurse Natty is even weirder than any of us suspected.

I’m sorry, Natty once rode in a what?

It was October 2023, and Donald Trump was due at a New York City courthouse to fight his latest set of legal troubles. But as the motorcade idled outside his Trump Tower residence, staffers confronted a more immediate problem: There wasn’t room for Harp, the hyper-loyal aide whose devotion to Trump had quickly entrenched her within his orbit.

A screaming match in the lobby ensued, with Harp insisting that Trump had personally asked her to attend the court appearance, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Denied a seat but determined not to be left behind, Harp jumped into an SUV trunk, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN.

who acts like this? what’s with all the drama? there was never any need for screamingany normal person would have just gone ‘oh, okay,’ and flagged down the nearest cab. they’re all the fuck over the place, in Manhattan.

in the interest of Responsible Journalism and Everything™, I just asked Google’s janky six-fingered plagiarism robot to tell me the distance between Trump Tower and the Federal Courthouse down in Foley Square. 

the answer is four miles — a twenty-eight minute cab ride, give or take for traffic.

Natty would have arrived in plenty of time to settle in and watch Dear Leader close his narcoleptic eyes and start filling the courtroom with the piquant aroma of ass music.

but no, Natty couldn’t do the sane thing. she had to throw a thermonuclear shit-fit and then wedge herself into the trunk of an SUV.

perfectly normal stuff.

as is this.

According to journalist Michael Wolff’s 2024 book, All or Nothing, Harp previously slept in the locker rooms at the property.

Wolff revealed that during one of Trump’s summers at Bedminster, Natalie found herself without any assigned accommodations.

He wrote, per a Vanity Fair excerpt, “Out of sight, for Trump, was out of mind. And even Natalie would not presume to speak to Trump about her accommodation.”

“And yet, in Bedminster, suddenly there she was. She had reached out to the grounds staff at the country club and gotten herself a maid’s room. And when that proved too far from the main house to respond quickly enough to Trump’s calls, she relocated herself to the much closer women’s locker room, where, with undiminished proximity to Trump, she would spend the summer.”

okay, this behavior is clearly cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and right now it’s just something Natty is ahem alleged to have done. but Michael Wolff is Donny’s official biographer, and if he put it in one of his books about Donny, I’d call it a pretty credible allegation.

but even without that last anecdote, Nurse Natty is guilty of some serious stalkerish behavior. I mean, come on: Donny’s own Secret Service considered her, and I quote, “a potential danger to herself as well as to the president.” 

if any of that shit happened to you or I, the first thing we’d do is keep far the fuck away from this person.

but not Donny. he gave her a job — over the objections of his own handlers and Secret Service. he’s that clownfucktacularly broken inside, and in constant need of worship.

perfectly normal stuff.

today, I’m giving the final word on this subject to Fox News found object Jesse Watters.

yes, you heard me right: Jesse Watters — because that’s how far through the looking glass we are with the tale of Donny and the Diaper Nurse, that Jesse Fucking Watters is the voice of reason.

“I mean, to suggest that Trump surrounds himself with attractive women? I mean, yeah. he’s done that his whole life. I don’t think he’s very upset about the comment. am I fazed by this comment? no. has Trump said SO MUCH WORSE, so much more sleazy things against other people? YES. have I defended those things? ABSOLUTELY. so, I’m not going to pretend I’m all hot and bothered about this.”

okay, who are you, and what have you done with the real Jesse Watters?


now, let’s circle back to the dude who kicked off this whole non-story, because Jon Ossoff has no more fucks to give, and no-fucks-to-give Jon Ossoff is my favorite Jon Ossoff.

here’s Jon yesterday, at a town hall with Georgia voters, speaking up for Senator Mark Kelly, who Donny wanted to imprison for the heinous crime of reminding service members that they have a duty not to carry out illegal orders.

“because I don’t think anything illustrates the times more aptly than that the draft-dodging crook president, who has plunged our nation recklessly into a war he knows not how to end or to win, tried to imprison this man who embodies American heroism: a decorated combat veteran, naval aviator, astronaut, space shuttle commander, U.S. senator. Donald Trump tried to lock him up for daring to state in public a fundamental principle of military law.”

any comment on that, wingnut outrage machine?

no? good. keep your fucking mouths shut.


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.

1 comments

Strong Women


I did not realize how badly I needed Rosie O’Donnell back on my television until she guest-hosted for Jimmy Kimmel and reminded me that one of the greatest weapons against a thin-skinned, tantrum-throwing, tyrant-cosplaying asshole like Donald Trump is to LAUGH RIGHT IN HIS FUCKING FACE.

Because Rosie O’Donnell is fucking FEARLESS, and Donald Trump absolutely cannot stand a woman he cannot frighten, flatten, flatter into submission, or otherwise force to genuflect before the wobbling orange wedding cake of his own self-importance.

He has been attacking this woman for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS, and that bloated, blubbery, butter-basted, blockheaded little bitch still hasn’t figured out that she is not afraid of him. He insults her. Threatens her. Obsesses over her. Drags her name out whenever the ancient grievance carousel inside his spectacularly stupid, sawdust-stuffed, synapse-starved skull starts wheezing around again, spewing the same petty, puerile, pissy little complaints he has been nursing since George W. Bush was president and people still had dedicated drawers for MapQuest directions.

And thanks to a plurality of smooth-brained, mouth-breathing, troglodytic, self-sabotaging shidiots, Donald Trump ascended to the presidency of the United States TWICE and still couldn’t evict Rosie O’Donnell from the rent-controlled duplex she apparently occupies inside his frontal lobe.

And Rosie just keeps fucking laughing.

Which made it absolutely DELICIOUS when she looked directly into the camera during her opening monologue, referred to him not as President Trump, not even as Donald Trump, but as “Mango Mussolini,” gave this teeny cheerful wave and said:

“Hi. I know you’re watching.”

I almost fucking DIED.

Five words. One wave. A goddamn assassination by finger wiggle.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t lecture. She didn’t even give the bastard his NAME. She just smiled into that lens with the exquisite serenity of a woman who knows EXACTLY where Donald Trump’s emotional prostate is located and gently pressed.

Hi, Mango Mussolini!

Because YOU KNOW HE WAS WATCHING.

You know that ambulatory sack of ego and edema was parked somewhere in front of a television, marinating in a bubbling vat of narcissistic injury, his tissue-paper ego disintegrating because the woman he has spent two decades trying to intimidate was CHEERFULLY WAVING AT HIM.

And the chef’s kiss is that she did it from JIMMY KIMMEL’S set, another person Trump has repeatedly tried to bully into submission who simply will not cow to him.

It was a gorgeous little layer cake of fuck-yous: Jimmy’s show, Rosie on his set, Trump hate-watching from wherever the hell he was, and she stared directly through the camera to let him know SHE KNEW.

Because ridicule is Donald Trump’s kryptonite.

This ruinously insecure, criticism-allergic crybaby can spend all day cosplaying Caesar and have his emotional ecosystem collapse because somebody made a joke about his hair. For a man pathologically obsessed with dominance, Donald Trump radiates the sexual confidence of a guy who spends forty-five minutes adjusting the lighting before presenting a Vienna sausage and asking, “Be honest, does this look huge from over there?”

And we’re supposed to regard THIS asshole as a terrifying authoritarian?

This pampered, powder-faced fraud who looks like he fell asleep face-first in a bowl of spaghetti, staggered upright, got shoved into wardrobe and was sent onstage at the Shawnee Playhouse for a summer-stock production of Il Duce: The Temu Years?

The guy lacquered in peach-toned stucco, teetering around in high heels, cinched into a corset, crowned with a wind-tortured thatch installation, and wrapped in a suit containing enough excess fabric to tarp a fucking pontoon boat?

That’s the terrifying tyrant?

That distended satsuma in orthopedic elevators?

That marmalade manatee with a necktie?

That preening, pouting, pancake-pasted parcel of presidential pique?

PLEASE.

The whole goddamn thing is a SHOW.

The flags. The gold. The scowling photographs. The military spectacle. The dictator poses. The chest-puffing, chin-jutting, cocktail-wiener-swinging stagecraft of supremacy, right down to that bizarre double-fisted jerk-and-twist “dance,” the only choreography the braces around his legs now seem to allow, pumping both fists beside his hips like Hando Calrissian simultaneously jerking off two imaginary MMA fighters.

It is pomp wrapped around pathology, a gaudy, gilded, gold-plated papier-mâché colostomy bag with the emotional load-bearing capacity of a motherfucking meringue.

He’s the end-cap-clearance, factory-reject, off-brand imitation Wizard of Oz toy your coupon-clipping granny found at a garage sale after somebody had already blowtorched the face and redrawn the features with a fucking Magic Marker, now frantically yanking levers behind a polyester curtain, coughing out machine smoke and booming threats through a busted amplifier while praying nobody wanders backstage and discovers that the Great and Powerful Whatever-the-Hell is actually an aggrieved carnival appliance salesman in a discount statesman costume having a nervous breakdown.

And Rosie is Toto.

She trots right over and YANKS.

There he is.

No legend. No majesty. No magnificent masculine mystique. Just a brittle, blustering, bouffant-bearing blowhard whose psychological stability can be knocked sideways by a monologue joke.

POINT AND FUCKING LAUGH.

And watching Rosie do exactly that was cathartic for me for reasons that reached much further back than Donald Trump, because long before that malignant mandarin-colored motherfucker became the human push notification none of us can swipe away, she meant comfort to me.

Being home sick when I was younger meant blankets, daytime television and The Rosie O’Donnell Show, this gloriously goofy explosion of Koosh balls, Broadway songs, giveaways, celebrity crushes and completely unembarrassed enthusiasm pouring through the television. She loved things LOUDLY. She would practically levitate when somebody she adored walked onto that set, and there was something wonderfully uncomplicated about watching a grown woman refuse to ration her happiness for fear of looking uncool.

When you were sick and miserable on the couch, she felt like company.

There was safety in that show, a little daytime sanctuary connected in my memory to a kinder stretch of life when television could simply entertain you instead of informing you that democracy had just been stuffed into the trunk of a Lincoln Continental before breakfast.

So seeing THAT woman all these years later hit me somewhere I wasn’t expecting. The world changed. She changed. I changed. But there she was, still carrying that enormous capacity for delight, except now it belonged to a woman who has spent two decades being targeted by a vengeance-addled, vanity-engorged bully and still refuses to give that son of a bitch one drop of the fear he keeps trying to squeeze out of her.

I fucking LOVE that.

Maybe because I understand the mechanism.

I had plenty of bullies growing up, and children can be exquisitely efficient little sadists when they discover something that gets a reaction. They find the sore spot, jam a finger into it and WATCH YOUR FACE. Their cruelty isn’t complete until they see the flinch.

So I learned to sabotage the whole damn setup.

If somebody was going to make fun of me, I could let everybody laugh AT me, or I could grab the joke before it landed, improve the motherfucker and make everybody laugh WITH me.

So I became funnier than the little asshole coming for me.

You found something embarrassing about me? Congratulations, cupcake. Give me thirty seconds and I’ll make it funnier than you ever could.

And it worked like a charm, because the instant everyone starts laughing WITH the person you intended to humiliate, you’ve lost control of the room. Your weapon has been confiscated, your cruelty grenade turns out to be a party popper, and now people are looking at YOU.

Bullies hate that.

So do despots, dictators, demagogues, dime-store Duces and every puffed-up, power-drunk prick who depends upon everyone treating him like an eight-foot marble monument instead of a mortal asshole with gastrointestinal problems.

Bullies need your humiliation. Despots need your deference. Dictators need their mythology.

Humor is a goddamn crowbar jammed underneath all three.

Ridicule doesn’t make dangerous people harmless. These people are dangerous because they possess actual authority.

But we do not have to lend them OUR awe.

We don’t have to become unpaid extras in their shitty little tyranny pageant. We don’t have to gasp when the smoke machine starts or applaud the costume, and we sure as hell don’t have to help some vain, voluble, volume-discount despot inflate himself into some towering object of reverence when he keeps landing somewhere between county-fair hypnotist and divorced casino magician whose tiger got repossessed.

For a man so ravenous for submission, Donald Trump spends an extraordinary amount of time pleading with the universe to reassure him that he is bigger, tougher, richer, taller, harder, smarter, hotter, more feared, more virile, more magnificent than every other swinging mammal on Earth, while lumbering around with an ass that appears to have entered the room several seconds before the rest of him and may require its own tugboat escort.

The flags get more gigantic. The gilt gets more garish. The threats get more theatrical. The trousers descend farther toward the floor as though hems themselves have entered witness protection. Every inch of the performance screams BEHOLD MY POWER while the performer looks like a bloated birthday clown who got into a fistfight with a spray-tan booth, lost, and then demanded everyone call him Daddy.

That is the fucking charade.

And mockery is how you puncture it.

Strip away the props. Expose the fraud. Make the emperor stand there in his fucking Spanx, stretched to structural failure around that swollen, sloshing sack of octogenarian suet.

Then LAUGH.

Laugh loudly. Laugh publicly. Laugh without permission.

Mock him. Puncture the pomposity. Remind the world that underneath all the presidential pageantry, authoritarian affectation, belligerent bluster and tough-guy theater is someone who cannot fucking bear the sound of people laughing at him.

Because the emperor needs you admiring the robes.

The counterfeit wizard needs you watching the smoke.

The bully needs to know he hurt you.

Don’t give them a fucking thing.

Keep laughing. Keep pointing. Keep humiliating these pompous pricks until every last inch of manufactured menace collapses into the pathetic punchline it always was.

And Rosie?

Keep.

Fucking.

Waving.

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0 comments

group of people in red cap and blue jacket
Photo by David Todd McCarty on Unsplash

Ignorance is not a compelling argument at this point.

We’ve all heard the theories for the last ten years: people still supporting Donald Trump are unwitting victims of the partisan media and Evangelical alternate reality that they’ve been raised in and are still captives of. They’re continually surrounded
by fake news and endless conspiracy, and so they aren’t bad people; they just aren’t seeing what we are seeing, and we need all to be more understanding.

We’re a decade into this madness. This just isn’t acceptable anymore.

There isn’t a sufficient excuse for being an adult so sheltered from facts and so truth-deprived that you can’t see Trump’s complete sociopathy and you can’t discern the existential threat he and his party are to this nation.

His supporters aren’t being asked to dig beneath some complex, brilliantly crafted ruse perpetrated by Conservative media and religious conglomerates working in concert. If you can read Trump’s own social media feed or listen to the bile he spews in front of the cameras at female reporters and political opponents, and not be fully disgusted to the point of vomiting, you aren’t a reasonable human being. Either that, or you are willingly choosing to engage in wild intellectual and theological gymnastics to avoid a reality that makes you uncomfortable, intentionally avoiding some really vile stuff that he and his collaborators aren’t even attempting to conceal anymore.

I’m fully convinced that nearly everyone still supporting Donald Trump knows he is a reprehensible human being and guilty of high crimes against this nation, but they simply can’t admit to themselves or anyone else they made a mistake, and so they are doubling down again and again.

They’re not stupid; they’re just willing to let America die on the altar of their pride, which may be far worse.

Being an adult means being responsible for ferreting out what is real and what isn’t, and for making good decisions with the available information. This is what we demand from our children, isn’t it? We only let their ignorance be an excuse for so long, and then we remove that option because we expect them to be smarter than that at some point. And if we realize that they are smart enough to know better, then it becomes an indictment of their character.

If grown men and women aren’t willing or able to sift information and choose wisely because of their media choices or their circle of friends or their mental effort, the
net result is the same: they are enabling and protecting reprehensible behavior that places people in great danger.

If Fox News creates your reality, you’re going to be hateful toward lots of people. You’re going to be afraid of Muslims, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people of color, refugees—and on and on and on. And if you’ve been on the planet for a few decades, you should have developed the critical thinking not to allow a network that brokers in fantasy and fiction to be your baseline for truth. That’s a youproblem.

If The Religious Right defines for you what it means to be a Christian, your Christianity is going to look nothing like the actual teachings of Christ. It’s going to be an angry, violent thing devoid of compassion and gentleness. That isn’t your preacher’s fault, and it isn’t Franklin Graham’s fault, and it isn’t the Devil’s fault. As a thinking Christian who supposedly reads the words of Jesus and reflects on them regularly—you should see through this sham in a hot minute and soundly reject it.

If the brazen, unapologetic racism and xenophobia and misogyny on display right now is too subtle for your sensibilities, and if Nazis marching through town squares, supremacist politicians, and election interference fall beneath your radar, you either intentionally have your head in the sand or it isn’t on straight to begin with—and either is a problem.

Many of my white Evangelical friends supporting Trump aren’t as much stupid or unaware as they are cowardly. They held their noses in 2016, voted in anger or haste or error, and then quickly got out of the politics business, choosing to escape the consequences of their decision on other people. So Newsmax and the Conservative Christian Church have become convenient places of sanctuary for people with privilege wanting to hide from the results of their vote.

Again, they aren’t ignorant of reality; they just are opting out of it altogether. If it is stupidity, the affliction is highly selective, extremely localized, and very convenient. And if that’s the case, are we supposed to expect in year eleven or twelve they’re going finally have a magical epiphany and part with him?

It’s time we stopped giving adult human beings the benefit of the doubt, simply because we think they’re not smart enough not to be fooled by religious shysters, fake news peddlers, and political snake oil salesmen. If that is true, then they’re also not smart or mentally available enough to be presented with objective data or compelling arguments and to filter them responsibly. They are, practically speaking, unreachable with rational measures.

I’m tired of having to treat people like children when they aren’t capable or willing to see what even a child can see, what my children can see. They know hatred and bullying without needing to read a think piece or do online research or unpack layers of religion and history.

I’m over justifying bigotry and racism and the horrible stuff happening in the country, and giving people who perpetuate it a pass because they supposedly don’t realize they’re supporting a monster—when most of the watching world seems to get it.

In a time when information is available at our fingertips and when conversation and study and exploration are limitless, I’m through excusing supposed adults for not being able to make a decision that is based in reality, simply because they’re in some hateful, self-righteous, nationalistic bubble. That’s their fault, not ours.

I don’t hate these people, but I’m also not going to coddle them and encourage their ignorance anymore because lots of people are damaged when that happens.

Sooner or later we adults all have to own our supposed stupidity–and choose to be wiser

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So. Much. Pearl. Clutching.

on Sunday, Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff delivered a barn-burner of a speech, in which he ripped Preznit Fuckwit several new ones, for being the incompetent imbecile who lied our country into an unwinnable war against Iran, and for being the callous toad who is ignoring the plight of the five thousand sailors trapped aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

but all that was lost on the MAGAverse, because there were three words toward the end of Ossoff’s speech that caused every Republican to immediately shit a massive, white-hot brick and explode into paroxysms of performative outrage.

he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

that’s right, Jon Ossoff went there. he brought up the weird stalker-slash-diaper-nurse who is now Dear Leader’s constant companion.

once those three words — ‘travel with Natalie’ — escaped Ossoff’s lips, the entire Donnyverse clutched their pearls and collapsed onto their fainting couches.

oh my good, how dare Jon Ossoff say such a mean thing!

I’m looking straight at you, Tim Murtaugh.

Jon @ossoff subjects an innocent female staffer, a bone cancer survivor who credits President Trump’s Right to Try legislation for saving her life, to the oldest and most vulgar innuendo there is, simply because she’s at work seemingly all the time. Ossoff should apologize.

oh dear, can someone get in here and see if they can revive Tim?

what on earth is Tim Murtaugh talking about? what ‘vulgar innuendo’? all Ossoff did was to accurately describe the situation. Diaper Nurse Natalie travels with Dear Leader. not a day goes by that the two of them aren’t photographed together. to point that out is not ‘innuendo.’

who even knew that Ari Fleischer was still a thing?

I never really knew what to think about Ossoff. He seemed a backbencher who played it safe. Now I see he’s a bottom feeder. Who does this and holds their head high? Who accuses women of behaving like that because he doesn’t like their boss. This guy should be ashamed.

whoa, whoa, slow the fuck down there, Ari. show us on the doll where Ossoff accused Natalie of ‘behaving like that’.

like what?

it’s pretty weird how every Republican immediately interpreted ‘travel together’ to mean that Donny and Nattie are getting it on, isn’t it? this sounds like another one of those ‘every accusation is a confession’ things again, doesn’t it? 

that’s because it is. Republicans have eyes. they can see what’s going on.

they know how bad this looks, President Pussygrabber swanning around with some blonde half his age, while his Slovenian green-card rent-a-wife is nowhere to be seen.

look, it’s not Jon Ossoff’s fault that Donny immediately falls for any woman who reminds him of the daughter he want to quote-unquote ‘date,’ if that’s what we’re charitably going to call it. this shit happens over and over. remember the Presidential Pants Steamer, Hope Hicks, who was right by his side throughout his first term?

his own handlers have been trying to minimize Natty’s contact with Dear Leader since forever. here’s what the NY Times reported almost two years ago.

This has generated concern among other aides who feel she has been far too willing to serve as a funnel for conspiratorial information at a moment when Mr. Trump appears more contemptuous than ever of attempts to manage or control him.

but Donny keeps overruling them.

Mr. Trump has dismissed concerns about Ms. Harp, whom he calls “sweetie” and treats like a daughter, according to people close to him.

and we all know how Donny treats his daughter.

but somehow, this is all Jon Ossoff’s fault — and so the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex has risen up as one to demand that Ossoff apologize.

Yes @ossoff should apologize and he should get beaten in November. He’s a ridiculous caricature of a senator and far too left wing for Georgia. And a mean-spirited jerk who traffics in slander as well.

oh, please. Jon Ossoff ‘traffics in slander’?

has Hugh Hewitt ever met the current president of the United States? has he met the president’s Director of Communications?

Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hard working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he’s a miserable person who hates this country. It’s because he’s a radical, extremist Dumocrat.

who even talks like this? I swear, everyone in the Donnyverse operates on the emotional level of a 14-year-old boy.

all this performative outrage over something Jon Ossoff never actually said is just a distraction — just more red meat for the cultists, to make them forget for a day that Donny has made their lives measurably worse in every way.

Jon Ossoff apologize? piss straight up a rope, pal. it’s Donny who should apologize, for fucking America straight into the shitter.

it’s Donny who should apologize for destroying Joe Biden’s strong economy.

it’s Donny who should apologize for enriching himself while in office.

it’s Donny who should apologize for pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists. 

it’s Donny who should apologize for inflicting his stupid face and name onto money, passports and half the buildings in Washington, DC.

it’s Donny who should apologize for allowing the Space Nazi’s merry band of pimply DOG incels to fire entire agencies, to the point where government is now broken.

it’s Donny who should apologize for allowing racists to set immigration policy, crackpots to set healthcare policy, and fossil-fuel flunkies to set environmental policy.

it’s Donny who should apologize for alienating all of our allies and snuggling up to the world’s worst despots.

it’s Donny who should apologize for turning American cities into war zones, where masked government thugs are allowed to gun down anyone who looks at them funny.

it’s Donny who should apologize for blundering into an winnable war that’s depleted our weapons stockpile and jacked up the price of every fucking thing.

it’s Donny who should apologize for throwing a 250th birthday party that was such a rinky-dink piece of shit that even his own cultists refused to show up for it.

it’s Donny who should apologize for destroying the Oval Office, the East Wing, the South Lawn, the Rose Garden and the Reflecting Pool.

and it’s Donny who should apologize to CNN’s Kristen Holmes, the latest woman reporter to get an undeserved earful from this misogynistic prick.

“quiet. quiet. quiet. you’re very disrespectful in front of this young man. okay? don’t you find her disrespectful? quiet. who are you with?”

Holmes: “CNN.”

“fake news. you’re fake news. you’re a loud— you’re a loud, boisterous person. you’re fake news. be quiet. BE QUIET. BE QUIET. you’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news.”

shut the fuck up, Piggy.

oh, excuse us if Kristen Holmes takes her job as a reporter seriously, instead of slavishly following Dear Leader around, and braying like a hyena at everything he says, like some people we know.

do you know what Kristen Holmes had been asking Donny about, that made him lose his fucking mind? the diaper nurse, of course. she wanted to know if Donny had any comment on what Ossoff had said about thew two of them traveling together.

oh, and good for CNN. they actually stood up and defended Holmes.

Kristen Holmes is one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House. This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant, and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people. Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press. We stand firmly behind Kristen and reject these attacks in the strongest possible terms.

worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media, are you paying attention? this is how it’s done — though if I had been a member of the press pool in the Oval Bordello yesterday, I would have immediately won my own What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge™, which is now in its 2,331st day.

honestly, I don’t give a shit what Donny and Natty get up to, as long as it’s consenting. that’s their own business.

I do give a shit what Donny and his Republican enablers are doing to our country.

oh, and while we’re at it, release the full, unedited Epstein Files, you fucking fucks.


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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And Another Day Begins Without Being Greeted With That One, Glorious Headline

I mean seriously. He’s an 80 year old, grossly-overweight, incontinent, flatulent, fast food-guzzling, dementia-ridden patient who—if not for who he is and the cadre of apparatchiks he has in place—would be in an assisted living facility or nursing home.

What is his end goal? Complete domination of the United States and forced adulation of the entire populace a la North Korea? To possess all the money? To continue to fuck thirteen year old girls with impunity? Or does he just want to do as much damage as possible to the planet and civilization as possible until that inevitable—and glorious—day he’s sucked back down into the pits of hell?

When I posted this image a couple weeks ago, it was kind of in passing. Another bit of shitgibbon-related detritus the internet hacked up. But the more I think about it, does he seriously think he’s going to escape this fate, either by the hands of humanity or an errant blood clot?

If he thinks he can—ahem—outrun this fate, we can add totally fucking delusional to his description above.

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