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Quote Of The day

Soviet poster, 1940s

Quote from a Minnesotan: “ICE has made the classic NAZI mistake. They have invaded a winter people… in the winter.”

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I Will Not Look Away. I Will Not Be Silent.

I don’t care if some of you are tired of the Tiedrich posts. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere. Seriously.

yes, again.

once again, masked thugs who have been conditioned — not trained, but conditioned — to shoot first and think never have gunned down a civilian in cold blood.

and, once again, the vile shitstains responsible for all this fuckery have asked us to — no, I’m sorry, they’re demanding that we disbelieve what we’re all seeing with our own eyes.

here’s what we know so far:

militarized government thugs were patrolling the streets of an American city and harassing its residents — just as the framers of our Constitution intended. they wore masks to hide their identities — just as the framers of our Constitution intended.

five of the masked thugs approached a man who was recording them, pepper-sprayed him, and roughly shoved him to the ground — just as the framers of our Constitution intended.

as the man struggled to get away, one or more of the masked thugs drew his weapon and shot the man several times, killing him — just as the framers of our Constitution intended. as the man lay face-down on the ground, more shots were fired into his lifeless body — just as the framers of our Constitution intended.

it was just another fucked-up day in these United States of Brutal Fascism.

as with the state-sponsored killing of Renee Good three weeks ago, the worst people in the world immediately started lying their insipid faces off about what had happened.

they blamed the victim — Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse — painting him as the latest Radical Leftist Lunatic™ to get what was coming to him.

here’s some truly Orwellian shit from Obergruppenführer Greg Bovino, everyone’s favorite bite-sized fascist.

“the suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID. this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

fact check: bull fucking shit, Pocket Nazi.

The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him.

so, let’s talk about that gun that Alex Pretti was carrying.

His concealed weapon was found only after he was restrained on the sidewalk, the videos show. It appears to have been taken from him before the agents opened fire.

according to Minneapolis police, he had every legal right to carry it.

“The only interaction that we are aware of with law enforcement has been for traffic tickets and we believe he is a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”

let’s be crystal fucking clear about this: the ICE thugs were never in danger. Pretti’s weapon remained holstered, and was never in his hand. what was in his hand was very clearly a cell phone. I mean, even low-wattage ICE morons can tell the difference, right?

the very same people who have spent year fetishizing the right to carry weapons in public are shocked — shocked! — to discover that people are exercising that Constitutionally-protected right.

let’s gaze in awe as ICE Barbie once again drags the truth out back to the gravel pit and shoots it in the face.

reporter: “did the 37-year-old who had a license to carry, did he brandish a gun?”

Kristi Noem: “this individual showed up to impede a law enforcement operation and assaulted our officers. they responded according to their training and took action to defend the officer’s life and those of the public around him, and I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign. this is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons and are using them to assault law enforcement officers.”

can we please stop calling ICE ‘law enforcement officers’? they’re not enforcing any known laws on the books. what they’re doing is inventing their own laws on the spot — and playing judge, jury and executioner.

but I digress. answer the question, puppy perforator — did Alex Pretti brandish a gun?

fact check: no, he fucking well did not.

hey, you want to see what brandishing looks like? here’s some brandishing.

I’m so old, I remember when some teenage fuckbag showed up at a protest and brandished the shit out of an assault rifle. when he used that weapon to kill three protesters, the entire wingnut ecosystem made him an instant folk hero.

so, to recap: if you’re an anti-fascist protester with lawful, holstered weapon, too bad, fuck-o, it’s summary execution for you. but if you’re a MAGA dipshit openly spraying bullets into a crowd, you’re ‘a nice young man.’

shut up, Piggy.

and you can shut the fuck up, too, Couchfuck McGee.

“This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”

oh please, don’t piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining. the only people engineering chaos are the masked ICE goons who are going out of their way to harm as many Minnesotans as possible.

Uncle Tim Walz, can you please talk some sense to these shit-kazoos?

“speak out. bear witness and document legally. but I understand the risk in that. and I understand the courage that it takes to have people out there doing this. thank God we have video, because according to DHS, these seven heroic guys took an onslaught of a battalion against them or something. it’s nonsense, people. it’s nonsense and it is lies.”

you know thinks Little Miss Hair Extensions’ Department of Homeland Security has gone to far? the guy who invented the Department of Homeland Security, that’s who. he’s calling today’s DHS fascists — and he’s calling for Preznit Fuckwit to be impeached and removed from office.

“I helped to establish DHS in 2002 and 2003 and later had the homeland security portfolio as a White House Counsel and served as General Counsel of the Department. I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump—now.”

Democrats must to do whatever they can to shut this shit down — and it looks like they might actually follow through. look at Chuck Schumer.

Strongly-Worded Chuck has come about as close to losing his shit as I’ve ever seen him.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city. Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no. Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”

Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News points out that — assuming that Chuck isn’t just Lucy-and-the-footballing us — all this could lead to another government shutdown.

“This ICE situation is a nightmare for the Senate. Cannot see a scenario in which Senate Dems can vote for this 6-bill package which includes DHS funding. Govt shuts down Friday. First Senate procedural vote likely not until Wednesday, giving them limited room to maneuver. House on recess. Any changes to the bill would require the House. Shutdown a real possibility at this point.”

so, fun week ahead.

I think it’s great the Democrats are finding their voices, but as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reminds us, none of this shit is normal — especially the GOP’s total abdication of any responsibility to rein in Dear Leader’s excesses — and we should reject every attempt to normalize it.

“this really isn’t just about Democrats. this is about Democrats, Republicans, and independents. and I think, right now, in this moment, there has been this permission structure where we have all universally accepted that the Republican Party will simply just have no morals, or fall in line with the president of the United States — and we have to challenge that logic and rhetoric every single time. I believe that often times they are given a free pass, and this accepted logic just allows them to continue to vote without any resistance from the constituencies, because we’ve accepted some foregone conclusion.”

now for your heroes of the day: the brave — and I do mean brave — Minnesotans who used debris — and then their own bodies — to block an armored vehicle from advancing.

(video credit: Brendan Gutenschwager via Threads.)

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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Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE, in cold blood, without cause, and with giddy joy from his assassins.

For simply bearing witness to a neighbor’s abuse, for being the kind of person we all say we aspire to be, for being present to an imperiled stranger, he was executed in the street by our government.

It is as tragic and frightening as any day in my lifetime:

The complete disregard for his life by those thugs cosplaying as soldiers is beyond comprehension.

The utter contempt for his memory by this Administration is unrepentantly evil.

And what soon followed by supposedly patriotic, Jesus-following Conservative Americans is sadly predictable.

Like you, I’m finding words difficult for the waste of it all, the sickening deja vu of what’s unfolded, and the feeling that we’re slipping into something more dark than our minds can fathom.

One of the saddest things about today is that I can imagine the conversations right now by my former friends, distant family members, neighbors, and people I used to pastor:

“Oh, he was threatening them!”

“He came at them with a gun. They were just defending themselves.”

“He was another Leftist extremist!”

“That’s what you get when you attack officers.”

This is the mass delusion being curated again.

They will believe Trump and Noem and Patel and Bondi and Leavitt, and not their own eyes.

They will convince themselves that the truth is not the truth, because otherwise they will need to come to terms with the reality that they are complicit in this, that they have created this monster, that they have failed their nation and their faith, that everything we’ve warned them about for ten years is now here.

To avoid accountability, and the courage and change that would require of them, they will willfully choose a comfortable fiction; a fantasy that declares them patriotic and righteous, and anyone whose presence disturbs that story, the enemy.

And they will dig in their heels, double down, and descend further into cultic tribalism while trying to bury the cognitive dissonance they have created.

Actual, real, walking-around, business-owning, church-going, school board-attending Americans will choose to vilify slaughtered human beings instead of admitting they were wrong.

And they will look at the decent people across this nation, those with a conscience, those who refuse to deny reality, and they will say that we are the problem.

They will dehumanize us to the point that when we are beaten or kidnapped or executed, it will not elicit anything but the belief that we got what we deserved.

This is what Trump has done to a sizable portion of this nation, and it’s something the rest of us need to face with sober, unflinching clarity.

It’s not enough to grieve the loss of Renee Good and Alex Pretti; we must defend their memories.

We must not allow them to be slandered, mischaracterized, and dehumanized.

We must walk into our days and into every space in which we find ourselves, and we must speak truth about what is happening.

That is our responsibility as good people bearing witness to violence, just as they did.

This is the statement from Alex Pretti’s distraught family:

ICE killed him.

The Trump Administration slandered him.

Conservative Americans have joined them.

This has happened to Alex Pretti and his family.

It happened to Renee Good and her family.

It will happen to thousands and thousands of families, unless we decide that we not tolerate it another day.

I know you’d like me to tell you what you should do in response, but I’m unable to.

I’m still working through what my response will be.

These are matters of conscience, and they cannot be made from a distance, but within the cavernous places of our own hearts.

I can only tell you that we are all tethered together, that every one of us has a life to leverage, and that we will rise or fall together.

May we meet this moment with the best of ourselves.

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Don’t Give In To Nihilism

ICE Field Marshall Greg Bovino, The Desert Brat

From Mock Paper  Scissors:

It’s way too easy to feel hopeless and powerless, and that is what shadow president S.S. Stephen Miller and his Gestapo want.

But we do have power when the Senate returns to work next week. You see, the Senate will vote on the bill recently passed in the House to fund ICE and the rest of the Department of Homeland Security. If a bill is not passed by the end of the month, DHS will shut down.

That’s our opportunity, and we must seize it.

Democrats cannot fund ICE after what has happened in Minnesota.

Look, I get it: it’s politically risky. Democrats will be tar’ed and feather’ed as being lawless illegal alien sympathizers and whatnot. But they are already being called that and worse. There’s really not much to lose for us to stand up to the killers and bullies. But there’s a lot more that we can lose if we don’t. When we lose faith in the future, we lose it all.

It’s a moral imperative that we fight the Republicans like our lives depend on it, because our lives do depend on it. There is a higher calling here, people have already died. The First They Came poem has become a trope, but it is also more applicable now than ever.

Senate Democrats (and sweet Jeebus I hope some Republicans join them) must come together to block the bill and send a message to the country that what ICE is doing cannot stand.

Everyone of us must contact our Senators —regardless of party— and demand that they put an end to this atrocity that is happening in our names. Tell them you’ve got their backs, too. 

(And I’ll kill the suspense: already I have heard back from both my Senators Murray and Cantwell(!!!) saying that they will vote against this. Next up: Chuck Schumer. My pen pall club is growing.)

Contact your Representative by clicking HERE

Contact your Senators by clicking HERE

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Saturday’s Pavlovitz

Dear President Trump,

It’s taken me a while to realize and admit this, but I’m grateful to you.

I’ve spent a decade openly lamenting your presence and the poison it has so effortlessly released into our nation’s blood system.

Today, I find myself horrified at a second term that is doing even greater damage than I ever imagined it would. My heart has been hourly broken as I’ve watched our country imploding, our public discourse become polluted, our daily existence grow ever more corrosive, and I’ve wrongly assumed you were to blame.

Yet, I’ve come to understand that you haven’t manufactured our current national ugliness; you’ve simply revealed it and leveraged it.

By generating a limitless torrent of hateful, mean-spirited ignorance, you’ve given other like-minded people license to do the same. You’ve opened up the floodgates for their collective moral sewage to flow fully. People no longer hide their malevolence behind feigned politeness and phony civility; they now revel in it, they broadcast it, and they celebrate it.

You’ve made bigotry, misogyny, and racism socially acceptable again, and that has been a kind of twisted gift because it’s allowed me to really see people, not as they pretend to be on the surface, but in the very depths of their calloused hearts.

Over and over throughout the last decade, your supporters would always tell me that they liked you because you “speak your mind,” yet I realized a long time ago that it is because you speak their minds. You’ve given credence to their phobias, sanctioned their prejudices, and normalized their contempt for their neighbors.

Thanks to the terrible ground you’ve broken, politicians, pastors, friends, and strangers, both in person and on social media, now regularly out themselves as cruel, intolerant, and malicious. They remind me just how close they are to me, just how deep the sickness in us runs, and just how far a nation we have to go to become worthy of our songs and anthems.

You’ve emboldened people to be open about things they used to conceal for the sake of decorum, and though it turns my stomach, I know that this is the only way we can move forward; to have that cancerous stuff exposed fully so that it can be dealt with. Our progress as a nation is predicated on authentic dialogue, no matter how brutal and disheartening that dialogue is.

In other words, you’ve let us know what we’re really dealing with here and while it’s been rightly disturbing, it’s also been revelatory. That’s the thing about that kind of harsh light: you’re forced to see everything; beauty and monstrosity equally illuminated.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me: I think you are the most malignant President in our nation’s history, and I fear gravely for the world my children will inherit, should America survive your Presidency at all. I believe you’re a soulless, loveless, irredeemably hateful bottom-feeder; the very worst of what humanity has produced.

But regardless of what happens now, you’ve already allowed me the blessing of discovering the truth: about me, about my neighbors, about my friends and family members, and about our country.

And in the process, you’ve also shown me that I am not alone in resisting you and the sickening, grievous things you’ve revealed about us.

You’ve generated an equally loud, equally passionate response to it, and this is where I find my hope these days.

I find it in those for whom equality, freedom, and justice aren’t just cheap buzzwords or hollow sentiments; they are the most precious of hills to die on.

I find it in those people who refuse to be silent in the face of our moral regression.

I find it in those who are willing to be more bold in defending the inherent value of all people.

I find it in the growing army of those true patriots who will not tolerate hatred as a core American value.

I find it in human beings who fiercely reject white supremacy in every form.

I find it in those who reject violence as a default response to dissension.

I find it in the ever-rising voice of people who will not let your malice and bitterness represent them in the world.

I find it in the ordinary activists who will not allow us to repeat the worst of history here.

Today I find my hope in those who, like me, will not be complicit in allowing exclusion to become a source of national pride, who will not tolerate an America that is bereft of empathy and drained of diversity, because we’ve seen where that leads.

Yes, President Trump, you’ve unearthed our hidden afflictions, and you’ve paraded them unapologetically in the light of day.

You brought every awful thing about us out into the open so that we can face it without myth or misunderstanding.

You’ve shown me that America is greater than you and your sycophantic disciples’ plans for it, and that it is worth fighting for with everything I have.

And for all of this, I thank you.

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Saturday Jokes

I tried making skimmed milk, but it was too hard to throw the cow across the lake. (Bilbo)

A person learning English as a second language just asked me the difference between “burned” and “burnt”, and I just stared blankly back with a 404 error screen running through my brain.

You might be in a CULT if you buy a red hat made in China to support a felon who married an immigrant and has convinced you that all your problems are caused by immigrants and felons. Or maybe you’re just stupid.

(phone ringing)
Boss: Why the hell aren’t you picking that up?!
Me: I always answer on the third ring, makes me seem cooler.
Boss: PICK IT UP!
Me: Fine… 911 what’s your emergency?

BREAKING:
The cold weather is set to last until it gets warmer.

I celebrate every touchdown my team makes by drinking nearly a liter of beer. That’s a two pint conversion.

Please be reassured ladies that there is no such thing as pre-natal fever. I’m confident the fetus is at womb temperature.

What were electric eels called before electricity was discovered?

Me to dog: I’m out of treats.
Dog: I’ll hold your beer ’till you get back.

Minute and minute shouldn’t be spelled the same. I’m not content with this content. I object to that object. I need to read what I read again. Excuse me but there’s no excuse for this. Someone should wind this comment up and throw it in the wind.

I haven’t spoken to my wife in four years.
I thought it would be rude to interrupt her!

I saw someone with a tattoo that read, Comparison is the Thief of Joy.
I’m going to get the same tattoo…but mine will be bigger!

(I was to lazy to retype this.)
SLEEPY JOE LET OUR BEAUTIFUL SOUTHERN BOULEVARD TURN INTO A WAR ZONE. JAY WALKERS WERE POURING IN BY THE THOUSANDS. OUR STREETS WERE BEING OVERRUN BY ILLEGAL U-TURNS AND UNDOCUMENTED MERGING. BLATANTLY ILLEGAL LANE CHANGES EVERYWHERE YOU LOOKED. TOTAL DISASTER!
UNDER YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT (THAT’S ME!!), LAW & ORDER IS BACK! THE BOULEVARD IS NOW SAFE AGAIN BECAUSE ANYONE CAUGHT JAY WALKING WILL BE MACED AND SHOT WITH RUBBER BULLETS. THEY TRIED FOR YEARS. NOTHING WORKED. EVERYBODY SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONE. WRONG! I WALKED IN AND ON DAY ONE I FIXED IT JUST BY THINKING ABOUT IT. TY FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS COVFEFE. – DJT

How big is Greenland? It’s so big that it covers up 99% of the Epstein files.

Trump supporters are threatening to leave the US if Trump is sent to prison. (Now THAT’S funny.)

(Still funny)
A husband and wife are shopping in their local Wal-Mart. The husband picks up a case of Miller Lite and puts it in their cart. ‘What’s the big idea?’ asks the wife. ‘They’re a steal, only $10 for 24 cans’, he replies. ‘Put them back, it’s a total waste’, demands the wife, and so he does and they carry on shopping. A few aisles further on along, the woman picks up a $20 jar of face cream and puts it in the basket. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asks the husband. ‘It’s my face cream. It makes me look absolutely stunning’, replies the wife. Her husband retorts: ‘So does 24 cans of Miller Lite and it’s half the price.’ HUSBAND DOWN, AISLE 7!

(IT ticket)
My keyboard is not working. When I try to put in a backspace it will not insert. It keeps deleting to the left. I am restarted.

I had a leak in the roof over my dining room so I called a roofer to take a look at it.
“When did you first notice the leak?” he asked.
I told him, “Last night, when it took me two hours to finish my soup!”

At the marriage counselor…
After talking to the wife, Maria, she talks the husband, Tony.
“Well, Maria had a few things she wanted me to discuss with you. First, she says you are a workaholic. Second, she says you pick your nose quite a bit in public. Third, and this is a little delicate, she says you never let her get on top when you are having sex.”
Tony replies, “When I comma to dis country, my father tell me three things. He tell me to make it big in America, First: worka hard. So I worka hard. Second, he says: keepa your nose clean. So I keepa my nose clean. And third, he says, don’t fuck up.”

My brother thinks he’s a turtle. I’m taking him to the best terrapist in town.

The rule of tyrants depends on murder. In each reign some life must fall.

A man had just opened a restaurant but he couldn’t think of a name. So he decided to name it after the third person that walked in.
The third person’s name that walked in was Jill. The owner said, “Jill, you also have nice legs.” So the guy named the restaurant ‘Jill’s Legs’.
A week later a drunk was laying on the sidewalk outside the restaurant when a police officer asked him what he was doing. He replied, “I’m waiting for Jill’s Legs to open so I can get a bite to eat.”

Whoever said 10°F is better than 100°F better be sitting outside enjoying it today.

They say the machines of the future will be as smart as people. Okay, but which people? Because that’s gonna make a big difference. (Bilbo)

Smart people underestimate themselves and ignorant people think they’re brilliant.

When in grizzly territory, always hike in groups and carry sedative dart guns.
Remember, there’s safety in numb bears.

[source]

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Released 47 Years Ago Today

And how can we possibly forget when the album’s title track was forever burned in our memories?

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Midweek Tiedrich

let’s start with a bang, and put our Hero of the Day right up top.

here’s Anders Vistisen, Danish politician and member of the European Parliament, speaking for the entire world.

“let me put this in words you might understand: Mr. President, fuck off.”

it must be said that Anders Vistisen is not our friend. he’s as far-right as they come — and it is absolutely heartbreaking to have to note that it took a Nazi to speak bluntly to Dear Leader.

yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Donny’s second reign — so naturally, preening peacock held a victory lap, in the form of an excruciatingly long, incoherent shit-show of a press conference.

let’s gaze in awe as Donny encounters a tool for the first time, and learns to master it.

whoops, wrong clip. sorry. here you go, here’s President Hominid, mastering a new tool.

“here’s, uh, the book on— accomplishments. and this is something— woo, I’m glad my finger wasn’t in that sucker. [hold up binder clip] that could have done some damage, but you know what? I wouldn’t have shown the pain. I would have gone back. boy did you hear that? that was nasty. but I would not have shown the pain. I would have acted like nothing happened, as my finger fell off. that was nasty. I think somebody did that. [points to camera] it was him. it was my man. how are you? you didn’t do it. I know you didn’t. I know you didn’t. so, uh—”

hey, you know what, Donny? fuck off. it was a paper clip. stop being a drama queen.

thank god Donny’s bone spurs weren’t acting up, and preventing him from heroically winning the War of the Binder Clip.

that pile of papers Donny’s brandishing in the above clip, that’s his list of ‘365 wins.’ that’s what the whole presser was about, Donny bragging about his (imaginary) wins.

let’s check out just one of them, number 243.

#243 says: “Stripped notorious crackhead and grifter Hunter Biden of his taxpayer-funded Secret Service detail.”

Donny, fuck off. that’s not a ‘win’ — that’s the act of a toxic piece of shit obsessed with settling scores.

hey, where do you think ‘suppressing the Dead Pedo Bestie Files’ was in Donny’s list of wins? I’d have put it at number one.

now excuse me, but what the fuck is this, and where does ‘blithering like a lunatic’ land on Donny’s win list?

“we had in my area in Queens, I grew up in Queens, we had a place called Creedmore. Creedmore. does anybody know that? Creedmore. it was a big— I said ‘mom, why are those— bars on the building?’ I used to play little league baseball— there. a place called Cunningham Park. I was quite the baseball player. you couldn’t believe it. but I said to my mother, ‘mom—’ she would be there always there for me, she said ‘son, you could be a professional baseball player.’ I said ‘thanks mom.’ I said, ‘why are those bars on the windows?’ big building. big, powerful building that loomed over the park, actually. she said, ‘well, people that are very sick are in that building.’ I said, ‘boy.’ I used to always look at that building and I’d see— big building, big, tall building, it loomed over the park, sort of. now that I think of it, I think it was pretty unfriendly, sad. but I— I’ll never forget— I don’t know if it’s still there.”

get the idea? it was a big, tall building — powerful, in fact, with tears in its eyes.

of course, that fascinating anecdote took place in the old days, when Donny used to tie an onion to his belt, which was the style at the time.

so, what was the press doing, while Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants’ brain was visibly leaking out of his ears? just what they always do: sitting there like useless lumps, nodding their heads. this is probably a good place to note that my What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge™ is now in its 2,122nd day.

instead of any ‘what the fuck’ bravery, we just got the the usual fresh load of horse shit. here’s NPR’s Mara Liasson’s hot take.

“And what else struck me about this press conference was how similar Trump and Biden were. Both of them tried to convince Americans that the economy was a lot better than voters’ own experience of the economy is.”

worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press, please stop it with this both-sides nonsense.

we’re one year into this nightmare, and the press is still normalizing and sanewashing Donny’s outright fascism.

“President Donald Trump has commanded attention during his second term. From military interventions to controversial social media posts, the Republican has rewritten the presidency’s role in a divided country.”

oh please, fuck straight off with this tepid pablum.

Donny isn’t ‘rewriting the role of the presidency.’ he’s pouring gasoline all over the Constitution and setting a fucking match to it — and by dancing around the issue couching it in oh-so-polite terms, the press is aiding and abetting him.

Gavin Newsom is in Davos this week, and he’s got a message for the gathered world leaders: cut the bullshit, and stop kowtowing to Donny.

“it’s time buck up. it’s time to get serious. stop being complicit. it’s time to stand tall and firm. have a backbone. I’ve seen this in the United States. playing Congress, playing both sides, saying one thing in a text or tweet, another publicly. it’s time to have principles. it’s time to stand tall. it’s time to stand united. have principles. I can’t take this complicity. people rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders. I mean, handing out crowns, this is pathetic. Nobel Prizes that are being given away. it’s just pathetic. and I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage. I mean, at least from an American perspective. it’s embarrassing. one thing they can’t do is what they’ve been doing, and they’ve been played. this guy’s playing folks for fools, and it’s embarrassing.”

Gavin is spot fucking on — because world leaders have indeed spent a year flattering Donny, and appeasing him, hoping that by stroking his unquenchable ego, they could somehow magically come out on top.

in case you’ve forgotten, South Korea really did literally give Donny his very own crown.

what did South Korea end up getting in return? not one fucking thing.

yet the flattery and kowtowing goes on, right up to into the new year. we even saw it yesterday, in the text message from Macron that Donny posted on his shitty app. look at this obsequious drek.

“my friend.” “we are totally in line.” “let us try to build great things.” “let’s have lunch, I’ll invite whoever you want to.”

oh please. Donny is laughing his ginormous ass off at what a fool you are.

hey, you know who else thought he could flatter his way to victory?

this homey. Neville Chamberlain, pictured here with his best bud, Adolf Whats-His-Name.

in 1938, Chamberlain came up with an awesome idea: all Europe had to do was flatter old Adolf, tell him what a great guy he is — and if they him keep Sudetenland, that’ll satisfy him, and he’ll leave the rest of the world alone.

come on, Adolf. let’s do lunch. I’ll invite whoever you want.

tell me, how did flattery and appeasement work out for Europe?

Anders Vistisen, can you step back in here for a moment and remind that everyone tyrants need to spoken to in the only language they understand?

“let me put this in words you might understand: Mr. President, fuck off.”

thanks, bro. now get your right-wing ass out of my sight.

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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AI Slop

AI is getting good. Perhaps too good.

I recently ran across an Instagram account that at first blush looked like a great collection of hot guys. The more I got into it, however, the more I started doubting the images’ authenticity. They were perfect…with one tell. The tattoos on what were otherwise identical models were radically different from image to image—in some cases absent altogether.

Then I went back to the main account and read the description.

But seriously, if I hadn’t noticed the ink, I would’ve blithly continued believing the images were real.

The gentleman in the image above, while not from that particular account, gives me pause as well.

How can we even trust what we see as real/

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This is not about politics.

We are not a nation, as we’ve often thought, simply positioned on either side of the aisle working to craft reasonable, good-faith compromise somewhere in the humane middle. Sadly, that ship left the port a long time ago. (Or maybe, it descended a gold escalator.)

The prevailing narrative of the last decade is that America has been fractured by political ideologies, bunkered down in disagreement on what path will most serve the common good. This is a dangerous fiction we need to discard once and for all.

The dividing lines in America have nothing to do with party affiliation anymore.

Just open up your phone, eavesdrop at the checkout line, or talk to your neighbor, and you’ll see the lines along which we now find ourselves:

One side celebrates people being abducted from the street without due process or just cause.

One side rejoices in strangers having food taken away from them without knowing a single one of their stories.

One side applauds the bombing of boats in foreign waters with zero knowledge of who is killed.

One side blindly despises people for their gender identity, despite that having no impact on their lives whatsoever.

One side reduces an entire population to terrorists and drug dealers to justify their swift eradication.

One side conflates American with righteous and whiteness with goodness.

One side excuses pardons for drug runners.

It defends the protection of pedophiles.

It steadfastly worships a felonious, treasonous rapist.

And none of this is about politics; it’s about when faced with the suffering and injustice in our path, whether we will default to compassion or to cruelty.

America’s present divide reveals the orientation of hearts as we move through the world, the story we tell ourselves about other people, and what we want our lives to be marked by.

Will we be bleeding heart empaths who err on the side of love toward all our neighbors, or callous, fuck your feelings sociopaths who rejoice in the pain of others because we’ve dehumanized them to the point that their lives are worthless to us?

Will we see empathy as our highest calling as human beings, or as a character flaw needing to be discarded?

Saying that we believe in diversity does not come with the expectation that we will object to nothing and that we will accept everything—actually, it’s quite the opposite.
Precisely because disparate humanity is of such importance to us, we can and should conclude that certain beliefs, legislation, movements, and people are antithetical to life; that they are adversarial to that humanity:

Yes, countless perspectives on international conflicts, gun legislation, government spending, or environmental dangers fall within the confines of what tolerance will accommodate and what responsible debate will hold, but not all of them.

We can disagree on all sorts of issues without that disagreement being a deal breaker, but there are some things that, as people of faith, morality, and conscience, we simply will not allow—and these things transcend politics.

The days ahead are going to require us to dig beneath the surface skirmishes and into the bedrock of what’s really happening here so that we don’t waste a second fighting fruitless battles that miss the point entirely.

Refuse to be gaslighted and guilted for allowing politics to get in the way of your relationships because that’s not what’s happening here.

It’s time we stopped pretending that our current national crisis is political, as that only serves to distract us from the far more worrisome truth that we need to reckon with:

We’re not politically divided; we are morally fractured.

No election result will change that.

The question is, what will?