Posts

Posted on

Tuesday Tiedrich

ladies and gentlemen, please stand by for a decree of the utmost importancefrom Donny J. Convict, President of the United States, King of the Americas, Ruler of Our Great Oceans and Plentipotentary for All of Planet Earth and the Stars Beyond.

‘The NFL has to get rid of that ridiculous looking new Kickoff Rule. How can they make such a big and sweeping change so easily and quickly. It’s at least as dangerous as the “normal” kickoff, and looks like hell. The ball is moving, and the players are not, the exact opposite of what football is all about. “Sissy” football is bad for America, and bad for the NFL! Who comes up with these ridiculous ideas? It’s like wanting to “roll back” the golf ball so it doesn’t go (nearly!) as far. Fortunately, college football will remain the same, hopefully forever!!’

folks, I regret to inform you that this is not one of Gavin Newsom’s awesome parody tweets. nope, this batshit post is one hundred percent from the deteriorating brain of Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants — who, apparently, knows more about sportsball than all the sportsballers.

imagine being such a small and petty grievance-baby that everything annoys you. windmills. low-flush toilets. not enough ugly golden filigree in the Oval Office. late-night TV hosts. laws against domestic violence. football.

you would imagine that the very job of being president of a large country would keep one too occupied with actual pressing matters to worry about some rule change in a sport. but I guess when you’ve delegated executive authority to Norferatu McGoebbels and Piss-Drunk Pete Kegstand, it gives you all the time in the world to bellyache about inconsequential minutiae.

fortunately for the NFL, they don’t have to do shit about Donny’s whining, because he forgot to thank them for their attention to this matter — which means it’s not a legally-binding decree. it’s right there in Article II of the Constitution, in the Very Special Boy Clause that John Roberts scribbled in the margins, when no one was looking.

apparently it’s the same clause that allows Donny — without proof, or actual legal authority — to blow Venezuelan fishing boats out of the water, killing who the fuck even cares how many civilians, they’re Venezuelans.

I’m guessing that the extrajudicial killing of foreign civilians is addictive — kind of like a drug — because Donny done gone and blowed up a second Venezuelan fishing boat.

once again, Donny has decided that he gets to kill whoever he wants, because reasons. and notice what he does here: he unilaterally reclassifies drugs as ‘deadly weapons’ — presumably so he can justify using US military might against what could very well end up being another unarmed Venezuelan fishing boat. I wonder which one of Donny’s ace team of parking garage lawyers came up with that flimsy rationale.

and, once again, Donny offers no tangible proof that this ship was operated by a cartel — or was transporting drugs — beyond his say-so.

reporter: “what can you tell us about this Venezuelan boat that was taken out, and do you plan to provide proof that these were narco terrorists who were on the way to the US?”

Donny: “we have proof. all you have to do is look at the cargo that was— like, it’s spattered all over the ocean. big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”

excuse me, big bags of what? here’s a screencap of the video Donny provided in his not-tweet. do you see any ‘big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place’? I don’t. all I see is a boat on fire.

what the fuck is Donny blithering about?

wait a minute. Donny, are these bags of cocaine and fentanyl in the room with us right now? is that why we’re not seeing them in the video? are these ginormous drugbags saying ‘sir, sir! thank for blowing us all the fuck to hell! no one polices the waterways like you do, sir!’

so, Donny’s not going to offer us any proof, other than his say-so, and a blurry video. I guess when you’re King of the Americas and Ruler of All Our Great Oceans, they just let you.

here’s a fun fact about Venezuela and fentanyl.

Venezuela plays virtually no role in the fentanyl trade.

Fentanyl is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department and the Congressional Research Service. Mexico is close to the U.S. market, and Mexican cartels already control many fentanyl smuggling routes.

fentanyl doesn’t come from Venezuela — and unlike Colombian cocaine, it’s not even routed through Venezuela.

so please, Donny, tells us again about the big bags of imaginary fentanyl in the water. I love a good fairy tale, don’t you? especially when the moral is fear for your life.

“we have noticed that there are no ships in the ocean any more. that there’s like, no ships, when the first one we went— hundreds of boats. now there are no boats. I wonder why. meaning, no drugs are coming across. probably stopping some fishermen too. to be honest about it, if I were a fisherman, I wouldn’t want to go fishing either. just a nice, let’s take a little trip, because [laughs] I’d say, ‘man, if they— maybe they think I have drugs downstairs. I don’t want that—’ I think the fishing business has probably been hurt. but there are literally no boats. this was a boat, and we were surprised to see it.”

Jesus H. Christ on a Venezuelan fishing boat, who the fuck talks like this? psychopaths, that’s who. check out how Donny laughs maniacally as he muses about how he’s scaring the shit out of terrified fisherman. this is all a big joke to him. ha ha!

hey fisherman — duck! oops, too late. looks like you blowed up real good. ha ha!

I don’t have to tell you just how fucking evil this is. we’re no longer just an international laughingstock. we’re now a lawless, sadistic pariah as well. lucky us.

also: ‘there are literally no boats’? fact check:

what is Donny talking about? each of those triangles is a ship, and — spoiler alert — they are in the room with us right now. there are hundreds of craft in the waters around Venezuela. once again, Donny is just making shit up, blithering idiotically, cackling like a cartoon villian, lying to the press — and every one of these worthless scribblers is bobbing their head and going ‘well, I guess so’ as Donny jokes about slaughtering fishermen.

this is probably a good time to remind every reporter that my What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge™ is now in its 1,995th day.

by the way, did you notice how President Rottinghand keeps covering up his rotting hand?

oh, there we go. yeesh, that’s nasty. and it’s getting worse.

h, and speaking of covering up, there seems to be another large object in the waters south of our country.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

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.

Posted on

GO SCREW YOURSELF

From Palmer Report:

Charlie Kirk was a right wing extremist who spent years putting the safety of America’s most vulnerable groups at risk by targeting them with hate speech. He was murdered by another right wing extremist, who will now face due process. Other than universally agreeing that murder is always wrong, and perhaps pointing out that proper gun control laws might have saved Charlie’s life, that should be the end of the story. And by the time the midterms come around, this won’t still be a story – at least not one that will impact any votes. But for right now, it is indeed still a story, for the most deranged of reasons.

I can honestly say that I’m not glad Charlie Kirk is dead. But according to the Vice President of the United States, if you are glad that Charlie is dead and you dare to say so, you should lose your job. In fact that Vice President of the United States is encouraging people, in exact words, to spy on your social media and report you to your employer if you dare say that you’re glad Charlie is dead.

This is objectively insane. And profoundly un-American. The Vice President of the United States is actively trying to get people fired from their private sector jobs based on their social media posts? Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. But that’s between you and your employer – not the federal government.

Right wingers have always had this insane logic where literally anything that happens – even a right winger murdering another right winger – it’s somehow the fault of the liberals. They’ll rationalize it in nonsensical ways. They’ll make up false information about the circumstances and then cling to it so tightly that they end up believing it. They aren’t psychologically able to accept the fact that political violence is inherently a right wing trait, and so they just make things up in a way that allows them to pretend that it was the fault of the liberals. And then right wingers wonder why the rest of us consider them to be mentally ill.

But that’s the right wing loony bin. Those are the deranged types that used to be shunned by normal conservatives, the ones who are simply selfish enough to want the government to stack the societal deck in their favor. The Republican Party has been evil for longer than I’ve been alive. But it didn’t used to be psychotically evil enough to use something like the murder of a right winger by a right winger as an excuse to outright persecute liberals.

Of course persecution of liberals for being liberal was precisely what the Republican Party stood for back in the fifties, in the age of McCarthyism. But even then it was just one deranged Republican Senator, and a party too amoral to get rid of him.

This time around it’s the Vice President of the United States – a guy who could become President of the United States any day now based on the current President’s visibly collapsing health – who is trying to blacklist liberals. Here’s my response to Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the rest of this evil regime: go screw yourselves. Let’s all take this fascist evil that’s on display and use it as motivation to work hard and win the midterms by such a big margin that they can’t rig it. The midterms start now. Let’s get in that mindset now.

Posted on

Sometimes I really think 2019 was the last normal year of our lives and ever since, it feels like we’ve slipped into some alternate reality where nothing makes sense, everyone is on edge, time moves too fast yet too slow, and the world we knew just doesn’t exist anymore.

Posted on

Monday Madness From Jeff Tiedrich

even though signs point to the shitbag who killed Charlie Kirk being a far-right ‘groyper’ with a rifle and a grudge, Republicans fanned out on the Sunday shows yesterday with the singular message of ‘Democrats, this is all your fault, because reasons.’

let us document the atrocities.

let’s start with the limpest dick in American politics, House Speaker Holy Mike Johnson. Holy Mike’s complaint is why do Democrats alla time have to be so mean?

“people have got to stop framing simple policy disagreements in terms of existential threats to our democracy. you can’t call the other side fascists and enemies of the state and not understand that there are some deranged people in our society who will take that as cues to act.”

the fucking nerve of this guy. Holy Mike is pissing on all of our heads right now, and going ‘mmm, doesn’t that refreshing rain feel great?’

tell us, Mike, what are these ‘simple policy disagreements’ that ‘our side’ is blowing all out of shape? is it ‘should the US military invade a state,’ is that a simple disagreement? how about ‘should states redraw their maps in order to rig elections’? oh, here’s one: ‘should a president get to declare that he “has the right to do anything he wants”’?

maybe it’s just me, but all those things sound absolutely like ‘existential threats to our democracy.’

spoiler alert: yes, these are indeed literal existential threats to democracy. Donny Convict believes he should have all the power, and should be above the law at all times. he wants to remain in office indefinitely. all of this is fundamentally anti-American. our founders would shit their breeches if they could see what has become of their ‘grand experiment.’

Holy Mike wants to downplay all that. c’mon, he says, it’s just two sides bickering. what’s with all the rhetoric?

hey, Mike — is this your guy?

help me here, is ‘should Liz Cheney face a firing squad’ a ‘simple policy disagreement’?

now Mike, what was that were you saying about how it’s unacceptable to call someone a fascist? I’m asking because ABC News has put together a supercut of the numerous times that Donny Convict has done exactly that.

in one of those clips, Donny calls Kamala Harris a “marxist communist fascist socialist.”

how does that even work? what are the tenets of marxocommunofascosocialism? I’d really love to know.

oh, you don’t want to be called ‘Nazi’? it hurts your fee-fees? then stop pulling shit like this:

let’s move on Donny’s personal lapdog, Lindsey Graham.

Old Linz is very sad right now, because things just aren’t like they used to be, back in them there good old days.

 

“this is viewed by many people in the MAGA movement, conservatives like myself, as an attack on the movement, and not just traditional political violence, and I really believe that.”

wait wait wait wait wait wait JUST ONE FUCKING MINUTE HERE.

‘traditional political violence,’ what’s that? is there some Grand Old Tradition of Acceptable Political Violence, some halcyon time that Old Linz here would like to return to?

might it be the good old days when you’d use a flagpole to beat the shit out of a cop because you were mad about losing an election?

how about when neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, and chanted ‘Jews will not replace us’? Dear Leader literally called these shitheads ‘very fine people.’

was this ‘traditional political violence’? or was it a ‘simple policy disagreement’ over ‘should Jews replace us, or what?’

politics can be so confusing!

here’s a fun chart, created by Alex Nowrasteh of the right-wing Cato Institute. blue is left-wing political violence, and red is right-wing political violence, categorized by each decade from 1975 to now.

I’m seeing a lot more red than blue.

(Alex explains his methodology in a long substack post here.)

I’d love for Lindsey Graham to tell us which decade had the most traditionalpolitical violence. I’m guessing it’s 1995–2004.

here are a lot of things that have never happened to Crown Prince of the Library Paste Eaters, Eric Trump — but I’m going to go out on a limb here and assert that the story we’re about to hear is the thing that has never happened to Eric Trump the most.

“as I was showing up to the studio, there was an older Jamaican man who came up to me in very broken English and said, ‘Mr Trump, I’m very sorry about Charlie Kirk. he was an amazing Christian. I am Charlie Kirk.’”

isn’t that cute? Eric is trying to tell a ‘sir’ story — and he’s so fucking bad at it.

so, this ‘older Jamaican man,’ his massive biceps rippling in the morning sun, tears of gratitude streaming down his age-lined face, came up to Eric Trump and spoke ‘very broken English’?

why would his English be broken? English is the official language of Jamaica.

come on, you know that if some Jamaican dude wandered up to Eric, the first thing Eric would do would be to shout ‘get away from me, I don’t have any money’ — and then tell his Secret Service detail to ‘get this guy outta here.’

lastly, let’s check in with the fuckwit who knows more about numbers than all the number-counter-thingy people.

reporter: “the president of Venezuela called the strike on the boat illegal. are you concerned that Maduro might escalate something?”

Donny: “what’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat, and the drugs that are being sent into our country, and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs.”

dear lord. can somebody please get Donny a pudding cup and help him to bed? he’s sundowning again.

I have a question for President Math Whiz, and it goes like this: if the United States has a total population of 340 million people, and 300 million of them die from illegal drugs, leaving 40 million people, and then the price of prescription drugs is lowered by 1,500%, what is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?

this is probably a good place to note that my What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge™ is now in its 1,994th day.

despite their high-minded tut-tut harrumph-harrumph rhetoric, none of these Republican shitweasels actually wants healing, or an end to divisiveness. keeping us all at each other’s throats works in their favor. do you know what’s written on page one of the Oligarchs’ Playbook?

‘keep the people ignorant and fighting each other, and they won’t notice the plutocrats picking their pockets.’

but there is one thing that whole country can in fact unite over: release the full Epstein Files, you fucking fucks.

it’s what Charlie Kirk would have wanted.

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.

Posted on

I Could Definitely Live There

Yes, please! Absolutely gorgeous…

The Farm, Ganaraska, Ontario, Canada by Scott Posno Design

The Farm, an hour east of Toronto, is a 30-hectare haven in Southwestern Ontario, offering a serene escape for the client, their family, and friends. This picturesque retreat features an array of buildings artfully integrated into the natural landscape, designed to resonate with the site’s rich history and stunning beauty.

The centerpiece of The Farm is the main house, a contemporary reimagining of a traditional longhouse. Stretching 48 meters in length and oriented eastward to greet the morning sun, the house boasts a sleek exterior of charcoal-stained cedar complemented by a matching metal roof. The design elegantly distributes public and private spaces along its length, including a luxurious master suite with a secluded patio, additional bedrooms, and a versatile loft studio above the garage.

Enhancing the home‘s fluidity, multiple entry points provide seamless access, while the dining room transforms into a breezeway, merging indoor and outdoor living depending on the seasons. The interior palette is a study in refined simplicity, featuring polished concrete, warm white oak, and exposed Douglas fir, creating an ambiance of understated elegance.

The Farm’s grounds are equally captivating. A tranquil Zen Garden invites meditation and relaxation, while an outdoor pool, hot tub, fire pit, and charming guest cabana promise leisurely afternoons and cozy evenings. The pond, situated 70 meters east of the main house, draws wildlife and serves as a perfect stargazing spot. Beyond the pond, a meandering stream with rustic wooden bridges beckons exploration, fostering a profound connection to nature.

At The Farm, every detail is crafted to enhance the harmony between architecture and landscape, offering a retreat that is both a luxurious escape and a celebration of nature’s splendor.

[source]

Posted on

Another Toy

As I mentioned on the 2nd, I entered a raffle a couple weeks ago for a totally unneeded bit of kit, never expecting to actually win it.  But in a bit of blind luck, I actually won the raffle.  It arrived while I was in the hospital, and of course it was the first bit of mail I opened yesterday upon returning home.

Sony MZ-E510

Not much to look at; it’s got some scratches and is a little dinged up, but this was one of Sony’s last MD players and when you consider it’s been 20 years…it’s held up quite nicely. Mr. Technical Initiative did a thorough clean and lube on the unit, and I was surprised to discover the internal gumstick battery compartment was actually working. (So often these units were put into storage with the batteries installed, forgotten, and the batteries then leaked and corroded the contacts.)

I think this one will be a good under-the-pillow fall-sleep-to-music player because it’s so thin. My current player for that use runs off a standard AA battery and is pretty thick.

Posted on

I Could Live There

Chislehurst Place

A 1929 Spanish masterpiece, this meticulously preserved residence enchants with sweeping landmark views and timeless craftsmanship.

You enter through a courtyard that features an outdoor kitchen and dining area, arriving inside under a majestic rotunda graced by hand-painted Malibu tiles and intricate wrought iron staircases. Multiple archways, soaring vaulted ceilings, exposed wooden beams, grand fireplaces, and wrought iron balconies evoke an era of refined grace, while stained and leaded glass windows bathe the home in radiant light.

Gather with friends in the sunlit kitchen designed for culinary artistry and open to the front courtyard or relax and read a book by the office fireplace. A dramatic entertaining living room comes complete with a Juliet balcony; downstairs is a home theater, a cozy bar in the family room for your favorite cocktails and then unwind by the cascading saltwater spa before heading off to one of the three en suite bedrooms.

Nestled within the coveted hills of Los Feliz, this estate, formerly owned by actress Olivia Wilde, features four bedrooms, three-and-one-half baths in just under 3300 square feet and recently sold for $5M.

[Source, source, source]

$5M is a bit of a bargian for L.A. isn’t it?

Posted on

This Is All Wrong

From Palmer Report:

I’ve spent hours trying to figure out what the first sentence of this article should be, and I keep coming back to one simple thought: This is all wrong. Charlie Kirk is dead, murdered, presumably assassinated. We still don’t know all the details. I couldn’t think of a positive thing to say about Charlie even if I tried. But this? This is wrong. Very, very wrong.

It’s not just that he had the personal right to live and breathe air no matter what you or I thought of him. It’s that our society doesn’t work this way. Or at least it’s not supposed to. Even if you feel that Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric amounted to hate speech, we have laws and judges and juries for that. The response to someone standing on a stage and spewing hate speech is not to shoot them to death. It’s wrong on a personal level, wrong on a societal level, and it’s counterproductive to whatever your cause might be.

As I’m writing this, we still don’t know who did this or why. That information may have since come out by the time you’re reading this. And since the Trump regime is in charge of the federal criminal investigation, we may not even be able to trust what the FBI ends up announcing.

For now, suffice it to say that I don’t know a lot of bleeding heart liberals with sniper rifle training. But if it does turn out that the person who did this came from our side of the political fence, then we need to condemn that person as loudly and emphatically as possible. We have to keep this from devolving into the kind of anarchist nightmare where voices on all sides have to be afraid to speak up for fear of violent retaliation. Liberals are, always, the adults in the room. It has to be the same way now.

In the meantime, this is all wrong. Donald Trump’s criminal incitement of the January 6th terrorist attack was wrong. The recent assassination of two Democratic Party leaders in Minnesota was wrong. The murder of Charlie Kirk is wrong. Political violence is always wrong, and we must always condemn it – and mean it. There are no exceptions to that rule just because we can’t think of anything positive to say about someone.

I’m sorry friends. Maybe I am a truly horrible person, but my first reaction upon hearing ot the shooting was best summed up in this meme:

I know I shouldn’t be making light of this since the country is a powder keg right now, just waiting for that one incident to set it off. I hope this was not that incident…