Category Archives: awful people

hate

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I’ve resisted hate. At least I’ve tried to resist hate. I told myself that hate is a pointless, futile emotion, that it only gets in the way, that it warps the process of thought, that it clouds judgment and leads to bad decisions. I’ve told myself that hate harms the hater more than the hated.

I still think that’s true. But I don’t care anymore.

It was difficult at first, but I came to accept the fact that I hated Donald Trump. I don’t need to list all the reasons for hating him — you’re probably aware of them, they’ve been pretty clear for most of his life. But man I resisted admitting to myself that I hated him. Actually hated him. I still hate him, of course. Hate is fucking hard to turn off. But that doesn’t matter, because I have no desire to stop hating Trump.

One of the problems with hate is that once you get the hang of it, it’s easy. It gets harder to resist. Trump taught me to hate. Today I hate Republicans. Right now, as I sit here and type this, I hate Republicans. Not just the Republicans who’ve voted in ways I disagree with, not just Republicans who hold public office at any level, not just the Republican Party — right now, this moment, I hate every person who voted for any Republican in the last five years, Make it ten years. I don’t think this hate will be as persistent as my hatred for Trump; I suspect this generalized hatred will subside over time. But right now, at this particularly painful point in time, I hate them.

They’re all complicit, every Republican, every one of them. The epidemic of gun violence in the US, that’s on Republicans. The erosion of civil rights and liberties, that’s on Republicans. The rise in hate crime against Asians, Jews, Women, Black people, trans people, Muslims, gay folks — that’s on Republicans. The rise of asshole billionaires, that’s on Republicans. The health care desert that so many people live in, that’s on Republicans. The collapse of representative democracy, that’s on Republicans and I fucking hate them for it.

I’ve learned to hate. I’m ashamed of it, but there it is. I’ve become a hater. I hate that they’ve taught me to hate. I feel diminished by that hate; I feel tainted because of it. I hate, but I’m still resisting being hateful. It’s bad enough to hate, to act on that hate…at that point, you’re probably lost. I know it’s possible to come back from that, but it wouldn’t be easy.

Working to defeat Republicans, however, isn’t hateful. It’s just necessary. If your foot becomes infected and gangrene sets it, you don’t amputate your foot because you hate it. You do it because it’s necessary for survival. Republicans are political gangrene; they are necrotic tissue on the body of representative democracy.

That’s where I am now. Right now. Today. I hate Republicans. But that’s not the reason I want them removed from political power and authority; I want them removed because that’s the only way to salvage democracy in the United States.

quick note on bill barr

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It’s important to remember that Bill Barr was Comrade Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General. He replaced Jeff Sessions who, if you’ll recall, was fired–well, asked to resign–by Trump because he properly recused himself from any investigations relating to Russian interference to aid Trump in the 2016 election. Barr was selected because he was more willing to accede to Trump’s questionable legal practices.

Barr, in videotaped testimony, can be heard referring to Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results as “rubbish.” He also called it “nonsense” and “garbage.” He called it “crazy” and “annoying” and “idiotic” and “stupid.” He called it “bullshit.” He even suggested Trump may have been “detached from reality.” But he never called it “criminal.”

Criminal is exactly what it was. Not the lying, but the financial profiting from the lie. Barr has been around the block long enough to know that’s fraud. Fraud is “the deliberate misrepresentation of fact for the purpose of depriving someone of a valuable possession.”

The Attorney General of the United States was essentially witnessing a crime in progress. He didn’t report it, he didn’t act on it, he just tried to dodge any responsibility for the mess by resigning his job. Bill Barr doesn’t get any credit now for speaking out now. He failed to do his job, he failed to do his duty, the most senior law enforcement officer in the nation failed to perform the most basic function of law enforcement.

Fuck him in the neck.

criminals don’t obey the law

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It could have been almost any Republican who said it. I mean, they’ve probably all said it at some point. But this time it was Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie.

“Every single one of these bills is unserious and unconstitutional and suffers from the inherent problem that all gun control bills suffer from, that is that criminals do not obey the law.”

There are a lot of really stupid arguments made by a lot of stupid (or disingenuous) people against common sense firearm safety legislation. But the stupidest argument of all–and this is just my opinion–is the criminals don’t obey the law argument.

Sure, it’s true. But it’s also stupid. Deeply, profoundly stupid. Stupid at the cellular level. It’s stupid in so many ways you’d need an abacus to count them. It’s stupid because it suggests criminality is a binary condition. People are either Criminal or Not Criminal. Criminals don’t obey the law? It’s like saying sober people don’t get drunk. It’s like saying people who are standing don’t sit down.

Dude, you’re standing until you sit, you’re sober until you get drunk, and you’re not a criminal until you break the law. You’re not a mass murderer until you kill lots of people.

Mass murderer or 2nd Amendment Asshole? Who knows?

We all know–and this includes that fuckwit Massie–most of the recent mass murderers legally obtained the guns they used to murder lots of people. That’s because it’s pretty fucking easy to legally obtain a gun. Especially a long gun, like a rifle. Yes, if you buy a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer, you have to submit to a background check, but it’s a fairly cursory check. And in most states you can dodge that background check if you buy the gun from an individual–a friend, a relative, a neighbor, some guy you met at a bar–so long as you live in the same state (well, so long as the seller has reasonable cause to believe the person buying the gun is from the same state). Hell, somebody can just give you a gun as a gift. All perfectly legal.

So you can easily acquire a gun and be Not Criminal.

In 44 states, it’s also perfectly legal to openly carry a long gun–a rifle or shotgun. Seriously, in most of the US you can just walk around town openly with an AR-15 strapped to your shoulder and still be Not Criminal. In three of those 44 states, it’s illegal to openly carry a long gun IF it’s loaded. But, of course, you can’t tell if a rifle is loaded just by looking at it. And police officers would need probable cause in order to stop a person carrying a long gun to check to see whether or not it was loaded. Only a few of those 44 states that allow you to wander around toting a rifle have restrictions on large capacity magazines (generally considered to be a magazine holding more than ten rounds).

And hey, guess what? In most jurisdictions, you can walk around wearing body armor IF you’re not pretending to be a member of law enforcement. So in most of the US you can buy yourself an AR-15 variant, load it with a large capacity magazine, dress yourself in generic military gear, and wander over to the local supermarket and you’d still officially be Not Criminal unless and until you started shooting people.

Mass murderer or 2nd Amendment Asshole? Who knows?

And that’s a problem, isn’t it. You can’t tell the Criminals from the Not Criminals until the bastards start shooting, until you have to start running and ducking and screaming. You have absolutely no way of knowing if the guy carrying his AR-15 into the coffee shop is a mass murderer or just another Second Amendment Asshole.

Republicans are okay with this.

Here’s another very basic fact that Representative Massie and his fellow GOP fuckwits fail to understand: law exists to regulate human conduct. We know we can’t ever completely stop people from doing stuff we don’t like, but we institute laws to discourage certain unwanted antisocial behaviors. We don’t expect trespassing laws to completely stop trespassing, but they discourage it. We know stalking laws won’t prevent stalking, but they give stalking victims some small measure of protection. We know sensible firearm safety laws won’t put an end to mass murder, but they can reduce the butcher’s bill. They can moderate the body count.

But c’mon. We know that’s not important to people like Massie. These people will claim they see firearms as nothing more than tools, but the truth is they treat guns as tangible evidence–as undeniable proof–that they’re strong and independent and courageous and free. But that’s bullshit. The only people who need or want to carry guns in public are people who are afraid of the world around them or bullies who want to intimidate others.

Plain old 2nd Amendment Assholes.

People like Massie are just afraid. They feel their world–the world in which they’re powerful and dominant–is slipping away from them. They fear a future in which they’re not powerful and dominant. They seem to think guns and the Second Amendment will somehow magically protect them, will allow them to hold on to their current position in society, will grant them the measure of respect they think they deserve.

And they’re willing to sacrifice shoppers, office workers, random civilians, and school kids to keep their own place in the world.

You cant tell a mass murderer from a 2nd Amendment Asshole until the shooting starts, but you can tell an accessory to mass murder by the way they vote.

folks buying groceries refreshing the tree of liberty

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As Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Oh, and kids in school. And folks shopping for groceries, if they’re not white.” Yesterday, while I was enjoying a pleasant…what?

Okay, some of you are saying, “Greg, old sock, I don’t think you’ve accurately quoted our boy TJ.” Maybe you’re right; this may not be an exact quote, but it’s close enough to the way it’s interpreted by a lot of people who identify as right-wing lunatic gun nuts. Okay, okay, maybe they don’t actually identify themselves that way, but stop calling me old sock.

I mean, sure, TJ was talking about Daniel Shays, a farmhand in western Massachusetts who was having trouble paying his taxes, partly because he was also having trouble collecting the pay he was supposed to have received as a grunt in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. There’s still a lot of debate about what TJ meant by that tree of liberty bullshit, but the right-wing lunatic gun nuts take it as an article of faith that TJ was suggesting folks need to periodically have a good old fashioned bloody war of rebellion against the legitimate government. This is exactly WHY the term lunatic is included in the name of ‘right-wing lunatic gun nuts’.

But even right-wing lunatic gun nuts have trouble explaining how mass murder events at schools, mall, movie theaters, and grocery stores fit into that ‘blood of patriots and tyrants’ business. Especially when…oh yeah, and churches, I forgot to include churches. And temples and mosques. Anyway, right-wing lunatic gun nuts have trouble explaining how that blood of patriots stuff fits with those mass murders committed by white men specifically against victims who aren’t white. Or men. Or people who don’t quite fit into the right-wing lunatic gun nut definition of ‘men’.

So the right-wing lunatic gun nuts have developed a pair of sure-fire (get it? Sure-fire? See what I did there? I’m a hoot) responses to those events. First, they…well, wait. I say ‘first’ as if this is the preferred response, which would be inaccurate on account of these two responses are pretty much equally relied on. So when I say ‘first’ I’m just admitting that I can’t share two responses at the same time. These responses are numerical, not sequential. Or the other way around, maybe? Doesn’t matter.

First, they blame the mass murder on emotional health. As in “This kid who shot up the supermarket in Buffalo must be CRAZY because, yeah sure, he says he was motivated by hate and he says white folks are being replaced by non-white folks who breed faster and yeah sure, that’s exactly what Tucker Carlson says on FoxNEWS every night, but c’mon, you’d have to be CRAZY to believe that, so there, it’s a mental health issue.”

Second, they claim the mass murder is a false flag event perpetrated by Democrats or Jews or some other Satanist-pedophile group in order to TAKE OUR GUNS, or at least distract us from Hunter Biden’s laptop. They seem to think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to believe.

Sometimes they combine the two responses, suggesting Democrats and Jews and other Satanist-pedophile groups convince mentally ill white folks to commit mass murders to distract the population from some vague but really awful thing that Democrats, Jews, and other Satanist-pedophile groups really enjoy.

But as I was saying (you may have to refer back to the beginning of this blog), yesterday, while I was enjoying a pleasant 30-mile bike ride from one bike pub to another bike pub, some white kid went to a supermarket in a predominantly black community and killed a whole bunch of folks who were just buying groceries.

Mentally ill (probably) white kid led astray (probably) by Democrats, Jews, of some other Satanist-pedophile group (probably), but clearly guns aren’t the problem.

Right now on television (I don’t actually know this, but I know this) some conservative is on a national news Sunday program explaining that the mass murder in Buffalo would never have happened if we had better mental health programs, which we can’t afford to make free because that would raise taxes, but maybe for-profit insurance companies could include mental health anti-mass murder options for people who can afford it, but guns don’t kill people, mentally ill people kill people and if they didn’t have guns, they’d do it with axes, do you really want to ban axes, and besides guns are good because an armed patriot inside the store could have returned fire and prevented more needless death, and sure there was a security guard who did return fire and hit the killer, but the shooter was wearing tactical body armor which is protected by the Second Amendment, however a highly trained patriot could have shot him in the head–or at least the part of his head that wasn’t covered by his tactical helmet–and that would have ended the tragic situation, but there’s nothing in the Second Amendment that says private citizens should have to undergo training to carry a weapon, and did I mention the kid was mentally ill, because that’s the problem. Unless if was a false flag event.

So it turns out TJ, whatever he actually meant, was right about the blood and the tree of liberty. We are refreshing the fuck out of that tree.

they’re right to be afraid

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This is an actual Washington Post headline for an article by Jeff Stein (WaPo’s White House economics reporter):

With Roe at risk, GOP faces pressure to support families after birth

Republican supporters of policies to help children say new restrictions on abortion should change political calculus

Dude, c’mon, you ought to know better. The GOP opposition to abortion isn’t about babies. It’s not about children or families.

If it was about babies or children or families, the GOP wouldn’t need to start cobbling together policies “to help children.” If it was about babies, those policies would already be in place.

From the Women’s March in January, 2017

If it was about babies and families, the US would make pre-natal care, childbirth, and post-natal care free (or at least affordable). If it was about babies and families, the US mandate paid parental leave with employment safeguards. If it was about babies and families, we’d support new parents by guaranteeing they’ll be able to return to their jobs and insuring they didn’t lose income during the important first few months of a baby’s life. But the GOP opposes all of this.

If it was about babies and families, we’d have free (or heavily subsidized) day care for working families. If it was really about babies and families, we’d provide a basic income for a parent who opts to be a full-time parent. If it was about children and families, we’d fund public education better; we’d pay teachers more; we’d give much more financial support to after-school programs. But the GOP opposes that.

If it was truly about babies and children and families, we’d enact sensible firearm legislation. In 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death among kids aged one to nineteen. More kids died from gunshot wounds than from car crashes, cancer, or drugs. But there’s no way the GOP would support gun restrictions.

From the Women’s March, January 2017

No, it’s perfectly clear the GOP opposition to reproductive freedom isn’t–and never has been–about protecting babies, children, or families. It’s certainly not about protecting women. It’s about controlling women. It’s about reinforcing patriarchy. And deep down, it’s about being afraid of women.

The GOP is right to be afraid.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Burn the patriarchy. Set it ablaze and let it burn until its reduced to ash. Stomp the ashes into dust. Let the wind blow it away.

mtg omg

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I watched the Marjorie Taylor Greene Amnesia-Fest yesterday. Technically, it was an evidentiary hearing to determine if MTG should be barred from seeking re-election to Congress based on a violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. In practice, it was MTG playing dodge-ball with the Truth, ducking any personal responsibility by claiming she couldn’t remember much of anything about anything.

You may be wondering just what in the name of the Great Bearded God of Goats is in the 14th Amendment. There’s a whole bunch of stuff in it, but the only part that MTG was fretting about was Section 3, which says this:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. 

The hearing was to determine whether there is any evidence that MTG ‘engaged in insurrection’ against the United States (SPOILER: yeah, lots of evidence) and whether the evidence was enough to begin a legal proceeding to remove her from the mid-term election ballot (SPOILER: probably not, but who knows?). The entire proceeding could be boiled down to this:

Lawyer: Ms. Greene, did you do some insurrection against the US?
MTG: I don’t recall.

I’ve seen a lot of trials and hearings, and I think I can say without any hesitation that MTG was a shitty witness. It wasn’t just that she was occasionally dramatic or uncooperative or snarky AF (though she often was), or that her memory was remarkably and conveniently inconsistent, it was the astonishing scope of her lack of memory that was staggering. She couldn’t remember nothing about nothing unless it meant nothing.

Marjorie Taylor Greene swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth except when she can dodge it.

I wouldn’t expect her to remember every pro-insurrection tweet she made, because lawdy, she made a LOT of them. But I’m pretty sure that most folks would remember whether or not they discussed, with the President of These United States, imposing martial law on the US. That’s not the sort of thing that would slip your mind. But that was the level of her denial.

Sadly, I doubt the judge will find the evidence is sufficient to remove her from the ballot for the mid-term elections. It’s pretty clear she was lying some/many/most of the times she claimed she couldn’t recall stuff she’d done, but it’s damned difficult to prove she was lying.

At the heel of the hunt, this will probably be yet another example of a Republican lying, violating the law, and getting away with it. I suspect MTG will get to stay on the ballot and will likely be re-elected. I suspect other Republicans will learn the lesson that they can lie and get away with it.

I keep hoping that someday somebody somewhere will be held accountable for something.

loathsome, feculent

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The good news? Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. Light the fireworks, cue the herald angels singing, hand out tissues for the tears of joy.

Then remember that loathsome, feculent pillocks like Judge Trevor N. McFadden are also sitting on Federal courts. Before he became a judge, McFadden specialized in defending white collar criminals–including people accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (which prohibits people and businesses from bribing foreign officials) and money laundering. There’s nothing wrong with that; every person accused of a crime deserves to be represented by a good attorney. The problem, of course, is that people and entities who can afford to bribe foreign officials and need to launder money can also afford really good attorneys while people caught shoplifting Oreo cookies generally can’t.

Judge Trevor N. McFadden

But that’s not what makes Judge McFadden a loathsome, feculent pillock. Neither is the fact that he was appointed to the court by Comrade Trump (also a loathsome, feculent pillock). No, what makes him a loathsome, feculent pillock is that as soon as he put his pale ass on the bench, he began doing exactly what Trump expected him to do: protect Trump.

For example, back in 2019 Trump, pissed off because Congress wasn’t giving him the money he wanted to build his stupid wall on the border of Mexico, decided to divert US$6 billion from military construction and from counter-drug operations and piss it away on his stupid wall. Congress sued to stop him. McFadden, being loathsome and feculent, dismissed the suit, saying Congress lacked standing to sue POTUS (although a couple of years earlier, when the GOP controlled Congress and Obama was POTUS, the court agreed Congress DID have standing to sue POTUS…go figure).

Another example: when the House Ways and Means Committee tried to get Trump’s tax returns as part of his first impeachment, McFadden (loathsome and feculent) slow-walked the matter, making it impossible to get the tax information in time to press the impeachment.

But wait, there’s more. When Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian “internet entrepreneur” sued BuzzFeed News for libel after they published his name in connection with the investigation into Comrade Trump’s Russian connections, feculent and loathsome Judge McFadden was assigned to rule on a subpoena seeking information. The defendant asked McFadden to recuse himself, since 1) he was appointed by Trump, 2) he’d donated money to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and 3) he’d been a volunteer on Trump’s presidential transition team. McFadden refused to recuse himself, saying there was no reason “to question my impartiality.”

But wait again, there’s still more. Despite expressing his belief that the January 6th Insurrectionists were being treated more harshly than the rioters in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the loathsome and feculent McFadden has been assigned to some of the cases resulting from the insurrection. Yesterday, McFadden became the only judge to issue an outright acquittal of one of the Insurrectionists. Matthew Martin argued that he believed the Capitol police had allowed him into the Capitol, so didn’t realize he was trespassing. Prosecutors argued that the broken windows and blaring alarms should have given Martin a hint. McFadden said, “I do think the defendant reasonably believed the officers allowed him into the Capitol.”

But wait one more time, because Jesus suffering fuck, there’s still more. One of the Insurrectionists, Jenny Cudd, who was indicted on five federal counts, including one felony, had requested she be allowed to leave the jurisdiction in order to attend a company retreat at a resort in Mexico. McFadden allowed her to go. Cudd eventually entered a plea agreement–she would plead guilty to one misdemeanor (entering and remaining in a restricted building) and the other charges (including the felony count, which was punishable by up to 20 years in prison) would be dropped. The misdemeanor is punishable by a year in jail and a US$5000 fine. Although Cudd has said she was proud of her part in the insurrection, McFadden loathsomely and feculently sentenced her to two months probation.

But lawdy, wait one more fucking time because yeah, there’s more. One condition of Cudd’s probation forbade her to own or possess any “firearm, ammunition, destructive device, or dangerous weapon.” That’s a common probation condition. Today, Judge McFadden (feculent, loathsome) restored Jenny Cudd’s right to possess firearms.

So yes, we should absolutely celebrate soon-to-be Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. And we should keep celebrating her, because she deserves it and we deserve a celebration too. But let’s not get too starry-eyed; let’s not forget that Comrade Trump (with the help of a loathsome, feculent Republican Congress) installed a metric shit-ton of Judge McFaddens throughout the Federal Court system. And they’ll continue to stink up the judiciary for years.

jesus suffering fuck, this guy, I declare

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I’m sitting here this morning, minding my own business, right? Drinking my coffee and noshing on some sort of unpronounceable chocolate cookie I bought at the Grand European Market (yes, that’s actually its name), reading the news, getting pestered by the cat, just like every morning. Then I come across this bullshit:

This shouldn’t surprise me. I mean, Comrade Trump–he’s an ignorant, lying sack of shit. Ain’t nobody surprised by that. And that bit about NATO dues? That’s probably just an example of his ignorance. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Trump actually believes NATO nations pay ‘dues’. Like it’s a membership at one of his golf clubs. We’re probably lucky he’s not complaining about NATO not paying green fees.

But “There would be no NATO if I didn’t act strongly and swiftly“? Fuck me with a chainsaw. This is the guy who wanted to withdraw the US from NATO, something he’d even talked about during his 2016 presidential campaign. That talk didn’t stop after his election. In fact, both the House of Representatives and the Senate were alarmed enough that they passed bills that would require Congressional approval for the US to withdraw from NATO. For him to claim credit for the continued existence of NATO is utter bullshit.

What a fucking idjit.

But this is where the real delusional thinking comes into it: “[I]t was me that got Ukraine the very effective anti-tank busters (Javelins)“. We all know Trump tried to withhold those Javelins unless Ukraine’s recently elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, cobbled together some sort of dirt on Joe Biden (or his son). We know he actually froze the military support for Ukraine, and it remained frozen until a Federal whistleblower spoke out and basically forced Trump to release the funds and gear. This was money and weaponry Congress had approved, and Trump illegally froze it in order to cheat on a coming election. I mean, c’mon–the motherfucker was impeached for trying to pull that shit. You’d think Trump would remember that. You’d think Republicans would remember it.

But no.

Happily, Ukraine got its Javelins (sadly, they need to use them). Also happily, Ukrainians have given us a handy phrase to respond to bullshit like Comrade Trump’s statement. Іди на хуй. Go fuck yourself.