Category Archives: corrupt motherfuckers

i’m glad you asked

Posted on by
2

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. In other words, Comrade Trump is slouching back to Washington, DC for the first time since he skipped out on Uncle Joe Biden’s inauguration. You’re probably wondering, “Greg, old sock, why would this canker on democracy revisit the scene of his crime?”

I’m glad you asked. He’s going to be in DC to–and I’m NOT making this up–deliver a ‘policy speech.’ Stop laughing. That’s what he says he’s going to do, deliver a ‘policy speech.’ You know, a speech on policy. At the America First Policy Institute. Now you’re probably wondering, “Greg, old sock, what in the popcorn fuck is the America First Policy Institute?”

Comrade Policy Expert Donald J. Trump

I’m glad you asked, The America First Policy Institute calls itself “a non-partisan nonprofit research institute” although it’s totally partisan and designed to grift off MAGA boneheads. It’s staffed entirely by Trump fluffers and considers itself to the the next Trump White House-in-waiting. The AFPI’s mission is “

…to advance policies that put the American people first. Our guiding principles are liberty, free enterprise, national greatness, American military superiority, foreign-policy engagement in the American interest, and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities in all we do.

You’re probably wondering, “Greg, old sock, what does that mean?” I’m glad you asked. It doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s just an amalgam of buzzwords and patriotic-sounding phrases collected in one place for the purpose of sounding like a real policy institute. The AFPI has collected “reams of research that build on the Trump administration’s successes.”

Reams, you guys. They have reams of research. You may be wondering, “Greg, old sock, just what successes did the Trump administration…uh…succeed at?” I’m glad you asked. Also, don’t ask, on account of the AFPI doesn’t really say. Instead, they encourage ‘patriots’ to sign on as co-complainants in (former) President Donald J. Trump’s class action First Amendment lawsuit against social media companies. Except that the link for ‘patriots’ to join the class action suit takes them to a fundraising page for the Constitutional Leadership Partnership, which is coincidentally staffed by the staff of the AFPI.

You may be wondering, “Greg, old sock, what policies will Comrade Trump address in his speech?” I’m glad you asked. Apparently, he’s going to talk about law and order. Trump is allegedly in favor of law and is quite fond of order. He may find time to comment on the last election as well.

You may be wondering, “Greg, old sock, will you be watching this policy speech?” I’m glad you asked.

No.

And stop calling me ‘old sock.’

well, here we are

Posted on by
2

I haven’t written here for a week or so — not because I don’t have anything to say, but because there’s SO MUCH to say. I start to write about this, which is necessarily tied into that and is deeply connected to this other thing. You can’t, for example, write about abortion without also writing about the political corruption of the Supreme Court, which means you also need to address the rising fascism of the Republican Party and the green grass grows all around, all around.

But here we are on July 4th. Independence Day, right? When we celebrate the decision by a group of colonists so fed up with a hostile government that subjected them to such “a long train of abuses and usurpations” that they felt it was necessary “to dissolve the political bands which have connected them.”

I think the operative term there is necessary. It’s from the Latin necesse (which meant ‘unavoidable’) and cedere (to withdraw, go away). Necessary, a thing from which there is no backing away. The colonists felt it was necessary to rebel against the government that oppressed them.

When we think about the Declaration of Independence, we tend to focus on the dramatic bits at the beginning. Mainly this line:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That’s powerful stuff, no mistake. Beautifully written. But we forget that the biggest chunk of the Declaration is a list of grievances — an inventory of all the shit the government of the King of England was imposing on the American colonies. That list includes stuff like:

— He has obstructed the Administration of Justice
— He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices
— He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us

There’s another small chunk of Declaration that gets overlooked. It’s just a paragraph that basically says, “Hey, look, we warned you guys about this. Repeatedly. We asked you nicely to knock this shit off. We have appealed to your native justice and magnanimity. But no, you fucking ignored all those warnings. You have been deaf to the voice of justice.

A lot of us today feel much as those colonists did almost 250 years ago. Instead of a tyrannical king or queen, we have to deal with a neo-fascist Republican Party. We have to deal with Republican at the state level who are actively manipulating laws to undermine the process of representative democracy. We have to deal with a Republican Supreme Court that ignores legal precedence when it conflicts with their personal religious beliefs or their political ideology. We have to deal with a former president who not only refused to accept the result of a free and fair election, but continues to foment sedition.

Those colonists had to choose — do we keep putting up with this shit, or do we act? We have to make a similar choice. We know basically what needs to be done. The Supreme Court MUST be made neutral. It MUST be returned to balance. Not a liberal Court (as much as I’d love that); just a Supreme Court that isn’t governed by any partisan ideology.

The Declaration of Independence was a revolutionary document. I mean revolutionary in every sense of the term. It sparked an actual revolution, it started a shooting war. We don’t want or need that here. We don’t need to turn the world upside down — at least not at this point; we just need to put it back into balance.

But one thing is clear. If we don’t act, if we keep putting up with this shit, if we don’t start electing Democrats who are willing to make some radical but legal decisions to balance SCOTUS, if we don’t do that in the very next election, then we may never see another free and fair election in my lifetime.

mtg omg

Posted on by
3

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.

so what the fuck just happened here?

Posted on by
8

A week and a half ago I wrote, “…don’t be surprised if Rittenhouse walks.” And yet, I was sorta kinda surprised. Because, c’mon…how could this ridiculous doofus illegally buy an assault-style rifle, carry it across a state line, insert himself into a volatile environment, carry it while claiming to offer medical care he wasn’t trained or qualified to give, carry it while claiming to protect property nobody asked him to protect, then using it to shoot three people, killing two of them, and NOT suffer any consequences? It just ain’t right.

But yeah, that’s basically what happened. But WHY did it happen? I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been around the criminal justice block a few times, and I have opinions. It begins with the Wisconsin law on self defense, which essentially says a person can use deadly force to defend themselves if that person “reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself.”

A lot of self-defense laws, including Wisconsin’s, include an exception for provocation and/or criminal conduct. You can’t provoke an attack, then kill your attacker and claim self-defense; you can’t engage in criminal conduct that would cause an attack, then kill your attacker and claim self defense. Makes sense, right? Okay, here we go.

Wisconsin’s self-defense law states: “A person who engages in unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack him or her and thereby does provoke an attack is not entitled to claim the privilege of self-defense against such attack…”

That seems pretty clear, doesn’t it. But it continues: “…except when the attack which ensues is of a type causing the person engaging in the unlawful conduct to reasonably believe that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm. In such a case, the person engaging in the unlawful conduct is privileged to act in self-defense, but the person is not privileged to resort to the use of force intended or likely to cause death to the person’s assailant….” So the law says yeah, you CAN defend yourself if you provoke an attack, but LIMITS the amount of force you can use. You can fight back, but you can’t kill your attacker.

But wait. Again, it continues with another caveat: “…unless the person reasonably believes he or she has exhausted every other reasonable means to escape from or otherwise avoid death or great bodily harm at the hands of his or her assailant.” So even if you’ve provoked an attack through illegal behavior, you can only use deadly force to defend yourself after you’ve exhausted your other options for escape.

What does that mean in the Rittenhouse case? If he’d engaged in unlawful conduct that provoked an attack, he was only justified in using deadly force to defend himself IF he’d exhausted every reasonable means to escape. He DID try to run away before the second killing, but he tripped and fell, then shot Huber and Grosskreutz. That very possibly could fall under the Wisconsin self-defense law–tried to escape, but couldn’t. But in the initial killing, Rittenhouse was running away from Rosenbaum, then stopped, turned, shot and killed him. That seems likely to fall under the unlawful conduct exception, which would prevent him from using the self-defense claim. BUT ONLY if Rittenhouse was engaged in unlawful conduct. Like, say, illegally carrying a rifle.

The judge, remember, dismissed the illegal rifle charge. Which removed the unlawful conduct exception. Which meant Rittenhouse only had to feel his life was in danger to kill Rosenbaum. Hey bingo, he walks.

That’s how I see it. Again, I’m not a lawyer. My reasoning may be flawed. But that’s how I see it. It sucks. It’s wrong. It’s obscene on a number of levels. But that seems to be how the law is written.

There’s a lesson here. If you want to stop vigilante tourism, enact better laws. If you want better laws, vote for better legislators. You want better laws, prevent outside money and outside interests from influencing weak-ass greedy legislators.

Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t walk because he was innocent. He walked because of the motherfuckers who wrote Wisconsin’s self-defense law .

fuck those guys

Posted on by
9

Here’s a headline from this morning’s Washington Post:

In wake of Bannon indictment, Republicans warn of payback

If you can read that and not wonder ‘What in the pumpkin spice fuck is wrong with these people’ then…well, I don’t know what. Just think about that for a moment. Republicans say they want payback because Steve Bannon…I mean Steve Goddamn Bannon…was indicted for refusing to obey a writ legally issued by a Congressional committee to provide testimony and produce evidence.

Steve Bannon showing up for arraignment this morning.

Payback? Fuck those guys. Payback is a casual way of saying revenge–a retaliatory act taken in response to some alleged/perceived harm or injustice. Republicans apparently feel harmed and aggrieved that the law applies to them as if they were ordinary people. They apparently feel subpoenas only matter if they’re issued by Republicans. They’re distressed to find that a subpoena isn’t a suggestion; it’s an order. If you choose NOT to abide by a subpoena, there’s a penalty.

I mean, it’s right there in the goddamn name. Subpoena–Latin sub, meaning ‘under’ and poena meaning ‘penalty’. A subpoena means you have to show up and/or produce evidence under penalty of law. This has been part of the common law since the 1380s when John Waltham, the Master of the Rolls of the Court of Chancery for Richard II, issued the very first subpoena–a writ compelling witnesses and defendants to show up for trial. We’re talking six and a half centuries of precedent here. If a subpoena was good enough for Richard II, it’s good enough for Steve Goddamn Bannon.

Payback? Fuck those guys. Payback for being expected to follow the law? Payback from Republicans for a guy who was 1) indicted for defrauding 2) Republican donors of millions of dollars 3) in a scam that was purported to help build 4) a border wall supported only by Republicans? They want payback for this guy? A guy who was eventually pardoned for that crime by a Republican president? Payback for a guy who had his Twitter account ganked for publicly calling for beheading FBI Director Christopher Wray and Anthony Fauci? Republicans want payback for a guy who helped foment an insurrection that put many of them personally in danger? An insurrection that included calls to hang the Republican Vice President of the United States? Republicans want payback for that guy? Fuck them. Fuck them in the neck.

Comrade Trump and two of the criminals he’s pardoned.

And fuck the Washington Post too. It’s bad enough Republicans feel outraged and vindictive for having to obey the law, but to have WaPo act like it’s normal is an appalling act of journalistic malpractice. Just because politicians say stupid shit, journalists aren’t obligated to repeat it–to pretend it’s not stupid shit. Stupid shit is stupid and it’s shit. This is not rocket surgery.

Bannon was indicted last week for contempt of Congress, but he wasn’t arrested like an ordinary person. He was given until this morning to surrender himself for arraignment. My guess is he’ll be released on bail. And while that annoys me, it’s the right thing to do. Bannon isn’t likely to flee the country. My guess is he probably wants a trial. He’ll use it as a platform to spread more disinformation.

The thing is, this isn’t just about contempt of Congress; it’s about contempt for the very idea of representative democracy. It’s about contempt for the concept of equal justice under the law. A political party that feels justified in seeking payback for a person like Steve Bannon has abandoned the right to call itself a political party. There’s nothing ‘political’ about it. Politics, after all, is devoted to working things out. Politics is about people with different ideologies and viewpoints finding ways to compromise in an effort to benefit the greater good. Modern Republicans aren’t interested in the greater good.

They’re only interested in ruling.

Fuck those guys.

a mook and his money

Posted on by
Reply

Back in the Dark Times, when Comrade Trump was the actual president (and lawdy, that was only six months ago; it’s still hard to believe that happened), I made routine recon sweeps through the loopiest of loopy right-wing ‘news’ sites. I felt it was important to know what they were thinking and planning–not because I saw them as the enemy, but because they believed people like me were their enemy. You don’t have to actually be an enemy to be perceived as one, and the success of the Republican Party depends on having lots of enemies.

I still do occasional recon sweeps of loopy right-wing sites, but without the same sense of urgency. Now it’s more of a prophylactic measure. They’re still a threat to democracy, but without Comrade Trump squatting in the Oval Office, they’re less of an imminent threat than they were before.

They’d be more of a threat if Trump 1) wasn’t increasingly losing contact with objective reality, 2) hadn’t convinced so many of them to impale themselves on the pointed stick of Covid, and 3) was actually using his influence to further his conspiratorial-authoritarian agenda instead of to make a quick buck for himself.

As I waded through the muck of loopy right-wing sites this morning, I came across a post in which an ardent Trump supporter said he’d donated more of his hard-earned to Trump’s Save America Leadership PAC. You know, to support the audit in Arizona and reinstall Trump as president and prevent the US from becoming a completely communist pedophile nation. He encouraged others to “donate as much as you can afford or more” so other states could conduct their own audits and prove the extent of the fraud.

There’s a part of me that feels sorry for this mook, because as near as I can tell, Comrade Trump hasn’t donated a single ruble to support any audit in any state. It seems Trump’s PAC has taken in somewhere around US$75 million in the first half of this year–much of it from mooks like this guy. Trump has said he’ll probably use some of the money to fund other election audits, but so far the PAC has only spent the cash on travel, legal costs, staff expenses, and on the PR campaign to raise more money. Most of that $75 million is sitting in the bank.

Do you think this mook has a clue how Trump is actually spending his donation? Probably not. Do you think it would matter if he did know? Probably not. This is why only a part of me feels sorry for him. He’s a willing participant in his delusion. He’s not a victim of propaganda; he made deliberate choices about where to obtain information. If he suffers financially, it’s because he has agreed to it.

In effect, this guy is a financial flagellant. Remember the flagellants? Those 14th century religious zealots who made a public demonstration of their religious fervor by literally whipping themselves? Here, let the Dominican friar Heinrich von Herford describe them:

“Each whip consisted of a stick with three knotted thongs hanging from the end. Two pieces of needle-sharp metal were run through the centre of the knots from both sides, forming a cross, the end of which extended beyond the knots for the length of a grain of wheat or less. Using these whips they beat and whipped their bare skin until their bodies were bruised and swollen and blood rained down, spattering the walls nearby. I have seen, when they whipped themselves, how sometimes those bits of metal penetrated the skin so deeply that it took more than two attempts to pull them out.”

This mook whips his checkbook instead of his body. There’s also an excellent chance he’s one of those folks who believe Covid is a hoax, so he’s willfully offering up his health and life as a tribute to Trump as well. This doesn’t mean he deserves to be broke and infected with Covid. It just means that if he becomes broke and Covid positive, he only has himself to blame. Comrade Trump didn’t hand him a whip; he just collects money off the whipping.

This guy deserves our compassion; he doesn’t deserve our sympathy or pity.

the odor of burnt communism

Posted on by
2

Reader, you may be asking yourself, “What in the name of maple oatmeal fuck were Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene doing in California?” It’s a valid question. I mean, he’s a soon-to-be indicted child sex trafficker and generic party creep from Florida and she’s multi-delusional insurrectionist from Georgia who isn’t trusted by her own party to hold any committee seats. So why were they in California instead of promoting conspiracy theories their home states?

The answer is…communism. No, I am NOT MAKING THIS UP. MG and MTG were in California to hold a Free Speech Against Communism rally. Now, you may be asking yourself, “Where is all this communism in California coming from?” Silly rabbit. According to noted scientists in starched white lab coats, it comes directly from gazooney rays emanating from the brain of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Those rays are amplified by Jewish space lasers and tight-beamed straight into the brain of Matt Gaetz, temporarily disrupting his brain’s primary sex-with-minors receptors.

“Attica! Attica! Power to the perverts!”

It’s fair to say the Gaetz-Greene ratfuck rodeo has struggled. They’d originally intended to kick communism in the balls at the Pacific Hills Banquet & Event Center in Laguna Hills. But it was canceled after people who actually live in Laguna Hills said, “Oh, c’mon, keep these crazy fuckers out of our sweet little town.” Gaetz-Greene shifted their plan to the Riverside Convention Center (coincidentally located in Riverside, CA). But the people who live in Riverside said, “No, seriously, we can cope with the earthquakes and the wildfires and shit, just don’t inflict these fuckwits on us.” So the event was canceled. Not to be deterred, G-G moved their Free Speech to Stop Communist Speech rally to the Anaheim Event Center. But the people of Anaheim said, “We’d rather have a battery acid enema than listen to Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Whatshername.” So, canceled again.

Did that stop Gaetz-Greene? Hah! They said, “Hah! If six hundred thousand dead Americans didn’t stop us from standing up for your right not to wear an annoying mask, do you think being rejected by a few respectable venues is going to stop us? Hah! I say again, hah!” No fucking way. They took their Free Speech Dammit rally to a public parking lot outside of the Riverside City Hall.

Was it a success? Absolutely. According to a local newspaper, G-G “drew a crowd of more than 100” (some of which, it must be said, were counter-protestors. Oh, and news media. And a few police officers). MTG told her fellow free speech anti-communists:

“We won’t back down. The radical left wants to threaten you, they want to harass you, they want to target you, and they want to cancel you. And here’s what we’re going to do, America. You’ve got two members of Congress right here and we refuse to be canceled because we won’t let you be canceled.”

It’s fair to say the group of anti-Communists were encouraged, if confused, to learn that MG and MTG were going to do…you know, something. And if it wasn’t clear exactly what they were going to do, it was enough that it involved refusing to be canceled.

MTG leads the crowd in singing ‘Delta Variant Dawn’.

MG supported MTG, saying:

“These folks, they tried to cancel our venues, but they can never cancel our patriotism or our American spirit.”

It’s not clear who MG meant by ‘these folks’. Communists, possibly, or the owners of the other venues, or the people of Anaheim and Riverside and Laguna Hills, or Californians in general, or Hunter Biden art collectors. But he was adamant that they couldn’t cancel his American spirit.

They each spoke for about five minutes, posed for a few photos, then left. The crowd dissipated. Nothing was left but the lingering odor of burnt communism.

UPDATE: Sources say MG has reserved two VIP tickets to Anaheim’s Battery Acid EnemaFest using the screen name DeltaVariantBoi.

always room for ignorance

Posted on by
1

Émile Borel, French mathematician. In 1931 he wrote: Whatever the progress of human knowledge, there will always be room for ignorance, hence for chance and probability. Borel is best known as the originator of the Infinite Monkey Theorem (and yes, I know, other mathematicians and philosophers had made similar arguments before Borel; don’t fuss at me over this).

A monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely eventually type every book in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Émile Borel

An English monkey, of course, using an English typewriter would eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. An American monkey would bang out the screenplay to Casablanca. A Marxist monkey would produce The Communist Manifesto and all three volumes of Das Kapital. And a fantasy fiction monkeys would be able to complete A Song of Fire and Ice before George R.R. Martin ever will.

A modern Republican monkey would shit on the typewriter for an infinite amount of time and claim it’s the Constitution of the United States.

Jim Jordan, with a banana-flavored tie.

A couple of days ago, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote this:

We are a big tent party. We represent Americans of all backgrounds and continue to grow our movement by the day. And unlike the left, we embrace free thought and debate.

This morning, that ‘big tent party’ voted to remove Liz Cheney as the chair of the House Republican Conference because she insisted on speaking the truth. She is not only willing, but insistent on stating categorically that Comrade Trump provoked a violent attack on the US Capitol building in an effort to steal the 2020 presidential election, that he continues to try to convince Americans the election was stolen from him, and that by doing so Trump not only undermines US election integrity, he also increases the likelihood of further violence.

For that she was removed from her position of power. Removed by a voice vote–a cowardly vote that allowed House Republicans to vote without having to go on the record. A vote that allows them to dodge any personal responsibility for voting. This is what the modern Republican Party has become.

Jim Jordan preparing to re-write the US Constitution

McCarthy claims the GOP is growing by the day; in fact, it’s shrinking. It’s shrinking largely because the GOP is no longer a political party; it has no internally consistent political philosophy, it doesn’t stand for anything other than the retention of power, it’s only ideology is grounded in pissing off ‘the libs’, and worst of all, they’ve rejected the core principles of representative democracy.

The modern GOP is a monkey angrily shitting on a typewriter, denying that they’re doing it, while trying to convince the weakminded that it smells like freedom.