Category Archives: current events

targeted murder hornets

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Okay, so, I have a plan. It’s still in the very early stages of development, so maybe it’s not actually a ‘plan’. At least not in the sense of a thought-out arrangement or method for doing something. I can’t really say I’ve thought this out terribly well. In fact, it would be more accurate to call it a ‘plot’ rather than a plan, since it’s more of a sequence of intended events rather than an actual arrangeme…well, okay even ‘plot’ is probably inaccurate. Let’s call it a thought experiment. Or wishful thinking.

Okay, so I’ve been doing some wishful thinking about those tuna-brained plonkers parading outside the offices and homes of state government officials who have implemented stay-at-home orders in an effort to reduce the Covid-19 butcher’s bill. I should say that I support anybody’s right to protest. Anybody’s, even if I disagree with the protest, and even if I think the protest is stupid beyond belief.

Yeah, THIS is a guy I’d trust with a firearm. He looks nice.

But damn. Look I know I should feel compassion for folks who are so frightened or timid they feel they need to carry at least one firearm (and preferably more, plus some extra ammo and probably some sort of tactical knife) to go to the market or to exercise their civil liberties. It must be miserable to be that scared all the time. But the sad truth is I’m finding it increasingly difficult to be compassionate for people who have to carry a firearm everywhere they go in public in order to feel safe while insisting that others who are scared of a virus should just stay home.

Anyway, I have a plan some wishful thinking about these dolts. It involves murder hornets. Have you heard about the murder hornets? Vespa Mandarina, or something like that. Big fucking Asian wasps that have found their way to the US, probably from Wuhan China (I mean, why not?). Two inches long, with mandibles like scimitars and a stinger long enough to penetrate a bee-keeper’s suit. Also? They can sting you multiple times. Multiple. Flies at 20 miles per hour, so good luck outrunning one of those angry bastards. I mean, Usain Bolt, who is like the fastest man on the damned planet, was clocked at 28 mph, and that was only for a hundred meters. Of course, if he had a murder hornet behind him, he might do better. But the rest of us are fucked. I mean, just look at them.

Their sting has been described as like being impaled with red hot thumbtacks.

Here’s a thing about hornets (well, some hornets, not all of them, but maybe including murder hornets, I don’t know, but we’re still in the wishful thought experiment stage, so don’t discourage me): when angry or attacked, they release an alarm pheromone (your basic 2-methyl-3-butene-2-ol) that incites other nearby hornets to attack. This alarm pheromone is semi-key to my plan wishful thought experiment.

Okay, here it is: we (and by ‘we’ I mean somebody else other than me) capture and breed hundreds or thousands of murder hornets, genetically modifying the brutes so they’re attracted to the smell of Hoppe’s gun oil. How hard could that be?

Hey tunahead, say hello to my little friend.

Anyway, that’s the plan wishful thought experiment. Breed them, train them, turn them loose at these protests. Then stand back. The hornets are drawn to the firearms, the tunaheads panic and swat at them (or just panic and run, the plan work…dammit, the wishful thought experiment works either way), hilarity ensues.

There are still a few wrinkles to work out, I admit. I wonder if Kickstarter would accept something like this.

it stinks

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I’m trying to remember when I hit that point where I stopped trying to keep track of each and every awful thing that happened that day.

I mean, there was actually a time when I could read two or three news sources and feel like I had a solid grasp of all the awful things that happened on any given day. Later I found myself focusing on the primary awful things that happened, because it would take a spreadsheet to keep track of the picayune awful things. But over time, every day became a muddle of major corruption, lying, gross incompetence, vindictiveness, and venality, all of which existed in a melange of Trumpian hate-rage. And it was impossible to keep track even of all the massively awful things that happened in a given day.

This guy is awful in so many ways you need a quantum computer to keep track.

It’s hard to imagine a president who in the course of a single day would 1) shirk his duty during a pandemic that has cost more than 65,000 American lives, 2) lie about the availability of testing necessary to know the extent of that pandemic, 3) encourage states to re-open their economies even though NONE of those states have met the guidelines issued by the president’s own task force, 4) try to extort political favors from states in desperate need of federal financial aid as a result of that pandemic, 4) try to undermine the 2020 presidential election by claiming vote-by-mail is risky, 5) find ways to threaten the unemployment benefits of the nearly 20% of the US workforce that’s unemployed because of the pandemic, 6) use his presidential emergency powers to force workers in the meat industry to continue to work despite the alarming number of Covid-19 cases appearing in meat-packing plants, 7) block the nation’s most trusted information source from testifying in front of the Democratic-led House while allowing his testimony in the Republican-led Senate, 8) encourage armed insurrection against the legitimately elected Democratic governors of states he doesn’t like, 9) float the idea of pardoning his former National Security Advisor whom he’d fired because the man had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI (and the Vice President) about his dealings with Russian intelligence (not to mention his failure to register as a foreign agent of Turkey OR his involvement in a plot to kidnap a Turkish dissident cleric), 10) denigrated and undermined the leadership and line staff of the nation’s primary national law enforcement agency, 11) promoted a number of conspiracy theories, including one about the origins of the pandemic, and 12) tried to pressure US intelligence agencies to substantiate that conspiracy theory.

That’s just what I can recall of the major awful stuff Comrade Trump engaged in one a single day. There’s bound to be awful stuff I’ve missed.

Gov. Kim Reynolds and Comrade Trump ohmyfuckinggod I can’t even look killmenow.

All of this horror is compounded by state governors who are willing (or actually eager) to curry favor with Trump for their own political reasons. Like so many other Republican governors, the governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, refused to issue a state-wide shelter-in-place order. She’s not only supporting Trump’s executive order to require workers at meat-packing plants (a large proportion of whom are immigrants) to report for work regardless of Covid-19 outbreaks, she’s also informed low wage workers who are reluctant to return to work because of pandemic fears that if they refuse to return to work, they will be denied unemployment benefits.

The result of this monstrous cascade of really, truly, awful stuff from Trump and his supporters is a sort of numbness. It’s like living downwind from a paper mill or a hog containment farm — you sort of get inured to the stink. Some days stink more than others, but every day stinks horribly.

And it will continue to stink horribly until we get rid of the hog farm.

the lord knoweth them that are his

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If you’re anything like me (and yeah, the odds are against it), when you hear people like Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of the River Tampa Bay Church in Florida, you almost immediately think of Arnaud Amalric, the Abbot of Cîteaux.

Since you’re probably not like me, you’re probably thinking, “Greg, old sock, these names are completely unfamiliar to me. Who, pray tell, are these people?” First, stop calling me ‘old sock’. Second, they’re both what I like to call ‘providentialist fuckwits’. True, they’re separated by about 830 years, but they share some astonishingly stupid approaches to their religious practices.

Here’s Pastor Rodney just a few days ago:

“If you cannot be saved in church, you in serious trouble. I’ve got news for you, this church will never close. The only time the church is closed is when the Rapture is taking place. If you don’t believe God, and trust God, you will not make it in the days coming. God will protect our people. And if you die to be with Jesus, so what’s the problem?”

This is some seriously old school providentialism that…wait, some of you might be thinking, “Greg, old sock, what do you mean by ‘providentialism’?” Okay, we’ve already discussed the ‘old sock’ issue. Providentialism is the belief that all events on Earth, including the fates of individuals and/or nations, are determined by god, who will take care of the true believers, obv.

This is Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, providentialist fuckwit.

Basically, in its purest and most idiotic form, it’s an abdication of personal responsibility. ‘If I get sick and die, that’s god’s will. If I expose a few dozen other people who get sick and die, that’s up to god. It’s not me but god, who is responsible for everything that happens. God will sort it out.’

And that brings me to Abbot Arnaud Amalic, who was a big hat in the Albigensian Crusade. In the summer of 1209, our boy Arnaud had led his crusader army to the town of Béziers, which was considered a stronghold of the Cathars. He…okay, okay, now you’re probably thinking, “Whoa, Greg old so…uh, what is this albiwhatsit crusade and who or what are Cathars?”

The guy on the left with the halo? That’s Abbot Arnaud Amalric, providentialist fuckwit. I’m not saying there’s a family resemblance to Pastor Rodney, but….

Yeah, good questions. Understand, this is a really quick and dirty explanation of a really complex and fascinating sociological thingy. With that warning in mind, Cathars were a religious sect, many of whom lived in the town of Albi, which is why they were called Albigensians. The Cathars were vegetarian Christians who believed in reincarnation, gender equality, and non-procreative sex (basically any form of sexual activity that wouldn’t lead to pregnancy — yeah, that’s right, any form). They also thought the pope was corrupt as fuck (SPOILER: despite taking the name Innocent III, he was really pretty corrupt). None of that was acceptable to the Church. The pope decided the Cathars were NOT Christians at all, and therefore they had to be converted. Or killed. Pick one.

Remember, from about 1099 to 1272, Christian Europe did a LOT of crusading. This involved traveling a couple of thousand miles to the Middle East in order to kill non-Christians and take their property. A crusade against non-Christians in the south of France was a LOT easier, a lot more time-effective, you didn’t have to deal with all that foreign food, and you still got to kill folks and take their stuff. That made this a very very popular crusade.

Right, back to our boy Arnaud Amalric. He took his crusader army from northern France into southern France, stopping at the town of Béziers. Another tangent: this wasn’t an army in the way we think of armies today. Crusader armies were largely led by knights (privileged guys who expected to get richer through plunder), but the bulk of the fighting was done by peasant foot soldiers (who expected to get some of the riches the knights missed) and mercenary bands (who expected to get paid by the Church and also get rich from plundering), as well as a contingent of religious pilgrims who just wanted the chance to kill non-Christians (and maybe pick up some extra coin while they were at it).

Christian v. Cathars (The guys doing all the stabbing? They’re the Christians.)

So Arnaud’s boys pull up to Béziers, which basically locked their doors (which they could do since the city was behind walls). Arnaud began to set up a siege. Some townsfolk decided to slide out of the city and whack a few mercenaries before the siege was firmly established. Big mistake. The mercenaries not only whacked the townsfolk, they were able to get in the gate. Where they started killing folks.

Siege warfare at that time was pretty routine. You pick away at the walls until you can send in some mercenaries and foot soldiers and peasants to get gloriously slaughtered while opening a gate or a big enough breach in the wall. Then the knights come flouncing in on their horses, allow the people of the town to get semi-slaughtered until the mercenaries reached the part of town where the richest folks lived. Then the knights would move in, stop the slaughter and the plundering, and take the best stuff. Like Jesus intended.

But in Béziers, the knights were still sitting in their tents drinking wine when the mercenaries broke into the city and started the slaughtering and plundering. Somebody found our boy Arnaud and said, “Dude, they’re killing everybody in town, Christians and Cathars alike, women and children, everybody, what do we do?” There’s some dispute whether the concern was about the slaughtering or about the fact that the peasants and mercenaries were getting all the best plunder. In any event, Arnaud is reported to have said this:

“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”

This often gets translated as “Kill them all, let god sort them out.” A more accurate translation is, “Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are his own.” The more accurate translation is important, because it cites the Bible (Paul’s second epistle to Timothy) as the source for the killing.

“[T]he foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his.”

In the end, Arnaud wrote to the pope to let him know they’d taken Béziers. He wrote, “Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost twenty thousand people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt.” But hey, we all make mistakes, and surely god knew which of those twenty thousand were good Christians. So there’s that.

“The Lord knoweth them that are his.”

Basically Arnaud’s take on the situation was largely the same as Pastor Rodney’s. “If you die to be with Jesus, what’s the problem?” Of course, it sounds more sober and religious if you say it in Latin. Si morietur cum ad Jesum, quid est forsit?

The problem, of course, is there are folks who’d just as soon not die. They’d prefer to have a choice in the matter. They’d rather not be put to the sword or infected with a disease simply because some folks believe god will take care of everything in the end, and everybody will get what they deserve.

Let me be clear about this. I have no beef with religion as a social institution. A lot of folks find comfort and solace in their beliefs. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. But I do have a problem with the sort of religious stupidity that puts folks with a different belief system at risk because believers think in the end god will take care of his own team.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to tell those providentialist fuckwits to go fuck themselves. That would probably sound better in Latin.

fuckwits struggle with tyranny

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Garrett Soldano, the founder of Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine, one of the groups participating in Wednesday’s Fuckwits on Parade, had this to say about that punk-ass stunt:

“Keeping healthy people at home is tyranny.”

Tyranny. What is it? Where does it come from? How do you spell it? Conservatives know they don’t like it, but they’re having some difficulty, the poor dears, trying to figure out what actually constitutes tyranny. Happily, I am here to help! Here are some useful examples.

Saying ‘Happy holidays’? Not tyranny. Being kidnapped by the authorities for dissent? Tyranny. Giving folks access to affordable health care? Not tyranny. Routine torture to obtain confessions from political/religious dissidents? Tyranny. Having a limit on the number of firearms you can purchase in a month? Not tyranny. Having your home bulldozed to make way for a settlement of ‘approved’ citizens? Tyranny. Requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for birth control for unmarried women? Not tyranny. Being shot by agents of your own government for voicing anti-government opinions? Tyranny. Telling folks to isolate themselves at home to mitigate the death toll of a pandemic? Not tyranny.

See how easy it is? You don’t have to have a brain like Stephen Hawking to tell the difference between 1) laws/rules/regulations you disagree with, or you think are stupid, or you find overly restrictive and 2) tyranny. 

Another useful tool in determining tyranny: compare and contrast. Ask yourself ‘What would happen if I showed up armed and dressed in camo on the capital steps in Lansing, Michigan to protest against the government?’ And then ask the same question, this time using Riyadh, Saudi Arabia? (HINT: the correct answer is ‘In Lansing, after a while I’d go home and grill burgers’ and ‘In Riyadh, I’d be arrested and have electrodes attached to my genitals.’) Ask yourself ‘In Lansing, what would happen if I protested by blocking traffic in front of the emergency entrance to a hospital?’ And then ask the same question, only using Pyongyang, North Korea. (HINT: the correct answer is ‘In Lansing, people would be upset because I was acting like a horse’s ass’ and ‘In Pyongyang, they’d put a bullet in the back of my head and feed my body to the pigs.’) Ask yourself ‘What if I carried a protest sign and chanted for the governor to be locked up without a trial?’ and ask the same question about Harare, Zimbabwe. (HINT: the correct answer is ‘In Lansing, the police would protect my right to protest’ and ‘In Harare, I’d disappear and never be heard from again…and so would my family.’)

Tyranny.

See? It’s simple. If you can publicly call your government officials tyrants without fear of being arrested, assaulted, or killed by the authorities, you’re NOT living under tyranny.

But just to be sure, I took a look at Governor Whitmer’s ‘stay at home’ order. I wanted to get a sense of exactly how tyrannical it was. She explains the reasoning behind the order. “To suppress the spread of COVID-19, to prevent the state’s health care system from being overwhelmed, to allow time for the production of critical test kits, ventilators, and personal protective equipment, and to avoid needless deaths.” Not very tyrannical.

Not tyranny.

But then comes the meat of the order. The real test of tyranny. The order prohibits “businesses and operations from requiring workers to leave their homes, unless those workers are necessary to sustain or protect life or to conduct minimum basic operations.” That’s not just disappointingly non-tyrannical, it’s also a reasonable step to reduce the body count during a pandemic.

What about personal restrictions? I mean, that offers some opportunities for serious tyranny. Her order expressly tells folks it’s okay to “leave the house to get groceries or needed supplies” and to “engage in outdoor activities like walking, hiking, running, cycling, kayaking, canoeing, or any other recreational activity” so long as it was consistent with remaining at least six feet apart. That’s not tyranny. That’s good government.

Tyranny.

You know what would be tyrannical? A government that required its workers to labor in conditions known to increase the probability of dying simply to maintain a certain economic standard for the nation’s elite.

As I write this, the butcher’s bill in the United States is 37,175 confirmed Covid-19 deaths and 609,587 confirmed active cases (13,509 of which are considered to be in serious or critical condition). Those are confirmed cases. Because of inadequate testing, we don’t know how many actual active cases exist or how many people have actually died from Covin-19. The confirmed cases undoubtedly underestimate the actual cases.

Not tyranny. Heroism. Stay home. Wear masks. Wear gloves. Wash your damned hands.

Let me just repeat that. We have 37,889 confirmed Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. There are 157,451 confirmed deaths worldwide. That means the United States, which has about 4.25% of the world’s population, accounts for around 24% of the world’s confirmed Covid-19 deaths.

That’s not tyranny. But it’s really, really, really bad government.

fuckwits on parade

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You remember those folks who were too afraid to go to Target or Starbucks unless they were allowed to carry their semi-auto assault-style firearms? You know, the folks who believe freedom’s just another word for ‘I have both the right and the duty to carry an AR-15 into the local Dairy Queen even if (and maybe especially if) it scares liberal snowflakes because it’s just possible that some day somebody carrying another AR-15 into the local Dairy Queen might start shooting people and I want to be able to return fire and I will sure as hell shoot straight and kill the bad guys and not accidentally kill innocent people, then you’ll be glad I was armed because I’m doing this for you and America.’ Yeah, those folks. Now they’re standing up to the novel coronavirus.

Fuckwits with flags.

Conservatives in Michigan, manfully pissed off because ‘that woman in Michigan’ wants everybody to stay inside and be safe and healthy, organized a protest. ‘Operation Gridlock.’ They gathered their guns, their MAGA hats, their ‘Trump 2020’ signs, their Confederate battle flags, their Gadsen ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags, and they loaded up their pickups, and headed to Lansing to teach a lesson to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and show that pesky Chinese virus that real Americans aren’t afraid to gather in large groups and create patriotic vectors of viral transmission.

fuckwits in pickups with Confederate flags.

Michigan, right now, has more active Covid-19 cases than California. They’ve had a couple thousand confirmed Covid-19 deaths (and who knows how many unconfirmed deaths) — the third most deaths in this entire sad, gutted nation, behind New Jersey and New York. Gov. Whitmer ordered non-essential businesses to close and people to stay home and self-isolate in an attempt to mitigate the deaths. So of course these fuckwits decided to gather together, to chant ‘lock her up’ about the governor, to wave their flags and Trump signs, and block traffic in front of a hospital. Seriously, during a goddamn pandemic, these yahoos thought it was cute to block the emergency entrance to a hospital. Jesus suffering fuck.

Gov. Whitmer’s order for Michigan citizens to stay home, they said, was tyranny (SPOILER: if you can gather in public and accuse the government of tyranny without fear of arrest, it’s not tyranny). They repeated Ben Franklin’s claim that ‘security without liberty is called prison’ (SPOILER: if you can drive your pickup to Lansing, Michigan, you’re not in prison and you have liberty). They chanted “Lock her up!” and “Keep America Great!” (SPOILER: if your nation was warned a pandemic was coming and didn’t bother to prepare for it, your country isn’t all that great, and a populace that wants to lock up a governor for trying to mitigate that pandemic isn’t particularly great either).

Fuckwits with firearms.

I kinda sorta semi-support the right of these fuckwits to gather together. The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees ‘the right of the people peaceably to assemble’, after all. On the other hand, legal scholars agree that the State has the power and an obligation to regulate behavior when there’s a compelling interest vital to the protection of public health and safety. Like, say, a pandemic. There’s no pandemic exception to the First Amendment, but courts have ruled that states and localities have the right to limit the size of gatherings when it’s in the interest of public health and safety. Which is exactly what Gov. Whitmer did.

In the end, you can’t fully protect stupid people from being stupid and doing stupid things with other stupid people. Some of these fuckwits on parade will possibly/likely get infected with the Covid-19 virus. If that happens, they’ll possibly/likely pass that infection on to others — some of whom didn’t behave stupidly. This the way of the fuckwitted; their stupidity is splashed onto the innocent.

Conservatives are fond of quoting Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” The tree of stupidity, it seems, has to be refreshed on a regular basis with the blood of the innocent.

still standing

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I do like an early morning thunderstorm. It’s nine o’clock in the morning and it’s so dark I have the kitchen light on while I drink my morning coffee and read the news. The rain is falling with a sort of steady insistence, like it’s telling us we can stay inside and act like nothing is happening, but it is not going to stop. The cat is looking resentfully out the window at the rain, unfazed by the sporadic thunder. It’s a pretty solid thunderstorm in terms of rain and thunder, but it’s skimping on the lightning. Maybe it’s storing it up and will give us a show later.

The news tells me that on Friday the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives issued guidelines to allow federally licensed firearm dealers to provide drive-up or walk-up gun sales during this period of isolation. Why? To reduce the health risks posed by the coronavirus. The BATF has a dead solid lock on graveyard humor.

On Facebook one of my Christian senator is wishing me a happy Easter and assuring me ‘He has risen’. I hope she’s not referring to that dark, malignant force haunting the White House, ghoulishly presiding over the drown-in-the-fluid-that-fills-your-own-lungs pandemic. Speaking of which, the butcher’s bill in the U.S. will exceed 21,000 deaths at some point today.

This morning the Twitterverse is, as usual, like Jabberwocky written by the illegitimate child of Oscar Wilde and Charlie Manson (just go with me on this; I don’t need a lesson in biology). It’s clever and hateful and funny and malicious and witty and snarky and so incredibly stupid and full of fascinating information and confusing as hell. Twitter is probably like a lot of family gatherings.

~ ~ ~

I’ve forgotten what point I’d intended to make when I started writing this morning. I got distracted by this photograph. I saw it on Twitter. If Twitter can be believed — and I want to believe this is true — this is a photograph of an ICU nurse who has worked 65 hours in the last week. I’ve been looking at and thinking about this photo for about an hour.

I don’t know this woman’s name, or where she works, or who shot the photo. I don’t really know anything at all about her. But I recognize her. I recognize that look. I know she’s on the ragged edge of exhaustion, discouraged, worn down by grief and duty. I don’t know who she is, and I know she can’t save us. But I also know she’ll try. And I know that after a few hours of sleep, she’ll be back at it. So will all of her colleagues.

Today I’ll stay inside, dry and warm. I’ll read my book, I’ll cook some food, I’ll do a little housework, I’ll do a bit of writing, I’ll feed and pet the cat, I’ll continue to check in on social media. At some point tonight I’ll watch an episode of Breaking Bad and maybe an episode of some other show. I’ll fill up every hour of the day, but I’ll never be busy and I’ll never be uncomfortable and I’ll never have to make a decision more difficult than what to cook for supper.

But I know I’ll return, over and over, to this photograph. It’s that powerful; it’s that compelling. Right there — everything that can be said about the power of photography is right there. Everything that’s good and noble about humankind, right there. Everything that can be said about sacrifice and dignity and dedication and love and compassion, right there. Everything that is heart-crushing, that is hopeful, that is beautiful, that is desperately sad and deeply caring and incredibly tough and still tender, it’s all right there.

I hope my Christian senator sees this photograph. I’m glad she finds some comfort and strength in her belief that ‘He has risen’. Me, I’m drawing my strength and comfort from knowing that this woman, whoever she is and wherever she is, is still standing.

whistle and go fishing

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My heart’s in the ice house. John Prine is dead, the world is locked down, and Bernie Sanders has suspended his presidential campaign.

I have mixed feelings about that last thing. Last July I said “I just wish he hadn’t decided to run for POTUS again” so you’d think I’d be glad that Bernie suspended his campaign. And I sorta kinda am. But I’m also sorta kinda not. I’m sorta kinda glad on account of Bernie has some followers who flat out piss me off and (in my opinion) taint his campaign. But I’m sorta kinda not glad because Bernie has almost single-handedly shifted the Democratic Party to the left.

He did that partly by being a Democrat of Convenience. He runs as a Democrat without actually being a Democrat, but his positions are so popular he yanked the Democratic Party leftward. There are folks in the Democratic National Committee who aren’t happy about that, of course. And that brings me back to being sorta kinda glad Bernie is suspending his campaign now, at this point in time, rather than later. Because some of his supporters are DNC conspiracy theorists. They believe the DNC ‘rigged’ the primaries to defeat Bernie (and, in some cases, to re-elect Comrade Trump).

Here are some actual, not-made-up, real comments taken from a couple of Facebook groups that support Bernie:

— [T]he DNC plots against Bernie, violate the constitution by stealing the election/votes, asks us to vote for an absolutely terrible choice instead and then whines to us about how they won’t beat trump because of US!?
— The Democrat Party could have changed their voting date if they wanted, but they rigged their election again to boot Bernie out
— The DNC knows the numbers, and either believe they don’t need Sanders voters for them to win, or else they actively want Trump to win. Either way, my one vote isn’t going to change the election. I bear zero responsibility for their loser plans.
— I want to be counted as one of the growing number of people rejecting the DNC
— If you’re voting for Biden you’re giving the DNC consent to rigging elections.
— I’m willing to lose this election to trump if it teaches the DNC the lesson that they Will Never win another election ever again until they listen to us and run a progressive candidate.

There are Sanders supporters who apparently actually believe the DNC is somehow violating the US Constitution by setting rules for the Democratic Party primaries. Who apparently actually believe the DNC is secretly working to elect Trump. Who apparently actually believe NOT voting for Biden will somehow teach the DNC a lesson.

Look, the DNC sets the rules for the Democratic Party primaries because they’re the Democratic Party’s National Committee. Who else is going to set those rules? The Green Party? The Republican Party? This is how things work everywhere. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees are chosen by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nomination Board, not by the Country Music Assocation’s Nomination Board. Michelin stars are awarded to restaurants by Michelin’s full-time staff of anonymous restaurant reviewers, not by Yelp feedback.

Bernie didn’t lose the nomination because the DNC conspired against him; he lost because more people showed up and voted for Biden. Warren didn’t lose because the DNC conspired against her; she lost because people didn’t vote for her. Booker lost because people didn’t vote for him. Harris lost because people didn’t vote for her.

Joe Biden, go figure.

Joe Biden won because people voted for him. Why did they vote for him? Damned if I know. I don’t think he was anywhere near the best candidate (SPOILER: the best candidate was Warren). But Biden got the votes. You don’t have to like it to accept the reality of it. You don’t have to LIKE gravity to accept that if you drop a rock, it’ll fall on the grass (if you’re outside and standing on grass — let’s not get too fussy about this).

The other reason I’m sorta kinda glad Bernie has suspended his campaign now is so we can get the following completely predictable bullshit conversation out of the way. You know the conversation I’m talking about, but here are a few actual, not-made-up, real examples of it (again, straight from Facebook pro-Bernie groups):

— A choice between two rapists is no choice at all. Joe Biden is Trump with fewer obnoxious tweets and even more dementia.
— I’m not voting for another monster just to stop a monster.
— Voting in the moderate choice is just as bad as trump.
— what is the real difference between Biden and trump
— There is no really big difference between Biden and trump…they are both representing the neoliberal agenda
— I can’t vote for either with a clear conscience. Trump and Biden are sexual predators. I can’t vote for them and feel good about it.
— BIDEN IS JUST LIKE VOTING REPUBLICAN. I’M NOT VOTING FOR BIDEN OR TRUMP. I’M OUT.

Okay, Biden wasn’t my first choice. Hell, he wasn’t even in my top five. He might have been in my top ten, but near the bottom. But Jesus suffering fuck, people, he’s in a totally different political galaxy than Comrade Trump and is infinitely preferable.

If you think there’s no difference between Joe Biden and this fuckwit, then you’re an idjit.

Biden says he’ll increase taxes on the wealthy. The Tax Policy Center calculated that Biden’s plan would raise $4 trillion over a decade—one of the largest wealth transfers in American history. He supports subsidies and Medicaid funding, along with a public option, in order to achieve universal health care. It’s not Medicare for All, but it’s an improvement over the current feral insurance system. He’s advocating a US$17 trillion clean energy investment, and tighter regulations to bring emissions to zero. He’s supporting $2 trillion in new spending on early education, post-secondary education, and housing. He’s talking about a $1.3 trillion infrastructure plan. He’s in favor of a $15 minimum wage. He wants to close the gun show loophole and ban the sale of assault-style weapons. He’s in favor of immigration reform and wants to provide undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. He’s just come out in support of Warren’s bankruptcy plan.

Comrade Trump is opposed to all of those things. If you say there’s no difference between Biden and Trump, you’re completely fucking delusional. Or stupid. Or a Russian troll. Or so goddamned well established in your privilege that Trump’s policy depredations won’t have much effect on your life. Also? Fuck you in the neck, just on general principles.

I’ll vote for Joe Biden. Hell, I’ll hold my nose and even campaign for him. I’ll probably give him some money. Not because he’s the best candidate, but because I can forgive myself for voting for him. I couldn’t forgive myself for voting for anybody else.

As the poet Prine said:

Father forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us we’ll forgive you
We’ll forgive each other till we both turn blue
Then we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven.

but not unexpected

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…but not unexpected. That phrase gets a lot of exercise when we’re talking about the behavior of Comrade Donald Trump. The president’s response was irregular, but not unexpected. The president’s comments were undiplomatic, but not unexpected. It’s a nice way of saying ‘Yeah, as usual, Trump is being an asshole’.

Friday evening, Trump announced he was firing Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. In his letter, Trump stated, “[I]t is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General.”

What’s actually vital to Trump is that everybody in his administration MUST be willing to publicly support whatever crazy-ass thing Trump wants to do. Anybody who disagrees or challenges him has to go. When it comes to following the law or following Trump, the law has to step aside.

Comrade Trump signing the two-trillion-dollar covid-19 stimulus package.

Atkinson followed the law. When he received a complaint from a whistleblower in the intelligence community about Trump’s communications with the president of Ukraine, he had an obligation to determine if the complaint was credible and urgent. He decided it was, so he notified Congress — which is exactly what he was legally required to do.

From that moment on, Atkinson’s career in federal government was doomed. He followed the law instead of ‘protecting’ Trump. Same thing happened to James Comey, to Andrew McCabe, to Jeff Sessions (who actually deserved to be fired, but for other reasons), to Col. Alexander Vindman (and even his brother, for fuck’s sake, whose only sin was to be born a twin). Trump attempted to fire Robert Mueller, but couldn’t. All of that was wildly inappropriate. But not unexpected.

Trump didn’t fire Atkinson just to be vindictive. He’s also sending a message to other Inspectors General — including the newest one. That new two-trillion dollar stimulus package? One reason it was delayed was Democrats insisted the bill include a Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery — somebody to monitor how the Treasury Department hands out the loans and loan guarantees to businesses. Somebody whose job was to keep Trump corruption to a minimum. The bill also states the new IG MUST notify Congress IMMEDIATELY if the Trump administration withholds information requested by investigators. Because if there’s one thing we know for certain about Trump, it’s that he’s going to pull some sort of nasty-ass scam and then refuse to answer any questions about it.

Trump really really didn’t want a new IG to oversee the stimulus loans, but eventually he had to give in. At least in theory. But this is Comrade Donald Trump (remember in the last paragraph we said he’d pull some nasty-ass scam? Here we go.). In addition to signing the bill, Trump also issued a signing statement…you know, to ‘clarify’ how he interprets the bill. He told Congress he intended to treat the “requirement to consult with the Congress regarding executive decision-making” as “hortatory but not mandatory.” Yeah, I know…there’s no way Trump knows what ‘hortatory’ means. But basically Trump is saying he’s going to consider that ‘requirement’ to just be an earnest suggestion, which he can ignore if he wants to. He also said he won’t “treat spending decisions as dependent on prior consultation with or the approval of congressional committees,” which is a nice way of saying he intends to hand out the money to whoever the fuck he wants to and Congress can kiss his ass. He ends his signing statement by saying, “my Administration will continue the practice of treating provisions like these as advisory and non-binding.” This, in essence, is Trump making farting noises in the direction of Congress.

Comrade Trump signing a statement saying he’ll do whatever the fuck he wants regardless of the law and Congress can pull his finger.

With that signing statement and the firing of Atkinson, Trump is basically telling the new stimulus IG, “Dude, you’re just there for show. Stay quiet, don’t ask too many questions, don’t interfere, just sit in your office, look out the window, and continue to cash those sweet sweet government checks. Or say goodbye to your career and your pension, because, dude, you know I will fire your ass in a skinny minute.”

What Comrade Trump is doing is borderline illegal, immoral, pathologically unethical, utterly reprehensible, and corrupt as fuck. But not unexpected.