Stabby Stabby

My gosh Tyre Nichols was handsome.

They keep showing his picture over and over again on MSNBC. He was beautiful. He was gorgeous. He was so pretty. And his death makes me think of a quote from the infamous movie called FIGHT CLUB. Where the guy beats the living shit out of Jared Leto and justifies it by saying: I felt like destroying something beautiful.”

Those cops. Those cops destroyed something beautiful. They did it yards away from his own home. While he was, as President Biden would says, was LITERALLY, LITERALLY, HE WAS LITERALLY calling out for his mom. And by that I mean literally. He was hards away from her the he was lynched. He was not calling for her as a spiritual exercise. He was really asking for her help.

I remember where I was when I first witnessed the video tape where the LAPD beat the living shit out of Rodney King. I was in a corporate apartment in Virginia. And we all watched it, we all did. And the visuals are remarkably similar. What is it, 34 years later, something? And we haven’t learned a fucking thing. We’re still killing people in the streets with batons and kicks and punches and tear gas and tasers, and most of the people suffering that fate are black people. Just like Rodney King, just like now, just like handsome, skateboarding Trye Nichols, who came home every dinner to eat with his mom and who skateboarded and was a father.

When does this stop?

When do we stop being afraid of our policemen?

Fortunately for me, I have the invisible blanket of whiteness. I have talked a cop out of arresting me at least once, Maybe twice. This is not the honkey you are looking for. That kind of thing.

That poor man. I watched the video of it. Did you?

I watched a man who was sometimes throughout the brutal torture that would lead to his death, I watched him stood up in his pain at times, only to be fallen. I heard these incompetent peace officers claim to ask Nichols to give the his hands despite that he was prostrate and obedient. I saw batons.

I do not understand how this happens. It is violence and I do not understand why people tend to choose violence.

I wish it were not an option.

Writer’s Block

Let’s see if I can get into writer mode tonight. Let’s see if I can. I find it increasingly difficult these days. I find it difficult because I’ve been blogging about the politics since the early 2000s and have had a mind full of it since I was a toddler and the United States of America was threatening to send my 20-something year old father off to Viet Nam to fight, and he and my 20-something mom would watch David Brinkley every night like it was life and death to them because it was. And as I’ve been blogging about this for so many years, one would think pointing out this stuff to people online for so many years would have had some sort of effect. But no, it hasn’t. The poop has just continued to run downhill, worse, smellier, and in bigger and bigger piles ever since. Holy moly, it’s as if nobody has been listening to a thing I’ve written ever in my life. And it makes me frustrated.

So let’s see if I get this correct, as I get ready to flip over to side two of Thomas Dolby’s The Flat Earth, which I particularly recommend listening to on vinyl, and hoping that those reading this remember Highlights magazine: Goofus steals a thousand pounds of classified, top-secret documents and takes them to Florida with him, and when they are requested to be returned to the American people, he lies about their existence at his place, then he acknowledges they are there but insinuates they were planted, then he flouts subpoenas, then returns some but not all of the documents, then he gets his place searched with a legal search warrant after like two years of this stupid tug of war, then he announces this search to the world when those who searched him would have been content to have done it quietly, then wonders why the world falls down on him regarding this.

Gallant discovers a dozen classified documents and calls the Department of Justice and reports it.

One of these things is not like the other. And yet, so much of it is being reported as a BUT-WHAT-ABOUT insanity. Holy Starbucks, can we stop pretending that both sides should be treated equally when it’s so clear that once side is throwing shit on the wall while the other side is desperately trying to fold a fitted sheet?

Hey. I think I just got into writer mode. Need to go put on side two and see what else we can dredge up. BRB.

So, how about this George Santos character, huh?

If only I had in my professional life puffed up my CV to a fifth of how this asshole inflated his, I would have been Bill Gates by now. Hi, I’m George Santos. I went to big fancy schools, blah blah blah. My auntie died in the Holocaust and my mommy died on 9/11, and by the way, I had a brain tumor and I’m Jewish and I’m a financial genius and I can shoot lasers out of my eyes and I used to be Menachem Mendel Schneerson and here’s maybe a white power hand signal on the floor of the Congress.

What the f87k?

And the new Sporker of the Haus is okay with this? The guy who only got his position after an internecine conflict that only happened previously the same year Ted Knight was born? Yeah. He thinks that’s dandy. Because “Santos’” (and I think anything to do with him from now on should be treated with scare quotes, let’s make that AP Style) provides him with a vote. McCarthy isn’t going to do jack-fart about Santos’ fraud. Because power.

Meanwhile, there’s the bill that acts like Kermit Gosnell is an everyday occurrence like the throw on your sofa. They call it the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.” And now for a change I put on that Apollonia 6 album I’ve been thinking about lately. Do you know why there are three chicks in the band but it’s called Apollonia 6? Because of they have six tits between them. That Prince was a genius.

There is audio somewhere I heard today, sorry, I am getting sloppy with my attribution but it is almost 2 a.m., of Rep. Steve Scalise, who was once shot in the ass at a basketball game, claiming with all his heart and soul that babies are routinely being born in this country and then, I dunno, what, the doctors then bash their little heads against the wall? That’s basically what he said. This is the narrative being expressed by one half of the mainstream political infrastructure of this country, that doctors are routinely killing babies just for shits and giggles.

Let me counter. This country is more women than men, more potentially pregnant people than there are sperm donors. Those of them who take on the physical burden of pregnancy should be respected and honored. They should enjoy our trust and our support, unconditionally. We should not assume the worst from more than half of us, that any of them would carry a fetus to term and then would just willy-nilly change their minds. This is purely mysogynistic drivel and should be pooped out and flushed.

I want a country that trusts women, unconditionally. I want a country that does not assume the worst of our women, our potentially pregnant people, our people. I want a country that stops assigning a particular agenda to the label “pro-life” because this halts legitimate conversation about anything completely (which it is meant to do, by the way). I want sanity in my little neck of the woods.

But I doubt that’s ever gonna happen.

87,000

It should not come as a surprise that the first piece of legislation passed by the Republican House is based on a lie, is constructed to solve a problem that doesn’t exist and, in fact, sabotages an already-cast solution to an actual problem, and that some of the more visible people in that august body are taking to social media to shout from the rooftops as if they have performed some sort of miracle.

As such, via Twitter: “Nixing the 87,000 IRS agents tonight and conservatives are just getting started!” (Rep. Lauren Boebert)

“I was proud to help pass legislation to defund Joe Biden’s army of 87,000 new IRS agents. America needs to support border agents, police officers, and servicemembers NOT more IRS agents targeting small businesses and families.” (Rep. Elise Stefanik)

“BREAKING → The House just voted to repeal funding for Biden’s 87,000 new IRS agents. Every Democrat voted no. Tells you all you need to know.” (Rep. Steve Scalise)

Indeed it does. It tells you that Democrats are not interested in voting for nonsense.

This morning, The Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler once again took on the task of debunking this hideous, disingenuous ghoul of a bill (link below). Spoiler: The Post upgraded this idiocy from three Pinocchios to four and characterizes it as a “zombie claim,” “…because they keep rising from the dead no matter how often they have been fact-checked.”

Link: ‘87,000 IRS agents’ is the zombie falsehood setting the House agenda

The debunking is thorough. Kessler first discusses the origin of the Republican’s dubious number they keep slinging around like a rotting fish and explains the rationale behind the policy, which is to improve tax receipts via enforcement and better auditing for complex returns. It notes that the Republicans’ effort “…would raise the budget deficit by almost $115 billion over 10 years because anticipated tax revenue would not materialize.”

Fortunately, this measure gutting the recent investments in the IRS will likely go nowhere in the Senate and would certainly face a veto by President Biden. But Republicans will continue their obfuscation offensive. They could not possible abide by attempts to make tax cheaters accountable, to fairly render treasury funds, to address deficit concerns from the funding side rather than looming with burglar’s masks on over Social Security and Medicare.

It’s almost as if Republicans don’t care about facts or good public policy. Huh.

A New Path for Pence

I am not often in the business of advising Republican politicians. However, I really hate to see Columbus North High School’s most prestigious fella pass up such a smart opportunity.

Former Vice-President Mike Pence has let a few impressions leak that seem to me to be trial balloons regarding his recent invitation to testify before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Via the New York Times:

In recent weeks, Mr. Pence is said by people familiar with his thinking to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the idea of voluntary cooperation. He has told aides that the committee has taken a sharp partisan turn by openly considering the potential for criminal referrals to the Justice Department about Mr. Trump and others. Such referrals, in Mr. Pence’s view, appear designed to hurt Republican chances of winning control of Congress in November.

The problem is that Pence, who presumably has designs on the presidency himself, is in a rather difficult spot. He seems concerned that capitulation to the Select Committee would lose him sway among the mighty Trump base. But didn’t he already lose that precious anointing when he refused to throw out the generally accepted election result on 1/6/2021? Or when he’s seen on video being quickly evacuated from the legislative floor?

This why I suspect we are reading such speculation in the great NYT. He needs to test his standing with the MAGATs. With the Qanons. With the true believers. With those who await the necromancing of JFK Jr., the ones who think Wayfair furniture is built out of human remains. Pence is sticking a wet phalange into the wind. And I don’t think the results are gonna be all that great for him.

That’s got to be quite a kick in the gut for a guy who spent four years staring into the back of Preznit Carnage’s head with a look on his face like when Itchy the Wookie is watching Diahann Carroll sing “This Minute Now” in the Star Wars Holiday Special. This is Mr. “I Am Deeply Humbled to Be Your Vice President,” after all. His repayment? HANG MIKE PENCE. HANG MIKE PENCE HANG MIKE PENCE.

So why is he even pondering this when there’s a much better, albeit more risky, way forward?

Hey. Mike. Get to marching in Liz Cheney’s parade.

Do I think Liz Cheney is doing what she’s doing because she wants what’s best for the country and she believes the Big Lie is a Big Lie and that the Insurrection of January 6 was ungood? I guess. But on the other hand, I think Liz Cheney sees a BIG FAT LONGSHOT PATH TO BECOME LA PREZNIT OF DEEZ UNTIED STATES OF AMERICA.

After all, what happens when or if the unexplainable shine wears off of der cheeterhosen? Criminal charges. Lawsuits. Sexual assault charges. Civil suits leaving him hemorrhaging money. His recent vaccine endorsements are already throwing off his most loyal unwashed. Who’s going to be there if and when the Republican Party tosses Former Preznit Disgraceful Carnage out on his ass in his fat golf khakis? Liz Cheney is so far the only one betting the long game that it’s going to be she. (Okay, yes, Adam Kinzinger, blah blah blah. Dude is really kind of an afterthought on all this, methinks.)

Cheney has begun to forge a path that might could behoove the former Vice-Preznit to embark upon. It could start with his straightforward, unredacted public testimony to the Select Committee, followed by public calls to his own party to purge itself of this enormous, treacherous lie, to respect the fair and correct result of the 2020 election, and to get back to the business of working for true conservative values.

Mr. Former Vice President, heed my call: You sir, are in need of a reinvention. And I would argue that the Congresswoman from Wyoming is showing you the way. Show up. Testify. Cooperate. Throw your former boss, who I remind you tried to have you assassinated, way deep and far under the bus. It will be good for the country. It will make you seem to be presidential.

Heck. It might even make you presidential.

Insurrection

In the early summer of 1989 in Washington, D.C., my Dad and I took a Metro downtown (or maybe we drove) and went to the Capitol to see the mighty legislator Claude Pepper lie in state. As I recall, it was kind of on a whim. He at the time was running his own newsletter so his schedule was flexible; I was a kid, so my schedule was flexible. We woke up, he said hey, let’s go see Claude, and we went.

My Dad up and moved to D.C. a few years before this. By this time, he had purchased a hovel of a house over the river in Virginia that he would soon raze and replace. So I had been hanging out in D.C. for several years by that time. I was commuting like a pro by age 15, taking the Metro to wherever I liked, and where I liked was often to the National Mall. My favorite spot was the Lincoln Memorial, where you could stand at the man’s feet and see so much of our Nation’s Capital’s great landmarks all in a line. I’d sometimes walk the whole way from Lincoln, down to the Vietnam, along the Mall passing all of the great museums, past the Washington, and then wonder at the majesty of our U.S. Capitol building.

I would later spend a semester in D.C. via a program sponsored by my school, interning and visiting various interest groups and lobby shops. I would work a summer there as a busboy just off of Georgetown Much later, I would finally succumb and move there, landing a job on a magazine published by a trade association, and ending up as their Web guy until the job was too much for me. I lasted there 13 years. And, when the weather was nice, a lunchtime walk around the White House was a usual event. (This blog, in fact, was born there, a nice way at the time to get this introvert to go out and meet people.)

Washington, D.C. is in my backbone. And though I haven’t even been there in more than a decade, it is one of the places in the world that I call home. It is decades of memories. And many of those memories involve that big beautiful bicameral building.

So I was properly horrified watching the events of January 6, 2021. I was not just horrified for my country, or for my government, or for the insurrection’s victims. It was as if my own house was being mauled. It was as if someone had crapped all over my temple. I think of the fellow who sat with a big grin on his face with a foot up on Speaker Pelosi’s desk. I think of those morons rifling through legislators’ notes looking for “dirt,” as if they had half the brain-power required to even comprehend what was on those papers. I think of that douche in the horn-hat crowing from the lectern, those who climbed the walls, those who came prepped with plastic cuffs, and my blood boils.

Due to this, yes, I wanted to hear more from Attorney General Merrick Garland today. I have liked to imagine that his demeanor through his speech would be closer to how I feel about this event, that he’d get a vein-bulge on his forehead, that his eyes might bug out some, that he’d clench his fists and declare that heads will roll. But Garland doesn’t seem to be the veiny-forehead type. C’est la vie.

But I want to see heads roll for this. 365 days now and I have yet to witness this cathartic experience. I want heads to roll. I want tales told. I want names. I want to know who paid for this. I want to know who advocated for it. I want these people to suffer as I suffered seeing my home, my temple, so horribly violated.

More than anything, I want that orange idiot to be shuffled off in chains for this. Not for tax evasion. Not for fraud. This. I fear largely that this country may punish him for his toilet business practices but may never assign him accountability for his septic tank presidency. The Republican Senate failed to do this job. It failed to do it twice. And while the Attorney General is taking massive pressure to do something regarding this, I think every conversation about that should note that had the Senate done its job in February 2021, Garland’s position would not be nearly as precarious as it is now. He would feel far less political pressure as he does now to do the right thing, to prosecute this doorknob to the fullest extent of the law. Don’t land this on Merrick Garland. Land it on Mitch McConnell. He drove the getaway car.

As an American. As a person who used to live there and considered it home to my heart. As a person who followed public policy since I was 4 years old. As a guy who took a field trip with his Dad to see Clace Pepper’s dead bald head. As a person who would genuflect entering the Capitol but would refuse to do so in any other building.

I detest what took place one year ago. I hate them all. I hate them all with a passion that spills bile from my eyes, from my mouth, from my penis. I hate them all. I hope they all find a place in a burny place after they die, I hope that burny place chops them into little pieces one crouton at a time. I want them to suffer. I want them to know that what they did wrong. They invaded my home. They violated me personally. And I want them to pay the price.

Let’s go.

An Impressive CV

~ Founding “Freedom Caucus” member and signer, Contract From America.

~ Voted against disaster relief spending for Hurricane Sandy, based on the later-debunked claim that the relief bill contained “pork.”

~ Removed from the Subcommittee on Government Operations by fellow Republican Jason Chaffetz for opposing a procedural motion to grant President Barack Obama fast-track authority on trade agreements.

~ Ranking member, House Oversight Committee.

~ Penned open letter to Republican leadership urging they “affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of Obamacare in any relevant appropriations bills brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill.” It is said this letter was the catalyst for the 2013 federal government shutdown.

~ Filed a resolution to vote on removing John Boehner as speaker of the House.

~ Kept his chief-of-staff Kenny West on the payroll following West’s resignation following harassment claims against West. Of this, the Office of Congressional Ethics found “…substantial reason to believe that Representative Meadows retained an employee who did not perform duties commensurate with the compensation the employee received and certified that the compensation met applicable House standards, in violation of House rules and standards of conduct.”

~ Fined $40,000 by the House Ethics Committee for failing to act strongly enough regarding the claims against West.

~ Claimed for years to have received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida. He eventually had to admit that he had received an associate degree, not a bachelor’s.

~ “2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is…” Yep, he said that at a Tea Party Rally.

~ Advocated for a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution.

~ Voted against renewing the Violence Against Women Act.

~ At least once led a Trump crowd in the infamous “Lock her up”, an anti-Hillary Clinton chant.

~ As Trump’s Chief of Staff he was of course a raging dumpster fire on COVID.

~ Actively participated in the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

~ Today dragging his feet on cooperation with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

Ladies and gentlemen, Preznit Carnage’s COS. Mark Meadows.

Orangey, You Did A Heck of a Job

One can hope that the previous resident of the Oval Office would just limp off to Florida, play some golf, take up some unexpected hobby, wait for the onerous legal problems that will plague him the rest of his life, and shut up.

Sadly, even without his social media megaphone, Preznit Carnage One-Term Loser Insurrectionist finds a way to make a statement. I won’t quote it here because I don’t want to amplify anything he says, but suffice it to say that he thinks you ought to be thanking him for that shot in your arm that now 20 percent of all Americans have received. In fact, both the Washington Post and New York Times have pushed this story as well.

Great. I’ve asked you to paint a room in my house. I return to find that you have smeared shit on one of the walls. And you expect me to thank you for a job well done.

I mean, the conversation ongoing regarding this doesn’t even address a larger issue: We are attempting to vaccinate our way out of a pandemic. And that’s stupid. Because a vaccine is not the most effective tool in the box.

Let’s say I test positive for Covid. I tell the people all the people I’ve had contact with in the last two weeks. The people go and they find those people and test all of them, and the ones who test positive, they get info on all of the people they’ve had contact with in the last two weeks. And so on. And so on. And scooby dooby dooby. This is testing and contact tracing, and, if you commence with it soon enough in a pandemic, it is the most effective way to stop the microscopic monster in its vapor. And not only did Preznit Carnage not do this. He fought it.

He didn’t do testing and tracing. He didn’t lead by example—in fact, he seemed determined to model the exact wrong behavior. He told countless lies about the pandemic, and we know he knew he was lying. He himself sponsored countless super-spreader events, including his own party’s convention. He couldn’t even keep himself and his family from getting sick.

Yes. But do you like the paint job?