The News Has Finally Reduced Even Me to a Quivering Mess, Begging For Mercy
Last edited Fri Mar 2, 2018, 01:46 AM - Edit history (1)
Sweet Titty-Fucking Christ, how is there this much news in ONE WEEK? There wasn't this much news in some YEARS of the Obama administration. There wasn't this much news in the entire motherfucking Renaissance!
I apologize in advance for the sheer length of this. I even cut the part where Tom Bombadil bought a jet ski with government funds. Let's just dive into this septic tank we call...the news. (And yeah, you can get it, with links, on my site: http://showercapblog.com/news-has-finally-reduced-even-me-quivering-mess/)
Let's start with a little light schadenfreude, as the faculty at Lehigh University voted to strip the Candycorn Skidmark of the honorary degree they bestowed upon him back when he was an amusing buffoon rather than a daily threat to international peace and stability.
That'll show him! Losing a meaningless ceremonial honor seems like a reasonable consequence for a Commander-in-Chief who actively refuses to defend his country!
Yup yup, Admiral Mike Rogers, NSA Director, let the Senate know that President Boris Bonespurs somehow hasn't yet granted him the authority he needs to smack Russia hard enough to deter them from fucking with our sweet, beautiful, democracy in the future.
That's just NEAT, innit? I'll tell you what, Resisters, I had no love for any of the Gaggle of Assholes who opposed Orange Julius Caesar in the 2016 GOP primary, but I never doubted that any of them, from Fiorina to Jeb(!) to Pataki would have gone, "Oh, a hostile foreign power attacked America? MEH, I GOT GOLF."
The reigning NBA champion Golden State Warriors took a group of local children to the National Museum of African American History and Culture during their visit to Washington, D.C., after Shart Garfunkel petulantly rescinded their White House invitation over several players Expressing Opinions While Black.
...I still think somebody should have challenged Stephen Miller to a game of Horse, with his Senior Advisor gig on the line. Stephen's quite the athlete you know, as his storied track career demonstrates.
Sooooooo there's this Russian escort/"self-described sex instructor," right? She's been arrested in Thailand (for running an illegal "seduction class," I guess?) and she wants the U.S. government to intervene and rescue her, in exchange for dirt of Trump and Manafort.
Sure, whatever. That's about par for the course these days. The "course" is like, a miniature golf course. That the Joker rigged into a series of themed death traps designed to kill Batman. It's par for that course.
Anyway. Russian escort, seduction class, dirt on Trump. And you won't even fucking remember any of that shit by the end of this blog.
A little more good news before we move on, Team Blue flipped a couple more special election seats, including a Connecticut House district Republicans had held for 40 years. And those generic congressional polls just keep getting sweeter and sweeter.
Once upon a time, this dude said CNN wanted to make his son read a scripted question at the Parkland/gun control town hall, and he showed the world an e-mail to prove it, and the right wing media lost their shit.
Only then it turned out the dude had totally doctored the e-mail in question, because I guess he's the kind of person who's cool with not only lying, but using both a community tragedy and his OWN FUCKING KID in a bullshit ploy to...what? Make CNN look bad? COOL LIFE, BRO.
Bob Corker is still retiring, after floating a To Hell With All My So-Called 'Principled" Criticism of Trump Maybe I'll Just Give Him a Rim Job So He'll Endorse Me trial balloon.
If you missed the "Yup, still quitting" Corker story, you might not have noticed the little nugget where Tangerine Idi Amin's staff keeps files full of mean things Republicans have said about him, so they can whip him up into a rage should the need arise. It's really fun that the President is so easy to manipulate, and that everyone around him knows it, isn't it?
Prospects for peace in the Middle East took a good sturdy punt to the groin, as Jared Kushner finally lost the security clearance he had no fucking business ever having in the first place.
Jar-Jar's portfolio isn't shrinking, at least for now. Whatever. Not like he was actually accomplishing anything anyway. He's probably sitting in his office, working his way through a coloring book he picked up in a Saudi Arabian gift shop, pretending it's "research."
Oh, and WaPo informs us that at least four foreign nations have explored how to exploit Kushner's unique blend of Enormous Fucking Idiot in Over His Head and Shit Businessman Desperate for Deliverance From a Mountain of Debt in order to, y'know, INFLUENCE THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster found out Jared was communicating with foreign officials without letting the National Security Council know, and was all "Hey, maybe cut this shady shit out," so naturally between that and saying Yuh Huh Russia Sure Did Meddle in Our Election, he's being replaced.
...so that's fun.
Oh, and allegedly, more than THIRTY additional Shart House staffers lost their clearances, too, meaning there were more than thirty random dipshits running around looking at America's most closely-guarded secrets. Fucking Omarosa probably knows where every undercover agent on the planet lives. COOL.
The whole damn executive branch seems to fall into two camps these days: under-qualified assclowns sniping at each other like middle school children, and shitty grifters trying to loot as much as they humanly can before the cops show up.
Ben Carson wants all the dirty takers to know that their free ride is over! Americans are sick and tired of seeing their taxpayer dollars wasted on housing for the less fortunate! No sir, we send our hard earned money to Washington to finance our swindler Cabinet Secretaries' luxury redecorating projects!
Seems Dr. Ben demoted a career HUD staffer for daring to suggest he park his royal ass in a chair costing even a penny less than five thousand bucks like some sort of PEASANT, because, as we all know, everything this administration does is driven by raw, unfiltered, populism!
And then there's the now-famous dining set. $31,000 might seem like an awful lot to spend on a table, but trust me, you should see how much grain it stores.
But now Chief Inspector Gowdy Doody, that Redneck Javert, is on the case, investigating Carson's little shopping spree! If he brings the same rigor and integrity to this case as he did to his Benghazi investigation, Ben's office will wind up with a waterfall and a couple of Fabergé eggs.
Cowboy Ryan Zinke has been getting his share, too. It's been a real privilege, paying the Z-Man's swanky hotel bills whenever he's felt like hangin' with his homies in the NRA, but the REAL treat was when he pulled a BLM supervisor out of his day job (which happens to be fighting wildfires) during fire season.
And Scott Pruitt says he's just doing God's will as he eviscerates the EPA, I guess cuz God wants all his children to have asthma and Legionnaires disease.
Just for the record, little man, if you had an omnipotent deity on your side, you wouldn't need a $25,000 soundproof booth in your fucking office so you can hide the fact that you're wanking off to x-rays of children's wrecked lungs from your secretary.
Another grifter, VA Secretary David Shulkin, apparently has his very own chief aides sneaking around behind his back, trying to get Congress to call for his (totally justified) firing. I bet the office parties at the VA are...Pinteresque.
I tell you what, we're about one more unjustified first-class flight away from the entire Cabinet descending into a Lord of the Flies scenario. And yes, Jeff Sessions would be Piggy.*
Hope Hicks testified before the House Intelligence Committee, following in the footsteps of colleagues like Sessions and Steve Bannon in invoking the Not Quite Executive Privilege But We All Know the Collaborating Republican Majority Will Let Us Get Away With Anything defense to avoid actually answering questions.
She did let it slip that her job as Drumpf's communications director entails regularly deceiving the American people. "White lies," she playfully labeled her ongoing campaign of dishonesty and gaslighting. Gotta give props to John Dingell for the simple, brutal, elegance of his retorting Tweet: "Even their lies are white."
Anyhow, Hicks went on to announce her resignation, wearing a custom-made "I Betrayed My Country and All I Got Was Set Up With a Serial Domestic Abuser" t-shirt. She claims she's been thinking about quitting for awhile, and that her boss' epically disastrous week and her own grilling by House Intel had nothing to do with her decision. And maybe there are even two or three people out there who believe her.
(Rumor has it the next communications director is going to be an audiobook of Seb Gorka reading Mein Kampf, so that'll be fun.)
And of course everybody knows Hicks is one of the only people our Idiot Manchild President feels comfortable around, so now we have to wonder how he'll behave without his security blanket. Lord. Like, what if the last two years is what he's like when he's comparatively well-behaved?
Man, things are totally nucking futs here in the U.S. of A., but what the shit is going on with the Drumpf Hotel down in Panama? There's some sort of management dispute between the Trump Organization and the new owners, and it's actually descended, and repeatedly, into physical violence.
...I suppose you have to expect this sort of thing when you give an organized crime family this much political power. Le sigh.
Precious Paul Manafort pleaded "Let's see how much of this shit I can get away with," and his trial is set for September. Yeah, a bunch of fall headlines about the President's campaign being run by a money-launderer should be the maraschino cherry on top of the midterms sundae.
There's actually a quite lot of news out of Muellertown these days. We're already in "What did the President know and when did he know it?" territory regarding the hacking and release of the Podesta/DNC emails. Luckily for the President, there's no video record of him publicly begging Russia to release dirt on his opponent or anything.
...wait.
And the Bobadook is also reportedly sniffing around Shartboy's weaselly attempts to rid himself of that troublesome Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions th'Third!
I bet there's a friendly competition between the Foreign Collusion wing of Mueller's team and the Obstruction of Justice wing. Like, whoever saves the Republic first gets a steak dinner.
Vice President Mike Pants promised a crowd of faux Christians an end to abortion rights "in our time," apparently oblivious to all the American women who will shortly find themselves alone in a voting booth with their intentions to vote his Bad-Guy-in-Pleasantville ass straight back to the 1940's.
Hey, Jews of mid-20th Century Europe! Alaska Republican Don Young wants to know why y'all were so complicit in your own Holocaust-ing? If only you'd had the bloodthirsty maniacs of the National Rifle Associate to turn you into Good Guyz With Gunz, you could've spared yourself a whole buncha grief!
Anyway, Young is the longest-serving member of the House, but doesn't have a high school kid's grasp of world history, because in the 21st century GOP, book-learnin' is ELITIST and therefore bad.
I swear, by 2024, you're gonna see Republican candidates squabbling in debates over who reads less. "I don't even read menus, I just order a cheeseburger wherever I go!"
The President and his Attorney General are bickering, trading passive-aggressive messages through public statements and social media, which is a normal and healthy way to run the world's last remaining superpower.
Littlefinger wants Beauregard to use the Justice Department to attack his political enemies, but Beau insists he will do his job with "integrity and honor." By the way, you know Sessions had a staffer draft that statement, because he would've immediately burst into flames had he made such a blatantly ridiculous claim himself.
And now Bilbo Bigot is dining out with Rowdy Roddy Rosenstein, which political journalists assure me is a big middle finger to the President, and Drumpf calls Jeff "Mr. Magoo" behind his back, because he imagines mean nicknames have the same currency in national politics as they did on the grade school playground.
I dunno. When two of history's biggest jagoffs are fighting, who do you root for? Can't we just lock Trump and Sessions inside a hammer factory and let God figure out the rest?
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio is still trying to pick out the atomic wedgie those Parkland kids gave him at the CNN town hall last week. His approval rating hit an all-time low, so maybe people aren't "buying into his agenda" as much as he likes to think.
Hey, remember back in Season One when Roger Stone testified under oath that he didn't communicate directly with Wikileaks? And Wikileaks insisted that Roger Stone never communicated directly with Wikileaks? Well it turns out Roger Stone communicated directly with Wikileaks.
But I'm sure he's telling the truth about everything else. He's just got a face you can trust, y'know?
At some point in this shitstorm, the Drudge Report took a brave little stab at setting the narrative, announcing that Shartleby the Scrivener had named Brad Parscale as his 2020 campaign manager. It was kinda cute. Then the AP dropped a little tidbit about Parscale's ties to a penny-stock fraudster, and we all moved on to the legitimately crazy stuff.
Let's check in on the state of the gun debate. Why, I'm sure it's balanced and rational, dominated by by sensible ideas designed to respect everyone's rights while simultaneously making people safer. Boring, probably.
...oh, hell.
Ex Republican CongressFuck Jason Chaffetz helpfully offered the advice that what these mouthy Marjory Stoneman kids need isn't gun control, but JESUS. In Jason's Bible, I guess God sent his only son to Earth to tell children to suck it the fuck up, cower behind their bulletproof backpacks, and hope the shooter has a bigger grudge with the kids in the classroom down the hall.
For extra fun, Marjory Stoneman has a large number of Jewish students, just to add a little Evangelical Supremacy to Chaffetz' general shittiness. "Maybe if you picked MY God, you wouldn't have experienced this horrific trauma in the first place, EVER THINK ABOUT THAT, INFIDELS?"
And, because we live in fucking awful times, that shit is somehow not even the nuttiest story on the Firearms/Religious Lunatics axis.
The Alabama Senate passed a measure to deploy the most fearsome anti-shooter measure of all: the TEN COMMANDMENTS! Yup, some old wannabe theocrat named Gerald Dial says his bill (which he's been pushing for years in oddly-non-massacre-preventing contexts) would prevent school shootings by displaying the 10 C's on school property, which would make potential shooters decide to NOT commit mass murder, I guess on the idea that they'd never stopped to consider that killing (and idol-making, while we're at it) is wrong.
Ok, we've got this gun problem figured out! Somebody tell Chris Murphy to pick out a new pet issue!
And we're STILL not at that craziest God n' Gunz story yet.
That honor falls to the blithering maniacs of the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, who laced the holy wine with a famous local meth-n-bath-salts cocktail, put on their CROWNS MADE OF BULLETS and had a big party to bless their assault rifles or some such crazy-ass shit.
Somebody shoulda locked all the doors from the outside. Stop by once a week to toss a couple jars of peanut butter and a fuckton of antipsychotic drugs through the window. Good gravy.
Of course, our actual government's behavior is only marginally less insane. The House decided to pass a new rule where they charge taxpayers for bulletproof vests...for themselves. The rest of us? We're on our own.
Smallhands Magoo, meanwhile, will merrily capitulate to one of the NRA's favorite bullshit diversions, and meet with video game makers, who, I'd like to remind you, do not make products that have ever been used in any mass shooting, or any other kind of shooting. Unlike certain irearm-fay anufacturers-may I could mention.
The Georgia legislature decided to send a big fat Fuck You to Delta Airlines over the high crime of ending their discount program partnership with the NRA. How fucking far gone do you have to be to lash out at one of the largest employers in your state in favor of the death merchant nutjobs who want to turn our public schools into armed compounds?
Having previously lost a fight with Yogurt, Alex Jones is on the brink of losing his YouTube channel, having yet again sicced his dirtbag followers on the grieving survivors of a mass-shooting, because he has a campground outhouse where other people have a soul.
And so he's begging for backup from one of the student activists, David Hogg, who Jones has claimed is a crisis actor involved in a deep state false flag blah blah blah blah who gives a fuck, the POINT is, the kid is just mercilessly dragging this piece of shit all up and down Twitter, and it's glorious to watch.
Boy howdy, the Florida state legislature never met a problem they didn't think they could solve by passing a ridiculous gun law. Yes, the originators of the murder-legalizing "stand your ground" scam are responding to the latest senseless tragedy by passing a $67 million bailout to the gun manufacturing industry, placing firearm-wielding "marshals" in every fucking school in the state, what could go wrong?
I swear, these loons will be holding hearings on repurposing medical research funds before we know it. "Cancer: Has Anybody Tried Shooting It?"
Even as Florida rushed to implement their brilliant plan, another group of children, this time in Georgia, got treated to a traumatizing day full of terror, as one of their teachers discharged a firearm in his classroom. So yeah, let's toss a few hundred thousand MORE guns into our schools. Makes sense.
Didja see that fucking gun meeting? Donnie Dotard loved the fawning obsequiousness the press lavished him with when he held that immigration meeting a few weeks back, and he wanted another hit. So he invited the cameras back to watch him blunder through a discussion on an issue he understands about as well as my cat understands particle physics.
On the one hand, he basically endorsed an Everytown wish list, from expanding background checks to banning bump stocks to raising age restrictions to even considering an assault rifle ban.
On the other, everybody understands our President is a doofus/goon/moron/doorknob/twit/schmuck/idiot who doesn't understand anything about anything, that he'll walk everything back after Wayne LaPierre yells at him for half an hour, and that Congressional Republicans will certainly try to get away with doing as little as possible anyway.
For extra fun, he suggested "Hey, let's just start taking people's guns away, because DUE PROCESS IS FOR CUCKS," which basically makes him the precise cartoon caricature of Obama the lunatic gun fringe always warned against, but somehow he still hasn't shaken the faith of his loyal Rube Army, bless their little hearts.
I guess some clever fellow tried to sneak one past the Nobel Peace Prize people, forging a nomination for everyone's least favorite Halloween Peeps Candy Accident. Gosh, between the horrific increase in civilian casualties from U.S. military operations and the lifetime of sexual assault, it's hard to imagine anyone worthier.
Shit, if anybody deserves the fucking thing, it's whichever Secret Service agent is tasked with tackling Fat Q*Bert whenever he tries to nuke Cleveland because of something LeBron James said. Put that guy on Mount Rushmore.
Steve Mnuchbag stopped by UCLA to give a little talk, but he was booed and heckled (because he's a great big asshole, you see), and Steve got real sad and told UCLA they couldn't release the video but he forgot that cellular telephones exist, and are in fact quite affordable, so there are plenty of videos of The Heckling, which you shouldn't watch unless you want to make your Treasury Secretary sad.
Anti-Semitic incidents saw their largest-ever increase during the first year of the Very Fine People administration, A COINCIDENCE, I'M SURE. Congratulations, Mr. President, you've finally found a metric where you're outpacing Obama. Of course, you've cut funding to the groups that fight this sort of thing, so it's almost like you're encouraging this shit. HASHTAG MAGA.
Getting back to Jared for a moment...Jesus Fuck, this kid's having a Matthew-Broderick-in-ELECTION-style week, isn't he? I assume at this point, he's just stumbling around the White House lawn, stepping on rake after rake after rake.
But yeah, now he's been caught giving White House meetings, even offering powerful government jobs, to people who gave his shitty criminal family nine-figure loans. Golly, I wonder when he even found time to work on that whole Middle East thing.
Anyhoo.
Turns out our beloved First Lady, she of the anti-bullying campaign that has thus far failed to extend to even to the other side of the bed, got her green card through a program designed for the truly elite, folks with "sustained national and international acclaim," known as the "Einstein visa." It appears she qualified because of some swimsuit photos. I have questions.
Hey, remember that Putin guy? The one the American President won't enforce congressionally-mandated sanctions on? Well, he had some fun today, talking up his new Mega-Rad Invincible Unblockable SuperNukez (We're all very impressed, Vlad) in a presentation highlighted by a VIDEO OF A NUCLEAR MISSILE STRIKE ON FLORIDA.
Hit him right in the golf resort. Stone cold.
...I just want my President to be harder on a dude who pulls shit like that than he is on Jemele Hill, is that really so fucking much to ask?
Our Ambassador to Mexico is stepping down, probably because she's tired of starting out every meeting by wearily repeating, "My boss wants me to ask if you've changed your mind about paying for a 20 billion dollar barrier between our counties?"
I'm sure her replacement will be some basement-dwelling redditor from Stephen Miller's Overwatch team.
And now we discover that Devin "Pigfucker" Nunes and his merry band of collaborators on the House Intelligence Committee leaked some of Senator Mark Warner's texts in a frantic bid to discredit Warner, who is, unlike Devin and Co., actually trying to protect his country from a foreign attack.
Given this administration's well-publicized anti-leak stance, I'm sure they'll call for Devin's resignation, because they are nothing if not ethically consistent. I typed that with a totally straight face. Really I did.
Inside the Shart House, I guess the wheels finally came off the wagon with the Hicks resignation. People are swinging from chandeliers, barricades have sprung up in the hallways, and the Kelly faction and the Javanka faction are in the early stages of developing their own culturally unique code languages and war paint.
Staffers are desperately seeking work elsewhere, but it turns out "low-level accessory to emoluments violations and treason" isn't an enticing resume-topper.
To these poor enablers, I want to extend all the appropriate sympathy, which is FUCKING NO SYMPATHY AT ALL, YOU COLLABORATING FUCKS. You knew what you were getting into. You saw the hate rallies. You heard the Access Hollywood tape. You signed up anyway. You made your choice. Wear it, like a Scarlet Letter, painted in fecal matter on your fucking forehead, for the remainder of your shitty, misbegotten lives.
President Poostain himself, unmoored, unhinged, desperate to change the subject and rack up some sort of "win," blundered out on television, where, safe from his killjoy advisors, he finally announced the opening salvo in his long-desired trade war.
And, WONDER OF WONDERS, all the bad things everybody told him would happen if he did such a dumbfuck thing...happened! Almost immediately! The stock market plummeted. Members of his own party tripped over one another to go on TV to shit on him. And of course, the entire world, including allies like Canada and the E.U., threatened retaliation.
But Donnie Dotard doesn't care. He has visions of steel mills popping up like dandelions clouding his vision. "They'll love me then, you'll see, Dad! They'll finally all fill in the cavernous emptiness that's existed in my soul since you sent me to military school, DAD!"
Smarter folks than I have pointed out that maybe starting a trade war with China right when you need their help reining in North Korea is kind of thing only a Great Big Fucking Dope would do. Well, thanks to the electoral college, a Great Big Fucking Dope is exactly who gets to make these decisions. YAY.
Ok, there absolutely can't POSSIBLY be anyth- WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? No, Utah House of Representatives, I do not have time for your White Folks Rapping video. Fuck you. TODAY IS NOT THE DAY FOR THIS SHIT.
While we're on Utah, it seems Orrin Hatch has given up on the whole "pretending to respect his constituents" thing now that his days of facing voters are behind him. If you're one of those types who likes Obamacare, perhaps because it gave you health insurance or even life-saving treatment, Old Man Hatch wants you know what a big doodoobrained "dumbass" you are.
What's great, Utah, is that he's ALWAYS held common people in this much contempt, but you just kept sending him back to Washington anyway. I'm sure Mitt Romney will give you the same treatment, fucking you over with an big empty smile on his face.
Affable HateYokel Mike Huckabee got booted from the Country Music Association Foundation board after just one day, because he's a despicable bigot who has no place in decent society, and godDAMN it's nice to see people finally treating him like one.
I'm TRYING to get to the end of this goddamn post, I really am, but news just keeps breaking...
Now NBC says the Mueller investigation is preparing a fresh batch of charges for the group of Russians responsible for hacking and distributing the DNC/Podesta emails. And there was a great changing of underpants amongst the President's inner circle.
That Mueller guy's all over EVERYTHING, isn't he? I'm paying off my library fines, just in case.
And now Princess Ivanka finally has an FBI investigation of her very own! That won't upset her daddy at all! Why, after the low-key week he's having, I'm sure he'll take this news in stride and not do anything insane like declare war on Finland.
...I'm too old to be drafted, right?
I see Former Drumpf Campaign Official/Celebrity Stool Pigeon Rick Gates had to cancel a planned family spring break excursion to Boston because of threats from the Russian Mafia. That's a tough break, you cheap traitor, but hey, I bet you can parlay it into the next screenplay in the National Lampoon's Vacation series! SILVER LININGS!
Ok...fucking hell. I think that's all of it. Or most of it. I'm sure that, at the very moment I'm typing this, Steve Bannon is getting arrested for sacrificing a goat in a ceremony designed to summon an Elder God or something, but I no longer care. This ruined world can have its relentless, unforgiving news cycle. I'mma watch old Duck Tales cartoons until sleep, blessed sleep, wraps me in her news-obliterating embrace. Fuck this shit.
PS, yeah, just when I'm at the end of my rope, NPR drops a story on the NRA's ties with a Putin-connected Russian politician. Tell you what, YOU read the fucking thing, tell me all about it in the morning.
*And yes, that means Devin Nunes would try to fuck him.
= new reply since forum marked as read
You rock, Ferret!
thank you and don't. It's crazy making. and manana could top this. 
the Ferret.
I remain sane.. so far
Thanks for taking the hit, Ferret
left of his poor overworked fertile hyperactive brilliant mind, but he’ll hang tough and come see us tomorrow night...which is now.
I shall read this in a while or for breakfast, but as ever, THANK YOU in advance, FOR REAL!!!!!!!!
Going in to try to finish this off, but I might not make it.
Thank you for pulling together just how nutty it is, while making us laugh at the same time.
Writing a book?
outside of the period of time surrounding 9/11?
Clinton years (when there wasn't some manufactured right-wing "Clinton scandal" anyway)? Bush I years? News seemed almost boring by comparison back during those halcyon days.
I feel liked we've lived four years in just the past year. I think we need to start redefining units of time in terms of "Trump Time".
