Saturday Stuff

Like many of you I’m sure, I was raised by parents who lived through the Depression and World War II (I hesitate to say it was “the Greatest Generation” not because I didn’t love my parents, but because that term had a lot to do with marketing and branding by Tom Brokaw for his book, and my father thought Brokaw was full of crap)...I’m mentioning that only to add that I’m glad that they weren’t around to see that disgusting Oval Office spectacle yesterday with President Zelenskyy...we know that #47 is an insane lying narcissist (and nice job to screw up the year of hostilities between Ukraine and Vlad The Butcher, with the latter annexing Crimea...it was 2014, you putz!...more here), but my God, does “Couch Boy” ever come off here as someone waaay out of his depth...and God almighty, Combover Caligula is doing the “accordion hands” thing again and lying about former President Biden in response to a question about Russia breaking a cease fire agreement with Ukraine...and yeah, what a “Democrat scam”...suuure...every time I think there’s no possible way I could despise Our Treasonous Orange Pestilence any more than I do, he always seems to plummet to lower depths somehow...I actually agree with this impaired orange asshat when he says at about 13:07 that “we’ve seen enough” (and let’s not forget how devastating this gaffe was also)...I’m glad Ben Meiselas of the Meidas Touch Network also included the clip of Justin Trudeau so we can see how a legitimate leader of an industrialized nation actually behaves on this issue (I often click or swipe off anything having to do with Cantaloupe Capone, but I forced myself to watch the entire excruciating 16 minutes of this...and yeah, I’m sure this will make “good television” for Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and every other autocrat out there)...



Update: Uh, yep.

...and Brian Tyler Cohen gives us a sampling of how global leaders reacted to yesterday’s horror show...my stomach absolutely sank watching that clip from the German prime minister at about 5:08 saying they need to establish independence from the US, though I don’t blame the man one bit for reacting the way he did to what happened...



...and here is some overseas reporting form Sky News...I’m presenting this for the dumbfounded take from people no doubt wondering exactly what the f*ck is going on with our demented toddler-king...



...and Belle focuses on Zelenskyy and Mango Mussolini and comments about World War III...GREAT point about China now wondering if they have an opening against Taiwan, unfortunately (echoing the Cohen clip a bit), as well as noting that Trump probably doesn’t know, as Belle says, that HE is in the poker game also (though God only knows what passes for thought processes with this truly sick individual...and yeah, I’m sure all of this will do wonders for recruitment also - #sarcasm)...



...and yeah, I think this man is all of us at this point (and I wonder if @JamesCarville still thinks we should "do nothing")...

This gentleman is spot-fucking-on. 🎯🎯🎯👇 pic.twitter.com/9yApHGycbl

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) March 1, 2025

...and there are a few musical numbers that come to mind for yours truly at a time like this, but I think this selection is apropos - hope you agree.



Update 3/2/25: Well done.

Friday Stuff

Once more, The Lincoln Project shows a spine that the national Democratic Party refuses to demonstrate (as far as I’m concerned, the latest example from Kaine, Hassan and Hickenlooper in the Senate is here...confirm absolutely no one from this criminal regime until King Elon I ends this DOGE insanity, but not before putting right everything and his flunkies have destroyed)...



...and Brian Tyler Cohen and Marc Elias discuss Repugs in the House being encouraged to hold “tele” town halls as opposed to facing their constituents in person (since those protesting must be “crisis actors” or something, according to the RNC), taking a page from the book used spinelessly by Bri-Fi among others, who refuses to hold in-person town halls to this day (and of course, Bri-Fi’s numbskull supporters continue to reward this behavior by sending him back to Washington every 2 years...glad to see Bri-Fi himself getting a dig here)...and as far as I’m concerned, it’s typical con man/crook behavior for Mango Mussolini to say, “Oh, don’t blame ME for cuts to Medicare/Medicaid; it’s really the fault of Congress,” kind of like a CEO who gets named chairman of the board, hires someone to take his place as CEO and then says, “Don’t blame ME for the layoffs – I hired somebody ELSE to run my company even though I still call the shots behind the scenes”...and in response to Elias’s question as to whether or not Repugs in Congress are playing dumb or really are that dumb, I would respond by saying that there are so many millionaires in the House and the Senate that they likely REALLY ARE that out of touch...



...and Kyle Kulinkski tells us about mass resignations from King Elon’s DOGE staff; looks like 20 legit data scientists said “F this” after they got harassed by these Musk fan boy punks...additionally, the Ketamine addict apparently sent an Email to government agencies saying “give me 5 bullet points of what you did – if you don’t, that’s your resignation” and people rightly flipped out...shocked that Kash Patel didn’t give in, which is a fluke as far as I’m concerned...and by the way, Elmo, “Old Twitter” had a hell of a lot more value than that trash fire you’ve turned it into (and now #47 and his sycophants are acting like “Elon Musk? Head of DOGE? Never heard of him – it’s really this nondescript woman manager no one has ever heard of who’s on vacation in Mexico.”) – I’d say that we’re being run by an administration out of a Seinfeld episode, but that’s probably being too kind...and altering records from Biden showing #46 wanted to purchase about $483K in Tesla vehicles, then backdating the records to make it look like Biden really wanted to spend $400 million instead? Lock their asses up! (NSFW/H)...



...and Chris Hayes informs us that, apparently, Uday Trump’s hunting buddy will be the new food regulator at the FDA...and apparently, this character has made a name for himself litigating against food safety regulation (Hayes speaks with Adam Serwer about this “Great Re-segregation,” which I think is an apt term, and also the forcing out of General C.Q. Brown of the Joint Chiefs and Admiral Lisa Franchetti)...I’m not exactly sure why Hayes is pivoting here to Woodrow Wilson from over a hundred years ago; yes, Wilson fell down on race a bit, though he did speak out against lynching (albeit a bit late) – I think Wilson evolved on that issue a bit, but not a lot I realize...good point by Serwer about how the federal government used to provide a ladder of sorts when It came to mobility for minorities because of on-the-job anti-discrimination protections (oh, but now, "That's DEI, so it's baaaaad!!!"...removing my tongue from my cheek)...



...and Tennessee Brando finds some fresh new Repug hell over this MAGA state senator named Shane Jett who spoke out against a bill that banned physical punishment against disabled kids (and quoted from the Bible, because of course...here)...kind of astonishing that that ban needed to be codified into law in the first place, but then again, we’re talking about Oklahoma here, folks...and kudos to Brando for shooting down that nonsense about kids identifying as cats and needing littler boxes, a story pushed by Rojo The Clown among others (NSFW/H also)...



...and here’s a great newer rockin’ number to lead us into the weekend...and once more, don’t forget that today is boycott day.



Update: For reasons that are too long and boring to get into, I know that a lot of stuff I post here is a little “behind the curve,” but I still try to keep content at this site as current as I can. That being said, I know about the train wreck today with Bronzer Beelzebub, Couch Boy and President Zelenskyy for what it’s worth. I don’t have much to add at the moment, but I can assure you that I will adress that soon.

Thursday Stuff

Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report tells us about former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe speaking out against MAGA at a Huntington Beach, CA city council meeting (and that takes guts if for no other reason because that’s a Repug-leaning district)...it’s pretty freaking incredible to me that there’s actually a Project 2025 tracker so we can see our government getting dismantled in real time (and again, I wonder where the hell the “D team” is on all of this)...and we’re presented once more with the clip of that puke Kevin Roberts of The Heritage Foundation again saying all of this will remain “bloodless” if we knuckle under and comply...I’d also forgotten about that garbage SAVE Act from that troglodyte Chip Roy of Texas, which indeed would remove voting rights for “cis” married women, as well as queer and trans people of course as Figueredo says...what country am I living in again?...clip also discusses the ways that Our Ochre Abomination is basically thumbing his nose at court orders, along with that nutball judge trying to pave the way for another ruinous Trump term beyond this one...by the way, and I know this isn’t the main point here, but Kluwe is a “cis” married male with two kids – just an FYI, and sorry that it took me a few days to get to this (NSFW/H)...



...and kudos to Dem U.S. House Rep Becca Balint of the great state of Vermont for speaking truth to stoo-pidity here on the ridiculous (to say nothing of cruel) budget just passed by the U.S. House of Mango Mussolini and “MAGA Mike” Johnson (and voted for by Bri-Fi, our utter joke of a PA-01 U.S. House rep)...



...and David Shuster brings us more on that utterly awful Repug budget that just passed the House, which includes $2 trillion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps (oh, but Bri-Fi says, “You silly lib! We didn’t spell out those programs!,” which makes me ask this question: HOW DUMB DO YOU THINK WE ARE??!!)...this is EXACTLY the kind of garbage I and many, MANY others were trying to warn people about last year...oh, but watch our glorious Beltway courtier media twist itself into knots covering the atmospherics or whatever of the “arm twisting” and all of the perception BS WHILE IGNORING THE ACTUAL SUBSTANCE OF THE FREAKING BILL!!! And the “news” isn’t that Joe Kernan is defending the “pay no price, bear no burden” bunch; the “news” would be if he didn’t – no disrespect to Shuster (and I wish Khanna would have pushed back by quoting Warren Buffett saying he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary in terms of what rich people actually pay FOR REAL in taxes - more here - but at least Khanna did something in response)...and nothing against Erin Burnett of CNN, but why the hell that network gives the time of day to a wingnut like Erick (“Son Of Erick”) Erickson...oh, never mind...and I’m actually glad Shuster showed that clip with Fitzgerald and Grothman of Wisconsin again; that should be hung around both of their necks for the rest of their lives...



(Also, speaking of our wet noodle PA-01 rep, I’m hearing unofficially that people are calling his office and making respectful inquiries about what the #@!! exactly is going on, and Bri-Fi’s staffers are hanging up on them...figures.)

..and this TikTok clip comes courtesy of Bill Madden on Xitter; I had said in the past that Bronzer Beelzebub and our “ally” “Bibi” want to do the genocide thing in Gaza, pave it over and build luxury hi-rise hotels or condos or something, but my God, I was hoping that was just an exaggeration...this promo for “Trump Gaza” (yes, you read that right) actually appeared on Truth Septic...

To the fucking idiots who refused to vote for Kamala Harris because of Gaza — we told you what would happen, but you didn't listen. Trump actually posted this. 😡😡😡👇 pic.twitter.com/ShESjbAmDl

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) February 26, 2025

...and in response, I have only this to say...

(By the way, something in the back of my mind is pinging a bit over this – I’m sure #47 promised “Bibi” something, and I just pray to God that it wasn’t an attack on Iran, but knowing our outlaw regime in charge I wouldn’t put that past them.)

...and RIP screen icon Gene Hackman...I know I should reserve judgment on this stuff, but it sounds an awful lot like a suicide took place, though it could be accidental asphyxiation also (God, even the dog died...so many terrific clips from Hackman’s career to choose from, but I settled on this from “Mississippi Burning”...NSFW/H but for a good reason)...



...and apparently, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Rhiannon Giddens cancelled an appearance at the Kennedy Center and rescheduled her performance elsewhere based on you-know-who’s takeover of the institution named after our 35th president...nice work to set an example more should follow.



Update: And one more thing...

Wednesday Stuff

(Note to those pinheads in charge of the network that once fired Phil Donahue for protesting the Iraq war – I SERIOUSLY hope you don’t think this “bend the knee” gesture to our fascist ruling regime will cause me to watch you more than I do already.)

David Doel brings us this video of Rachel Maddow commendably speaking out against MSNBC letting Joy Reid go and reassigning Katie Phang and the other correspondents...and yeah, if Michael Steele is a “lefty,” then I’m a Chinese aviator; my understanding is that Symone Sanders-Townsend and Alicia Menendez are basically middle of the road, which I’m sure is exactly what MSNBC management wants...and I’ll admit I don’t follow the machinations and gamesmanship of the TV biz like others do because I think more important stuff is going on, but yeah, I can definitely see the argument that Joy Reid’s stance on Gaza could have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back (and I applaud Reid for that, by the way, as well as the others at MSNBC who opined in similar fashion...I had a big issue with Reid over the whole “Bernie Sanders body language expert” thing, but other than that, I thought she was spot-on and certainly didn’t deserve this treatment...and I wonder how many of these fine folks whose careers are now in limbo will end up leaving ultimately; I hope that doesn’t happen, but we’ll see)...



Update: And meanwhile, I'm sure right-wing "influencers" online will have no trouble getting funded by Trump-loving sugar daddies (here).

...and Brian Tyler Cohen brigs us a clip of this numbskull U.S. House Rep Mark Alford of Missouri apparently trying to turn up the volume on his microphone to drown out people protesting his nonsensical answers about King Elon I at a recent town hall, but sadly for Alford, it didn’t work (clip shows the Fitzgerald and Grothman clips again with crowds rightly turning on them, which is fine with me...NSFW/H)...



...and Thom Hartmann gives us a disturbing but important history lesson on the Reichstag fire and how Vlad The Butcher did something similar to re-absorb Chechnya, which was a sovereign nation (gassing a theater – yep, that’s about par for the course for our former “ally”)...and Thom is spot-on in the matter of Dems needing to be prepared if, God forbid, this country suffers another catastrophic attack as we did on 9/11, but I don’t have a lot of faith in that seeing that the Dems weren’t even prepared for Project 2025, and they had at least a year and a half to read about it and figure out how to respond...additionally, I didn’t know about Cantaloupe Capone shutting down our NATO base in Greece, which also helps Vlad The Butcher...par for the sorry course, as it were (Thom needs to work on the quality of his videos since they’re still pretty choppy)...



...and I give Brittany Page so much credit for this video; our alleged fourth estate geniuses should do more stuff like this (regarding the clip with Jim McGovern that I’ll note shortly)...first, she tells us that it looks like Repugs are coming after Medicaid to pay for their stinking tax cuts (with the bill that just passed the House with all Repugs voting for it except Thomas Massie of Kentucky for some reason), with the Gropenfuhrer leading the way as per usual, despite the nonsense that he blathered to Sean Inanity...and then, kudos to McGovern for introducing his amendments not to give tax breaks to anyone making more than #$1 million, or even $100 million; every Dem on McGovern’s committee voted Aye and every Repug voted Nay, so the measure failed (and the same for Repugs in favor of tax breaks for about the 748 billionaires int his country, just for that extra special “FU” to the residents of those 9 “R” congressional districts allegedly represented by those individuals on that committee...and yeah, I don’t want to imagine how devoid of conscience you have to be to oppose protecting the child tax credit, which is already too damn small in this country...but we love the children so much, don’t we?)...



Update: There’s still time to try and push back against this garbage budget and its ruinous impact on people’s health care, and again, for the sake of tax cuts for people who we already shower with money in this country and who definitely DON’T NEED more of our hard-earned income (and for PA-01 folks, Bri-Fi is on this list).

...and Robert Reich basically says that Dems need to grow a freaking spine...how true (and FORGET ONCE AND FOR ALL about moving to this mythical “center” that is the stuff of free candy canes, unicorns and bubble gum clouds, as it were)...



...and it’s been awhile I guess since I included a newer tune dealing with twenty-something romantic angst, so I might as well add this and give a brief respite from some of the “moldy oldies” I usually put up in this space.

Tuesday Stuff

Lawrence O’Donnell tells us that our supposedly august corporate media has to find a way to keep up with the laws broken by the Gropenfuhrer (who of course has proclaimed himself king...somehow I think there are a lot more laws broken than 22)...and yeah, “Crazy Eyes” Kash Patel is going to hasten the lawlessness of this wretched administration every way possible...and I have to admit that I didn’t have “Thom Tillis Shows A Spine” in response to Vlad The Butcher and Ukraine on my Bingo card, but credit where it’s due...



...and David Shuster of Rebel HQ tells us that it looks like Bronzer Beelzebub is doing his best to completely tank the stock market, and he’ll try to blame Biden for this in 3,2,1...as Rachel Maddow says, in terms of polling, no *president has ever started off a term this poorly (and of course, Our Ochre Abomination goes to CPAC and prattles on about Maddow – what an utter coward this guy is)...I wish Shuster would stop playing that clip of that idiot Jonah Goldberg saying that USAID doesn’t “touch” the lives of Americans; once more, try running that line past our Kansas farmers...



...and under the heading of reckless and utterly ridiculous abuse of taxpayer dollars, Jesse Dollemore tells us that #47 was able to get Homeland Security Secretary Kristi (“Unsafe At Any Speed”) Noem to spend $200 million to thank Our Ochre Abomination for “closing the border”...yep, banana pants time indeed, you might say (mildly NSFW/H)...



...and apparently, Our Treasonous Orange Pestilence just wants blue states to “disappear”? For all of the reasons David Pakman notes in this video, that would be catastrophically destructive to this country (but of course, the person uttering these words about blue states may be the most intellectually lazy human being we’ve ever seen...definitely not referring to Pakman)...



...and according to what Tennessee Brando is telling us, it looks like politicians in the “party of Lincoln” are having to face the music for the incredible abuses of President Musk and his orange sidekick...it’s a shame that this is what it took for people to wake up, but we are where we are of course (first clip is Scott Fitzgerald and the second one is Glenn Grothman...both are U.S. House Repugs from Wisconsin)...next clip is this Rich McCormick person in Georgia – yeah, so he pivots right to “but Biden was just as bad”...and comparing your constituents to the 1/6 insurrectionists? Wow, this McCormick guy is a real MENSA candidate, isn’t he? (NSFW/H)...



...and RIP Roberta Flack.

Monday Stuff

I know I discussed the departure of Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao from the U.S. Senate a couple of days ago, but I didn’t mention the episode noted by Rachel Maddow here, namely, about how Russia first sought to undermine our influence domestically and around the world, and I think it’s safe to say that their efforts have been successful, tragically...Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao shows up at about 8:08; clip argues that we needed a “bipartisan punch back” against Russian interference in our elections, but that death eater from Kentucky said “naaah”...and oh yeah, McConnell also blocked two bipartisan election security bills in response to Russia’s threat...Maddow’s segment also mentions Putin pal Oleg Deripaska and his connection to (senior Trump advisor at the time) Paul Manafort...and oh yeah, under the heading of “quid pro quo,” we found out about a Russian company linked to Deripaska that made a, shall we say, strategic investment in Kentucky at the time the sanctions against Russia were due to be passed, leading to McConnell forcing the sanctions against Deripaska’s firm to be cancelled (and a very interesting update from ’21 is here...clip ends at about 29:39 and loops into another one)...

...and Jen Psaki speaks with MSNBC Pentagon reporter Courtney Kube about the firing of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Gen. Charles Q. Brown) because he’s black (I don’t feel like dancing around this subject anymore – we have a *presidential administration of racists...period, full stop), along with two other women in senior management positions at the Navy and the Coase Guard respectively as well as a general who promoted DEI, which of course is the black spot of career death as far as Trumpers are concerned (let’s see...“unit cohesion” – might be something this accursed administration should look into)...



...and speaking of our wretched SecDef (who rubber stamped the moves noted in the prior video), Farron Cousins informs us that Pete Hegseth owes $33K in back taxes...sweet! – and I definitely agree with Cousins that the whole “witch hunt” metaphor falls apart if you actually find something, which appears to have happened in this case...Cousins is also right when he says that an audit is a bit of a multi-layered process and it doesn’t just turn out without warning that you owe a ton of dough to the taxman (and yeah, it’s not like Hegseth doesn’t have the scratch to pay it either...yeah, just be a WATB instead, huh?)...



...and concerning Hegseth’s boss, Jonathan Pie gives Bronzer Beelzebub the shellacking he deserves over #47’s utter betrayal of Ukraine...and of course, our utterly gutless PA-01 U.S. House Rep Bri-Fi found a way to criticize Our Ochre Abomination without mentioning his name (clip is incredibly NSFW/H but appropriate IMO...we think politics is “rough and tumble” on our shores; we’ve got nothing on the Brits when it comes to that stuff, folks)...



...and this video from The Lincoln Project lets us know that Republican senators in “the world’s greatest deliberative body” (spare me) continue to follow the example of their utterly awful former “leader” from Kentucky in completely ignoring the health care needs of families and kids in their confirmation of “brain worms” RFK Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services...of course, if we had an opposition party in this country that, collectively, could find its own metaphorical butt with multiple sets of hands, THEY would have created an ad like this when it might have mattered (and yes, the odds were long against preventing confirmation, I know)...



...and RIP Jerry ("Iceman") Butler...the following hit from Butler was recorded at Philly's Sigma Sound Studios.