Friday Stuff

Yasmin Khan of Rebel HQ tells us that Pumpkin Pol Pot has been ranting against windmills again, and as Khan says, this goes back once more to his hissy fit over windmills on Spray-Tan Satan’s golf course in Scotland...and yes, this also ties into his boneheaded attacks on the U.K. and drilling in the North Sea because EVERY DAMN THING HE DOES is transactional somehow; he can’t do anything to drive up the price of renewable energy, which is why he hates it so damn much (among other reasons I know), but he CAN drive up the price of dirty energy for sure...



..and Jesse Dollemore lets us know that Combover Caligula sent his DOJ goon Todd Blanche after the Southern Poverty Law Center, and if anybody out there somehow disagrees with Jesse’s assessment that the Repug Party is racist to its core (and moves like this show that), then you must also believe in cotton candy ponies and Jesus riding the dinosaurs (and I respectfully disagree with Jesse on Graham Platner, but I understand Jesse’s principled opposition – I think Platner made a dumb, youthful mistake, but I don’t think getting a Nazi tattoo then represents the type of person he is now, and Platner got rid of the tattoo)...and I would comment on the merits of the indictment against the SPLC if there WERE any merits in the indictment...and I would LOVE to know the racial and gender makeup of the grand jury that returned this indictment in Alabama, the state that sent that lummox Tommy Tuberville to the U.S. Senate (and MAY elect him as governor)...interesting background from Jesse about his time serving on a grand jury...



...and Thom Hartmann brings us the sorry tale of Texas and other southern states forcing public schools to post the Ten Commandments (here), according to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Appeals Court, destroying a SCOTUS precedent from 1980 (trying to extinguish the memory of Madalyn Murray O’Hair once and for all)...I didn’t know SecDef Kegseth was trashing Catholics, but that’s in line with the general behavior of our ruling regime of grifters and frauds...this also is the first I’ve heard of Cantaloupe Capone blowing up the Afghan resettlement program and dumping everyone in the Congo, but that figures also – yeah, good luck expecting anyone living in conflict areas to actually assist our military or diplomats ever again...and family members of our U.S. service members too??!! Including 400 kids??!!...



...and the Logical Leftist Jeff Waldorf gives us more details on PA’s U.S. Senator John Fetterman voting with Repugs to defeat a Senate war powers resolution requiring the Gropenfuhrer to seek congressional approval before conducting military operations against Iran (didn’t know the resolution had been introduced four times, with Fetterman opposing each time)...oh, and Fetterman also went on Fox Business to call the Dems’ response on the war “very disappointing”...oh, and OF COURSE there are now parallels between Fetterman and “Curtsy Kyrsten” Sinema, and except for Joe Manchin, I can’t think of a lower insult to hurl against a Senate Dem...I also knew that Conor Lamb has all but declared to primary Fetterman, but I didn’t know that Susan Wild may end up in that mix also...



...and I guess we couldn’t truly plummet to absurd new depths this week without this story about Alan Dershowitz; Kyle Kulinski informs us that “Dersh” has officially joined the “R” team...wonder what took him so long? Gee, I guess this means nobody on the Vineyard will sell him pierogies any more for certain...as Kyle sez, Dershowitz was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers...and given that Dershowitz actually wrote a column alleging that the age of consent laws are supposedly too HIGH, well, I would call that more than a bit of a “tell”...don’t let the door hit you, buddy (NSFW/H)...



...and Stephen Colbert of The Late Show lets us know that Don The Con will be attending the “nerd prom” tomorrow...apparently he’s going to hang around the WHCD just to give another hissy fit, make another speech full of lies and then leave like the petulant man-baby he truly is...not usually a cheerleader for the Murdoch Street Journal, but glad to see they’re going to get some kind of special mentions for the story about our *preznit’s “pube doodle” and that pic of him standing like a wooden Indian while somebody had a seizure in the Oval...and regarding the war with Iran, it sounds like each side is trying to close the Strait of Hormuz; I mean, that’s if you ACTUALLY BELIEVE the BS from our ruling regime, which I definitely don’t (this mess would be amusing if it weren’t for the fact that our military and other innocent lives are involved...and “shoot and kill any boat” – are there ANY ACTUAL ADULTS in this administration?)...and why the hell are we bailing out Spirit Airlines anyway?...also, I tried to avoid the story about Bobby Brainworms slicing off a dead raccoon’s penis, but sadly I was unable to do that...and oh yeah, “I’ve never been anti-vax,” huh? And I’ve never been a Caucasian either (#facepalm)...and “coked-out salmon” too? (and nice Biden bit as well)...



...and I know I mentioned what would have been Glen Campbell’s recent 90th birthday, and yesterday was the same milestone for Roy Orbison (I think the guitarist performing the solo was James Burton)...



...and RIP Dave Mason, who had great music careers with Traffic and as a solo artist.

Wednesday Stuff

I know Tax Day was a week ago, but Leeja Miller provides what I would still call a timely update...88 of the largest corps in the US paid an effective tax rate of 0…average tax rate in the country for everyone else is 14.5%...one of those companes is Live Nation Entertainment, so I would ask that you remember that the next time you get price gouged if you want to buy tickets for a show at the WTF/Xfinity place (I guess that’s what it’s called now) or the Mann Music Center in these parts…probably comes as no shock whatsoever that the Feds now have zero interest in antitrust enforcement, so some states are continuing the fight…and in News For Plutocrats, it looks like David Ellison is hosting a dinner in honor of Combover Caligula while Ellison just happens to be awaiting news on a merger with Warner/Discovery – how con-vee-nient…didn’t know the top oil and gas companies are planning to make $234 bil over #47’s illegal war of choice…hard to control my gag reflex when I read those numbers from the Working Families Party…and BTW, the notion of a horribly regressive “flat tax” continues to be an utterly awful idea for the reasons Miller mentions…GREAT tax rate discussion about the person making $663K a year vs the person making $50K…and yes, the top-end tax rate under Eisenhower/Kennedy was indeed about 90 percent…important info on the tax resistance movement at about 13:40…also, important historical info on Henry David Thoreau’s tax resistance and how that spurred on non-violent protest in this country…interesting info as well on legal and non-legal tax resistance (NSFW/H)...



...and Brian Tyler Cohen discusses a Murdoch Street Journal report in which we learn that the team for Our Treasonous Orange Pustule kept him away from the Situation Room during the rescue of one of our airmen in Iran because “they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful”...and no, as we learn, this episode wasn’t a “one-off” by any means...also included is a clip of shrieking harpie Maria Bartiromo asking Cheetoh Hitler if he wants to take back his lunatic remark that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” and OF COURSE he says NFW – and for more dark comedy, along comes Couch Boy to try and clean up this latest presidential mess, and Trumpette spokes-liar Karoline Leavitt also ignores the question from the NBC reporter to try and puff up her boss once more (who indeed is guilty of advocating for war crimes against Iran, meaning Spray-Tan Satan of course)...



...well, for a bit of good news, last night Virginia voters decided to redistrict their voting maps in a way that favors Dems, and for anybody who says, “Hey! That party is playing the same lowdown game as the ‘R’ Party!”, my response is “Damn right we are”...the one dark cloud is that this vote may get overturned by the Virginia supreme court, but hopefully not – we’ll see (and I don’t often turn to Steve Kornacki, but I will for now)...I know I didn’t pay attention to this contest over the last few months – apologies – but fortunately, it didn’t matter in the vote outcome...



...and Michael Kosta of The Daily Show gives us another episode of “The Worst Wing”...looks like Crazy Eyes Kash Patel is re-enacting his own version of “The Lost Weekend,” only it’s ongoing in his case, along with a lawsuit against The Atlantic of a quarter bil for reporting the truth...and a frequent guest of “The Poodle Room,” at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Las Vegas, huh? And on the taxpayer dime of course (kind of picturing Al Pacino in “Scarface” with his head buried in a pile of coke)...oh, and you were locked out on your workstation? I guess it didn’t occur to Patel to call tech support...and gee, it looks like we barely knew DOL Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer; I wish we could say that about the rest of the motley Trumpist regime...I guess she was trying to beat a retreat, you might say, over multiple scandals and investigations; apparently, she was drinking on the job also, though considering who her boss was, I can’t totally blame her (good joke in particular from Kosta about going through workplace harassment training here)...and I can’t believe Chavez-Deremer’s husband was accused of sexual harassment at his wife’s workplace (this confirms my suspicion that any members of this administration have to take an IQ test, and if they pass, they’re disqualified...and that apparently goes for her dad also)...with Ronny Chieng...



...and today would have been the 90th birthday of Glen Campbell...



...and Happy Earth Day, everyone (for a few more hours anyway).

Tuesday Stuff

Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report discusses U.S. allies watching in confusion as America self-immolates...yes, I know The Guardian is a center-left publication for sure (or maybe more left than that), but I have a hard time disagreeing with what Rebecca Solnit has to say...I think it’s irrefutable that #47 is a Russian operative since every damn thing that he ever does helps Putin, among other dictators...as Figueredo says, there’s a difference between what you could call the typical lies of a politician versus the outright hallucinations of the Tangerine Toddler (if this were an earlier era, I would expect Rod Serling to appear from a background and tell us that we were all in The Twilight Zone, but tragically, this is reality)...and that goes for Trumpette spokes-liar Karoline Leavitt also...and I’ll tell you what; I would suggest not listening to that fathead U.S. Senator Roger Marshall when it comes to Cantaloupe Capone vs. Biden on prices and would look to this instead, which looks like a wash overall at best for Dementia Donnie...and I don’t know who these people are who are getting a $1K-$1,500 rebate, but if you find anybody who qualifies, please let me know...and I have a feeling that I’ll be repeating this for-ev-ah, but BRONER BEELZEBUB WALKED AWAY FROM THE IRANIAN NUKE DEAL UNDER OBAMA, WHICH HAS A LOT TO DO WITH WHY WE’RE IN THIS MESS...I didn’t know that five doctors wrote to Congress and told those in charge to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS NUTBALL!!...”The monkeys have taken over the zoo” sounds about right (and leave it to “Dr. Crudité” to let his boss off the hook over that beyond ridiculous “diet soda cures cancer” claim)...and damn right that the bipedal life forms who decided to give this pudding-brained buffoon another term in An Oval Office share culpability with this mess...and when it comes to Cheetoh Hitler and exporting energy (in response to Tim Scott), I would ask that you take a look at this (NSFW/H)...



...and continuing the theme of global instability caused by #47, Belle of the Ranch tells us about Canadian PM Mark Carney calling U.S. ties a “weakness”...Carney isn’t wrong about Mango Mussolini’s stinking tariffs and the last time they were raised to the level they are now (as in the Great Depression – Google Smoot-Hawley)...the Canadian PM also correctly says that the ruinous economic policies of Spray-Tan Satan are causing “uncertainty hanging over all of us” (and as Belle says, the markets HATE uncertainty, as do the rest of us)...I definitely give Belle points for her plain speaking in this particular clip, though she’s spot on that way in her others also...



...and sticking with global matters, Ana Kasparian of TYT talks about Naftali Bennett of Israel giving some speech saying, “Turkey is the new Iran” (and Bennett is supposed to be a “moderate”?)...what will it take for this country to proclaim Israel as a pariah state and cut off all support (maybe making an exception for humanitarian funding)...and yes, I know from a practical perspective what a monumentally heavy political “lift” that is, but that’s the direction where all of this is going...as Ana says, Israel is still butt-hurt over Turkey’s response to the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023 (suspending trade with Israel and denying Turkey’s air space to that country), so “Bibi” decides to pick a fight with Turkey, and that country responds by calling Netanyahu “the Hitler of our time,” and from where I sit, Turkey isn’t wrong (though I’ll admit that Turkey has indeed been awful to the Kurds, seeing as how Turkey believes the Kurds are responsible for “a decades-long insurgency”)...I’ll grant you that this is a complicated story, but when you’ve got two parties drowning in the blood of slaughtered populations, nobody has the moral high ground...



...and turning to domestic politics, Farron Cousins informs us that Repug politicians in the House and Senate are freaking out over the fact that their voters are nuts; I mean, that’s not a news flash to yours truly or likely you if you’re reading this I know...now that their political butts are on the line, it looks like some in the “party of Lincoln” are realizing that, damn, we have to actually deliver something to the people who voted for us instead of trying to arrest women trying to get abortions or making the lives of LGBTQ plus folks generally miserable (NSFW/H also)...



...and Jesse Dollemore talks about Don The Con pocketing $63 mil intended for his “library”...apparently, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal (along with Dem U.S. House Rep Melanie Stansbury) have written a letter to the companies (ABC, Paramount, Meta and X) that supposedly donated to this slush fund for the Gropenfuhrer (and for a “library” that also doubles as a hotel...a “typical Trumpian twist” indeed)...the four companies in question responded as noted in the clip, but they didn’t get into details about the shakedowns bribes payouts...Jesse is spot-on IMO about the fact that, if this happened with, say, a Dem president, it would dominate the news cycle, as it should (mildly NSFW/H also)...



...and RIP Moya Brennan of the Irish folk group Clannad, performing “I Will Find You” from “The Last Of The Mohicans” (a terrific film).

Monday Stuff

This video from Public Citizen features lawyer Nicolas Sansone of that group and Vietnam vet Jon Gundersen taking legal action against the very latest monstrosity from Bronzer Beelzebub, which is his 250-foot vanity arch on the way to Arlington National Cemetery; it's illegal of course for the reasons noted...as Sansone says, any monuments in D.C. need to comply with the Commemorative Works Act and receive a buy-in from all affected constituencies, notably Congress...”a vainglorious monument to a person” indeed, as Gundersen says (and as Gundersen also points out, this thing, in addition to being an eyesore, would also monumentally screw up D.C. traffic)...



...and Sam and Emma of The Majority Report tell us that Couch Boy was recently sent to Pakistan to negotiate with Iran to try and end our latest Republican pre-emptive war...good point by Sam that “Mr. Hillbilly Elegy” wants to find a way to wrap this up through negotiation and use that to try and propel himself as the ’28 Repug frontrunner for *preznit, which is a horrifying possibility; picture MAGA Trumpism but at the hands of someone who would actually know how to control the levers of power (or at least, be TOLD what to do by Peter Thiel and that foul ilk), and “Little Marco” would barely be any better...and I realize it’s typical for this bunch to pointlessly dump on Biden once again, which Emma does at about 2:17 (yes, #46 indeed was “dog-walked” by “Bibi”...whaddaya say that we turn the damn record over, OK, and what the hell does Kamala Harris going to the border HAVE ONE DAMN THING TO DO WITH THE WAR WITH IRAN??!!)...however, I will grant Emma’s good point about Iran trading with Russia over the Caspian Sea, so the latter country can refuel and resupply and continue this stalemate indefinitely (and once more, Harry Enten brings some pretty damning poll numbers for the “R” team)...



...and David Shuster of Rebel HQ tells us about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent getting grilled by Steve Douchebag on the effect of the Iran war on gas prices; when even Fix Noise isn’t buying your BS any more, I would say that you have a problem...yeah, let’s blame the owners of gas stations (which would be Big Oil of course) for the up-and-down price at the pump, not Cheetoh Benito’s war of choice in the Middle East...oh, and Ainsley Earhardt is realizing ONLY NOW that “it’s expensive” to raise kids, with those chuckleheads Kilmeade and Lawrence Jones sitting on the couch alongside her with their big sh*t-eating grins (and I think $300K to raise a child is actually a low-ball estimate)...anybody with a brain knows that energy prices have a multiplying effect across our economy when calculating costs for damn near everything, so energy is the LAST issue where you want to see costs getting out of control...



...and Sean Morrow of More Perfect Union “turns over a lot of rocks,” as it were, to let us know how deeply embedded Jeffrey Epstein and his influence was across government, industry, and other institutions, and in a bipartisan way as it turns out...the report focuses on five individuals who bought into what Epstein was all about, and it seems that they looked the other way, you might say, when it came to Epstein’s “hobbies”...report focuses first on Leon Black, who apparently went to Epstein for ideas on how high net worth folks can shelter their dough, helping Black avoid about a billion in taxes through purchases of art and establishing a network of LLC firms...lawyer Kathy Ruemmler is also included; hard to get my head around anybody hanging out with Epstein given what he was all about, especially a woman (and Ruemmler worked in the Obama Administration, which does indeed make this mess bipartisan), though the fact that she came from Goldman Sachs and shows such contempt for overweight folks definitely fits the scumbag profile...let’s not forget Boris Nikolic also, who used the Gates Foundation to hide dough and direct untraceable donations, including in donor-advised funds, which apparently was a frequently-used vehicle by Epstein for sheltering dough...it seems that Epstein also had a pretty sophisticated PR network to try and publicize himself as an “education philanthropist”...Reid Hoffman of Linkedin and (drumroll) the aforementioned Peter Thiel show up also, with Thiel giving Epstein investment advice about not investing, as it turns out, in Spotify and Palantir...and oh yeah, Epstein had his sex-abusing hands in OpenAI also, as it turns out...the big takeaway for yours truly from this is that, as awful and depraved as “the Epstein network” was (and is still, actually), it also represents the global class of oligarchs who have figured out how to rig the political and corporate game in perpetuity at our ongoing expense...in fewer words, as awful as the sexual depravity is (and it is for sure), it’s only the cherry on the icing on this sh*t sundae when you look at all of the ways that these cretins truly control our lives...it also figures that Reid Hoffman is spending typically obscene dough to oppose progressive candidates (once again, love and kisses to the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR for Citizens United)...



...and the Onion News Network informs us that, with the ongoing strife in Iran, gas drinkers are having an especially tough time (heh)...



Update: Terrific accidental timing for this.

...and I hope this puts a little “pep in your step” for a not-quite-spring-yet Monday in these parts (maybe this selection will inspire the Phillies and the Sixers, but I’m not getting my hopes up).