3/17/2024

Regarding Bloodbaths: Let's Remember What Trump Said Would Happen If Biden Was Elected in 2020 That Didn't Happen

Republican presidential nominee and a shit-filled garbage bag with a bewigged, rotting rump roast on top, Donald Trump, loves to promise that violence and horror is coming unless he is elected. Forget that actual horror and violence happened while he was president. Oh, no. We're supposed to look back at the riots and disease four years ago and nod, like delusional fucks, that, yes, we were better off then than we are now. 

In every "speech" (if by "speech," you mean, "a maniacal march through a miasma of mendacity and madness that would make Lovecraft scream for it to stop"), Trump paints a Brueghelesque picture of streets overrun with immigrant demons who drag precious white maidens into a gaping Hellmouth, where pig-faced criminals run through innocent chain stores and ransack them, dragging their booty to their homes made of fetus bones, where cities crumble as a demonic leader cackles while cutting off the genitals of children and forcing them to use unholy pronouns. If you think I'm making this up or exaggerating for grotesque effect, check out what Trump really said this past weekend. From migrants being "not human" to a "bloodbath" for the economy if he's not restored to the White House, Trump gleefully baits and bashes with abandon. If Joe Biden is re-elected, Trump ominously intones, the world as we know it will cease to be and we will become slaves. 

The thing is, though, that Trump promised the same thing 4 years ago if Biden defeated him. In every campaign stop after the nominations were clinched, Trump would talk about the damage Biden would definitely do. Spoiler: None of it happened. 

It's such a broad array of ways that Trump claimed the country and individual states would suffer under a Biden presidency that I'm just gonna pull a few quotes from 2020 and see where we stand.

"He wants to destroy your energy jobs in Pennsylvania." Trump said this in Allentown in October 2020. The unemployment rate in PA when he left office in January 2021 was 7.4%. It's currently 3.4%, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb here to say that some of that growth was in the energy industry (especially clean energy, but, shh, don't say anything). Now you might wanna argue that the first number there was still part of the Covid shutdown, and, yeah, but prior to Covid, unemployment in PA was at 4.9%. So, yeah, no matter how you wanna look at it, Pennsylvania should be fucking grateful Biden is president.

"If Biden wins, China wins. And if China has anything to do with this whole deal, if he wins, let me tell you, China will own the United States of America. They will own it." China does not, in fact, own the United States. If we're talking facts, China's investments in the United States have shrunk substantially during the Biden administration. I'm too stupid to understand why, but it is the opposite of what Trump promised. 

"The Biden Harris plan would also increase refugees coming into our country by more than 700%. It would be the highest level anywhere in the world." Now this one is kind of interesting because, see, in 2020, during Covid and under the racist Trump administration, the number of refugees the US accepted went down to around 11,400. It's back up to 60,000, so, by my awesome power to do math, that's like a 500% increase, which sounds scary if you're a fucking moron. That's around where it was during some of the George W. Bush presidency. But the United States sucks ass when it comes to taking in our share of refugees. Even if it had been a 700% increase, that would be a pittance compared to countries like Germany, Turkiye, and, yeah, Iran. The US is nowhere in the ballpark of "highest level" in the world.

"They pledged to terminate all national security travel bans, opening the flood gates to radical Islamic terrorism." Yeah, virtually the only actual terrorism during the Biden administration came from MAGA troglodytes and threats from Trump himself. The anarchy that might come has always been from Trump's terrorist organization. 

"He wants to terminate religious liberty, destroy the suburbs." Neither of these things are even on the radar of shit that's happening. Of course, the latter thing there was pure racism: "I’m getting rid of a regulation that will move a project next to your beautiful house. Congratulations. You like having a nice project next to your house, I don’t think so. And with it comes plenty of crime," Trump said back in 2020, which was his way of trying to scare white suburban women into his flabby, orange arms.

"They’re going to take your guns away, sure as you’re there. If something happened with me, the guns are gone. Your Second Amendment will be either obliterated totally or almost totally." The guns are fine. You don't have to worry about the guns. This is the United States of America, goddamnit. We will kill each other and ourselves before we give up guns. 

You get the idea. Trump promised the collapse of civilization and all we got were more jobs, lower crime rates, and booming infrastructure spending. He told us in 2020 that Biden was a doddering old man who couldn't function, and yet everything, including Biden, functioned amazingly well. Rather than offer a vision for the country that is based on reality, Trump instead is running the same fucking playbook, and he's heightening the fearmongering because the only other option would be to actually promise to do something more than to close the border, round up anyone who doesn't look right, and shoot shoplifters on sight. 

If there's a bloodbath after a Biden victory in 2024, it won't be because of Biden. It will be because Trump's idiot hordes think they have to burn the country down. 

3/10/2024

The State of the Union is, Finally, "Eat Shit, Republicans"

One of my greatest worries in Joe Biden becoming president was that he "believes that his capacity to forgive and forget with Republicans is an asset" and that he could "work in partnership with Republicans." I said that back in 2019 as one reason that I didn't support him in our innocent, pre-pandemic period. And in his previous State of the Union in 2023, that Joe Biden was still on display as he praised vile hate-goblin Mitch McConnell and said, "To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress," adding multiple pleas for such unity of purpose.

Well, something shook loose because the President Biden who delivered the 2024 State of the Union last week was fucking done trying win over the savages on the GOP side. And, amid the right-wing commentariat's hand-wringing about how "political" and "angry" Biden's speech was, there was an air of "oh, fuck" to their typical nonsense. Some of that "oh, fuck" came from Biden's display of energy, which threw them off their game of endlessly calling Biden "sleepy" or "weak." Over on Fox "news," Sean  Hannity, who always looks like he's about to burp up a little bit of that puppy he ate, hilariously said Biden's speech was "frightening" and called Biden "Jacked-Up Joe" because "he sounded like a hyper-caffeinated, angry old man." Frankly, "Jacked-Up Joe" is an awesome nickname. Nutzoid right-wing spoogesock the Washington Times got a doctor to say that Biden had to be on Adderall to have that much energy. (This same psychiatrist told paper in 2021 that "parents are losing their teens...to the influence of teachers, peers and social media pushing political agendas," so, really, she's just there to polish the bullshit the Washington Times craps out.)

But the other thing that must have shocked the GOP and sure as hell surprised me and a great many more on my side of the political stadium was that Biden finally seems to have realized that every single time he reached his hand across the aisle, the gnarled orange claw of the 21st-century Republican Party raked its talons across his flesh. He didn't even mention McConnell this time, even though that gargoyle is stepping down as leader of the Senate Republicans after the election. The final straw for Biden with the GOP sure seems to have been the deal on the border that would have also included funding for Ukraine's war with Russia. Yes, he asked Trump to "join me in telling the Congress to pass it," but that was after he condemned congressional Republicans for bowing to Trump's demand to kill a bill that they had negotiated so he doesn't lose the border and racist attacks on migrants as issues he can bitch about incoherently in his hysterical, bizarre campaign rants. Biden had given the GOP nearly everything it fucking wanted and one word from a soon-to-be broke rapist and they drop everything. Man, that had to piss Biden off. 

Sure, Biden's willing to work with Republicans. He'll use the well-worn "my Republican friends," even if it sounds kind of facetious now. But he's obviously fucking sick of the chicanery and, well, the malarkey coming from a party that supports an anti-American rapist for president. "Not one of your Republican buddies voted for it," he said about the bill that lowers prescription drug costs. While he didn't go as far as I would have liked, he did call out Republicans who take credit for funding from the infrastructure and other bills that go to their districts, saying, "I noticed some of you who’ve strongly voted against it are there cheering on that money coming in," twisting the shiv with "And if any of you don’t want that money in your district, just let me know." I had wanted him to name GOP members and what they now pretend that they got for their constituents. And he's not even disguising his hope for 2024: "Send me a Congress that supports the right to choose," Biden said, meaning, quite clearly, tell the Republicans to eat shit and get the fuck out the way. 

As for whether or not the speech was "partisan" or like a campaign rally, as much as he took credit for his successes and praised those who voted for them, as much as he baited Republicans for ignoring reality and sucking Trump's dick as if his jizz is their only source of protein (and, within that sticky metaphor, it pretty much is), Biden barely mentioned the Democratic Party. Sure, sure, the implication was there, much like pointing at your pussy carries the implication that you want to get eaten out (or have a medical issue - it's context dependent, of course). But it wasn't over the top, like Trump giving Rush Limbaugh a goddamn medal at his last (fuck, I hope) State of the Union. Yeah, that really fucking happened. Hell, I wish Biden had been more partisan because one party gives a shit about the future of the country and the other wants to destroy democracy and turn us over to white Christian fascists.

One more thing probably fucked with the heads of the Republicans there, as well as their media partners in crime. It was reported that feckless House Speaker Mike Johnson, who always looks like he's wondering if he remembered to feed that tween boy he keeps in a pit in his basement, told his caucus to have "decorum" and not be braying asses at the speech, but asses will bray. I think animals like Marjorie Taylor Greene believed if they kept yelling shit out at Biden that they'd throw the doddering, ancient man they believe he is off his game. But it not only didn't work, it showed that Biden could think on his feet. He could pick up their shit and throw it back at them. And he looked like he was having fun at times while doing it. Of course he stumbled a bit. He's an 81 year-old with a stutter. Fuck, I hope I'm that coherent if I make it to that age. 

And the cherry on this fuckin' sundae that we got on Thursday was the absolute shitshow of a performance of Alabama Senator and mom most likely to be murdered by her children Katie Britt. Her Republican response to Biden's speech was totally overwrought and tone deaf, giving off Big Karen Energy.  She lied about a rape victim and blanket condemned everything Biden. Of course, even as she intensely spat, "His reckless spending dug our economy into a hole and sent the cost-of-living through the roof" (which, no, that's not what caused inflation), she sure as fuck doesn't seem to have a problem with Alabama getting billions of dollars in projects for roads, water, and high-speed internet for rural areas. Her fellow Republican senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, who also voted against the infrastructure bill, tweeted, "Great to see Alabama receive crucial funds to boost ongoing broadband efforts." Just the dumbest motherfuckers are elected from that state.

So, yeah, it was a big fucking sigh of relief over here in Democratville. But it was more than that. It was a sign that this fight is not going to be as hard as we thought it might be. It's going to be tougher than it should be, sure, because we have too many dumbfucks in this country. But we don't have to keep making excuses for Biden. We don't have to keep saying that Biden's slowed down but he's still a better leader than Trump. No, goddamnit. We get to say, "Fuck, yeah, look at the old bastard go," like watching an octogenarian complete the Boston Marathon. We can support him without compensating. Hell, yeah. 

3/03/2024

Democrats Should Go on the Offensive Against the Supreme Court

Look, the Supreme Court is not some super secret cabal of demigods who fly above the filthy, earthbound realm of politics. No, they are nine human being who shit and fart and fuck (one would hope), and you only need to look at the highly political negotiations behind the scenes when decisions are being made to understand that. 

And Supreme Court is the top of the Judiciary, one of three supposedly co-equal branches of government. It's like the president is the top of the Executive branch and the leaders of the Congress...you get the fuckin' idea. And the president has no problem talking shit about Congress and vice versa. But, for some reason, while it's fine to talk shit about lower courts, there's this bright line around the Supreme Court.

When Barack Obama mildly reproached the court for the bullshit Citizens United decision, which unlocked the hell of unlimited election spending by "outside" groups, you'd have thought he was eating Grey Poupon on a hamburger with Common at the White House while wearing a tan suit. (And, yes, kids, those are all things that right-wing fucknuts criticized Obama for because everything is stupid.)

Last week, the Supreme Court not only decided to hear Trump's appeal of the ironclad, unanimous ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that "no, you motherfucker, you're not fucking immune from crimes because you were president, what fucking bullshit is that, get the fuck out of our court, fuck" or words to that effect, while legal scholars across the political spectrum agreed, adding "Go fuck yourself. You're not a king." But the high court took over two weeks to make that decision and, instead of saying, "We know both sides are ready to go. Let's do this," set the week April 22 as when they'll hear the case. Then it might not rule until some fuckin' time in June.

It was such obvious election interference in Trump's favor that you almost have to respect how blatant the whole thing was, like a coordinated effort to bring a dictatorship into being. They are doing everything they can to push the January 6 case back as far as possible, to after the election, if they can, because they've put a hold on the case progressing until they rule. It's fucked beyond fucked, and I'm kind of pissed that liberal Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson didn't at least issue a dissent, if not spill all the tea about what the hell is going on.

So, fuck it. The Judiciary is co-equal, right? Democratic leaders should act like it and go on the attack. They should call into question the ethics of all of the conservatives, especially that dick Clarence Thomas, whose wife was literally coordinating with people during the insurrection. They should demand an explanation for why the case was taken, since none was given. They should organize protests and behave like the court has gone rogue because the court has fucking well gone rogue against democracy. (Although, for fuck's sake, don't show up at their houses or SWAT them. Just fucking don't.)

And make changing the court's makeup a focus of the 2024 election. I guarantee that if it were a 6-3 liberal court, Republicans would be running on how a GOP Senate and president could add justices until it shifted ideologically. The court has decided once again to help out one side in the election of a president, like it did in 2000. It's gotten political. So drag it off its pedestal and make it fight in the mud with the rest of the branches of government. 

Sure, it might not have an effect on a decision. But it will affect how the decision is seen by voters. The court's already full of shit to the majority of Americans because of the Dobbs decision declaring that states can turn women into brood mares. A good dose of political condemnation can prep voters to get even angrier if the court actually dares to grant some measure of immunity to Trump. It can hammer home that we are the only ones who can save this goddamn country from catastrophe. (And I don't want to hear what the tea-leaf readers say about what the court might do. They were all sure that the case wouldn't be taken and the appeals decision would stand. They told us that was what the delay meant. Their tea leaves were wrong, as vegetation-based predictions usually are.)

The hands-off approach to attacking the Supreme Court hasn't done a goddamn thing. Well, screw it. Let them know that they may be human beings who shit and fart and fuck, but so are the rest of us.

2/23/2024

Get Your Filthy Faith Out of Our Secular Legal System

One of the hopes and dreams for Jesus-fellating right-wingers and fascists who know how to manipulate the Jesus fellaters is that the 2024 election will hasten the establishment of a Christian nationalist government for this damned country. That means, among other scary shit, laws come directly from an invisible sky wizard or, you know, "God," and the book of fiction that is the Christian bible. (Just to be fair and clear, all books of fables about sky wizards and their earth-bound superfriends and relatives are fictional, no matter which flavor they happen to be.) And it means that you will need to follow what they claim their sky wizard tells them, whether you believe in that sky wizard or not.

In the past week. two judges, one on the Alabama Supreme Court and one on the U.S. Supreme Court, issued opinions that they didn't have to issue just to put forth the idea that the law needs to take into account what "God" thinks about shit. Seriously, the decisions in the cases, which they agree with, were completed and then they went and added their own bullshit side opinions just so they could flog for crazed right-wing Christianity.

Over at the Supreme Court (motto: "Harming as many people as possible as quickly as we can"), the justices declined to hear a case from Missouri "about people removed from a jury after voicing religious objections to gay relationships." More precisely, Jean Finney, a female employee for the Missouri Department of Corrections, was suing because a male co-worker retaliated against her for being in a same-sex relationship with the man's ex-wife. During jury selection, which, again, was in Missouri, Finney's attorney asked prospective jurors, "How many of you went to a religious organization growing up where it was taught that people that are homosexuals shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else because it was a sin with what they did?" A bunch raised their hands because, again, Missouri. Three jurors were excluded by the judge for their anti-gay bias when they said they couldn't set aside their belief that their sky wizard will be angry with them if they're nice to a lesbian. The state lost the case and appealed based on the exclusion of homophobes for Jesus. Other courts denied the appeal, and the Supreme Court let the verdict stand.

And that should have been that. It's a rational decision, one that even the conservatives went along with because of procedural issues with the state. But then fuckin' Samuel Alito, who wrote a dickish dissent in the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage, had to say fuckin' something. See, Sammy's sad because he feels this is unfair, that people who say they have to deny rights to the gays shouldn't be treated any differently when they're in a position to deny rights to the gays. Scribbles Sammy, "Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be 'labeled as bigots and treated as such' by the government." He's quoting his own Obergefell dissent there. 

Finney's lawyer was worried, quite rightly, that the "conduct" of her client involved activities that the Christ brigade thinks should be punished, you know, eternally. But Sammy doesn't think that's enough to exclude them from the jury. "When a court, a quintessential state actor, finds that a person is ineligible to serve on a jury because of his or her religious beliefs, that decision implicates fundamental rights," he whines. He says he would have wanted the court to take the case because of the constitutional issues, but the state fucked up procedural stuff and so, sorry, not this time. However, Alito is indicating he wants jurors to be allowed to bring their religious prejudices to the justice system.

Let's be perfectly clear, though. If you think an invisible sky wizard is commanding you to be a bigot, you're just a fucking bigot, and you should be treated like a fucking bigot. The rest of us don't give a fuck about your faith unless you try to impose it on the rest of us. You can choose to believe or not. You can choose to act on those beliefs. And that's on you. But you'll have to wait until Sammy gets his chance to baptize the law.

However, down in Alabama (state motto: "Are we worse than Mississippi? Maybe"), by a 7-2 decision, the state's Supreme Court declared that frozen embryos are the legal equivalent of children and thus if you dispose of unused embryos after your IVF treatment is successful, you've essentially killed kids. The mad legal reasoning on this is some clusterfuck of Alabama bullshit: the Sanctity of Life Amendment to the state constitution, as well as the Wrongful Death of a Minor law. The motherfuckers on the state court have long said that "unborn" children fall under the law. And the horrific implications of the decision are just being felt as hospitals and clinics that do IVF are saying that they can't risk their employees, doctors, nurses, whoever going to jail, so they are pausing something that is literally about women who definitely want children. In saving the zygotesicles, the court majority is preventing actual births.

The majority opinion is batshit enough, but Chief Justice Tom Parker, whose look says, "I really want to enslave women," took the extra step of writing a concurring opinion because he wanted to kick out the Jesus jams hard. After leaps of legal and theological logic that would make a kangaroo jealous, at the end, Parker gets to what he really, really wants to say. And, fuck it, I'm just gonna quote it in full because you need to behold the bonkers fuckery in all its wretchedness:

"The People of Alabama have declared the public policy of this State to be that unborn human life is sacred. We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.' Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982). All three branches of government are subject to a constitutional mandate to treat each unborn human life with reverence. Carving out an exception for the people in this case, small as they were, would be unacceptable to the People of this State, who have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image."

How about that? Everyone in Alabama has to abide by this jackass's ultra-conservative imaginary friend. 

First off, I know this isn't the most important part of the whole thing, but that line from the Book of Jeremiah is tossed around by anti-choicers all the time. It even shows up on their posters and bumper stickers and shit. And it doesn't fucking mean what they are saying it means. This isn't God making some general statement about loving everyone. No, it's God trying to convince Jeremiah to get off his ass and go be a prophet. That's why he sanctified Jeremiah. The rest of the verse is "Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations." It's a guilt trip by God before he gets all pissy about it. God's saying, "Look at all the shit I did so you could go be my spokesman." Seems way more specific in context. Then Jeremiah is all, "But I'm too young," and then God is all, "The fuck you say. I'll tell you what to do. Now fucking do it." So even Parker's cheap use of a bible verse to back him up is garbage.

But think of what that piece of the concurrence means. Imagine being Muslim or Jewish or, god forbid, an atheist in Alabama, and reading this shit. It's a big "fuck you" to anyone who doesn't believe in the cruelest version of Christianity. Parker believes it. He fucking well said, "God created government, and the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others, it’s heartbreaking." He totally supports this weirdo thing called the Seven Mountain Mandate, which is not some gay fun on a long camping trip. No, it's this bugfuck nuts idea that seven "mountains" that have "cultural influence" should be filtered through Jesus's ball hair: religion, family, government, education, media, arts/entertainment, and business. Speaker of the House and man who definitely isn't watching chicken porn Mike Johnson is into it. So is rat-bearded Ted Cruz. Or so they say. Who knows what these fucks really believe.

And to those of us who don't believe, it's madness. It's undemocratic. And it's filled with hate for women, for LGBTQ people, for anyone who isn't willing to say, "Yes, I believe an invisible sky wizard controls us all and will grant us wishes if we tell him we love him all the time." I mean, I might think that people like Alito and Parker actually believe this shit if they didn't constantly make decisions that seem to be the exact opposite of what the sky wizard says you should do for the poor, the hungry, the less fortunate right there in his Big Book of Stories. 

What's even scarier is how willing con men like noted rapist and fraud Donald Trump are willing to use Christian nationalism as a tool in their fascist chest. We're just gonna bumblefuck into Gilead.

(Bonus quote: Parker dismisses one of his fellow justices who wrote a dissent in the Alabama decision. He says, "To the extent that Justice Cook is predicting that IVF will now end in Alabama, that prediction does not seem to be well-founded." If Parker were capable of anything like self-reflection, he sure as fuck owes Cook an apology.)

2/18/2024

Justice Engoron Tells Trump to Fucking Live in Reality Already

I'm not gonna pretend to understand all the financial shenanigans detailed in Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron's decision in the civil fraud trial against noted rapist Donald Trump and his stupid company. But I do know a bitch-slapping when I see one, and, to my reading sensibilities, Engoron has his bitch-slapping gloves on and his knuckles cracked and he's getting down to the business of slapping some bitches. 

Check out how he describes Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg as a pathetic little lapdog: "[H]is testimony in this trial was intentionally evasive, with large gaps of 'I don't remember.' He conceded that his Separation Agreement, on which he is still apparently awaiting four payments, prohibits him from voluntarily cooperating with any entity adverse to the Trump Organization or its former or current employees. That alone renders his testimony highly unreliable. The Trump Organization keeps Weisselberg on a short leash, and it shows." Weisselberg was still waiting to get paid his full severance from a man who notoriously cheaps out on his debts (but now Weisselberg not only won't get it, he has to pay back what he already got). Engoron goes further in enbitchifying Weisselberg, adding, "As CFO, Weisselberg oversaw the Trump Organization's accounting department, although he was not a certified public accountant (CPA) and did not know any components of GAAP." That last thing there is "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles." In other words, Weisselberg doesn't know shit about shit and is only there to cover up all the criming. 

While there are jabs at Eric and Donald Trump, Jr., Engoron obviously wants to tear apart the myth that Trump created around his wealth. Here's the judge on one property that the rapist/former president ludicrously overvalued: "Donald Trump insisted that he believed Mar- a-Lago is worth 'between a billion and a billion five today,' which would require not only valuing it as a private residence, which the deed prohibits, but as more than the most expensive private residence listed in the country by approximately 400%." A footnote links to a goddamn palace in Los Angeles (where property is a little pricier than in Swampy Nutrot, Florida) that's really the most expensive house, listed at $290 million. Fun fact: it was on the market because its owner/builder couldn't afford it and went bankrupt. It sold for just $141 million, so, yeah, hubris and lies will fuck you every time. 

Later in the decision, Engoron states flatly, "There can be no mistake that Donald Trump's valuation of Mar-a-Lago from 2011-2021 was fraudulent." It doesn't get any clearer.

But Engoron was just getting warmed up with the bitch-slapping of Trump, who, to be fair, should have had someone on staff to bitch-slap him daily. After giving examples of Trump's bullshitting (like lying about how many stories one of his buildings is or defending his failure to live up to an agreement on Mar-a-Lago not being a single residence with "when you say, 'intend,' intend doesn't mean we will do it"), Engoron summarizes Trump's testimony with something that ought to be the equivalent of the Special Counsel report saying that Biden is forgetful: "Overall, Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial. His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility." There it is: the former president and adjudicated rapist isn't credible. You can't trust the motherfucker.

Compare that to Engoron's insights on former Trump fixer Michael Cohen: "Although the animosity between the witness and the defendant is palpable, providing Cohen with an incentive to lie, the Court found his testimony credible, based on the relaxed manner in which he testified, the general plausibility ofhis statements, and, most importantly, the way his testimony was corroborated by other trial evidence. A less-forgiving factfinder might have concluded differently, might not have believed a single word of a convicted perjurer. This factfinder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means that you can never tell the truth . Michael Cohen told the truth." Goddamn, that's a kick right in Trump's voluminous ass: the guy who went to prison because he was covering up for Trump is now more credible than his ex-boss.

In his conclusions, Engoron lets it all loose, all the anger he had to have from this prissy little wannabe mobster prancing in and out of his courtroom, pretending to be a pugilist when he was really just a punk. I mean, look at this pantsing: "Donald Trump was aware of many of the key facts underpinning various material fraudulent misstatements in the SFCs [statements of financial condition]: he was aware of having deeded away the right to use Mar-a- Lago as anything other than a social club, and notwithstanding, continued to value it as if it could be used as a single family residence ; he was aware that the Triplex apartment in which he, a real estate mogul and self-identified expert, resided for decades was not 30,000 square feet, but actually 10,996 square feet...he was aware that he had permission to build only 500 private residences in Aberdeen, notwithstanding that he represented that he had permission for 2500; and he was aware that 40 Wall Street was operating at a deficit despite proclaiming that it was running a net operating income of $64 million. As Eric Trump testified, Donald Trump sat at the top of the pyramid of the Trump Organization until 2017. Donald Trump professed to know more about real estate than other people and to be more expert than anybody else. He repeatedly falsified business records with the intent to defraud."

That's a fucking reality check right there. It's a list of lies from which Trump benefited financially, as well as a way of telling Trump that he can't pretend that his fantasy world is the truth. To that end, Engoron, towards the end, even expresses his disbelief in the delusions that Trump and his shitty family and shitty employees, co-conspirators all, keep professing to believe in the face of demonstrable facts: "Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological . They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin . Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways...Indeed, Donald Trump testified that, even today, he does not believe the Trump Organization needed to make any changes based on the facts that came out during this trial." So, yeah, Engoron says, we need to act like these skeevy fucks are just gonna do it all again. Hence his heavy financial penalty and other restrictions, including an independent monitor with the ability to shut the whole operation down. 

I mean, really, though, it's not fair to compare Trump to Madoff. Madoff at least pretended to apologize and take responsibility for his crimes. The final bitch slap here, though, is what Engoron is implying: if Trump had just admitted that he was fucking with the numbers and took some lumps for it, there's a good chance he would have had just a few mild fines and not the wealth-depleting decision here. But that egotistical orange rapist can't ever be told he's wrong, so, in the end, he bitch-slapped himself to the tune of a half-billion bucks.

2/11/2024

Completely Batshit Things from a Trump Speech That Won't Get as Much Coverage as Biden's Age

This week, everyone in the media apparently decided that Joe Biden is too old to be president again. One report from a Trump-appointed former US Attorney that has a few lines simping for MAGA cred by dissing Biden's memory for shit that happened years ago, and it's like we have to act like Biden's crumbling into dust before our eyes like a long-buried mummy who was touched before being preserved.  It's frankly fucked to watch the New York Times and CNN and other outlets climb over each other to try to out-dick one another on Biden's age. 

No shit he's old. We fucking know that. No shit that he's flubbed some names and dates. Biden's been doing that for decades. He's even joked about it before. And he's gonna continue to do it just like I'm going to sometimes call my dog by the name of the dog I had 20 years ago. Prove to me that his age has diminished his presidency. Fucking prove that to me and you'll have an argument to make saying that he should step away.

Meanwhile, the other candidate, Donald Trump, is an actual rapist (which can never be said enough) who bumblefucks through his speeches like a raging manatee flailing around on the shore and just about as articulate. Yesterday, he promised to refuse to live up to our treaty obligations to NATO and, in the rapiest language he could manage, said that, for countries who don't pay what he deems as a far amount to NATO, he'd "encourage" Russia "to do whatever the hell they want" to them. That's world war kind of shit talk. That's poking the bear in the nuts. And it is objectively worse than every single time Joe Biden has gotten a country wrong combined. 

I mean, have reporters just become so numb that they can't see how psychotic, incoherent, and dangerous Trump's speeches are? It's not just that he's promising to allow the execution of shoplifters. It's that he wants to use the military and law enforcement from red states to invade blue states to round up migrants into camps before deporting them. It's some dystopian fuckery of the rankest order, like the start of a civil war. And the rhetoric Trump uses about migrants is not just provocative. It's threatening. It's degrading and dehumanizing. And it's getting people hurt.

If you take any recent Trump speech, you can listen or watch (or, if you can't stand that and go into convulsions of shitting yourself in rage whenever you hear his lethargic, slurping voice, read the transcript) and there are dozens of things that, if ever hinted at by a Democrat, would bring howls of outrage.

Look at this bullshit from his performance on Friday prancing around at an NRA event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It vacillates from vile to incoherent and back again. 

1. Let's start with a lie: "I love Pennsylvania. We ran twice. We won Pennsylvania twice. We won Pennsylvania twice. We did much better the second time than we did the first time." This is election denialism, sure, and we should never lose our outrage over his continued refusal to acknowledge the results of the 2020 election. He lost PA in 2020. He litigated it and begged for it to be overturned, but he fucking lost.

2. "Now more then we have ever taken are pouring into the country from countries that many of you have never even heard of. They are pouring into our country and an entire generation of young people could very well be decimated by something that could very well happen: World War III." You got that? First off, he assumes his MAGA hordes are too stupid to have heard of Ecuador. And then he takes the migrant "threat" to the furthest possible and most absurd degree.

3. Okay, this is just fucking weird. A total aside that has no context in the speech: "If you are a violent criminal today, if you kill people nothing happens. But if you are a religious person of a certain faith, you get persecuted. And I don't know what's going on with Catholics. But Catholics are getting treated very badly. What the hell is going on with Catholics? And yet we got 88% of the evangelical vote, but only 50% of the Catholic vote. We should get 110% of the Catholic vote. What are they doing to Catholics?" I mean, what the fucking fuck is this even?

4. Trump loves spinning out fantasy scenarios to degrade others. Here he starts out talking about where President Biden kept some documents, exaggerating for grotesque comic effect. Then watch where this goes: "They were all sitting underneath his beautiful Corvette and a very flimsy garage with one of those very cheap garage doors. You can cut it open with a scissor. 'Does anybody have a scissor? I want to get some classified documents. Let's cut it open.' It had no security or Secret Service. Certain members of the Biden family lived there. I wonder what they did with those very important documents. They had no Secret Service people because he wasn't present. Biden fought them all the way. I didn't. He fought them very hard and they never got what they wanted to get anyway. I even gave the DOJ and the FBI lunch at Mar-a-Lago. They say I didn't behave. I have them lunch. Have lunch at beautiful Mar-a-Lago...I guess they expected dinner, not lunch. I should have given them dinner." Between this and his anger at getting lunch for the E. Jean Carroll's lawyers when they were at Mar-a-Lago, Trump just comes across as the cheapest motherfucker ever. Or, you know, not a billionaire. 

5. The fetishism of objects or the concentration on looks is prominent throughout, but, mostly, why the fuck is he talking about the goddamn desk? "Very smart people surround the resolute desk. It's the most beautiful desk. When you are president, they allow you to take your desk--pick your desk. They have these unbelievable desks. It had a tremendous history of presidents behind it. He had the same desk. I think he took it because he likes me so much. He said, 'I want the same desk as President Trump had.'" I shit you not, this is not the only time in the speech he talks about desks. He has a whole thing about moving a desk outside to sign executive orders, in the middle of talking about where a desk is in the White House. You wanna talk about being old and out of it? This right here.

6. Another lie: "We are losing, in my opinion, 350,000 people a year to fentanyl. There is no war for the most part where you're going to lose that many soldiers. We are losing 350,000, I believe. They always say it's 100, 120. It's not. It's much more. It's getting worse, too." No, 350k Americans aren't dying every year from fentanyl. Not even close. But it's one of those times that he's making shit up and won't back down from the shit he's making up. 

7. "We got Mexico to send 21,000 soldiers to our border free of charge. I got them free. By the way, I used to say Mexico is going to pay for a big piece of the wall. They us so much more than that. They gave us free soldiers. You're not allowed to do that, they can't pay for our wall. There was a mechanism where they could give us soldiers." Putting aside that it was 15,000 troops (and not 21 or 28,000, as he often brays), it wasn't that Trump "used to say" that Mexico would pay for the border wall. It was one of the centerpieces of his 2016 campaign. So he's saying he was lying or ignorant when he made that promise.

8. I'm putting this one in here because it's a story Trump tells all the time (and that the Mexican government says is bullshit). The whole fake tale gets more and more elaborate. And, again, this is in the middle of a nearly 90 minute speech, and he's just fucking riffing: "I got Mexico, I said, 'You are going to have to pay for the soldiers free of charge.' They said, 'We are not doing that.' 'You have to.' Handsome guy, beautiful representative. He laughed and said, 'We are not giving you soldiers. Why the hell would we give you soldiers? We have been ripping off the United States for years. Why would we give them soldiers to protect their border?' A lot of bad people are coming through. So I said, 'You are giving it to us, 100%.' 'No, sir, I'm not giving it to you.' '100%. That you are giving it to me.' 'We are not giving it to you, sir.' 'You are giving it to us.' He goes, 'No way.' He goes, 'No way.' I go, 'Way.'" 

9. This quote starts with a lie. The migrants who pummeled two police officers were arrested. "They beat the hell out of two police officers. The DA said let them go, that's ok. But he goes after Trump. You have to be a violent criminal. If you are a violent criminal, you have no problem. Under Biden, millions of illegals are now pouring into our country. You have a 100 percent chance of a major terror attack in the not-too-distant future." You want forgetfulness? Earlier in the speech, Trump said, "We are really likely to face a 100 percent chance of a terrorist attack." 

9a. Another repetition. In the beginning of this endurance test of a speech, Trump said, "They come in from prisons all over the world, mental institutions all over the world. They are terrorists. By the millions." Then later, since the majority of his speech is ad-libbing (or making shit up), he says, "First time you are seeing migrant crime. These are tough people. Many of them come out of jails and mental institutions...These are not innocents. These are tough people and we are taking them by the millions. We are taking millions of people. Millions and millions."

9b. Since about 75% of Trump's ludicrously long meanders through the mushpile where a brain once presumably sat is about how much he just fucking hates immigrants (even though he's exploited the hell out of them as workers throughout his entire pathetic career), here's one more dip into the madness: "Did you ever notice they come off--everybody has a cell phone. They come in and get off a bus. There is only some nice person greeting them. I don't know who these people are. Did you ever notice? They have like these people. Nice women. Beautiful women. 'Hello, it is so nice to see you.' The guy looks at her like he's going to tear her apart. 'Hello, here is your cell phone. Here is your credit card. Would you like to stay today at the Waldorf-Astoria or would you like a Trump hotel?' No, it's crazy." Well, that's the most self-awareness I've seen from him right there at the end.

10. Let's end with this one, which starts out as praise for the now-missing Melania Trump for working on drug addiction issues and then seems to...well, have a read: "I had the First Lady on committees. A lot of socialites from New York, a lot of socialites from Philadelphia. Many of them just love the glamour of being on a committee, but they don't know about El Chapo. They don't know about the toughness you were talking about, the ruthlessness you are talking about. They do things and they have a little discussion and then start talking about when they are having dinner, where they're going, wonder how nice it is. They talk about restaurants. Remember that every drug dealer kills a minimum of 500 people during his or her lifetime." That was a journey.

So in the course of a single speech, he promises endless violence is coming, he promises that he will cause endless misery to millions of people, he forgets shit, he gets shit wrong, he repeats shit he said just a little while before, and he goes off on tangents that are the equivalent of driving from New York to Boston by way of Australia. And we're supposed to be concerned about Joe Biden's age? The fuck is anyone talking about. Even when he's fumbling a bit, Biden knows what the hell he's talking about. But Trump is given a pass because he's never known what the fuck he's talking about and no one expects him to know but somehow it's okay to ignore that and keep going with attacking Biden for continuing to have birthdays.

I'm not saying that Biden isn't old. I'm not saying that age isn't a legitimate topic. But I am saying that it fucking stinks to go after Biden for it because he talks softly and moves stiffly while not bothering to give the same treatment to Trump because he screeches like a castrated goat and undulates around the stage in a weird dance that just looks like he's jacking off two men.

Of course, one reason for this is that some Democrats are going along with the age freakout over Biden. Meanwhile, no matter how shit-scrawling insane Trump gets, his MAGA cretins will lap it up like they're in a tub in Saltburn

2/04/2024

JD Vance Proves Again What a Vile Motherfucker He Is

You think sometimes that you're inured to the blithe madness and the constant stream of fuckery from people in the Trump Party (formerly known as the "Republican Party"). You can hear a compliant little bitch like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who always looks like he really wants to tell you about the boy he keeps in a shed in his backyard, say something ridiculous like "The President has executive authority right now" to do what he wants with the border, and think, "Yeah, that's why Texas is totally listening to him when he says to take down the fucking razor wire." You can hear Nikki Haley burble whatever pathetic swipe she wants to take at the former president, and think, "Call him a 'rapist,' Nikki, or get the fuck out of the race." 

But every once in a while, one of these motherfuckers goes even further on one of the Sunday political gabfests and just says to everyone's face, "I am a genuine motherfucker. If I see a mother, I will fuck her. I will fuck all the mothers because I'm a motherfucker. It's right there in the word." And on This Week with George Stephanopoulos's Hair, Senator JD Vance proved that he's one vile motherfucker. It was honestly one of the most fucked up performances I've seen in a while, and I've watched prison shank porn.

From the start, Vance wanted to prove his ass was Trump's tightest dick koozie. When Stephanopoulos played clips of Vance in 2015 and 2016 shitting all over Trump, Vance didn't flinch to say he loved the man now. "He proved me wrong," the senator from Ohio gargled testicularly. "He delivered. He did a good job, and that's why I think we should give him another run at it." And that's all well and good. It's typical of the prone position that the entire Trump Party has taken with regards to its namesake, noted rapist Donald Trump. 

Then shit got weird.

Shown an ad that says how it's messed up to see a rapist get treated like a hero, Vance responded, "I think it's actually very unfair to the victims of sexual assault to say that somehow their lives are being worse by electing Donald Trump for president when what he's trying to do, I think, is restore prosperity." In other words, sexual assault victims should just shut up and enjoy it. And then he outright dismissed the idea that anyone could dare accuse rapist Donald Trump of being a rapist: "[The cases are] funded by Donald Trump’s political opponents. If you actually look at so many of the court cases against Donald Trump, George, this is not about prosecuting Trump for something that he did. It's about throwing him off the ballot because Democrats feel that they can't beat him at the ballot box." The E. Jean Carroll case started in 2019, but, as we learn again and again, facts don't matter, not even to a motherfucker who graduated from Yale Law School like a regular liberal cuck. 

When Stephanopoulos pointed out that juries found Trump is a rapist, Vance smirked bitchily, "These are juries, George, in extremely left-wing jurisdictions." Stephanopoulos pressed him with the logical question of why the fuck aren't jury verdicts valid if they're in "left-wing jurisdictions." Vance essentially said that they aren't valid so we can all go fuck ourselves with our stupid judiciary if we don't like the outcome. "When the cases are funded by left-wing donors and when the case has absolute left-wing bias all over it, George, absolutely I think that we should call into question that particular conclusion." No shit that where a case is adjudicated can have an effect. Welcome to our actual legal system. Check out that fucked Supreme Court. But according to Vance, it was a "weird jury in New York" that said the rapist raped E. Jean Carroll, and the whole case is "weird," which is a weird word to use on a rape case.

Then shit got darker.

Asked about what he would have done on January 6, 2021, Vance explained, "If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there." In other words, pure fucking anarchy. A Democratic House of Representatives, a Senate waiting to see which party got a majority, and a Trump-knob-gobbler as vice-president would have had to figure out what the fuck to do, and likely the Supreme Court would have once again decided the outcome of the election. It's nonsensical, anti-constitutional, anti-American, and completely deranged. 

Just a side note here to reiterate that we have the dumbest fucking way of electing our president. I know we say that Republicans will never change the Constitution so that the president is decided by popular vote (or, you know, the way every other fucking country does it). That presumes that Republicans wouldn't moderate their stances in order to attract more voters. They'd have to, and they would probably have a shot at winning. But that would require them needing to be less nutzoid and putting the crazies who run the party back in the holes they crawled out of. 

Stephanopoulos, with increasing exasperation, asked if Vance thinks it's okay for the president to defy the Supreme Court. This was in the context of Vance making some mighty statement that President Rapist Trump should fire all lifetime civil servants and replace them with complacent lickspittles with the rapist's name tattooed on their faces, and that if the Supreme Court tried to stop the rapist, the rapist should defy the court. Vance twisted the question to if the court made an "illegitimate" decision, as in, "if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can't fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling." But Stephanopoulos was finally done and cut off the interview, calling Vance "you traitorous cunt" and threatening to whip him through the streets of DC until he ran home to Mee-Maw.

No, Stephanopoulos didn't say that part after the comma. But he would have had every right to say it and do it.