Are Republicans actually this stupid, or is it all performative?

Kentucky, always vying to win "Worst Senator Ever" with one seat or the other

I mean, it really could be either at this point.

This past Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci was hauled before the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs committee because chairman Rand Paul (Kentucky's only known living Senator) wanted to whine at him and call him names because he didn't like that whole pandemic thing. Well, guess what, Senator Hairpiece, neither did anyone on Earth, and Dr. Fauci was heroic in doing whatever was possible to mitigate that crisis in the face of utterly incompetent and counterproductive leadership from President Fraudster and his GOP lemming caucus, of which you were and are one.

Remarkable. The most gargantuan and colossal failure of the Republican party, its leadership, and its cult leader has somehow, some way, been memory-holed by much of the country, but Rand Paul wants to stir that pot again and remind everyone about how his party and his leaders enabled, both by negligence and by overtly obstructive actions, the spread of a deadly virus that killed over 350,000 Americans in 2020 alone and at least 1.2 million by 2022.

Of course, Paul thinks he can use this hearing to shift blame from where it rightfully belongs—the Republican president and his enablers that eliminated most of the country's line of defense against pandemics and emerging illnesses and then completely screwed up every chance they got when those cuts bit them in the ass—to one of the most qualified, principled, honored public health experts ever to serve in government. Paul and his committee lambasted Dr. Fauci for three hours out of sheer petulance.

Fauci, of course, knew that this was substanceless theater and declined to answer a single question, choosing not to give the Republicans any potential ammunition for more slander and misinformation campaigns. President Biden foresaw this sort of fiasco and preemptively gave Dr. Fauci a pardon so these thin-skinned rage factories couldn't prosecute him with made-up charges to cover their own malfeasance. I'm not sure that was the best move, but it made a kind of sense; being pardoned for serving the public as best one can while being led by a cadre of morons and criminals is just wacky, but we see here why the man needed protection.

Paul continually insisted Dr. Fauci apologize, though for what I can't fathom. I mean, I know what Paul wants, he wants someone to validate his own and his party's stances against public health, he wants support for the idea that all of the mitigation efforts to keep people as healthy as possible when COVID was rampant and had no defense were somehow bad. Paul wants to conjure up out of nothing a reality where fighting disease actually caused disease, where the roughly 30 million deaths from COVID-19 worldwide were somehow because Anthony Fauci recommended social distancing, facemasks in public, and other measures to curb viral spread. Moreover, Paul wants to advance his insane hypothesis that COVID-19 was deliberately engineered by the Chinese in a Wuhan laboratory, which really just amplifies that eliminating-our-line-of-defense Republican policy that took U.S. officials away from monitoring such labs. He wants to convince the world that, because the National Institute of Health funded research into novel viruses and how to protect against them, that Dr. Anthony Fauci is to blame for the very existence of COVID-19, again conveniently ignoring the whole eliminating-public-health-infrastructure wrinkle that preceded COVID reaching the U.S.

It's mind-boggling. 

Paul refers to the lockdowns and school closures and suspensions of regular activity during the pandemic as something that was "inflicted," and that Fauci was to blame for "aiding and abetting the crime." Ron Johnson, scourge of Wisconsin, pushed conspiracy theories against COVID vaccines and favoring medications that are wholly inappropriate, like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and accused Fauci of "sabotaging" their use, as if a learned public health expert would favor anti-parasitic medicines that weaken the immune system as a viral treatment. Florida Man Rick Scott tried to create a conspiracy between Fauci and other officials to quash the "true origins" of COVID-19 and outright accused Dr. Fauci of lying to the public and causing people to distrust vaccines. Rick Scott actually said this to Dr. Fauci, with a straight face no less: "The haphazard information you released and pushed on the American people with little research is appalling and why there's so much distrust in our institutions today. That trust is crucial to public health and you more than any person or event in my lifetime have destroyed that trust for millions of Americans."

Fuck. You. Rick. Scott.

Republicans, from Felon47 to his White House cadre to, yes, Senators and Representatives including RICK FUCKING SCOTT, are the source of mistrust in institutions, are the reason said institutions are a shadow of their former selves, are the purveyors of propaganda that convinces the rubes that vote for them that, even though the Republicans are the ones standing in the drive with gasoline cans and torches, the house was set on fire not by them, but by the people trying to SERVE THE PUBLIC.

Josh Hawley, that piece of crap, was even more childish than Rand Paul, and took "every accusation is a confession" to new heights by claiming Dr. Fauci was corrupt and used the pandemic to make money off the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Bernie Moreno, yet another pustule on the butt of humanity, was so outraged by Anthony Fauci trying to keep people from dying from COVID that he could not "stand idly on the side and watch this happen," ran for the Senate, and said, without a trace of irony, "Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?" He demanded apologies—apologies!—be given to people who took COVID vaccines! What does that idiot Moreno think would be appropriate wording, do you think? "I'm so sorry for urging you to get a perfectly safe vaccine that protects you from this deadly virus. It was wrong of me, I should have instead urged you to go out and bathe in contaminated hospital waste and invite the virus in so you would die."

It went on and on. Ashley Moody, Florida's other embarrassment Senator, touted her state's refusal to do anything to fight the spread of COVID and insulted Fauci for correctly calling Florida's governor a "complete disgrace." Joni Ernst, representing Iowa's dumbest, accused Fauci of somehow funding abortions to harvest body parts for evil experiments. 

Rand Paul engineered this showcase of bullshit, maybe because he thinks it'll curry favor with Felon47, but I think mostly because he hates public service and public servants. His unhinged remarks to both open and close the hearing were psychotic.

Yet, this whole thing will be nothing but a blip in the news. Our worthless corporate news media will not point out how deranged Rand Paul's words were. They will not spotlight Rick Scott's hypocrisy. They will not report on the myriad reasons Josh Hawley and Bernie Moreno and Ashley Moody should be treated as cranks and investigated for their own wrongdoings.

Midterms are just over three months away. Vote these anti-science, anti-democracy, anti-healthcare, pro-death, pro-corruption, sociopathic assholes out.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, COVID-19, Congress, Posted on July 31, 2026 at 4:01AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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New amendments

Having recently read through Melissa Murray's excellent The US Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader, I've found myself considering the need for reforms. Post-Trump reforms, I mean, as it's been made crystal clear by the largely unchecked criminality and corruption of Felon47 and his regime that solid protections against corruption and politically-based jurisprudence don't exist. Or rather, to the extent that they do exist, they depend on a Congressional membership that is not itself corrupt and willing to throw away its collective oath of office.

Assuming we survive the current presidential term as a nation governed by the US Constitution—by no means a sure thing, and something very much dependent on the upcoming midterm elections and the integrity thereof—we need to do what we failed to do in 2021-2024 and enact reforms to safeguard against the sort of destruction and sabotage being inflicted on the United States right now by its own president, aided and abetted by a compliant Congress.

I don't know precisely what these reforms should be, but it does appear that the most effective, most ironclad way to achieve them would be amending the Constitution. That is, of course, a high bar to clear, but I think it's necessary.

So, though I remain uncertain as to what these amendments should be, I have been workshopping a couple in my head and present them here for comment and revision. What do you all think? What's missing? What's overreach? What would be better?

Here goes.

XXVIII is obviously the attempt at an anti-corruption amendment. The emoluments clause of Article II, which states that the President will be paid a salary and "shall not receive within [the term of office] any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them," of course already exists and in general has been enough from presidents one through forty-four and forty-six. But since the emoluments clause uses relatively obscure language (when's the last time you heard the word "emolument" in a context outside of the Constitution?), and since it likely would be interpreted by the Supreme Court as only applying to money coming directly from the federal or state treasuries, we now see that the clause is vastly insufficient.

Felon47 seems to have become belatedly aware of the emoluments clause with his attempted shakedown of the IRS; having been apparently convinced that him suing the IRS for $10B would not work, he pivoted to using the suit as a vehicle to create the slush fund recently announced as a "settlement" of the lawsuit (not a settlement, lawsuit is no more, this is a legally separate thing); then the slush fund had to be reconfigured to fit into an existing "settlement fund" structure with meaningless language saying Felon47 himself would not receive any money even though the loopholes around that are parsecs wide. But most of Felon47’s grift and theft and other corruption has been via the stock market, conning his supporters, cryptocurrency scams, manipulation of government contracts to suit his portfolio, and so on, things that don't come directly from the government treasury. Things that are also largely illegal already, but given that this Supreme Court has decreed that the president can commit crime at will so long as its cloaked in "official action"—and since, even absent that ruling, waiting until a president leaves office to prosecute him for crimes opens a huge window for destruction in the meantime—solidifying the prohibitions in the Constitution is more than appropriate.

XXIX is a more of a work in progress. Clearly, there needs to be some sort of enforcement mechanism for the Supreme Court as there are currently between two and six, depending on your metric, outright corrupt and/or politically driven and/or anti-Constitutional Justices on the bench. The problem is in what form that mechanism should take, and I don't have a clear idea for that. An oversight/ethical review commission seems like a good idea, but maybe it isn't? Maybe it is but isn't enough? Punitive power over the Court rests exclusively with Congress and I don't think we can change that; maybe there's a method of creating some enforcement entity that I haven't thought of, but so far I'm at a loss for anything other than an advisory commission.

I'm not sure I like the idea of imposing term limits on Justices, so I didn't include that. I don't like the concept of term limits generally, but in other cases they apply to elected officials that face being voted out at regular intervals. With the Court there's only impeachment, retirement, or death to remove a Justice. Lifetime appointments theoretically prevent Justices from being vulnerable to political pressures, which is good, but the "job security," if you will, appears, with this crowd anyway, to invite other corruptions. So I'm open to the concept, but it doesn't sit well as a solution to anything.

What's interesting to me as a starting point is the language of Article III establishing the Court, which states that "Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour." So we need a standard, or at least a barometer, for "good behavior" and a clarification that if Justices are not evidencing "good behavior" then they can no longer hold their offices.

I don't know if this is a practical train of thought at all right now; I mean, we have to survive the current regime first, or at least retake a commanding majority of Congress, before anything like this can even be put in motion, so there may be more pressing areas to focus on. But assuming we do make it through to the other side, being ready to go with reform is a good idea. Why not work out the details now?

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Congress, Civics, Posted on May 19, 2026 at 3:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Screaming into the void

As the outrages continue—as the military misadventures further destabilize the world, as the criminality rolls on mostly unchecked, as Felon47 demonstrates more and more insanity—I figured it was time for another letter to Congress.

It's not exactly a rewarding exercise. I've got the best representation in the House and pretty decent representation in the Senate, so I'm expressing my frustration to people who already share it. But what else can we do?

Anyway, here's my latest missive. If you are inclined to send one off as well, there's a link in the sidebar that makes it super easy. It might not help. But it can't hurt. Particularly if you have less principled or more malleable people representing you than those of us in WA-7.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Congress, Posted on April 6, 2026 at 11:19PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Domestic terrorism

Domestic terrorist

Unsurprisingly, the response of the Felon47 regime—principally the Secretary of Homeland Security and Felon47 himself—to the murder of a young mother, an American citizen, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis has been to lie their asses off and claim the incident was something entirely different than what occurred in reality.

They are attempting to spin the killing as some sort of justified self-defense action, but if you've seen the videos taken by eyewitnesses you can plainly see that such a spin is, to echo the term used by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, bullshit. Everything in the statements by the DHS secretary and Felon47 is profoundly untrue, though there is a kernel of truth in one of the lies. Secretary Noem said that ICE reacted to a case of domestic terrorism. That is a blatant lie, easily debunked by the video records. But this was a case of domestic terrorism—just not in the way Noem would have us believe. The terrorists were the ICE agents, and the ICE agent that fired his gun repeatedly into the open driver-side window of Renee Good's car at point-blank range committed murder.

ICE has become a terrorist organization. By extension, the Department of Homeland Security has become a terrorist organization. By extension, the executive branch of the United States government has become a terrorist organization.

One of the many, many reforms I think is necessary for our country to recover from this dalliance with fascist thuggery is to undo the biggest mistake of the George W. Bush administration outside of his wars. That administration crafted the new cabinet agency, the Department of Homeland Security, in the wake of 9/11, making it a sprawling cluster of bureaucracies borne of paranoia and with overreaching, careless authorities. It needs to be abolished, its constituent parts returned to their former agencies or erased from existence. ICE in particular needs to be disbanded, with customs and border control and immigration duties reorganized in ways that actually keeps them in their own lanes.

Right now ICE is just the American Gestapo, with DHS functioning as the American Schutzstaffel.

These people have to be stopped. Since the Republican party is corrupt and Republican officials are functioning as accomplices and accessories to countless crimes including murder and outright betrayal of the Constitution, we may well have to suffer for another year before a new Congress can finally take these fuckers down, assuming we can overcome the inevitable Republican attempts to subvert the midterm elections. But that doesn't mean we don't try in the meantime.

Write your Congresspeople. Write your Senators. Call their offices, shout from the rooftops, communicate however you can to those with the power to fix this—and make no mistake, Congress could end this reign of terror today if they chose to—that we are mad as hell and won't take any more.

Impeach. Convict. Remove. Do it now.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Society, Congress, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 8, 2026 at 12:26AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Speak your mind

Yesterday I sent yet another letter to my Senators and my representative in the House. It's super simple to do, you just follow this link and put in your address and that links you to your three Congresspeople. Paste in your letter and send. Easy-peasy.

You, too, can speak your mind to power. I recommend it. Especially now, especially if you live in a red district or state.

Not sure what to say? Feel free to adapt mine. Here it is.

Dear Senator Murray / Senator Cantwell / Representative Jayapal,

 

Friday's Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian president Zelenskyy and Donald Trump & JD Vance displayed horrific, outrageous, and thoroughly unacceptable behavior from the United States government.

It was, of course, just one of many examples of horrific policy and behavior from the Trump administration. The sheer volume of lawlessness and cruelty and overt corruption present every single day from this administration is enough to warrant removal from office.

But today the president and vice-president of the United States insulted an ally fighting for his nation's very survival, lied repeatedly both to him and to the American public, bullied President Zelenskyy, and behaved like petulant children—all in the service of an attempt to extort Ukraine.

Trump is an embarrassment and profoundly dangerous. It's barely been one month since his inauguration and he's shown his contempt for the United States Constitution, his profound ignorance of international relations, and a corrupt agenda intended to cripple the government and enrich himself and his billionaire cronies. Today he destroyed the United States' standing as leader of the free world and made clear his intent to abandon Western alliances.

If this is what he's done in a month, what will he do in a year, two years, four years?

Trump is a criminal, an idiot, and a tyrant.

I realize the current state of Congress doesn't offer much hope for a successful impeachment. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying. What are you waiting for? How bad do things have to get before impeachment becomes a consideration?

I don't ask that rhetorically, I am genuinely curious as to whether or not a strategy has been discussed. Does it depend on congressional Republicans? They are not going to move on their own, they've shown themselves to be feckless toadies and/or MAGA zealots; they will only come around if they feel pressure from outside. Pressure them. Find out what's making them betray their oaths by supporting this anti-American administration. If they are bowing to terrorists, call them out.

Republican, Democrat, or other, everyone in congress is supposed to be an American. Americans, those who support our constitution and history and ideals surrounding a more perfect union, would remove this president as soon as possible, before the level of destruction at home and damage abroad becomes catastrophic.

If not the immediate introduction of articles of impeachment, then work to lobby and whip support for such must be happening right now. The longer Trump is allowed to hold office the greater the chance that this country ceases to exist as we know it.

 

Sincerely,

Tim Harrison,

Seattle, WA

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Congress, Posted on March 1, 2025 at 8:43PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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A Year of Trump

It could be worse.

A year since the election that gave us the most embarrassing and heinous man to ever hold the office of President of the United States, the orange idiot has basically failed to accomplish much of anything. Not entirely—the number of judicial appointments is concerning, of course, and a staggering number of executive orders intended to screw people and pollute the planet—but in terms of big policy, he's got bupkis to show for his efforts. (If we can call them efforts. Being ignorant of his actual job duties, he's actually done very little policymaking.) Still, everything he has done has been horrible, and the behavior of other elected Republicans is arguably more horrible as they allow him to continue to be president while pushing legislation that defies their mandate as public servants.

Last year at Thanksgiving I was asked how long I thought Trump would last in office. I said, if I recall correctly, somewhere between "until Christmas" and "early 2019," depending on how much the Republican congress would tolerate. Congress has already supported and/or turned a blind eye to more than I would have thought they would, but when the tax-reform bill fails that might tip the scales. Maybe. Who knows, with this crowd. Paul Ryan is apparently as corrupt as anyone this side of the Trump family themselves, at least in terms of betraying his duty to serve the public interest in favor of an overall agenda of enriching himself and his benefactors, so maybe nothing will tip the scales. The Mueller investigation could produce incontrovertible proof of treason and Ryan might shrug it off. The midterms may have to happen—without enough cheating to rig things—first, assuming we and our electoral system of government survive through 2018.

Meanwhile, he's still living at 1600 Penn. It could be worse, but it's plenty bad already. John Oliver lays it all out.

 

Tagged Congress, President VonClownstick, John Oliver, Posted on November 14, 2017 at 5:40PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Apply Pressure

If it's Monday, it must be time for another letter to Congress.

That's the way it is here in Trumpistan—every day there's a new outrage. So, gotta make our voices heard, especially since I didn't participate in the airport demonstration or the downtown rally last night. I sent the same one to all three of my reps, and by all means, feel free to crib for your own letters to Congress (though if you do, don't copy me verbatim, if it starts to look like a form letter it'll have less credence).

January 30, 2017

Dear Sen. Maria Cantwell :
Dear Sen. Patty Murray :
Dear Rep. Pramila Jayapal :

Hi. Me again. I know, this is starting to become a ritual.

Today's plea regards the upcoming votes on cabinet nominees. Please, for the sake of all humanity, oppose with vigor the confirmations of Betsy DeVos, Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, ... you know what? Every remaining Trump cabinet appointee is horrendous. They ALL need to be denied.

Perhaps more importantly, it has become crystal clear that the president is being controlled by Steve Bannon, a man no one elected to anything. This neo-Nazi is writing presidential executive orders and directing policy, taking advantage of Mr. Trump's obvious intellectual and psychological deficiencies to pursue an agenda of bigotry and mayhem. (He has said -- out loud! -- that his goal is to "destroy the state.") Steve Bannon needs to be denied as well. I don't know offhand what authority Congress can bring to bear on someone with a "White House adviser" title, but somehow, some way, he has to be removed from his position of influence.

The Trump Administration has been in power for just a week-and-a-half and the damage has been mind-boggling. Trump and Bannon's disregard for civil norms, policy procedure, legal review, and basic decency—not to mention the Constitution—must not be allowed to continue, lest the chaos of these last few days turn into complete and utter disaster in the next few months, let alone four years. And I haven't even mentioned the brazen, naked corruption happening with the president, his staff, and his cabinet nominees! The number of outrageous things this administration represents is almost infinite.

I'd say focus on the top of the food chain and "simply" impeach Mr. Trump, but I know the Speaker and most of his fellow House Republicans aren't likely to entertain that notion, at least not yet. So until that course becomes feasible, please: Give no quarter.

Oppose these horrid cabinet nominees. Find a way to remove Steve Bannon. Support the judiciary when Trump and his people break the law, as they did with the Muslim immigration ban (and let's not mice words, that's what it's intended to be).

Protect us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Tim Harrison
Seattle, WA 98103

Tagged Dystopia, President VonClownstick, Congress, Posted on January 30, 2017 at 4:31PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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