Stuff other people said

A few quotes from other places on the interwebs before I head out for the evening...

• "It’s like hiring your divorce lawyer to become the marriage counselor for the entire country. And apparently his confirmation has come down to two departing Republican senators saying, ‘Look... we’re fine with most of the corruption. We just need this one piece of corruption to go away in writing.’"

  —John Fugelsang, on the nomination of Todd Blanche for Attorney General being advanced out of committee in the Senate when Thom Tillis and John Cornyn accepted a meaningless written statement from Blanche saying there was no "slush find" for Felon47 to pay people off with.

• "The two senators are likely to puff out their chests and claim that they extracted a material concession. They held out, they made the White House sweat, they got it in writing. It is a tidy story, and every part of it that matters is wrong. They got nothing. Blanche gave up nothing. And the fund they think they killed is no less alive today than it was the day before Blanche put his name to that order."

  —Harry Litman, on the same subject.

• "It’s just one more thing that the next Democratic president’s Secretary of Un-Fucking All That Shit is going to have to deal with."

  —Jeff Tiedrich, on something that completely escaped my notice before today: Felon47’s further destruction of White House grounds to build a helipad, and then ordering the work to be redone because he didn't like the look of it, in another absurd waste of taxpayer money on a vanity project.

• "There are days when it genuinely feels almost masochistic to keep exposing ourselves to the relentless barrage of terrible news. At the same time, if we are members of a functioning society, we have to remain connected to what’s happening because that’s the only way we can respond in meaningful ways."

  —Mary Trump, articulating why I and others continue to follow the news when it's so goddamn maddening and depressing.

• "The fascinating question isn’t just who the Republican nominee might be. It’s whether Donald will ever acknowledge that anyone else deserves to lead. I don’t believe he can. His identity depends entirely on convincing himself that he’s indispensable."

  —Mary Trump again, responding to a question about whether Felon47 will support someone else running for the Republican nomination in 2028.

• "It reminds me of an old Star Trek episode. A historian attempts to stabilize a troubled planet by modeling it after Nazi Germany. Eventually he realizes what he’s created is monstrous and wants to stop it, but the people around him drug him, prop him up behind a microphone, and simply replay old recordings while pretending he’s still leading. As absurd as that sounds, I can imagine something similar happening with Donald. Whether it’s a fake Oval Office, carefully staged appearances, or simply limiting his public exposure, the people around him have every incentive to preserve the illusion for as long as possible because their own power depends on maintaining it."

  —Mary Trump one more time, scratching the nerd itch while talking politics, responding to the idea that Felon47 is becoming a mere figurehead as his dementia worsens.

• "The American League Central is like its own pocket universe. You’ve got five flawed teams bouncing around like lottery balls in that glass ball."

  —Joe Posnanski, writing about the just-passed Major League Baseball trade deadline and how that division is anyone's to win. Same could be said for the AL West, BTW, though there it's three underachieving teams instead of five.

• "I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack."

  —Felon47, the alleged President of the United States, after being shown voluminous evidence that there has been a cyberattack across the infrastructure of multiple states by Iran. Rest easy, America.

• "They’re Bizarro-world spidermen, whose great power confers no responsibility."

  —Cory Doctorow, on Google and credit card giants that enable fraud and, in Google's case, aid and abet fraudsters by purposely enshittifying their search algorithms.

• Finally, I give you the entirety of Andy Borowitz's latest bit of satire:

  FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY (The Borowitz Report)—Calling the situation “unacceptable to the people of my state,” on Tuesday Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear demanded to know whether or not Senator Rand Paul was brain-dead.

  “I have viewed disturbing video taken last week in the US Senate in which Senator Paul appears to be brain-dead,” Beshear told reporters. “As governor, I demand that he inform Kentuckians about his status—if, in fact, he is capable of human speech.”

  Beshear said he became “alarmed” when he viewed the video, in which Paul exhibited “brain activity consistent with that of a coma patient or Tommy Tuberville.”

  The governor’s announcement was only the latest controversy to embroil Paul, just days after shocking evidence emerged that he may have been created in a lab leak.

All for now. Gotta run.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Posted on August 5, 2026 at 5:28PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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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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Bits and pieces

All-Star Game AQI: Very Unhealthy

So, there've been a few things I've been meaning to post about, but time and energy haven't been forthcoming for it. So a disjointed one today and hopefully back to real posts over the weekend(?).

• ITEM: The MLB All-Star Game was a dud for the 7th consecutive year. I don't know exactly what to suggest for de-dudifying the All-Star Game, other than doing away with the unconscionable home-run derby tiebreaker that marred last year's ASG (some of the best ASGs have been extra-inning affairs, which can never happen again so long as that stupid rule exists). But it would be in baseball's interest to tweak some things. As a friend of mine put it last night, in a way it's amazing anyone gets any hits at all in these games, since every pitcher is elite and they're only in the game very briefly. And this time around, the National League team barely had any, with Juan Soto notching a base hit in the 4th and nothing else until PCA got a hit in the 8th and Otto Lopez lined one in the 9th. One walk in the first, one in the seventh. Zippo otherwise in a year when the NL is far and away the superior league in terms of team strength (of course, the ASG is all about individuals, where there's more parity). Meanwhile, the American League team plated three in the first inning and that was effectively it for the game, after that just a solo homer from Miguel Vargas in the 8th that went by in a blink. We were wondering if this game would set a record for most strikeouts, but no; that happened a few years back in another dud.

  Other than changing the selection process to better choose the participants, I don't know how to fix this, or even if it needs to be fixed, but there are a couple of things I'd like to see beyond obliterating the HR Derby tiebreaker. One, mandate that the starting pitcher pitch at least two innings unless he gets hurt or unless he gets lit up. Then it's actually a bigger deal to be named starter than to just be an opener in a bullpen game. Two, no more mid-game interruptions—in Bud Selig's day we'd get mid-game delays to make a speech or something, these days it's a delay for some sort of stunt or performance like it's a miniature football halftime show. This year it was a video of a bunch of kids riding their bikes to a ballgame followed by real kids riding bikes onto the field, I think as some sort of homage to the film The Sandlot. Also midgame fireworks that flooded the ballpark with particulates and haze. Do that shit before the game or don't do it at all.

  Maybe the biggest problem, though, isn't the game itself but the broadcast of the game. It's hard to follow the game as it's being presented to us. Fox Sports has taken to interviewing players—including, this time, both the pitcher and catcher at the same time—while they are actively playing the game, which, OK, can be entertaining in spots but generally is pointless and has to be distracting for the players, in addition to being a sideshow from the game itself. The commentators have interviewed players after they come out of the game forever, that's fine (so long as we can still see what's happening on the field) and less intrusive. But I'd do away with players taking earpieces with them out to the field to chat with Joe Davis and John Smoltz, or whomever takes over play-by-play duty in the future. Not unrelatedly, the Fox crew doesn't reliably let us know when players come into the game, and there are a ton of substitutions going on after the third inning of an ASG (elected starters have to play three frames); many fans are wanting to see "their guy" play, and sometimes we don't know until a ball is hit to his position and we see the guy make a play. "Hey, my guy is in! Wonder how long he's been out there. Could've been two or three innings for all we know." The broadcasters are too into doing their goofy/inane Q&A with players as they're trying to play to really pay attention to much else. We also should get more in the way of graphics and info on the All-Star players; you get some with the starters as the lineups are announced, but a lot of these guys are unfamiliar to the audience outside of their home markets, it'd be nice for the casual fan to see why, say, rookie Tristian Peters made the squad instead of just wondering amongst themselves as we did, "hey who's that White Sox guy, what's his deal?" Do a little graphical info dump when new players enter the game. And John Smoltz is his own category of problem, he's just terrible as a commentator whether it's the ASG or a playoff game or anything else.

  We enjoyed mocking the thing here, though.

• ITEM (related): Another quote from Craig. From the "this date in baseball history" section of Craig Calcaterra's newsletter today: "1909 — Ed Summers of the Detroit Tigers allows only seven hits and pitches all 18 innings of a 0-0 tie—the game was called due to darkness—with the Washington Senators. It's the longest scoreless game in AL history. Yet, somehow, it was still far more compelling than the 2026 All-Star Game."
• ITEM: People are dumb, and people with fireworks are super dumb. My umpiring shifts for Capitol Hill games have been/are being moved elsewhere because some idiot set off fireworks on the Cap Hill field's synthetic infield and damaged it to the point of unplayability. That whole set of athletic fields is in need of resurfacing, yes, but until a week-and-a-half ago it was still plenty usable. This happened to a lesser extent last year at the Ballard fields where the Spuds play and we had to navigate our play around a hole between first and second base. Can we just be done with fireworks? They're pretty, but the particulates, the smoke, the noise, the fire hazard, is it really worth it? Drone shows are less damaging.
• ITEM: Spuds done for ’26: Speaking of the Spuddies, we played our playoff game yesterday and it did not go well. Full post on that coming later on, but we were trounced.
• ITEM: The health care system in this country is a joke, part 2,352,091. I had my annual checkup today, and I had to go to a new doctor for it. My prior doc doesn't take the insurance I have now, which I switched to because Republicans made the premiums on the insurance I had the last couple of years unaffordable. So I had to go through the rigamarole of again finding a new primary care doc, which I did a couple months ago and today was the next available appointment I could comfortably swing. So I find my way to the new place, go to check in, and am told this doctor isn't taking new patients, but we can do my annual check. "Wait, what?" This didn't compute with me. "If she isn't taking new patients, why am I here? Why did this appointment even get accepted in the first place?" The reply was gobbledygook that made no sense to me, but I was already there and my Rx is going to run out in a couple weeks, so I said fine, we'll do this and then I'll go through the whole process yet again next time I need to see someone. The nurse/med tech guy was sympathetic when he was getting my vitals and such, and after he left the exam room I heard him explain to the doctor in detail about the scheduling fuckup, and in the end the doc agreed to take me on anyway. It may or may not work out well, I don't really have a sense of her as someone I can relate to. The prior doctor was a good fit, I wish I could've kept seeing her, but we live in the US of A, where everything medical is dictated by what insurance you can afford, because people are stupid and keep electing Republicans.
• ITEM: Felon47 went on TV with his tin-foil hat. The alleged President of the United States, a convicted felon and perpetrator of several frauds that were settled out of court as well as many that have yet to be charged, the most grandiose and prolific liar on Earth, made a "speech" about made-up election conspiracies tonight. He distorted intelligence that we already knew about to make it sound (to him, anyway) like there were rampant issues with foreign operatives that are not the actual issues with foreign operatives which benefit him, he made already-debunked claims of mass-voting by non-citizens. He whined and grievanced his way through a pathetic spectacle intended to do two things: Create support for his pet voter-suppression bill that as it stands has no chance of passing either house of Congress, because he wants to be able to cheat in elections with impunity; and take the news media's focus off of the Iran debacle, gas prices, oncoming economic calamity, the outrageous things said by his unqualified criminal lackey nominees in confirmation hearings going on this week, his Air Force One fuckups, the reflecting pool bullshit, ICE murdering people and getting away with it, RFK Jr.'s direct responsibility for both screwworm and parasites in our lettuce (and the need for me to have gotten a measles vaccination today), deaths in DHS custody, the embarrassing NATO summit, his petulant refusal to sign a bipartisan housing bill that became law anyway (which he may not know), his staff getting caught using inside info to make Kalshi bets, his flip-flopping Strait of Hormuz "policies", a judge slapping him down hard on his "settlement" with the IRS, the Republican push for an unconscionable increase in military funding, his and Pete Hegseth's various war crimes, his illegal harassment of journalists, and the evergreen scandal of the Epstein Files. We can't wait for this maniac's term to run out, we need to elect as may Democrats to Congress as possible, by margins too big for him to cheat against, and remove him ASAP.

Tagged Baseball, MLB, Umping, Softball, Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Health, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on July 16, 2026 at 8:51PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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I'd have preferred they resigned in disgrace, but...

Good riddance to bad senators

So, Lindsey Graham is dead. I don't celebrate that. I mean, it's good that he's out of the Senate, it's good that he can't go on promoting stupid wars and serving as Felon47’s most loyal/most effectively blackmailed mouthpiece. The world is probably better off overall. But this isn't how I wanted to see the fall of Lindsey Graham, I'd have preferred that whatever he was (probably) being blackmailed with had become public and prompted him to resign and go into hiding. But things are what they are and this pathetic, spineless, amoral warhawk is gone from the Earth.

On the other hand, there's Mitch McConnell—Schrödinger's Senator, at once alive and dead in isolation, the true state to be determined only when he can once more be observed. There was a social media post attributed to him today, with a photograph allegedly real and from the same day, that his staff would like us to accept as proof of life. And maybe it is. But I doubt it. After all, this is the political party that has shown itself to be much too comfortable with disinformation and propaganda, in support of one of the most evil men to ever hold elected office.

 The statement in the social media post attributed to McConnell was clearly not written by McConnell, but that doesn't mean anything as politicians have other people write remarks for them all the time. The photograph has been alleged to be a retouched version of a photo from several years ago, but that's as likely as not so means nothing. Other senators claimed to have spoken on the phone with McConnell in recent days "for about 20 minutes" each, which begins to sound like a scripted talking point after the second one.

The photo might be real, the statement might have been approved by him, he might be alive and recuperating as the statement suggests. Or, he could be brain-dead and being kept alive on life-support machinery until a political deadline passes that would preclude a special election to replace him from happening. Or, he could already be gone and the Republicans are perpetuating a sham in order to... what? The conspiracy theory kind of falls apart, the only benefit to covering up a death here would be to avoid that special election and the alternative is just a vacant seat. Is that better? Maybe, maybe not, but it seems extreme even for these idiots.

No matter what, though, it seems highly unlikely that Mitch McConnell will ever return to work. So, again, net gain for humanity. From his theft of a Supreme Court seat from President Obama to his refusal to support conviction of Felon47 while he was still Fraudster45 in both impeachments (as minority leader he had enough clout to get the conviction, he decided to let the insurrectionist skate instead), McConnell is more responsible for our current dystopia than any other individual person is. He is/was an evil fuck and the world will be better off without him. 

So the Senate losing these two pustules of humanity is good. The Senate now stands at 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats in practical terms, and a few of those Republicans lost their primaries and are potentially less controllable by leadership. No appointeds are getting confirmed for the rest of the year, I'd wager, and without Graham to be Felon47’s Senate Enforcer, any chance of GOP legislation getting passed is also near zero. This is positive.

Still, in a way these two asshats escaped. They don't have to face justice. They got to live their lives without ever being held accountable for their myriad misdeeds as alleged public servants.

This is one time when I think it would be nice to be a religious person. Then I could take some satisfaction in the belief that these two would be facing karmic punishments in the afterlife. Instead, I can't help but feel like they got away with it.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Posted on July 12, 2026 at 11:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The facts do not matter

It's been a dark several days for American jurisprudence. The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a number of rulings as the close out their session, and even the rulings that aren't outrageous or corrupt or just plain anti-Constitutional are causes for alarm and spotlight the dire need for reforms of some kind for SCOTUS.

What kind of reform I'm not sure about. I tried my hand at it with my proposal for new Constitutional amendments, but it's a tough nut to crack. At minimum the Court needs ethical standards that are enforceable by an entity outside of the Supreme Court, but how we get there is murky.

We can't really celebrate the "good" decisions, the ones that are in favor of upholding law and the Constitution and the forces of good, because the votes have been astonishingly close, with several justices making no bones about their allegiance to the Dark Side of the Force.

The Court has, just this week, ruled the following:

See full post: "The facts do not matter"...

Tagged SCOTUS, Republicans, Politics, Society, Posted on July 3, 2026 at 10:12PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Republican devolution: From championing abolition to paying tribute to the Don

The Republican Party was born in opposition to slavery. It championed liberty and inclusion, welcoming members from many political persuasions into the ranks so long as they supported the goal of abolition. In the ensuing 170 years it has evolved a lot, morphing into a home for those who favor oppression rather than oppose it; those who hoard wealth rather than use it to better society; those who wish to impose their religiosity and morality on others rather than defend freedom of faith and values.

It's impressive, really, how much of a fun-house-mirror distortion the GOP is now from its beginnings. It didn't take all that long to start morphing; after the failure of Reconstruction, the party fractured into racist and non- (or less-) racist wings (the "Lily-Whites" and the "Black and Tans"). The former became "conservative Republicans" that preferred maintaining discrimination in the defeated Confederacy as a means of healing the reconstructed nation. Fracturing continued with disagreements on economic policy and corruption joining the rift on civil rights, and by the turn of the 20th century the core of what we have today as the modern Republican party was in place—it just took 60-80 years, depending  on your metrics, to alienate out everyone else that still held to less selfish ideals.

Then another 20 to entrench the party as corrupt, irresponsible, and opposed to the well-being of the nation as a whole in favor of the greed and consolidated power of a few; then another 16 to become truly and fully modeled on organized crime and the mafia.

The alleged president often takes hostages, like he did this past week with the overwhelmingly supported housing bill that passed both houses of Congress by huge margins, refusing to sign it unless the Senate also passed a voter-suppression law, essentially telling Congress, "nice bill ya got here—be a shame if somethin' happened to it." But it's really Congressional Republicans that are the problem. The Godfather can't succeed without support from his Capos and their crews, and the Speaker of the House isn't bothering to hide the fact that he's the top Capo in the DJT Mafia.

Speaker Mike Johnson, or "Holy Mike," if you prefer, said this in an address to the "Faith and Freedom Coalition" yesterday:

If we were to lose these midterms, heaven forbid, these Democrats—y’all, impeachment’s not even the big concern—they will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the cabinet, his donors and friends, half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I’ll take care of you.

There's Holy Mike threatening me with a good time. A Congress that actually conducts oversight? That investigates malfeasance? That opposes criminality in government? Yes, please.

But he sees those things as a different sort of threat. I don't know about "half of you in this room" being worthy of Congressional investigations—certainly possible given Holy Mike's in-person audience there, largely GOP donors and electioneering footsoldiers from Ralph Reed's twisted-Christian army—but yeah, the president's sons' corrupt government contracts; cabinet officers' incompetence, corruption, and abuses of power; people bribing the regime (Holy Mike is calling them "donors"); all ripe for committee subpoenas and referrals for charges. But is even that enough for Holy Mike to consider a threat? Does he think investigations will lead to him? He's a capo, maybe the most powerful one, and despite his utter fecklessness at being Speaker of the House, he has thus far prevented untold scandals from becoming catastrophic for the regime. What crimes has he committed in the process?

Or, maybe he sees a takedown of the regime and/or exposure of all the criminality still hidden beneath the surface as an indirect threat to himself. As he himself put it, he runs the protection program. And if he fails to protect the regime, the regime will ruin him? Seems a likely fear. Cross the Don, or even appear to cross the Don, and even a Capo might be taken out in a message job. With just the slightest provocation from the Don, the pardoned thug army of enforcers would just change "Pence" to "Johnson" when they build their next gallows and chant as they riot.

"I run the protection program." What a thing to say.

Having identified the president's family, cabinet officers, GOP financiers, and "friends" of the president as being in need of protection, having insinuated that the audience at the "Faith and Freedom" event needs protection, having admitted that he runs a protection "program," the question Holy Mike needs to be asked by every reporter in the country is, "what are you protecting them from?" Of course, he would say "witch hunts" or something along those lines, but he knows full well that it's really only his crowd that engages in made-up accusatory behavior. What he's telling people to be afraid of are prosecutions for real malfeasance.

The Independent reported on it with a direct and honest headline no American publication would use today: "Mike Johnson warns roomful of conservatives to reelect Republicans or face prison."

The vast majority of elected Democrats don't need such protection because they aren't criminals. "If you don’t want to be prosecuted for crimes," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, "don’t do crimes." AOC elaborated on Holy Mike's remarks, noting that he is trying to "protect a class of impunity in America that says, ‘You can commit whatever crime, and so long as you pay a check to us, we will protect you.’ And that is a model of extortion in American politics."

November can't come fast enough. Depose Holy Mike from his Speakership, investigate every scandal, impeach the whole regime. Or we'll all be sleeping with the fishes.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Posted on June 27, 2026 at 9:53PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Capitulation at Versailles

When Felon47 announced he had reached an agreement on a "memo of understanding"—which he, of course, called a "deal"—with Iran that would end the war he started for no reason and with no authorization, he wouldn't let anyone see the text of the memo. Friday, he said. We'll have a "signing ceremony" and it'll be released then.

Uh-huh.

I translated this as "the agreement is so bad, so politically toxic, so embarrassing to the United States that I can't let it out until fewer people are paying attention." Someone explained to him the concept of "take out the trash day," which he only partly comprehended, and then made up a nonexistent ceremony that would trumpet this "deal" which is nothing more than an agreement to reach an agreement and points that the eventual agreement should include. You don't do a signing ceremony for that.

And there was none. In fact, he signed the damn thing early, not bothering to wait until Friday, maybe thinking that since he told us it would be Friday that we wouldn't notice it done on Wednesday, with no pomp and circumstance. And he did it at the Palace of Versailles, of all places.

Since he's an utter buffoon, he still talked to the press about it and was forced to admit things while still trying to gaslight everyone into thinking he'd achieved ... something. Anything. That his stupid war wasn't completely counterproductive and wasteful and damaging, not to mention lethal to thousands.

The agreement with Iran that had been in place before Felon47 came into office the first time, as Fraudster45, was a painstakingly negotiated, highly detailed triumph of international diplomacy known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JPCOA). An achievement of greatness by the Obama administration, it had already accomplished what Felon47 has repeatedly touted as his primary goal for his war: to prevent Iran from  joining the nuclear weapons club. It had placed specific restrictions on what Iran could and could not develop regarding nuclear power technology. It had safeguards, enforcement mechanisms, inspections. This is what Felon47 has continually insisted was "the worst deal ever," "a disaster," and "a road to [Iran getting] a nuclear weapon." Undoubtedly without reading a word of it, as Fraudster45 he withdrew the United States from the agreement, effectively scuttling it, for no reason other than it was something achieved by President Obama.

Having decried the JPCOA in extreme terms for years, Felon47 went to war. Why? No one knows, really. We can speculate, but no matter what we conclude, there was no sane reason. But the result of that utter waste of lives, money, resources, and credibility is, for now, the memo.

Which gives Iran:

• Security from further interference in their affairs, e.g. freedom to continue in oppressing their people and conducting terrorism at will;
• A new authority, with some input from other states abutting the Persian Gulf, to charge tolls for shipments to go through the Strait of Hormuz, which heretofore has been accepted to be an international waterway not subject to control by Iran or any other country; 
• A minimum of three-hundred-billion dollars "for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran";
• The termination of all economic sanctions against Iran, including those imposed by the UN and IAEA, which the US government has no authority over;
• Nuclear restrictions less severe than those in the JPCOA;
• Restoration of Iran's ability to participate in international banking services, thus the ability to sell oil at market rates instead of the prior necessarily lesser prices; and
• The return of all frozen Iranian assets with zero restrictions on their use.

And which gives the United States:

• A promise that Iran won't attack it or interfere with internal US policies.

So, Felon47 tears up a negotiated agreement that was a brilliant success at containing nuclear proliferation; bombs the crap out of the facilities resurgent since that agreement was torn up; launches a war without any legal authorization or rationale that depletes the US military, kills thousands of people and wounds untold others, costs the American taxpayers an estimated $50-$100 billion in direct expense and uncounted dollars in indirect expenses, installs a younger, more hardline Ayatollah as Iran's leader, puts the Iranian people under a harsher and better funded regime, and inflicts enormous damage on the global economy; signs a memo agreeing to give Iran everything it could possibly want including more billions of US funds (despite what JD Vance says, there is no way that $300+ billion fund will contain no American money); and calls it all a victory.

Some victory; the memo is so much like a surrender document that the Iranians are probably saying to themselves, "dang, we also should have added in that Puerto Rico is ours now."

Nevertheless, Felon47 posted this on his janky social media app on Saturday: "Radical Left fools and Dumocrats realize how well we have done in our War against Iran, with their Country being completely defeated." Even his gaslighting attempts are incoherent.

Yet, immediately after signing the memo, while still in France and presumably jetlagged and unable to function at what passes for normal proficiency for him, he told reporters some rare truths. Asked about the lopsided nature of the memo, he said, "If I went out and continued to bomb them … I'd get bad press. There's nothing I can do." He also acknowledged that Iran had all the power regarding their closure of the Strait of Hormuz, saying the memo terms "allow the ships to go. If we keep bombing, those ships won't be going." This is important to Felon47 because, as he admitted, the US would otherwise "run out of [oil] reserves in four weeks." He recognized that his war had begun to ruin the economy and he needed to end it because he couldn't stand the idea that he'd be remembered as Herbert Hoover is. "He was the one I didn't want to be." (It's notable that in this rare bout of honesty he didn't say he didn't want the American people to endure the hardship of a new Great Depression, he said he didn't want his reputation damaged. Well, too late, dude, you'd have to do some epic atonements to rise to within shouting distance of Hoover.)

We find ourselves in a position of hoping this terrible agreement survives the 60-day period it specifies as a window to complete a real treaty. We are led by a regime so utterly incompetent and corrupt that our best option is now this weak band-aid attempt to staunch the entirely self-inflicted bleeding caused by the alleged president running with scissors.

It probably won't survive the 60 days, and even if it does, any final agreement will need to be signed off on by the United Nations Security Council, which seems iffy.

Elect a clown, expect a circus. Also expect the circus to (eventually?) leave town leaving enormous piles of manure to contend with that never seem to end.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on June 22, 2026 at 7:04PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Potpourri

The metaphor isn't subtle. Americans, represented on the left, and the Republican Party, represented on the right.

Seems like a lot went on in the world this past weekend, but did it really? Let's see...

• White House announces war in Iran is over: Except it's not, at least not yet. All we really know is that there's a "memo of understanding" that includes a "cease-fire" and a 60-day timeline for a full agreement to be reached. Whatever documentation that has been agreed upon is still secret. Felon47 says we'll see it after a "signing ceremony" on Friday, which strikes me as more hyperbole since this is reportedly not a peace agreement but an agreement to discuss a peace agreement. A thing about which we've heard before that turned out to be baseless. So I'll believe it when I see the text and get confirmation from someone not affiliated with this corrupt and dishonest White House that all parties are on board with it. Regardless, it will shock me and most everyone who's been paying any attention at all if the end result of this fiasco is remotely close to what was the status quo before Felon47 as Fraudster45 torched the previous diplomatic agreement with Iran. No matter how he spins this, the alleged president undertook this deadly adventure for no sane reasons and achieved only negative results.
• Alleged president celebrates 80th birthday as if it's his 8th: Last year the toddler-in-chief held a military parade for himself that required massive repair to the DC road infrastructure after it was done. Almost no one attended and he fell asleep in the middle of it. This year he hosted corporately-sponsored brutality on public land, the White House lawn, where 14 modern-day gladiators-for-hire, decked out in faux-patriotic wardrobe, beat the shit out of each other in perhaps the most spot-on metaphor for the entire Felon47 regime. This was a crass, corrupt, likely illegal event which Felon47 and his sons have a financial stake in and which financially benefits corporate executives who will be expected to return the favor, yes. But it was also a spotlit image of Felon47’s id. Brutal violence as entertainment, bloodsport under advertising banners, all on grounds he does not own and does not have rights to use for profit. It combined almost all elements of the man's persona: Violence for violence's sake; grift and profiteering; spectacle, glitz, and "showmanship"; abuse of public property for the sake of flexing his own power; propaganda; mob-like dealmaking/extortion; and above all, a belief that brute force (and the threat thereof) is the only power that matters.
• American idiot leaves for G7: Felon 47 departed for Europe and a meeting of the G7 nations, a summit at which the other heads of state will have to find a way to tolerate his presence. As articulated by Ned Price, a State Department spokesman, “The bar for success at a multilateral summit like this is quite low during this administration.” Price elaborated to define success for the U.S. as the president "avoiding a massive blowup either in person or on social media." Summit host Emmanuel Macron is choosing the butter-him-up tactic, choosing to flatter Felon47’s ego to either smooth things over in general or as a means of manipulation for whatever good thing the rest of the G7 wants to achieve. I put the likelihood of Price seeing his bar for success met at maybe 35%.
• Ump works 8½ hours in the hot sun: On the micro scale, I had a five-game umpiring shift yesterday, a Sunday afternoon that reached 90° Fahrenheit, during which there are no breaks and only sporadic shade until about 6pm. As expected, by game five I was worn down, cranky, hungry, and good and ready to go home, but at least there weren't many points of conflict throughout the day. Just a couple of stupid things about balls and strikes that I never have patience for on a normal day. And now I've got to go out and do three more games tonight, and tonight's contests are playoffs. Hopefully, nobody amps up their machismo for them. I've been doing a whole lot of umping these past few weeks, and largely that's fine, but the five-gamers do make me question some of my life choices.

That's all I have time for right now. Ittekimasu.

Tagged Politics, Umping, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on June 15, 2026 at 5:35PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Numb to incivility

If a G.I.Joe action-figure were brain-damanged, had Nazi tattoos, and came to life to get blackout drunk, you'd have this guy

Every now and then I am reminded of how truly inured our culture has become to a lack of civility and decorum in this, the age of Felon47.

Sometimes it happens just in my daily life encountering people "in the wild," like a couple of Sundays ago with the road rager and the overly-macho softball player, but more often it happens when I'm watching/reading/listening to the news. People, sometimes high-level officials even, think nothing of just oozing hostility and contempt to whomever they're speaking to. With no provocation at all, it's just the default—be belligerent.

What brings this up today is the recent questioning of the idiotic caricature of machismo masquerading as the Secretary of Defense. A reporter asked him quite reasonable questions about the indefensible, pointless, illegal, and wholly counterproductive war with Iran (though the reporter did not use those descriptors), and Secretary Kegstand responded with insults and dismissive doubletalk and ridiculous propaganda. The reporters, sadly, let him do so without pushback.

REPORTER:  You've just mentioned you plan to strike [Iran] hard tonight. If [that includes] hitting bridges and electrical infrastructure, how is that not a war crime? Targeting civilian infrastructure?

HEGSETH: That's precisely the kind of disingenuous question I'm used to from the media, impugning the motives of the folks on our side who are incredibly professional and incredibly effective.

Hegseth goes on to blather about how Iran's military sucks and how they need to "negotiate" with Felon47 and his staff of criminals, but he never addresses the question at all. And the reporter let's him get away with it! The reporter does not say, when Hegseth is done with his word-vomit, "sir, none of that addresses the issue of hitting civilian targets and war crimes," nor anything else of value. He does not say, "there is nothing disingenuous about my question, the US has already bombed water facilities and you've given no indication that you think that was anything other than good targeting." He does not say, "my question has nothing to do with 'folks on our side,' it has to do with decision-making by the Defense Department. You know, the agency you are in charge of."

Hegseth is utterly worthless as a government official. Worse than worthless, he produces negative worth. But this sort of reportage is also worthless. Why the media just parrots this guy and allows him to spout bullshit and hurl insults at them is, to say the least, counterproductive.

Of course, it starts at the top—the alleged President of the United States does exactly the same thing and thus people in positions like SecDef emulate his uncivil behavior, but unacknowledged alcoholic Pete Hegseth seems like the kind of guy who is just this way in every aspect of his life. I can imagine domestic interactions at home, with Mrs. Hegseth asking where he'd like to go for dinner and getting a sneering reply along the lines of "that's exactly the kind of counterfactual question I've come to expect from my wives" (he's on number three).

It's easy to blame the Felon47 regime for this new normal of belligerence. It's accurate to do so, sure, but as with many other aspects of our increasingly dystopian reality, I assign a sizeable share of blame to the American news media. They have accepted and even encouraged the normalizing of this incivility by not calling out the officials who behave in ways that not long ago would have been near-universally unacceptable.

Felon47 has the demeanor of a spoiled toddler, he whines and gripes about anything and everything that doesn't feed his ego, and yet when he abruptly walked out of an interview for Meet the Press last week, hurling insults and demeaning comments to the reporter (female, of course, his favorite sort to insult) and crushing the microphone as he went, that reporter's reaction was to declare that she had since spoken to "the President," excuse his behavior as related to the weather, and come to an agreement to do another interview later on. Epic fail, Meet the Press. Instead, a responsible journalistic follow-up would have been to point out that the things he was upset about being questioned on were more than legitimate topics and that his whiny replies were lies when they were relevant to the topic at all. Treating this sort of thing like it's perfectly acceptable behavior from anyone, let alone someone claiming to be President of the United States, only serves to exacerbate the greater cultural decline into hostility-as-default.

None of this is new info, we've all been living it, it just felt like something I needed to rant about for a few minutes.

Tagged Politics, Pete Hegseth, Culture, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Media, Posted on June 13, 2026 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Diamond doings, etc.

Making up for some fallow weeks earlier in the spring, I'm getting assigned a lot of umpiring of late. Mostly that's good, I can certainly use the extra money in this age of Felon47’s economic sabotage. But it does cut into my TV time, and I'm just getting around to finishing the latest season of For All Mankind (not its best season, to put it mildly, but FAM remains a great show) so I can start on the first season of its companion show Star City. I still haven't gotten around to The Testaments, either, and need to find time for Spider-Noir sometime despite it being an Amazon property. (Is it kind of ridiculous to be singling out Amazon as an evil corporation these days? I mean, SNW returns next month on Paramount and I'll still watch that despite the CBS/Paramount takeover by fascist enablers.)

But the umping has been fun this week. Since the ugliness at the end of last Sunday's shift, I've had three nights calling games and they were all positive. Tonight I only had one or two familiar faces among the four teams on my schedule, but Monday's and Thursday's slates included a lot of old faves. Last night, in fact, included a championship game that was won by a team that goes by the name "Jeans," as several of them wear jeans or jean-shorts as their "uniform"; when I handed Robin, their captain, the team's winnings (a voucher for substantial bar credit and a discount on their next signup), he asked why they weren't getting the typical nothing-prize of league-branded wristbands again. It was sarcasm, as those prizes are pretty lame, but I hadn't been given any to hand out. But, as I was packing up the equipment bin, I found a stash of prize wristbands left over from previous seasons, so I handed some of those out to Robin and his team. He then led his team an a "Tim! Tim! Tim!" chant as they put on the wristbands and jumped around. It was goofy and made me laugh.

Tonight's only issues were with spectators. There were two versions of a peanut gallery in the seats behind the plate: the 8:00 game had the small children of some players doing cheers and chants for everybody; it was cute for two innings or so, then it was very much NOT. The 9:30 version was the boyfriend of one player and a friend of his that were drunkenly heckling me on nearly every pitch. Hard to say which version was more annoying. (Wait, no, it's not, the kids were way more annoying.)

The nights I didn't work this week were spent playing with the Spuds (Wednesday) and taking K & E to the Mariner game on Tuesday. That M's game vs. the New York Metropolitans was a fun one; we had terrific seats and the Mariners won handily to extend their winning streak to eight games (where it stopped, as they've dropped two straight since then). I don't know if their expenditure matched what I spent on the tickets or not, but K & E bought our concessions, which were plentiful and included the biggest soft-serve ice cream cone I'd ever seen, let alone eaten. It's three days on and I think I still feel some of it in my gut. Sure was tasty, though.

Another thing about these full-up weeknights is that I've been consuming less news than usual, but I still get the headlines and a few stray articles. This, from John Scalzi's newsletter today, I thought was worth sharing because schadenfreude. Felon47’s grift-scam "Freedom 250" event in DC has lost most of its star power as every musical act it had advertised as participating has either bowed out or insisted they were never going to be there in the first place. Except for Vanilla Ice and Lee Greenwood. Per Scalzi: "Trump is now having a rally on June 26th, where his aimless meandering mouth pooping will be occasionally interrupted by Lee Greenwood singing 'God Bless the USA,' or some such. If you attend, you deserve what you're going to get, and that's all I have to say about that. Greenwood's own reputation as a musician will not be notably dinged for his appearance; being hauled out for a single moment of performative patriotism for politicians who actively hate the majority of Americans is what he's been known for this entire century. I hope it pays well."

OK, I need something to eat and perhaps I'll start on Star City before calling it a night.

Tagged Umping, Seattle Mariners, TV, Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on June 6, 2026 at 12:42AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Bullpen Bulletins!

Taking just a few minutes here before I head out for more umpiring tonight to blurt out a few things...

• ITEM: SPUDS avoid being mercy-ruled for second consecutive week! My softball team, the Smiling Potatoes of death, lost to Lab Rats 12-5 last night. The loss was not a surprise. The score was—Lab Rats have historically wiped the proverbial floor with us, but yesterday we avoided going down by more than ten runs and thus being mercy-ruled into an early exit. Just like we did last week! Who-hoo! Manufactired triumph. I was 0-for-3 with two bee-stinger grounders and one solidly hit forceout grounder.
• ITEM: Felon 47 speaks to press in proof-of-life appearance. On the heels of yet another unexplained visit to Walter Reed Medical Center for a "checkup," Felon47 vanished from public view for a week. Again. He resumed his public lying and shitposting yesterday, so presumably he's recovered from this latest round of treatments for whatever it is he needs treatment for that the White House is hiding from the world. In the absence of any information from this, the allegedly most transparent administration in the history of the universe (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume Felon47 is undergoing regular blood transfusions from sacrificial infants and the drained lifeforce of conned "volunteers" from fundraising emails. I mean, there's got to be some reason this monument to unhealth is still alive.
• ITEM: Is DNI a real job? Felon47 has nominated yet another corrupt, incompetent crony to a cabinet-level post, this time to replace Tulsi Gabbard as "Director of National Intelligence." There are myriad reasons Bill Pulte should never be confirmed to any job ever, let alone the DNI, but it does bring up the question: Why do we have a "Director of National Intelligence?" It is a redundant position, basically a human aggregator, to be the filter through which the actual intelligence agencies of the US government report things to the president. One of the many overreactions to 9/11 was to create this job, which didn't need to exist before, but because George W. Bush was too dumb to understand his Presidential Daily Briefs that included reports form the various intelligence agencies, it was thought that adding a cabinet officer to personally tell things to the president was better. Competent presidents don't need this. Incompetent ones ignore it. Criminally corrupt incompetent ones (well, one twice) appoint sycophantic toadies who make sure nothing too complex even reaches the Oval Office, basically ensuring the opposite result from the intent of creating the position. Among the many post-Felon47 reforms we need to take up, eliminating a lot of 9/11 overreactions might only make it to the tertiary group of needs, but axing DNI might be on the list.
• ITEM: I am bad at time management! I'd intended more items here, including one on Monday's umpiring and one on Tuesday's fun night out with K&E at the Mariner game, but it's already 5:30 and I'm running late. Got to go deal with more playoff umpiring tonight, hopefully no one will get too wound up and macho about their games.

Tagged Softball, Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on June 4, 2026 at 5:38PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Priorities

As we all know, the regime of Felon47 is chock full of liars. Nothing that comes out of the alleged president's mouth, or that comes from the White House press office, or said by any of the regime's spokespeople can be taken at face value. Everything must be assumed to be dishonest and subject to questioning.

But every once in a while, someone from the regime will commit an honesty without realizing it and tell the world what they really think.

Case in point: Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council of the United States, who went on the Fox propaganda channel to tell the saps that watch the Fox propaganda channel that stuff is costing more. "People are spending more on gas," Hassett said, "but they’re also spending more on everything else—not just groceries, but restaurants and so on." Acknowledging that inflation is rampant because of Felon47’s illegal tariffs and his pointless war with Iran and his truly massive corruption and grift? No, of course not. Inflation and the economic hardships facing the American public aren't something he cares about. We can infer this from his follow-up comment on all that spending: "I think that’s a sign [that] people are optimistic about the future."

Now, one could interpret that as Hassett conflating the sort of freer spending one might see in a growth economy with what's happening today, as Hassett misunderstanding the spending he finds so optimistic to be out of abundance rather than necessity. But that's not it, he's not misunderstanding anything; he's either lying to con viewers into thinking their hardship is a good thing or, more likely, he does see this as something to be optimistic about and the "people" he's talking about are oligarchs.

Supporting that theory is what he said later, when questioned about the rise in credit card debt. The interviewer told him this: "[This year], the percentage of credit card balances that were at least 90 days delinquent rose to 13.12%. That’s the highest level in fifteen years. People say they’re using those cards to get through necessities, because they can’t afford what’s going on." Hassett's response? "We talked [sic] to the CEOs of the credit card companies all the time, and we do see some increased stress like the numbers that the Journal quotes, but for the most part, there’s not any kind of financial threat to the credit card companies."

Consumers have to use credit to pay for things they used to buy outright? That's not a problem. The credit card companies are fine with it.

You and I and the American public at large don't matter a whit to these people. If we go broke, well, sucks to be us, but hey, the corporations and the business sector benefit from that! That's what matters!

I filled up my gas tank the other night. I paid $5.39 a gallon, which was comparatively cheap. I got groceries too, spent over $100 and didn't even get everything on my list. Resupplied the cabinets with cat necessities as well, food and litter, for over $150. Is that a sign that I'm optimistic about the future, Kevin?

Quite the opposite. But Kevin doesn't give a shit about my relative optimism. He couldn't care less about my budget or bank balance or debt ratio. He cares about his own, his boss's, and his patrons'. Just like the rest of Felon47’s criminal mob.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on June 1, 2026 at 4:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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