More reasons to impeach

Though I've been preoccupied by baseball playoffs this week, the rest of the world kept on turning and the regime at the White House and their collaborators engaged in yet more fascistic malevolence.

There's too much of it to list, so I'm just going to vent about the incident at Quantico, which was another thing to add to the ever-increasing list of actions President Convicted Felon and his entire regime of gangsters would be impeached and removed for if we had a Congressional majority that respected their oaths of office.

This week the United States Secretary of Defense (that's still the name, no matter what the dude says) Pete Hegseth summoned all of the US military's flag officers to listen to him project his insecurities and cosplay as a tough guy. The SecDef essentially told these generals and admirals to go forth and commit war crimes.

It was a speech that former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele described as "a cross between a political rally and an old Friars Club roast." Hegseth not only disrupted the commands of all of these officers by demanding they give him an in-person audience to hear this inanity, he then fat-shamed them, criticized their grooming habits, encouraged the abuse of new recruits, and implied a blind eye would be turned to future sexual assaults on military bases. He called having to refrain from abuses "walking on eggshells" which shouldn't be anyone's concern. He paid lip service to racially motivated violence and sexual assault "remaining" illegal, but emphasized he wanted "no more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations," which given his own history and predilections can easily be inferred to mean soldiers can do what they want and we won't listen to anyone who is victimized, even if they're fellow soldiers. He said outright that drill sergeants should be allowed to hit their troops. He also implied that officers or enlisted personnel who had been held accountable for various abuses in the past would be essentially pardoned: "At my direction, we're making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity," he said.

He decried restrictions on military behavior in the field as well, blasting policies and agreements like the Geneva Convention as "stupid" and declaring that the US military should be ruthless. "We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters."

There was a fair amount of, I will say, honest explanation of why he and President Convicted Felon want to rebrand the Defense Department as the "War Department," all of it chilling. "We have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We're training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend." He might as well call it the "Department of Conquering" or the "Department of Global Bullies."

This cabinet secretary with multiple white supremacist tattoos on his body declared that he wanted the military to be white and male and heterosexual, barely coding his language at all. Referring to ethnic and gender diversity in the services, social justice, environmental concerns, and women in combat roles as "toxic ideological garbage," he declared that "we are done with that shit."  He called the new fitness requirement he wants to implement across the military to be "a gender-neutral age normed male standard," code for "no girls or sissies." He called on anyone in that room that wasn't on board with the fascist administration to resign their commissions. 

Hegseth's pro-abuse and pro-bigotry address was followed by a rambling, oft-incoherent speech by the tyrant-in-chief, who was very disturbed by the lack of adulation the flag officers were showing him. The tyrant told the generals and admirals that some of them would have a "major part" in his plan to essentially incite civil war, that he wanted to turn American cities into "training grounds" for the military, a force that would "straighten out" cities he didn't approve of. "That's a war too," he said, "a war from within."

Interestingly, Hegseth made multiple references to oaths taken to the Constitution and how they should be taken seriously, not once showing the slightest recognition that he and his boss violate such oaths on a daily if not hourly basis.

I've no doubt that there were some in that audience who were fully on board with what they heard, but I hold out some hope that some of them—most of them?—recognized that they were witness to leaders who seek to subvert the nation they swore to protect. I hope that enough of them convene among themselves in the aftermath of this and strategize for how to refuse illegal orders, protect each other from illegal firings, how to exert any influence they might have to promote an impeachment or two or twenty without overstepping their apolitical protocols.

We should fully expect President Convicted Felon to try to lay siege to major American cities in an effort to destroy his political opposition. I wish I could fully expect the military to tell him to fuck off when he does.

Tagged President VonClownstick, Republicans, Politics, Posted on October 3, 2025 at 4:54PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Mad enough to chew neutronium

What the fuck are you doing, Hakeem?!

Hakeem Jeffrries, along with 94 other Democrats in the House, voted Yes on "a resolution to honor the life of Charles Kirk."

Why?

I can think of no good reason. I can think of bad ones. Capitulation is what the bad ones all redound to. 

Charlie Kirk—whose middle name I've learned was "James," which bugs me to no end—was, yes, the victim of a horrible crime and that crime was detestable and unconscionable and a black mark on humanity. But is that sufficient to warrant this Congressional resolution? If so, then where are the resolutions honoring the countless other victims of our absurd gun culture? Charlie Kirk gets honored but the woman gunned down in a camp of unhoused folks in Minneapolis this week doesn't? Charlie Kirk gets honored but the guy shot and killed while playing basketball in the Bronx last month doesn't? Charlie Kirk gets honored but Melissa Hortman doesn't? Charlie Kirk gets honored but the 1,400+ minors shot and killed just last year in this country don't?

Charlie Kirk gets honored because his murder is being used by the so-called Republican party to fuel propaganda and as a rallying cry for stochastic terrorism.

The Democratic leader in the House of Representatives shouldn't be voting in favor of that.

I wrote to my senators and congresswoman again today. Not about Jeffries and the resolution honoring a misogynistic bigot that called for the previous president to be killed; I only mentioned that in passing. My focus was, once again, on the duty of every member of Congress to remove the fascist regime currently occupying power in the White House. By not doing so they are betraying their own oaths of office as this regime continues to piss all over the Constitution as they declare the First Amendment dead, as they continue to murder people on the open sea—three more killed today—as they continue to use a de facto secret police force to abduct and disappear people they don't think are "American" enough.

I'm sick of Chuck Schumer insisting that he needs bipartisan support for even the smallest things. We need him—or his replacement as minority leader if he gets out of the way—to insist on bipartisan support for defending and upholding the Constitution. We need Democratic leadership to be demanding the so-called Republicans either respect their oaths of office and end this fascist regime or resign immediately because they are betraying their country. They need to be called out for their rejection of the bill of rights, the very rule of law, every principle this country was founded on. (Well, except racism; if we're honest, that too was part of the country's founding and they're staying true to that.)

Congress could end this nightmare tomorrow.

But they won't.

Because the majority party is too corrupt, too cowed, too myopic, too greedy, and too comfortable with fascism.

That's got to change.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Hakeem Jeffries, President VonClownstick, Posted on September 20, 2025 at 3:17AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Supremely Corrupt

The Legion of Doom. Impeach them all.

The latest travesty from the corrupt anti-American fascist-enablers that make up the majority of our Supreme Court attempts to make the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution null and void. And it's merely the next link the lengthening chain of indefensible rulings from John Roberts and his Gang of Supervillains.

In the ruling favoring the government's position in Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo—unsigned, a product of the so-called "shadow docket" but with a concurrence written by Brett "I like beer" Kavanaugh—suspends the ruling of a lower court that declared actions taken in California by the Department of Homeland Security ran afoul of the public's Constitutional rights. Basically, it says that Constitutional protections from unreasonable searches and seizures are optional, that law enforcement may decide what's reasonable and what isn't and courts and judges can go fly a kite.

In his concurrence, Kavanaugh cites language from The Immigration and Nationality Act that says anyone may be detained and questioned given “a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts,” then goes on to describe DHS actions interrogating/snatching people "based on the following factors or combination of factors: (i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity"—the basis for the lower courts injunction—as perfectly fine.

"In my view," Kavanaugh writes,  "the Government has made a sufficient showing to obtain a stay pending appeal," contending that "the Government has demonstrated a fair prospect of reversal of the District Court’s injunction." How, you ask? By claiming those suing Kristi Noem and DHS have no standing. Those people have already been hassled by DHS, and they want injunctive relief against future harassment? Ridiculous, says Kavanaugh. "Plaintiffs have no good basis to believe that law enforcement will unlawfully stop them [specifically] in the future based on the prohibited factors—and certainly no good basis for believing that any stop of the plaintiffs is imminent." This is another example of the Roberts Court's claim that courts cannot protect the public at large, they can only protect the specific individuals who bring lawsuits and only in very narrow contexts.

Plus, I'd contend that the plaintiffs here have pretty firm basis that they are at risk. Their circumstances, i.e. existing while brown and Spanish-speaking, haven't changed since they were originally harassed so their continues to be equal risk.

Justice I Like Beer goes on to claim that DHS uses "their experience" and "a variety of factors" in deciding who to stop/question/harass/abduct, therefore the court cannot claim said decisions are "unreasonable." He continues, "Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances," then describes ethnic profiling and the supposition that undocumented immigrants often work certain jobs, "and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English" as valid reasons for DHS to do their thing. In other words, yeah, bigotry is fine.

And pay no attention to the fact that this entire justification is the inverse of the standing argument: Courts may only protect the specific individuals bringing suit for their specific individual claim and cannot paint with any broader brush than that, but DHS and law enforcement can paint with as broad a brush as they damn well want to. Double-standards are the way of the Roberts Court, after all.

It's a blatantly unconstitutional opinion. The Fourth Amendment doesn't allow for the kind of wiggle room or double standards Kavanaugh wants to employ. It says, in its entirety, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Then, as a cherry on top, Kavanaugh shows his absolute ignorance/willful blindness to reality with this gem: "Importantly, reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status. If the person is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter." Really, Brett? Ask Kilmar Abrego about that. Ask any number of people here legally but still being held in immigration detention centers or the Florida concentration camp if they were "free to go" following a "brief encounter" with DHS.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the dissent, yet another blistering rebuke of the majority's abuse of their position. Noting that it used to be near-unheard of for SCOTUS to stay a district court's ruling without prompting, Sotomayor wrote that this ruling "is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job."

Sotomayor goes on to detail the abuses of DHS in this matter and their terroristic tactics, reiterates the veracity of the plaintiff's case, cites the thoroughness of the District Court's decision that Kavanaugh rejects, and for good measure gives a primer on THE FOURTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION, since the majority of this court wants to pretend it doesn't exist. Kavanaugh's championing of profiling holds no water; the majority opinion's justifications "in no way reflect the kind of individualized inquiry the Fourth Amendment demands," writes Sotomayor, and she is 100% correct, citing numerous case precedents to back her up (including one that Kavanaugh attempted to twist into support for his concurrence). She also eviscerates Kavanaugh's lack-of-standing argument as well as points out what should be obvious to anyone taking this seriously, let alone, oh I don't know, A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE, that the government's case rests on its claim that the District Court's injunction against detaining/harassing people based on Kavanaugh-approved ethnic profiling “chills [its] enforcement efforts” and “deters officers from stopping suspects even when they have reasonable suspicion on other grounds.” If they have other grounds, then they are not violating the injunction. They're fighting the injunction because they want the freedom use these unconstitutional grounds.

Unwilling to let Kavanaugh's willful ignorance of reality skate by, Sotomayor also writes, "Immigration agents are not conducting 'brief stops for questioning,' as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions. Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families. The concurrence relegates the interests of U.S. citizens and individuals with legal status to a single sentence, positing that the Government will free these individuals as soon as they show they are legally in the United States. That blinks reality."

She concludes: "Because this [ruling] is unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent."

The whole dissent is suitably righteous and damning. Sotomayor serves to remind us what the Supreme Court of the United States is supposed to be, how the Constitution is supposed to be the Court's foundation, and maybe provides the slimmest bit of hope that when this reign of autocratic terror finally comes to an end that sanity will return to America.

 

Tagged SCOTUS, Politics, Posted on September 9, 2025 at 8:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The pro-death party

The news has been awful lately.

I know, that seems like an evergreen statement in the year 2025. It kind of is. Every day there's more nightmare fuel.

Since I last posted anything we've had another school shooting, more decimation at the CDC, concrete orders from RFK Jr.'s HHS to stop vaccinating people, the U.S. regime assassinated 11 Venezuelans in the Caribbean on suspicion of drug-running (prior administrations would have impounded and searched the boat, these guys just blew it up), the Russian regime assassinated a Ukrainian official in the midst of continued Russian attacks in their war, and our wannabe despot added Baltimore to the list of cities he wants to deploy troops to in violation of posse comitatus. And that's just off the top of my head.

Remember when Republicans branded themselves the "pro-life party"? Yes, yes, we knew it was bullshit then too, but even Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, the GOP's propaganda masters and spiritual disciples of Joseph Goebbels, would have a hard time spinning today's Republicans as "pro-life" when they are so clearly, actively, and zealously pro-death.

Pro-gun massacres. Pro-disease. Pro-pandemics. Pro-war, so long as it's the tyrant's pals Vlad and Bibi doing the warring and/or it's a convenient excuse to shoot at Spanish-speaking brown folks.

The modern Republican party is the Death Party.

The latest school shooting will not move a single Republican lawmaker to support any curtailment of the availability of assault weapons to the general public. They have accepted—with enthusiasm!—that the occasional massacre of children is an acceptable price to pay for the gun lobby's political support.

The illegal deployment of military to American cities to combat "crime" is, of course, an attempt to intimidate political opposition and an to incite violence; the longer it goes on, the more likely there will be people killed on the streets by government thugs.

We're not three years past a global pandemic that was only (mostly) overcome because of the herculean feat of creating and mass-distributing vaccines, so naturally the guy who mismanaged the start of the COVID-19 fiasco put a guy in charge of public health that opposes not just vaccines but public health measures in general. Because of this moronic regime's first go-round, COVID-19 is still a thing, and now you can't get the vaccine unless you're over 65 or have compounding risk factors. And we have to worry about diseases we thought were behind us again. Measles, anyone? HPV? Tetanus? Fucking polio, perhaps?

And if you do get sick, well, your health insurance is going to get worse and more expensive next year thanks to the one and only piece of legislation this traitorous excuse for a Congressional majority passed so far. Medicaid is basically going away, Medicare is next on the chopping block. For most of us this would be a problem, but Republicans, in the words of Senator Joni Ernst, think "we're all going to die [anyway]" so why fight it when we could instead give more money to rich people?

And this doesn't even touch on the destruction of USAID and the environmental damage being done by deregulation and callous incentives to polluters.

Death Party would be consistent with, you know, how words work. Which is antithetical to how this group handles things like names and labels. This year's HR1 was literally named the "Big Beautiful Bill" when it was the ugliest legislation to see a vote in ages. Back in the George W. Bush Administration there was legislation the Republicans named the "Clear Skies Act"; Al Franken rightly noted that the only way that would be an accurate label is if you added a couple of words and made the the "Clear the Skies of Birds Act." Atwater and Rove pioneered this for Republicans—call the worst things you can think of something positive and you can fool enough suckers into supporting it.

Even the name of their party.

Republican: Supporting a form of government known as a Republic, a governing body made up of Representatives of the Public. Modern Republican officeholders do not represent the public in any way, shape, or form.

The GOP: The "Grand Old Party" is not grand—at its outset it was a regional party, continued to be so in the aftermath of the Civil War, and despite some spans of electoral domination has never been comprised of a majority of the electorate by registration or identification—nor is it old in comparison to the Democratic party, which had already existed for 25 years when the Republican party was formed. If they want to maintain the monicker "GOP," perhaps it should stand for, oh, "Greedy Obnoxious Pedophiles" or "Getting Oligarchs Paid" or "Grotesquely Onerous Policies."

So call them the Death Party. Death by gunfire. Death by disease. Death by environmental cataclysm. Death by starvation. Death by negligence.

Death by a feckless Congressional caucus of neo-Nazi toadies. Death by tyrannical narcissism in the White House. Death by Republicans.

Tagged Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on September 3, 2025 at 12:00AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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What he said

You've probably heard about this already if you're tuned into the news at all, but Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker refused to bow to tyranny and told President Convicted Felon to keep his armed thugs the fuck out of his state (paraphrasing).

Rather than expound about Pritzker's awesome speech, I will instead direct you to what Erik said about it, which I endorse 100%. Erik's a morning person, he beat me to it.

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on August 26, 2025 at 4:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Trickle-down bitterness

The other night I had an umpiring shift that included something I'm not accustomed to these days—hostility directed at me from a player.

You'd think I'd have been in a better mindset to recognize/deal with such a thing; before the shift began, I and my fellow ump Laz, who was working the other field, had been comparing notes on difficult teams and conflict with players since Laz had some issues the previous day. But no, none of that stayed in my upper consciousness once I got going with the game, so when I had a close play at second base in the early innings and called the runner out, his irritated backtalk didn't really phase me and I just moved on. Then every subsequent time that player was involved in a play, offensively or defensively, he had something to say about me. Not directly to me, he had things to say to his fellows in the dugout—just making sure he was loud enough that I'd hear him.

After the third such remark I got it that he wasn't somehow trying to be funny, that he meant things literally, and it started to bug me; it also confused me, though, because I've gotten a little full of myself in this gig. I'm used to being everyone's favorite umpire. (Not everyone's, obviously; I mean, Laz has fans despite his newness to the league, which he should since he's good.)

Most players that have been around for a while know me by name and are glad to have me working their games. It's an unusual shift if no one asks me as they're getting ready to leave if I'll be doing their next games or not and if not asking me if I can't switch things around so I will. Once I was running behind schedule and texted Laz that I was going to be 10 minutes late or so to the park and would he please tell my teams to hang in there; Laz's reply was that they were "willing to wait without making trouble, but only because it's you coming." Banter even before I was there in person. Even in cases when a player argues with me about a call, most often after the game ends that player wants to make sure I knew it was just a heat of the moment reaction and s/he gets that it's a tough gig and close calls are part of the deal, no hard feelings. And if I blow a call and know it, I always own up to it even though most times it can't be undone; nine times out of ten, that goes over well and buys good will.

The guy the other night would have been the tenth out of ten had I actually got something wrong and knew it and said so. Makes me wonder what his life must be like elsewhere, can't be much fun.

Anyway, after that game was over I went up to this fellow and asked him what was up. "You've been badmouthing me the whole game, it can't just be from that close call at second, so let's have it. What's going on?" It was an attempt at conflict resolution, but either my tone was off or he just wasn't interested in coming to any understandings (maybe both). He then reminded me of the last time I had his team, about three or four weeks prior, when I also called him out on a close play at second base. Once he mentioned it, I recalled it was an almost identical play, including him sliding in and kicking up so much dust as to make the view of the tag questionable. He was still pissed off about that, had been holding a grudge about it. I told him that close plays were part of the game, they're bound to happen, and they always inevitably go against someone. He just doubled down on his hostility, offered me $100 to never umpire again, told me I sucked at it, and wanted me to know he was better than me in every way. OK, goodbye, then, conversation over. I turned away to get prepped for the next game and heard him continuing to badmouth me to others (but not as loudly this time). One of the players waiting for the next game, having heard some the exchange, came up to me and let me know that he and his team would have my back if necessary, which I appreciated but also dismissed—this guy wasn't looking for a physical fight and I wouldn't let him have one if he was. Too much machismo was the whole problem, after all, no need to add to it.

It's a nothing incident. A comment from another witness player reminded me of something else that happened after that game weeks ago that the hostile was holding a grudge from, when after the dustup someone asked me from the bleachers how often grown men yell at me about a rec-league game with no stakes at all. "More often than anyone would think appropriate," or something like that, was my reply.

Shit like that happens. Like Laz and I were saying before the shift, sometimes some people are asshats and the worst part of the gig is finding the line where competitive macho asshattery crosses into unacceptable abuse asshattery that ruins things for the rest of the participants and requires ejections or other means of reminding people who has authority.

Being me, of course, it took me a good hour or so to process the experience out of my head to the point that I was clearheaded for the rest of my shift. I always replay things in my head, puzzle over what I said, think of better things I could have said, wonder if my ego is so needy that this should bother me, then eventually just conclude that sometimes some people are asshats.

Fortunately, the rest of the night was filled entirely with players of good cheer and fun attitudes that didn't take things seriously even though their games were (a) a tight one that came down to the last batter of the game and (b) a lopsided trouncing that resulted in a 36-0 shutout.

Since then I've alternatively completely forgotten about this incident and pondered the why of sometimes some people are asshats. In this particular time in the world, I think people have shorter fuses, have more frayed nerves than ever, and are quicker to explode than what had been normal. Me included. There's so much threatening us on a daily basis from our alleged leaders that it's hard to remember we're supposed to be civilized. Or, for those on the other side, there's a new and intoxicating permission structure to lash out, to take responsibility for nothing, to make anything and everything into a grievance that personally offends and demands retribution.

It's like the GOP has finally found a scenario where the "trickle-down" theory works: Supply-side spite, anxiety, and antagonism.

Tagged Umping, Politics, Softball, Posted on August 20, 2025 at 8:00PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Crime and no punishment

I need to rant a bit today. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

 

 

“Washington DC is at its worst point.”

So said our authoritarian wannabe dictator, attempting to justify his Federal takeover of law enforcement and his deployment of Federal agents of various agencies and the National Guard in the nation’s capitol.

Taken in isolation, this is one of those times when the Grifter-in-Chief tells the truth while he’s lying—he’s trying to convince people that DC is a hellhole with constant citywide shooting sprees and muggings and break-ins with phrases like “crime is out of control.”

Of course, it isn’t. The rate of violent crime in DC is the lowest it’s been in decades. Yet, Washington, DC, is at its worst point and crime is out of control. In the White House. In Republican congressional offices. In the Supreme Court. The rampant criminality in dire need of law enforcement is committed on a daily—nay, hourly—basis inside our governmental buildings, not on the streets.

In declaring a state of emergency based on a made-up fantasy of terror amongst the citizenry, President Felon is trying to create terror amongst the citizenry. It’s not about crime; he cares nothing about crime except as it pertains to himself, in which case he’s all for it.

Rachel Maddow did a segment the other day that deftly illustrated how all claims of being “tough on crime” and the like out of Tyrant Don and his minions are completely without merit, but somehow, despite the obvious evidence in front of all of us, the Cult of Trumpism guzzles down the gaslighting like it’s their morning coffee, something they can’t effectively get through their days without.

Mind-blowing, isn’t it.

I had started to think that possibly, hopefully, please let it be, that the Cult was starting to wake up and see reality. Even MAGA mouthpieces like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens were openly speculating about why the regime wouldn’t release the Epstein files, why the neo-führer had thousands of agents combing those files for mentions of his own name and redacting them. What was the president trying to hide? He campaigned on releasing the Epstein files! He promised the pedophiles would be punished! Why is he now protecting them?!

I had hoped that, having been confronted with the paradox of being fed the conspiracy theories for years about pedophilia being rampant among liberals and the Epstein files would reveal so many important names as being heinous abusers of children, and then being told that there isn’t really any scandal here and that we can’t release the files because “innocent people” might “get hurt,” there might be a reaction other than drinking more metaphorical kool-aid.

The Cult messiah said that in response to a reporter’s question about why Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spent two days meeting with Epstein’s literal partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell at the Federal prison she was being held at (before she was transferred without merit to a minimum-security “Club Fed” facility in Texas in a blatantly corrupt move): “We’d like to release everything, but we don’t want people to get hurt that shouldn’t get hurt.”

The Cult had been screaming for years, egged on by the MAGA propagandists, that innocent people had been hurt, loads of them, mostly children, and that the perpetrators must be brought to justice. Now their Dear Leader is saying people named in those incriminating files are possibly “innocent people” who “shouldn’t” be held accountable.

Was this finally the tipping point? Was this finally something that would penetrate deeply enough into the Cultists’ collective psyche to make them realize that their leader was a lying piece of shit that has expertly manipulated them by utilizing the favored tactics of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, including Accusation in a Mirror? Would they finally figure out that whenever Donnie Two Scoops and his regime levels an accusation at someone it is an admission of their own behavior? Shouldn't that be enough to make at least some of the cult fritz out in their version of "Norman, coordinate?"

It may still come to be. I remain hopeful, though less so than a week ago or two weeks ago or three weeks ago.

Distractions work. Especially a distraction like the Federal takeover of DC, which our demented head of state most likely sees as a twofer: A big story to distract the media from tying him to Epstein and a move forward on the actual agenda item of punishing Black people for existing by falsely declaring the 50% African-American city to be a hotbed of “rising violence” and one of “the most dangerous cities in the world.”

Of course, to borrow a phrase from Cliff Schecter(?), Trump always makes things worse for Trump, and this DC fiasco may well blow up in his face and cause more political trouble for Dictator Donny than he started with. And at least some reporters are refusing to let go of the Epstein mess, plus people in the White House keep threatening lawsuits about it which will simply keep the whole thing front and center no matter how many times they throw something shiny at the idiots in a press gaggle.

But eventually this will all come out. Eventually we will see evidence supporting if not outright proving that the current holder of the title President of the United States not only knew all about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking of minors, but that he participated in it. That he himself abused children, that he himself is the “innocent” person that he says “shouldn’t get hurt.”

Whether that comes to light before this human stain is dead or not depends on American journalism, so, you know, odds aren’t great. But it does still seem like this might be the thing that brings him down.

The fact that every other fucking atrocity he’s committed hasn’t already brought him down is another problem.

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Posted on August 14, 2025 at 10:08PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Strange new world order

Tom Tomorrow jabs both the current state of affairs and the tendency of Strange New Worlds to rely on gimmickry. Kudos.

 

Tagged Politics, Star Trek, Posted on August 11, 2025 at 5:33PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Navigating the new normal

Every day there's a new outrage in the news surrounding the regime occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Every. Damn. Day. It just doesn't let up, except maybe during the weekends when the wannabe king is off cheating at golf.

Whether it's relocating his buddy the convicted child sex-trafficker from a high-security facility to a cushy "Club Fed" prison, human rights abuses at his Florida concentration camp, his HHS secretary setting back vaccine research and development by decades, his open declaration that he needs states to further gerrymander their congressional districts because he feels "entitled"—seriously, he said "entitled"—to five additional Republican seats in the House from Texas, or opening up bullshit investigations into the perfectly legal activities of Democratic officeholders, every day there's more crime committed by the alleged President of the United States and his regime of sycophantic neo-Nazis.

It's overwhelming.

Once again, our friend Craig Calcaterra has put something into words that is more eloquent than what I feel like I could articulate at the moment:

I honestly think something has happened in the past six months that has prevented me from ever truly understanding and, possibly, caring about most of the nonsense afoot in this country. Like, I lack the energy to mock or critique on most days. I just stare into the middle distance and offer an accepting nod. The acceptance is not substantive, of course. It's just acceptance of the fact that, yes, this is how people are now and it's doubtful that anything is going to break the fever of insanity which has overtaken so, so many of them.

This is how I've been feeling, though I don't think "acceptance" is quite the right word. Close. Not sure what would be better.

But a significant percentage of people in this country—including, importantly, people in Congress, who could put a stop to all this tomorrow if they wanted to—embrace this "fever of insanity," as Craig put it, and the rest of us suffer for it while we watch the end of the Republic barrel along at ludicrous speed.

I'm certainly not one to advocate tuning out. We can't fight the authoritarian takeover if we're not aware of what's going down. But for personal mental health reasons, I have been allowing life outside of politics to kind of pretend things are normal and just try to enjoy things that, so far, have not collapsed into nightmare fuel.

I've been watching some good TV—"Upload," "Platonic," ST:SNW—reading Enterprise fanfiction, even getting in a little bicycling. And, naturally, baseball and softball.

I had an umpiring shift tonight, championship games, which tend to bring out the worst in people. But tonight was almost entirely positive, with only one player giving me grief for a strike call that he had no business being mouthy about. Otherwise it was good spirits all around and general fun, plus some ego boosts for me when, upon my arrival, several players from the adjacent field objected that Laz was umping their games and not me (hey, Laz is a good dude, cut him a break); players in games I did officiate went out of their way to compliment my style and declare me "best ump we've ever had," which I will take given the state of my head lately.

The other night I attended the Mariner game with my friend Dave, and clearly I had a good time talking with him throughout the game because my scorebook has a number of scribbles in it where I had to cross things out and correct because I had lost track of who was batting or whathaveyou. Too busy conversing with Dave to have a clean scorebook. (Good game, too, went from what looked like a blowout in the making to a close one at the end, with the M's prevailing.) Sunday I have both another M's game and an ump shift to look forward to, a rare Sunday night shift of three games at Cap Hill. Hopefully those will also be engaging, fun, and leave me in a good mood.

'Cause the news sure isn't going to help me.

Tagged Politics, Umping, Seattle Mariners, Posted on August 9, 2025 at 12:02AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Laugh when you can while depression abounds

Hiya, netizens. It's been a few weeks. I've had a couple of folks check in with me to see if all was well, given my brain chemistry issues, so I figured a new post was in order.

The lack of posts hasn't entirely been black-hole related, but I have been fighting the gravity a bit. Not in a really dark, can't-get-out-of-bed sort of way, more in a mild ennui kind of way. Weary. Lethargic. Spurred on by the continual descent of the country into dictatorship and the corresponding frustration and anger with all the idiots who voted Republican despite having seen the sneak preview version of this play from 2017-2021.

Anyway. I won't turn this into a political rant today, at least not yet, because coherence when thinking about it is elusive. There's too much. Which atrocity to focus on? What can be said that hasn't been said already elsewhere? So I'll save that for later.

Instead, I'll just share something that amused me greatly when watching the baseball game from last Saturday between Your Seattle Mariners and the visiting Texas Rangers. There were two outs in the inning, M's at bat, Julio Rodríguez on 2nd base. Batter Josh Naylor taps a comebacker to the pitcher, who has a brain cramp and throws to third base trying to get the lead runner out even though he had an easy play at first which would have ended the inning. The throw gets past the third baseman because he wasn't expecting to be thrown to, Julio scores the tying run, Naylor safe at first, the inning continues.

This is something I had never seen in a big-league game but see all the frickin' time as a softball umpire. It has become kind of an inside joke just for me, one that I have stated out loud on occasion to the next batter in such a softball game, that one day, sometime before the heat death of the universe, I will be umpiring a game wherein the score is tight in a late inning and the defensive team takes the easy out at first to end an inning rather than attempt to get a lead runner instead. (To be fair, teams do take the easy out now and then, but never in a tense situation.) So when seven-year Major League veteran Merrill Kelly of the Texas Rangers did it I laughed very hard.

The M's still lost, though. Oh well.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, The Black Hole, Politics, Umping, Posted on August 5, 2025 at 8:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Attention Overload!

Wow, is there a lot going on right now. Big things, little things, consequential things, trivial things, nerd things, political things, sporty things, personal things, many combinations thereof.

Now, the personal things tend toward the nerdy and trivial. Don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But between the news, pop culture, and baseball/softball, my brain is jam-packed with musings.

Some, about the latest debasing of Major League Baseball by its own commissioner, were posted yesterday, so no need to rehash that except to just say once again—because there's never a bad time to say it—that Rob Manfred is horrible. But related to the All-Star Game are musings about the gathering I hosted here for it; I invited a bazillion people, but knowing it was for an event that has lost its luster and that started at 5:00pm on a weekday, I figured maybe seven or eight people might show. I overestimated by a few, but we had fun and I ate way too much junk food, including some oddly-made pizza from Spiro Not-Agnew's down the street and so-so store-bought guac. (Always worth it to make your own guac, dummy.) Thanks to Abe, the one person from my umping world to pop by for a while, and Mack and Erik for bringing some of the junk food. (Abe didn't know my dietary preferences, so I skipped his, but still thoughtful.)

That was Tuesday night. Last night was my softball team's final game of the year—we play a really short season, for better or worse—which was typical: We lost by a lot, only got to play a little over half a game because of the enforced mercy rule, and in my one at-bat I swung blind as the sunset was happening right behind the pitcher and tapped out 1-3 but still managed to tweak my ankle running to first. Kind of fitting, really.

Meanwhile, I went to see the new Superman film and enjoyed it. If you want a good rundown on it, I recommend Erik's review, I basically agree with everything he says there. I now want to see it a second time to better gauge my feeling abut it as it was somehow both really good and kind of a drag and I can't quite put my finger on why. It's very comic-booky, for lack of a better description, as opposed to the gritty/angsty Zach Snyder version of Superman or even the operatic Richard Donner Superman; in some ways, that's great, kind of my wheelhouse, there was a lot of funny stuff in it that required that sensibility. In other ways I thought it was maybe too fast-and-loose with conceptual reality with its "pocket universe" and off-hand inclusions of semi-intelligent "troll monkeys" (though that made for one of the biggest laughs) and an unexplained kaiju-like giant monster that was the least effective sequence for me. But on first viewing, I'd say Superman (2025) ranks below Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006) but way ahead of Man of Steel (2013).

Also, the long-awaited season three of Strange New Worlds premiered last night with two episodes. Both eps were good, neither was great, and there was plenty of good character stuff and smart dialogue to meet my high Trek standards.

Those all fall in the pop-culture/trivial/personal buckets. As for the big political world-affecting stuff, I find myself navigating a mix of outrage, hopefulness, hostility, schadenfreude, anxiety, callousness, and trepidation. Which is, let's face it, the new normal, but with new dimensions given the latest info:

• The MAGA civil war is fascinating as some of the cultists belatedly realize that their champion actually is a lying garbage person who gaslights them and thinks they're stupid. The fact that they see this only because they bought into a conspiracy theory he and they promulgated for years that he is now denying hasn't sunk in yet, but hey, baby steps.
• Today's publication of an article in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, that reinforces what most of us already knew—that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were two peas in a pod in their depravity and criminality—is outstanding, as it is causing the wannabe dictator and his minions to panic and dig themselves deeper into the hole they're in with the cultists. I've oft wondered what it would take to get the cult to turn on this subhuman stain when none of the prior atrocities seemed to make a dent, and it figures that the answer is apparently reneging on an implied promise to inflict cruelty on people they don't like.

• With all that creating chaos for the White House, official spokesmodel Karoline Leavitt told the press corps that our wannabe-dictator has health issues—which, again, duh—that she plays down as minor but actually might well prevent him from finishing his term of office.

  The demented occupant of the Oval Office has Chronic Venous Insufficiency, which in and of itself is not a big deal. Lots of senior citizens deal with it. But the patient in question is not "lots of senior citizens," he's an obese rage factory who doesn't believe in exercise and maintains a fast-food diet. And this has progressed enough to include Stage 5 or 6 elements, e.g. venous ulcers (evident from photos of POTUS47’s hand and the lie from his press secretary that he was bruised from aspirin and an overabundance of handshakes). Whether the hand wound is from the CVI directly, a complication of it, or from something else, it indicates something more serious than swollen ankles. Add to this the daily evidence of cognitive decline and one has to wonder if the CVI is severe enough to have hindered blood not just to the extremities but to the brain.

  What makes this especially hinky is that the White House—in the first term and in this one—never reveals anything about Dear Leader's health. They give bogus doctor notes from their very own Dr. Nick that say he's the healthiest person that ever lived. We got no information when he had COVID. We got no information after he was mildly wounded when someone took a shot at him last summer. They never reveal anything about his health, yet today Leavitt said he has CVI, probably the most innocuous explanation for the photo of his swollen ankles.

  It's probably true as far as the CVI goes, but what's not being said? Is he looking at heart failure? What about vascular dementia? Has he had a stroke? It sure fits the observable circumstantial evidence that long-standing CVI (pun not intended) correlated with lack of circulation to the brain begetting vascular dementia accounts for a lot of his nonsensical rants and wandering tangents and inappropriate dozing off. (Then again, this is the laziest, stupidest, most emotionally stunted public figure in the world, so all that crap might have nothing to do with his blood flow.)

  Might this health admission be the first step in a soft coup by the oligarchs that want JD Vance to be emperor? Might it be a first move in a fallback contingency should the Epstein mess actually catch up with him—he could resign for health reasons, get pardoned by Vance, and completely avoid any accountability for anything?

  And why am I conflicted about the prospect of PseudoPresident Convicted Felon dying of heart failure soon? Frankly, that's a better scenario than a pardon.

Oh, and CBS canceled Colbert because they need to not piss off the regime in order to get FCC approval on their corporate merger with SkyDance. That's just lovely. (Skip the below video to about the two minute mark for more context.)

 

Tagged Politics, Movies, Star Trek, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Softball, Posted on July 17, 2025 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Neverending Battle

I haven't seen the new Superman film yet, but I will later tonight. I have avoided spoilers on the film itself, wanting to go in cold; will it be good? Could be, I have faith in director James Gunn to treat the character well. But maybe not, I mean, the recent history with DC comics properties on film has been a mixed bag, to put it charitably.

But I am amused by the prerelease backlash the movie has gotten from right-wing blowhards. Republicans, evidently, hate Superman. Not the movie—though they claim to hate that without even seeing it—the character.

Most of the nonsense I've seen relates to the fact that Gunn apparently (again, I have yet to see the movie) celebrates the fact that Superman is an immigrant to America. Immigrants Good! is sure to make 21st Century Republicans blow their tops. Right-wing actor Dean Cain, who once played Superman himself in the 1990s ABC TV series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," reacted to a comment from Gunn about Superman being an immigrant and the character and film embodying "basic human kindness" by spouting off with incredulity, "How woke is Hollywood going to make this character?"

Putting aside the fact that "woke" is a term originally referring to awareness of one's surroundings and a measure of empathy for others and therefore those railing against it by definition mark themselves as preferring unconsciousness and disdain for others, it's remarkable that even someone like Dean Cain goes immediately to outrage over someone championing kindness.

Right-wing podcasters jumped on the immigrant angle to claim that Gunn's use of this very basic element to the character's origins and almost-90-year history would deter people from seeing the movie. “[Gunn]'s not going to get any more viewers saying this, and he might chase some people away," said podcaster Christian Toto while stoking his anti-immigrant fires. Podcaster Ben Shapiro is offended that, in his view, Gunn has tried to "separate Superman off from America" while podcaster Tim Pool went the other way and said Superman would be "denied birthright citizenship" as an illegal alien.

Fox TV personality Jesse Waters said that, because the phrase "truth, justice, and the American way"—something used only in radio and 1950s TV incarnations of Superman during and after World War II until said satirically in the 1978 Superman film, wherein Lois Lane responds to it by telling Superman "you're going to end up fighting every elected official in this country"—is not used in this movie that therefore Gunn's Superman "fights for truth, justice, and your preferred pronouns," as if everything has to come back to picking on trans folks. Not satisfied with that, Waters went on to say "You know what it says on his cape? 'MS-13.'"

Yes, Jesse Waters equates not overtly espousing support for "The American Way" to being a member of a violent criminal gang of bogeymen.

On the same show as Waters, everyone's favorite advocate for "alternative facts," Kellyanne Conway, complained of the film that, "We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us." No, people go to Fox News for that, obviously. Kellyanne is jealous that someone might be working her corner on the throwing ideology front.

All of this I find entertaining, because it illustrates how threatened the modern Republican party is by anything in popular culture that doesn't reflect their brand of cruelty, preferably wrapped in jingoism. Oh no, people like this thing that shows value in empathy and tolerance and decency! We must demonize it immediately so those same people come to think it's all some sort of psy-op. But not like our propaganda ops, never reveal those.

As for the folks who made the movie, they've responded to the backlash properly. "Somebody needs a hug," said actor Nathon Fillion, who appears in the film. When asked what he thought of the right-wing critics, Gunn himself was succinct: "Screw ’em."

Our pal Craig Calcaterra mentioned this in his newsletter too, and he pointed out how much these modern Republicans would relate to the villains in Superman movies. Noting the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, Craig says, "The first one featured a scheme to nuke California as part of a real estate play; the second one centered on the desecration of the White House and the destruction of the American way of life by an evil whack job who constantly demands fealty from others; and the third one featured a bad guy billionaire fixated on financial domination via technology and the final boss of the movie was some insane, sentient A.I. computer monster thing. The shit's relatable."

Superman, of course, foiled all of those villainous schemes. "No wonder Republicans hate him."

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Superman, Culture, Posted on July 12, 2025 at 8:12PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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