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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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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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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Patriot Day: Protests and baseball

I frequent this place a lot as an umpire. Today the fields were swarmed by protesters, eventually reaching 70,000 strong

A lot happened today. Most of which I didn't actively participate in, but it still deserves some mention here, I think.

I fully intended to attend one of the smaller No Kings protests this afternoon; one took place not far from my home, I was planning to at least go and take photos and add my voice for a little while. I'd intended to, but my nocturnal ways caught up with me and I failed. I was umpiring last night until almost 11:30, got home well after midnight, then watched the full Mariner game from earlier in the evening, then had trouble falling asleep... anyway, when my alarm went off at 10:30am I had only been asleep for maybe three hours. Still, I got up and fed the cats, but then plopped back down to check in with things on my phone and before I knew it I had fallen asleep again. (In a rather awkward position, to, leaving me with a nasty kink in my neck that is still annoying me.) I re-awoke around 2:30. A quick shower and I moseyed out to the protest site, but it had mostly dispersed by then. Alas.

But even without me, Seattle showed up in style, with over 70,000 people congregating at Cal Anderson park (often the site of my umpiring adventures) before marching to Seattle Center. Along with several smaller events around town, the greater metro area represented well in the nationwide protests today and I am most gratified to see the great masses of Americans giving POTUS47 a metaphorical (and occasionally literal) middle-finger salute on his birthday. It's especially gratifying to see the split-screen, as it were, of protest turnout on one side and the "crowd" at Donny's multimillion-dollar ego parade in DC on the other. I hope he's seething about it.

Seems the vast majority of the events were civil and trouble-free, but there were bound to be a few exceptions, like the Virginia MAGAt who drove his SUV into protesters and someone in Salt Lake City shooting a protester. The forces deployed to LA unsurprisingly escalated things there, but not until after the No Kings event had ended; I wasn't there, I have no way to really know if the violence perpetrated by law enforcement/Federal forces was appropriate or not, but my instinct is to believe it was at best an overreaction. I know the elderly veterans being arrested in DC for nothing more than protesting Donny's ego parade will have quite the case when they sue, though.

Anyway, I did not attend but fully support the No Kings events. After my abortive look at the remains of the small suburban one, I came back and fixed a sandwich and started to clean up a bit before heading down to the ballpark. Not knowing what traffic would be like after today's disruptions, I left pretty early but getting downtown turned out to be a breeze and I was over an hour early to the game. Still didn't get a giveaway Steelheads cap, though, that was a small bummer. (I'm over it.)

Turned out to be a fun evening. One of my umpees (hi, Neal) was there and had free seats near him down low, so my Spuds teammate Mona and I ended up taking in the whole game from pretty close in, which was pretty cool. I am still very much used to my perspective from 327, so tracking the ball was a little tough from the more expensive seats. It's a nice change of pace, though, and the opportunity was much appreciated.

It was a great game, too, with the hometown M's staging a 9th-inning comeback to win in walkoff fashion. One dude sitting in the row behind me struck up some conversation here and there during the game, first about my scorekeeping then about ballparks and then about game strategy. Always fun. Nice to talk with Neal a bit off the softball diamond, too, though the PA onslaught at the game makes for a less than stellar discussion venue.

All in all a good Saturday. (Edit: Events in Minnesota notwithstanding—I just read about that a few minutes ago. Jesus.)

Below are a few of my favorite photos/signs from the nationwide protests today. Please to enjoy.

 

From Los Angeles. The Constitution is a perfect prop for today, but I also really enjoy the sign held up by the guy in the lower left corner.

Handmaid's Tale imagery has been used a lot, but hey, cliches are cliches for a reason. The sign is great, too.

From Florida. Glad to see the rest of the GOP get a mention, but mostly I like rooting for gators here.

A little hard to read, but it says "You don't get to talk about what's illegal when you voted for a felon."

Truly inspired to use "Schoolhouse Rock" here.

No notes. 100%.

And, just for fun, the celebration after the win at the ballpark. J.P. Crawford (2nd form left) had a perfect night, going 3-for-3 with two walks
(though he did get picked off 2nd base).

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Society, Posted on June 15, 2025 at 12:49AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Extortion of the press

I've always been a fan of Bob Costas, the legendary sportscaster that wrote a book on baseball back in the early 2000s that made me think he is the one guy in the world who could solve all of MLB's problems if he became baseball commissioner. He might be a little too Yankee-centric, but he's a pro's pro and he always knows what he's talking about when he's on screen.

Costas was awarded the Mirror Award for “distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public’s understanding of the media” last Monday and used the platform of his acceptance speech to scold the news media in general and several media outlets in particular for failing to commit journalism.

Most of his address surrounded the sports news business, which included this beauty: "Network TV sports is the only business I can think of where the buyer must continually flatter the seller. 'Here's your billion dollars or more, and if we pulled the Brinks armored truck up to Park Avenue and haven't delivered it in the proper denominations, we apologize profusely and we'll be right back.'" Broadening his focus to news generally, he deplored the reluctance of (primarily) TV news from "identifying and acknowledging the elephants in the room."

"Beyond sports," he went on, "the free press is under attack." Excoriating ABC and CBS for "paying ransom" in the form of settlements to frivolous lawsuits brought against them by President Convicted Felon, Costas articulated what to most of us is the blindingly obvious but to news organizations apparently a novel concept: Journalism is about reporting fact, not propagating two sides of an argument. Especially when one side is completely nonsensical BS.

“What’s happening now are not matters of small degree,” Costas said, citing "ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press."

Costas approached the close of his speech with this:

Donald Trump’s view of the world ... is through a prism of what benefits him, there are no higher ideals. There are no principles at work other than what benefits him.

...Because he is the president, what he does and what is done in his name has been normalized so that "responsible journalists" have to pretend that there’s always two sides to this. There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents.... If someone is contending that the Earth is flat, in order to appear objective, you are not required to say, “Well, maybe it might be oblong.” No, it’s not. Certain things are just true.

And regrettably, something that’s true in America right now is that the President of the United States has absolutely no regard, and in fact has contempt, for basic American principles and basic common decency.

Seems like a good place to close this post as well.

Tagged Baseball, Politics, President VonClownstick, Bob Costas, Posted on June 12, 2025 at 5:28PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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This must not stand

Well, the news cycle sure took a turn.

On Sunday, when President Convicted Felon illegally seized control of the California National Guard to put down a rather mild protest against ICE, DHS, and POTUS47 deportation policy, the reaction in the "legacy media" was, "meh." Another day, another impeachable offense, whatever. But by Monday evening it apparently became clear to news directors that focusing on LA was critical—just not for the right reasons.

The White House would like us all to believe that (a) Los Angeles is on fire and out of control and severe military measures are needed to right this wrong; and (b) when Los Angeles was actually on fire earlier this year that the Federal government had no role to play in getting things under control. Sadly, legacy media news is abetting this propagandistic redirection away from the actual problem. The reality of the situation is that to the extent there is chaos in LA, it's due to the actions of the LAPD and the National Guard. POTUS47 is instigating trouble, not mitigating it. (And he's doing it with stunning incompetence.)

Seizing the National Guard and, now, deploying U.S. Marines to the two-block area of downtown Los Angeles that has been experiencing the sort of chaos that football fans celebrating a Super Bowl win would mock as tepid, is fundamentally illegal as well as counterproductive. The administration is attempting to rationalize the actions by claiming the forces are needed to quell an invasion of criminal gangs from Latin America, but of course there is no such invasion. The only legal way to do what POTUS 47 is doing would be under the Insurrection Act, which would have to be invoked to override Posse Comitatus, which bars the government from using military force, including Federalized National Guard, against the population within the U.S. (Normal, state-controlled, National Guard has different regulations.)

Unfortunately, the language of the Insurrection Act is fairly arcane and open to misapplication; the intent of the act is to allow for military involvement if and when state and local law enforcement are overwhelmed and Federal help is needed to "suppress rebellion." But while the language may have been considered definitive in the 1870s, today one can easily imagine unscrupulous actors twisting it to suit their own authoritarian aims.

To the extent the media should be focused on the LA situation, it should be on the illegality of POTUS47’s actions, the threat it presents, the waste generated, the escalation of chaos it generates, and the underlying criminality it is being used to support.

I'll close this post with another excerpt from our pal Craig Calcaterra:

Trump either wants [military troops] on the streets of L.A. to kill Americans who Trump has decided are his enemies or he simply wants make himself look like a military strongman. Neither of those things are compatible with American democracy or basic morality. Indeed, like so many other things Trump has done over the past four and a half months, this act is something that would get any single one of his predecessors impeached and removed from office.

... Last night involved scattered protests, a couple of trash fires, and a small handful of arrests. While the mood is certainly pitched, and for good reason, the situation is, kinetically speaking, barely lukewarm. Around 150 people have been arrested in Los Angeles since Friday. There are Big Ten football games which require more police activity....

Donald Trump is seeking bloody confrontation. He wants to foment a violent response and he wants to kill people. It could not be more plain....

The people of this country are unsafe until Donald Trump is, somehow, removed from power. Making that happen is the only thing that will end this Constitutional interregnum. And anything short of that is going to lead to unnecessary and unjustified death.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on June 10, 2025 at 4:37PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Sunday activity

Yesterday saw POTUS47 commit yet another impeachable offense by illegally deploying the National Guard to put down a protest and incite violence in Los Angeles. That's just par for the course in 2025, though, so it might not have made your particular newsfeed. But it happened. Since it happened 2,000 miles away form me, though, and this sort of thing doesn't move the media needle anymore, I wasn't aware of it because I was otherwise occupied on the ballfield.

We're having record-breaking heat here, so it was a taxing day for me. Fortunately, I am well-liked by the teams I umpire for (mostly), so I was kept well-hydrated when I ran out of my own water and gatorade by players tossing me bottles from their own coolers. I got through my games without any real difficulties. (The one time there was a problem no one complained; a batter hit a popup with runners aboard that was deeper than the infield dirt and not immediately near a defender, so I didn't call the infield fly rule; I should have, though, because the defending shortstop had proven himself to be quite good and in fact he did get under the pop and let it fall, proceeding to attempt a double-play. So I did the unusual thing and called the rule after-the-fact, owning my mistake and placing one of the runners back on base. Everyone was cool with it.)

The final game involved The Leftovers, who as readers know are among my favorites, and though they lost in a squeaker, 10-9, they always make a game more fun for me to work and this time they even invited me out to the bar with them after the game. So I joined them for a short while and shared tales from the umpiring side while they told of their experiences with other umps and other teams. We talked about the Mariners latest slide in the standings, our respective elderly parents, and how I am frankly so much older than all the other umpires in the league yet also the most active on the field.

It was a nice time, and when I returned home the heat of the day had caught up with me and I developed a gargantuan headache that was probably building all through the afternoon under the direct sun and I took some ibuprofen and read until I finally conked out. 

Tonight I have a briefer shift, tomorrow a standard three-gamer, Wednesday I'm playing, Thursday back for three, and Friday for two before a killer 8-hour day on Sunday. Here's hoping I can stave off the heatstroke.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Softball, Umping, Posted on June 9, 2025 at 5:06PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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LET THEM FIGHT

Who would have thought that two buddies with egos the size of the Hercules A galaxy, both narcissistic billionaires whose entire relationship was built on a shared desire to be cruel to other people and enrich themselves, would see their bromance blow up in a fiery explosion bigger than the conflagration following a failed SpaceX rocket launch?

Oh, right. Everyone. We all knew this was coming. In some ways, it's surprising that it took this long.

But it did take this long for the self-interest of these two malignant tumors of humanity to conflict, and now we all enjoy the show and pass around the popcorn.

It's undoubtedly entertaining to see—an entirely apropos situation for a reality-TV-show president—but I fear the collateral damage to come. Still, it'll likely be a net benefit in the end if the mutual takedowns succeed at all.

We're here at the point of conflict because POTUS47 insisted that his budget bill include every one of his legislative priorities, that it be "one big [redacted] bill." Then he cajoled Speaker Johnson and the House Republicans to ram through an approval of it in the dead of night without anyone having read the entire bill. Then someone read the bill and the details started to make the rounds.

Officially known as House Resolution 1 (that's right, this is the first piece of legislation the pile-of-manure Speaker of the House has brought to the floor in the five months this Congress has been in session), it's an enormous mountain of cruelty and theft, detailing the means to deprive millions of Americans of healthcare, student loans, services, and assistance of myriad kinds while redistributing all of that wealth to the richest of rich fucks, a full quarter of it to the oligarch class. It would be the largest redistribution of wealth from poor and middle classes to the upper class in generations. On top of that, it would blow another huge hole in the national debt—over a decade, it worsens the budget deficit, that is, the annual shortfall, by nearly four trillion dollars.

Let's put that in perspective. As I researched and noted in my 2024 voting aid pamphlet that apparently no one read, George W. Bush held the previous record for largest budget deficit when he ran the figure in his last year in office to nearly $1.5 trillion. The pre-GWB high-water mark, considered enormous at the time, was about $300 billion under W's dad (adjusting for inflation, about $460 billion in 2008 dollars, so less than a third of GWB's excesses). Barack Obama got it down from GWB's shocker to about $650 billion when he left. Then we got the first term of President Shitbag and it went from that to over $3 trillion before Joe Biden basically cut it in half. Now POTUS47 plans to make the annual shortfall exceed $6 trillion. The national debt is currently about $37 trillion, accumulated over 190 years since the last time the country's debt was zero (January 1835). Factor in interest and the POTUS47 plan would double that figure in no time at all—the CBO estimates that even without this clusterfuck of a budget, just the annual interest payment on U.S. debt will top $1 trillion next year.

And none of that deficit spending is to benefit anyone. None of it is for good things. Not only does this budget slash Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, SNAP, student grants and loans, the NEA, state assistance, disaster relief, environmental protections, et cetera, et cetera, it increases spending for defense contracts—guess who those will go to—and the Department of Homeland Security, home to ICE, HSI, and the various other agencies that make up this administration's burgeoning secret police.

But none of that is why the two billionaire BFF crybabies are fighting. No, no, neither of those moronic misanthropes gives a tinker's damn about fucking over the people or going bankrupt; the fight came about because the budget eliminates incentives and subsidies for electric vehicles while providing opposite measures for the fossil fuel industry. It's a direct threat to the existence of Tesla. Herr Elon might claim it's about excessive spending, but we all know that's a lie. It's because not enough of it goes to him.

So they're fighting. Throwing their takedown tantrums in public—on the social media platforms that each of them owns, which is just a chef's kiss to the whole thing—while the world laughs and while the reputation of the United States goes even further into the toilet.

What's coming next? Elon has already echoed a call to impeach Donny. Donny has already threatened to cancel Elon's many contracts. White House sewer troll Steve Bannon and Donny's shadow-president, the undead ghoul calling itself Stephen Miller, have called for Elon to be deported. Elon threatened to reveal what Donny's role in the Jeffrey Epstein saga really was. During the back-and-forths it appeared that each was just then realizing that the other was a corrupt, lying, amoral piece of shit when the rest of us knew they both were from the get-go.

Both of these people are fueled by grievance, take everything personally, and believe they are entitled to total deference and fealty. The escalation of revenge tactics to come promises to be pretty scary. The U.S. has quite stupidly become dependent on Elon for its space program, which could be all but destroyed in this mess. Who aligns with who among the oligarch class could have big economic effects on all of us. But if the end result is that the public sees proof that POTUS47 raped underage girls with Epstein, that Elon loses all his influence with the government and maybe even his companies and wealth, that the Republican Party fractures and self-immolates, then I'm here for it.

Let. Them. Fight.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on June 6, 2025 at 9:08PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Grifter in Chief

I've not done much posting lately on the plethora of horrors coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not that I haven't been aware of (at least some of) them, nor that they've been so numerous and unrelenting as to have overwhelmed my ability to comprehend—yet—it's just that I know I'm largely if not completely preaching to the choir here. At least when my uncle isn't lurking around.

Once more, I turn to our pal Craig Calcaterra to sum up what I'm trying to say but with better verbiage (emphasis mine to relate it to my own stuff as well):

Every single day something happens which reminds us that America is being torched by cruel, nihilistic bigots and ignoramuses for no reason beyond their destructive and psychotic whims. No country I can think of has ever so willingly and so deeply harmed itself like America is harming itself right now. Even countries who flung themselves into destructive wars believed, at last at the outset, that they were doing something to help themselves or advance their cause, whatever it happened to be. America, in contrast, is voluntarily maiming itself knowing full well that what it's doing will work toward its own ruin. All because we stupidly elected a Mad King who doesn't understand a goddamn thing and doesn't care that he doesn't understand a goddamn thing. And now that he's descending into acute dementia, a few dozen truly evil and hateful people who have attached themselves to him are doing whatever they want without a shred of oversight or consequence.

I try to roll with all of this awfulness most days. Some days I try to actively ignore it if I can manage to. Other days I try to find the bits of hope among the destruction or I try to focus on history and the longer view as a means of reminding myself that all things, even bad things, do eventually pass. For the past couple of days, however, I haven't been able to do any of that. For the past couple of days all I've been able to see is the bleakness and pointless pain and misery being inflicted upon millions by vile people who care about nothing and no one but themselves, their grievances, and their greed.

I really don't know what to do anymore. All I can muster right now is a bit of thankfulness that it's Friday and that I can fucking turn my brain, my computer, and my TV off for 48 hours or so and try to forget about it all for a little while.

In some ways, I think we are all Craig right now.

But yesterday was so egregiously corrupt, with essentially crickets from much of the press—the exception being Chris Hayes, who was rightly outraged/gobsmacked/incredulous on his show (see below)—so I need to vent a little bit.

President Corrupt, Cruel, Incompetent, Moron Fuckface raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and grift by hosting a contest: the 200+ largest purchasers of $TRUMP—which is an essentially valueless cryptocurrency (trading now at around $12 per "coin" after having declined from $75 around inauguration day to $8 last month) that POTUS47 makes money on via transaction fees, so any purchase or sale of any of it rings his cash register—win a dinner at Bribe-a-Lago with the grifter-in-chief, anonymously and with no reportage of the event, so trade favors and scheme safe from prying eyes, and a next-day tour of the White House with the man they bribed. The buyers of this corrupt access are largely unknown as they made their purchases under pseudonyms and/or usernames, though one admitted "winner" was Chinese crypto-bro Justin Sun, who was being prosecuted for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission until POTUS47 took office and put the kibosh on that. Because who doesn't like securities fraud? It's not a big jump to conclude that at least part of Sun's $18.5 million gratuity was thanks/payment for services rendered in dropping the legal case against him, and since most of the rest of the "donors" are anonymous, who knows what other quids were being quo'd last night.

I'll admit readily that I do not fully understand cryptocurrencies, but the nature of any currency is that it only has value to people/entities willing to accept it. National currencies (and international ones—the Euro is real) are governmentally recognized as legal tender "for all debts public and private" within a country's jurisdiction, but crypto has no such backing. If you try to spend bitcoin at the supermarket you'll find it's not worth anything to the merchant. If you try to spend $TRUMP coin, your only willing recipients will be fellow cultists. It's not currency, it's a digital trading card. No shade to card collectors, but they're a niche thing. I have a many-thousand-strong comic-book collection that is worth a fair chunk of money, but only to other collectors/enthusiasts/merchants. (Along with some junk and commons, I've got a Silver Age Superman comic for sale on eBay right now that's getting no bids among my fellow niche members; even within a niche people are fickle.) The president is grifting people with trading cards, and not good ones like Willie Mays or Honus Wagner cards, no, these are all Jeff Schaefers and Cliff Mapes.

One of the fools who copped to spending more than $100 million on presidential meme coin grift was a 27-year-old New Yorker named Vincent who has parted with far more than that amount in the service of making POTUS47 richer, as he boasted about having previously bought numerous Trump watches, Trump sneakers, Trump NFTs... Vince is the best mark there is for this regime of corruption, a cult devotee with money to burn. Sadly, he's not representative of the cult at large, members of which are just as easily suckered and might spend proportionately more when grifted, but reach a limit to their means/ability to go into debt a lot sooner. (The same people who, along with the rest of us non-multi-millionaires, would be utterly screwed if the budget House Republicans passed in the dead of night were to become law.) Vince is also a likely anomaly among the contest "winners," as most of them are thought to be foreign oligarch types and crypto-scammers looking for fewer obstacles to their own grift schemes.

This is, of course, on top of the acceptance by the US government of the "gift" of a glitzed-up Qatari 747 that the Qatari monarch no longer wanted and couldn't sell to anyone, a "gift" that us undoubtedly an attempt at a Trojan horse, a "free" gift that will cost American taxpayers on the order of a billion dollars to outfit as another Air Force One jet, a process that any sane Congress would kill dead in its tracks but might actually get rolling with these yahoos in charge.

Of course, even absent the rest of the voluminous impeachable offenses committed in just these four months, corruption on this enormous scale would get the president impeached and thrown out of office posthaste if the majority in Congress had any fidelity to their oaths of office. Sadly, Speaker Mike Johnson and the entire Republican caucus in the House, as well as most of the Republicans in the Senate, are traitors and/or cowards in the face of intimidation by the White House.

Midterms cannot come soon enough. Assuming we get them fairly; the level of election fuckery this regime will attempt is terrifying to contemplate. But we have to fight. And when those elections do come, we've got to turn out in numbers so vast that they overwhelm the cheating you know the regime will apply.

 

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra, Chris Hayes, Posted on May 23, 2025 at 4:52PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Worst. Commissioner. Ever.

The baseball commissioner is a corporate right-wing toady who doesn't give a damn about baseball

As if we needed more reasons to despise Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr.—and former Commissioner Bud Selig, for that matter—he provided us with one by reinstating Pete Rose and all other permanently-banned-from-the-game individuals under the fig leaf excuse of, "well, they're dead, so let's say permanent bans end at death."

This action pulls the neat trick of both being wholly about Pete Rose and not really being about Pete Rose at all. It's about Rose because a comment about Rose was the impetus for this, it's not about Rose because of who the comment came from. It came from the cruel, corrupt, and incompetent fascist now occupying the office of President of the United States.

POTUS47 wants Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame for some reason. Why? Far as I know, POTUS47 is not particularly fond of baseball or versed in its history. But he does know the name Pete Rose, knows that Pete Rose was a supporter of his in 2016 and 2020, and he very likely knows that Pete Rose was the kind of man he likes best: selfish, criminal, and in love with his own "greatness."

I don't know if Rose and POTUS47 ever met personally or not, but since they're totally birds of a feather—well, except for one of them being a professional athlete with a standout career and the other being a failure in every business venture he ever undertook—it totally tracks that President Convicted Felon would stick his nose into this comparatively trivial matter.

There are a lot of horrible things among the autocratic agenda of the present administration, many of them shared by the Republican party as a whole, many of which have been on display over the past couple of weeks, many of which deserve far more attention than they're getting. But one of the underlying foundational elements of the POTUS47 mindset is not just racism and misogyny, but their corollary: glorification of despicable behavior by white dudes.

POTUS47 is himself a despicable white dude guilty of some of the worst behavior humanity has to offer, so he needs society to approve of other despicable white dudes guilty of terrible behavior so he doesn't stand out as the festering boil on America's face that he is. So all the January 6 insurrectionists get pardons (and perhaps get called upon to be thugs for him again), Jeffrey Epstein was "a terrific guy," Pete Hegseth gets to be Secretary of Defense, neo-Nazis are "very fine people," RFK Jr. and Elon Musk are "genius" level specimens, and Pete Rose should be idolized on and off the field.

Pete Rose was banned form baseball in 1989 by then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti (otherwise known as the last commissioner worth the title, apologies to Fay Vincent who let himself get steamrolled by Selig and company). Not for general assholishness (or for being a statutory rapist or for tax crimes, both of which were still not widely known about), but for specific affronts to the integrity of the game by way of gambling. Rose denied at the time but later admitted that he not only bet on big-league baseball games regularly, but that he also bet on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds, for whom he was player-manager. This violated baseball's Rule 21(d), misconduct through gambling, which mandates a year's suspension for betting on games the bettor has no part in and a permanent ban for betting on games he participates in.

There have been arguments ever since over whether or not Rose's punishment was appropriate; of late, the arguments favoring his reinstatement center around how gambling has become normalized to the point of offensiveness, with sponsorships galore from gambling enterprises throughout the game. There have also been debates about others that are now, thanks to Rob Manfred's capitulation to one of the most heinous people on Earth, also re-eligible for the Hall, particularly Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was swept up in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 that ended up creating the position of commissioner in the first place (those unfamiliar should immediately go see the fine John Sayles film Eight Men Out). At first I sided with the pro-reinstate Jackson crowd, but upon reflection I will instead side with Bart Giamatti.

Giamatti was asked about reinstating Jackson shortly before he died later in ’89, and his reply was that the 1919 Series "and its aftermath cannot be recreated . . . I, for one, do not wish to play God with history. The Jackson case is now best given to historical analysis and debate as opposed to a present-day review with an eye to reinstatement." In other words, applying present-day judgments to events that occurred within their own historical contexts will inevitably miss key nuances and/or taint or sanitize history in ways that can't be predicted.

I would apply the same to Pete Rose now, particularly since we now know about some of his other gross behavior. I expect Giamatti would too, despite the idiotic remark by the guy who previously held the title of Worst Commissioner Ever, Bud Selig, who said, "I believe Bart would understand and respect the decision [to reinstate Rose] as well." Fuck you, Bud, Giamatti said he would only consider reinstating Rose if Rose worked toward living "a redirected, reconfigured, rehabilitated life," which he never did; Rose was unrepentant until the day he died last September. As Stephanie Apstein wrote in Sports Illustrated, "It’s hard to imagine a less savory character to whom to extend this grace. Rose agreed to the ban in the first place, then spent the rest of his life insisting he'd been wronged. He lied about betting on baseball until it became profitable to tell the truth."

Manfred, of course, isn't fit to lick Giamatti's loafers. The Rob Manfred era has been a nightmare of rule fuckery and greed and labor strife and greed and scandals and greed and, yes, more greed. Integrity of the game doesn't even make the top 20 in Manfred's list of priorities, all he wants to do is make more and more surfaces available for ad space (we now have ads on uniforms, ads on pitcher's mounds, ads on the grass in foul ground...), bully TV providers, and, yes, mingle with gamblers. When asked about Rose and gambling and the changes in baseball's attitude, Manfred tried to defend his office's relationship with gambling by saying "we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises." I leave it to the reader to decide if he meant, "we don't do any betting, we just encourage others to bet," or if he meant, "my job is first and foremost to sell data and ads to gambling outfits." No reason it can't be both, I guess.

But his job also, apparently, includes kowtowing to wannabe autocrats. I've seen one take that actually reflects well on Manfred, relatively speaking—that he reinstated Pete Rose as a sop to POTUS47 in hopes that it would get MLB some goodwill when it comes to immigration/deportations/renditioning of foreigners, that Major and minor-league ballplayers would be spared from ICE and HSI gestapo goons kidnapping them off the street or arresting them at airports. Maybe. I kind of doubt it, though. Even if that was the calculus it just means Manfred is as stupid as we all think he is, since you cannot appease the Bully-in-Chief, if you give him an inch he will take a parsec. Just ask Columbia U or the law firm of Paul, Weiss.

Pete Rose may or may not be bad for the Hall, depending on your metrics, but Rob Manfred is surely bad for baseball. Just as POTUS47 is bad for America and the world. All three deserve plaques in the Hall of Human Stains and Horrors.

 

Tagged Baseball, Politics, President VonClownstick, Rob Manfred, Posted on May 15, 2025 at 9:31PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Dispatches from the American hellscape

A few quotes and links for your Interwebs perusal...

 

•  From our buddy Craig Calcaterra:

Stephen Miller, the Trump Regime official who I feel is most likely to be torn limb-from-limb by angry mobs once the public learns who did what during this time, said this when talking about education:

"Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding ... we're gonna make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology."

I don't agree with Stephen Miller about a lot, but I agree with him to some extent here. I never wanted my kids' school to teach them about communism. They'd surely have gotten it wrong! That's why I made a point to teach my kids about communism at home, where they could get the straight dope. It's the responsible thing to do.

Anyway, I'm now gonna return to daydreaming about those mobs getting their hands on this Temu Roy Cohn over here and doing what mobs do.

 

•  From Will Bunch at the Philly Inquirer:

Most voters forgot, or never heard, the 2003 argument by some advocates that the creation of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the new Department of Homeland Security] to more aggressively hunt down undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil would create a 'monster' agency that would warp the entire national conversation around refugees. While it’s certainly and sadly true that waves of anti-immigration fervor are as American as cherry pie, from the anti-Irish 'Know Nothings' of the 1850s through the KKK resurgence of the 1920s and beyond, the 'national security' lens of ICE has taken us to a new low. ... Twenty-two years later, those 'monster' predictions feel understated. There’s no quick fix for the human rights nightmare of ICE and its sister agencies, because this warped experiment has gone off the rails in so many different ways.

 

•  From Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker:

This country was founded on the idea of habeas corpus. It’s a fancy legal term that, in plain words, means no government has a right to arbitrarily take your freedom away from you. Preserving habeas corpus is not some fever dream of the left wing echo chamber, it’s a fundamental concept of justice that people have fought and died for dating back to the Middle Ages. It was in the Magna Carta. It was considered by our nation’s founders to be so vital to our liberty that they wrote it right into the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson called it the essential principle of government. Benjamin Franklin opined that those who would give up habeas corpus for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security. And Alexander Hamilton wrote that the practice of arbitrary imprisonments has been in all the ages the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton. Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the most effective campaign slogan in history. It’s the OG of political messaging. So I mean, what do we think that Colonel Stark was talking about, if not this, when he said, 'Live Free or Die'?

Today it’s an immigrant with a tattoo. Tomorrow, it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Donald Trump.

There are plenty of people in this country who hold opinions that I find abhorrent, but my faith and our constitution dictate that I fight for their freedoms as loudly as I defend my own. And as a Ukrainian-American Jew who built a Holocaust Museum, whose family immigrated here as refugees from the Russian pogroms, let me say this to Donald Trump: Stop tearing down the Constitution in the name of my ancestors.

Do not claim that your authoritarian power grabs are about combating antisemitism. When you destroy social justice, you are disparaging the very foundation of Judaism. When the pendulum swings back, and it always does, you will have contributed to the climate of retribution that will inevitably follow.

...

We have a Secretary of Education who hates teachers and schools.

We have a Secretary of Transportation who hates public transit.

We have an attorney general who hates the constitution.

We have a secretary of state—the son of naturalized citizens, a family of refugees—on a crusade to expel our country of both,

We have a head of the 'department of government efficiency'—an immigrant granted the privilege of living and working here, a man who has made hundreds of billions of dollars after the government rescued his business for him—who is looking to destroy the American middle class to fund tax cuts for himself.

And we have a president who claims to love America but who hates our military so much that he calls them losers and suckers and who can’t be bothered to delay his golf game to greet the bodies of four fallen US soldiers.

...

If it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated. It’s because I am. You should be too. They’re an affront to every value this country was founded upon.

...

These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.

They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact—because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.

 

•  From the great satirist Andy Borowitz:

ROME—A man who fell asleep during Pope Francis’s funeral was “already going to Hell,” God clarified on Sunday.

Although snoozing during the pontiff’s funeral was “beyond rude,” the Almighty said that the man clinched his place in the netherworld “decades ago.”

“If I hadn’t already made up My mind, the last hundred days would have made him a slam dunk for eternal damnation,” He said. “I mean, deporting a two-year-old? Come on.”

The Heavenly Father said the man’s decision to wear a blue suit at the funeral “wasn’t a factor” in his going to Hell, but was nevertheless “incredibly assholic.”

In another observation from the funeral, God noted, “Interestingly, Sleepy Joe Biden managed to stay awake.”

 

•  From, of all people, former POTUS45 National Security Adviser and longtime pre-Trump-Republican extremist John Bolton:

To be a fascist, you have to think at some conceptual level, which Trump never does. It's too far above Trump’s capabilities. He has no philosophy. He has, in the national security space, no grand strategy, and doesn’t do policy as we conventionally understand that term. It was difficult for me to accept. … There are plenty of people around him with problematic philosophies, people who do have the ability to think at a more conceptual level. What they say may ultimately be reflected in certain Trump decisions, but it’s not because he shares their worldview or anything like that.

 

•  And, finally, from POTUS47 himself, to ABC News reporter Terry Moran in an interview in the Oval Office, who had the temerity to ask him about the Supreme Court's order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador and about his discussions with Vladimir Putin:

You're doing the interview. I picked you because frankly I never heard of you. But that's okay. But I picked you, Terry, but you're not being very nice. ... I don’t trust you. I don’t trust a lot of people. I don’t trust you. Look at you. You’re so happy to do the interview, and then you start hitting me with these fake questions.

I'd like to know how a question can be a "fake question"; the implication of a question could be dishonest, which POTUS47 knows all too well from his own practices, or the subject of a question could be whether or not something is fake (e.g., "Mr. President, do you think Neil Armstrong actually went to the moon or was that merely a propaganda op?"), but a question is a question, it's neutral.

Actually, I don't care about that bit of semantics here, it's just telling to see that whenever our president (barf) is presented with reality instead of obsequious bootlicking he will immediately resort to condescending attacks and some sort of Pee Wee Herman impression with a version of "I know you are, but what am I?"

 

Good times, right?

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on May 2, 2025 at 4:37PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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