Welcome Back to Pottersville: May 2021

Monday, May 31, 2021

Pottersville Digest: Memorial Day edition

Shut up, Hogsbreath.

These idiots can't even ad lib their own idiocy, any more.

Don't forget Kremlin Cruz.

Imagine how much he'd be bellyaching if he hadn't stiffed Rudy for his $20,000 a day legal fee.

Uh, Howard? There's no such thing as a "little" anti-Semitic remark.

Ted Diadiun is right. In all fairness, the Republican were damned if they did and damned if they didn't vote for the January 6th Commission. But if you're bound to be damned you might as well be so on the right side of history.

These right wing lunatics really do live in an alternate universe don't they?

Your Brad o' the day.

"I am not a conspiracy theorist!" says man who still thinks Trump is president at conspiracy theorist shindig.

"Her spokeswoman, Hannah Hurley, has declined to explain why Sinema skipped the vote. Se didn't return my call and all she would say to The Arizona Republic’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez was that Sinema 'will be entering into the Congressional record that she would’ve voted yes'.”

"I'd like to enter it into the police record that I would've turned on the hose to put out that fire. And, no, I'm not going to say why I hadn't."

"The remains of 215 children have been discovered on the grounds of a former boarding school set up more than a century ago to assimilate Canada's indigenous peoples, according to a local tribe."

Well, that's certainly a nice, passive way of putting it. They were torn from their families just as we had with migrant children two years ago. Only, Canada did it for 80 years with the full weight of the Crown behind it to dislodge parents who'd owned and occupied land bristling with trees that the logging companies wanted.

Rape, assault and murder of children is not "assimilation," It's just rape, assault and murder of children, period.

"If Trump is actually put on trial, it will become a spectacle unlike any other in American history. Any possible verdict — acquittal, conviction or mistrial — will be received by his supporters as a great victory. No matter what happens, such a trial would serve as a flashpoint for a far-right, anti-democratic movement the likes of which has never before existed in this country. On balance, that sounds really bad."

This guy seems to be saying, "Trump's too big to fail." If we're going to go down that line of "reasoning", then we might as well admit we're a nation of mob rule and that the terrorists have already won, even though they haven't won shit.

All 20 miles of it, and it barely touches Oklahoma.

Once a right winger, always a right winger.

Frankly, I'm surprised and disappointed they never once mentioned the Massachusetts 54th, the regiment that was made famous in GLORY.

This is a great article by a sex worker who's very aware that GOP policies create victims for the GOP.

So, darling Nikki, are you "enjoying the long weekend"?

Will no one rid us of this malignant leprechaun, Michael Flynn?

Once again, quoting right wingers in their own words is "fake news".

The Tulsa Massacre happened 100 years ago today.

Chauncey DeVega asks a good question in Salon today: Are we moving forward into the future or are we stuck in reverse?

Bill Kristol seems to think Democrats need to dominate the government, provided the Democrats aren't TOO liberal.

Remember when conservatives were in the party of ideas? Well this is what passes for ideas nowadays. And finally...

Yes, George P.'s political fortunes rest on Trump's sloped shoulders. But the good news is Trump's a very stable genius.

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Herd Immunity From the Truth

I honestly don't remember America, my native country, being this polarized and crazy. And I grew up in the 60s, the decade of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the Kennedy assassinations and psychedelic drugs.

I don't recognize it.

Yeah, some things have changed in a nation's inevitable cultural ebb and flow. I was born into a country in which doctors still made house calls, mail was delivered twice a day and there were milkmen and diaper delivery drivers. Since my childhood and adolescence, all these things and more have all but disappeared. Single bread winners. Pensions. Drive in theaters, waitresses on roller skates. Roller skating rinks.

You have to expect that life's not going to remain static. Republicans obviously have a problem understanding that.

But Republicans didn't contest election results in my childhood. Sure, there was political partisanship. There always has been since the Continental Congresses in the 1770s. But partisanship before now wasn't entirely dependent on filing for divorce from reality.

Five days ago, over four months into the new Biden administration that's been calling the shots and literally getting those shots in arms and stimulus checks into bank accounts, Reuters and IPSOS conducted a poll of 2007 Americans across the country. The results showed something frightening: Well over six months after the election, 53% of Republican voters still believe Trump is the president.

For a country that's famously hostile and suspicious of politicians, learning that a full quarter of the country doesn't accept the legitimacy of the 46th president, one doesn't have to look very hard to see from which all the head-shaking, denials and nay-saying are originating. And it's coming from lunatics like Trump, who still can't believe he actually lost something whose sole value, obviously, was in the legal immunity it gave him. That's the only thing about the presidency he misses. That and the Diet Coke button on the Resolute Desk.

It's coming from lunatics like unindicted child molester and whore monger Matt Gaetz and a congresswoman so toxic she was kicked off both her committee assignments. These moral quadriplegics like Gaetz and Taylor-Greene get to call the shots and dictate the terms of reality without any pushback whatsoever from their party.

I guess we should have seen this coming. For decades now, we've been hearing all sorts of bullshit from climate change and global warming deniers, Holocaust deniers, Flat Earthers and Birthers and now, anti-vaxxers and pandemic deniers.

So sure, why not call into perpetual question the results of a free and fair election that was pronounced by Cris Krebs to be "the most secure election in US history"? Just because you can't actually see or smell the smoke, it doesn't mean the smoke ain't there, right? Otherwise. why would they be looking so hard in Maricopa County, AZ?

The problem, of course, is that there isn't any smoke because there's no fire. But what does that matter to people who think that they can indefinitely live in a world in which facts and the truth are optional?

As I'd written in a recent article, we've seen one of the strangest inversions in American political history: We had a presidential candidate running on a major party ticket who'd run on a populist platform and pretended to make their grievances his. Nothing unusual about that. But now those same supporters are assuming the burden of his very real, if illegitimate, grievances. The fact that he didn't issue a single pardon to any of the hundreds of psychopaths he'd directed to the Capitol January 6th hasn't made a dent in their cast-iron belief the 2020 election was rigged. And a massive proportion of our elected officials are happily feeding that toxic narrative to their constituents.

We got through the Dark Ages almost completely fact-free. Despite the denialists in our midst, we should get into the 22nd century. But from this vantage point, I don't see how that's going to happen.

Pottersville Digest

("We believe in telling the truth." "Democrats want to cancel us!")

No wonder this asshole's grinning from ear to ear in his mug shot. In yet another instance of white privilege, he's looking at just a year of probation for threatening the life of the Iowa governor.

Meanwhile, in the "liberal" state of Massachusetts...

Trump was booed at Yankee Stadium and he wasn't even there.

No comment needed.

We're going to be seeing a lot of face palms in the weeks and months ahead.

Why won't the damned Dems do this through the reconciliation process?! That only requires a simple majority.

These idiots actually thought they were Washington and his troops crossing the Delaware on Xmas day.

These are the assholes the 5th columnist Republican Party want to protect.

Right wingers: They're always the victims, aren't they?

Joe Manchin has the sads from his fellow Republicans.

Yeah, I think it's time to put Stephen Breyer out to pasture.

The worst cop in Florida just got shit canned for the seventh time. “I don’t like corrupt cops. I hate when I’m portrayed as a dirty cop who slipped through the cracks,” he somehow managed to say with a straight face.

Yes, he incriminated himself with fashion photos.

We're gonna be seeing more brazen shit like this from Republican scum in the years to come.

Tommy Tuberville: "How could I make myself sound like an even more stereotypical redneck? I know...!"

Another racist asshat heard from.

In case you were thinking recent comparisons of Arizona to Nazi Germany were hyperbolic...

"The more dangerous truth is that a not-insignificant portion of the GOP’s Trumpian base actually appears to believe that the violent mob was justified in its effort to disrupt Congress as it conducted its pro forma tally of the electoral votes that made Joe Biden the 46th president." I came to a very similar conclusion in a recent article I'd written.

I agree with Roxanne Gay here. If cops insist on marching in uniform, then the only color they see in the rainbow flag is the blue.

WTF is going on with Biden's Justice Department?!

Fine. Let them blame Trump and right wing media. But this betrays perhaps the one unifying characteristic of the right wing mindset- A pathological inability or unwillingness to accept blame for the most egregious of actions.

Two recounts and two audits? It's become screamingly obvious that Arizona Republicans are fully planning on making this a permanent function of government until they finally manufacture the result they demand.

Yeah, so "critical" she couldn't be bothered to show up to vote for it.

Oh, no abuse of police power there. And finally...

The real standard-bearers of the Republican Party aren't McConnell, McCarthy and certainly not Trump. It's the tag team freak show starring Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

Thursday, May 27, 2021

Pottersville Digest

(Walmart's logo is actually an asshole.)

Welcome to Liz Cheney's world, bitch.

A grand jury's already been convened. Start warming up that harmonica, Donnie.

In exchange for what information, I wonder?

How could this idiot not know why there's a grand jury after him and why he's being investigated when he committed the crimes?

Because the Contract on America worked out so well the last time.

I guess no one sent this thick-necked moron the memo that no one elected him governor.

Looks as if Donnie Dumbo has some common sense, after all.

"You want to explain your extramarital affair?"

"I quit."

Karen Fann is obviously completely insane.

I could be wrong but I think outbidding other nations on PPE is a mite outside the CIA'S remit.

Your Karen o' the day.

He didn't look so damned disabled during the riot, though, did he?

Goddamn but this Karen has chutzpah.

"At this point I wouldn't be shocked if he tried to claim a deduction for a bribe. I mean, what else do we need? Trump to show up to a Fox News interview with a shovel in a shirt saying 'I love burying bodies?'" -Seth Meyers.

Let's set up a religious compound in the middle of Texas, with a religious whackjob, stock it to the rafters with weapons and take on the federal government. What could possibly go wrong?

Man, this is some rarified gaslighting here.

They dropped the most serious charges because you want a psychopath with anger management issues back on the streets that much sooner.

As rich as he is, I wouldn't want to be Allen Weisselberg these days.

Your Brad o' the day.

I am amazed at this bloated grifter's inexhaustible capacity to find new suckers to trust him.

"Land of the home"? Yeah, let's keep harping on Biden's stutter.

It makes perfect sense, in an inverted, Bizarro World way, that the party that refuses to accept Biden as president is also hunting for Bigfoot.

If there are two facets of American society that are likely to never change, it's that 1) it will always be open season on black people and 2) white privilege will always be a reality. And finally...

It ought to be stated that Matt Lewis is a right winger from way back. So when I read these articles from Never Trump right wingers, the unmistakable, invariable gist I get is that, "The Republican Party was all hunky dory until Trump came down the escalator. That the GOP didn't start to go bad until Trump threw his hat in the ring in 2015. The GOP gave us ruinous tax breaks for the 1%, deposed democratically-elected governments, unwinnable wars, a Great Depression, several recessions, inflation, scandals, unregulated corporations and banks, a mismanaged pandemic costing nearly 600,000 lives, anarchy in the streets, ridiculous hood ornament issues, bigotry, opposition to Civil Rights, vote purging, Congressional gridlock for its own sake and election-stealing.

So remind me again, Matty, when the GOP was ever the party of governance?

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Trump is the Pennywise of the Republican Party

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

Hey, ya wanna be my lawyer? You wanna be my state GOP chairman puppet? Ya wanna be my new oldest son?

And so forth and so on.

In his physical and digital excommunication, Donald Trump, the ringmaster of the GOP's Big Tent, is actually the Pennywise of the Republican Party. Exiled to a figurative storm drain, all he can do is log on to his "blog" and shrilly wail in his now-tinny voice about Joe Scarborough and Mika or one Republican or another. In fact, if it weren't for the ratings-hungry mainstream media continuing to breathlessly report on his every public brain seizure, his pronouncements would hardly rise to the level of a whisper. Absent social media, he's reduced to crashing weddings and bellyaching about the "stolen" 2020 election.

And the come-ons from his storm drains at Bedminster or Mar a Lago are, predictably, all about him and what you can do for him. And, as with Stephen King's epic novel, It, the GOP's answer to Pennywise will never lack for rain slickered victims to get too close to the drain and never be heard from again (except if CNN hires their remains to replace Rick Santorum for fairness and balance).

In refusing to seriously criticize Marjorie Taylor Greene, much less expel her from Congress, what passes for GOP leadership is signaling they're all in on Trump, conspiracy theories, fatal riots and all. We all remember, I think, Lady G mincing to a microphone and saying the GOP couldn't win without the guy who'd cost them the White House, Senate and reacquiring the House. Florida Man Zero, Matt Gaetz, still firmly has Trump's jiggling back flogging the Big Lie even though no one has apparently clued him in that, as far as he's concerned, Fat Elvis has already left the building.

For those not about to be accused of paying underage children for sex, Trump is soliciting help.

"Hey, kid, tell people I won the election and that Joe Biden is senile."

This, and blocking the Biden agenda at virtually very turn is what passes for ideas from the Party of Ideas. And why do they even need ideas when they can always depend the cast-iron ignorance of people like the goobers in Iowa who still think their last stimulus checks came courtesy of Donald Trump and the Party of Ideas that, to a man, voted against the latest stimulus measure?

The bar for Republican truth-telling (the oxymoron of the century) is not only set low, it's buried six feet beneath the ground moldering with the truth itself. "Yes, the vote was rigged last year but vote for me next November!" "No, there wasn't a riot on January 6th. It was just a really motivated tour group" (although tour groups generally don't come with body counts).

And they're valiantly manning this fire hose o' bullshit because they know that's what their alleged savior wants to hear them say and, most importantly, what his aggrieved voters want to hear. But what the GOP doesn't seem to realize is that Trump is like those black bears that you see in Clark's Trading Post in New Hampshire. They tell you the bears are trained but they're really not. Hence the endless spoons of soft serve ice cream the assistant needs to shovel into the animal's mouth. Because they're smart enough to know the second the ice cream stops is the very second the cooperation ends.

But the GOP still isn't smart enough to learn that it works the same way with Trump- That the second they stop spoon-feeding him flattery and lies is the very second he turns on them and roars, albeit at a much lower decibel range.

Pottersville Digest

(I'll assume they're talking about Pennywise and not Trump.)

Did you know that Nellie Bly was also a novelist? If not, maybe it's because they were lost in the mists of time. But they've been rediscovered. All 11 of them.

Bull Moose: Bull-headed bullshit.

This was videotaped last year when Marjorie Taylor-Greene was still running for Congress. Lord only knows why this didn't make national headlines at the time.

Because God told him to kick the student in the nuts.

Joseph Bondy wrote a letter in the interests of full disclosure to the defendants essentially listing a veritable Who's Who of Trump's swamp extending all the way to Ukraine. One of them was Giuliani's own lawyer, whose own cell phone was seized by the FBI. If Victoria Toensing is listed as a defendant, she'll no longer be able to defend Giuliani, which was Giuliani's exact reason for his inability to defend Trump during his second impeachment trial.

The story of how Cancun Cruz became Kremlin Cruz.

Real profile in courage that MTG is.

If you can't take the heat from your fellow Republicans, Joe, then stay out of their kitchen.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer union-busting, monopolistic prick.

Wake TSI to Cyber Ninjas: "Yeah, we're out. We don't need the money that badly."

"EPA unlawfully promoted the profits of pesticide companies instead of following the law and sound science, putting chemical companies over protecting farmers and the environment."

Yes, this was the Trump EPA. How could it not be?

Because I guess spending enough time in the sand traps at Mar a Lago and Bedminster guarantees legal immunity?

Apparently, the Candy Man can't.

Typical of politicians, DeSantis is now turning his back on Gaetz.

Right wing Arizona scum are essentially violating the state constitution in stripping Katie Hobbs of this power,

Bill Maher's evil twin, Tommy Tuberville, may well be the stupidest man in the Senate, which says a lot about Alabama voters.

You'd think this would be the one thing Qanon would cling to with all 20 fingers and toes but you'd be wrong.

And this racist asshole wasn't arrested... why?

How Chase just became the world's most dangerous bank.

The brazen, broad daylight kidnapping of Raman Pratasevich, and Belarus' hijacking of the plane he was on, puts pressure on the EU to protect exiled political dissidents. And finally...

They're in the minority, so why is the White House working with these legislative terrorists? If the Democrats were really serious about this infrastructure bill, they could pass it through reconciliation (a simple majority vote) without even using the nuclear option on the filibuster.

Monday, May 24, 2021

Pottersville Digest

(The difference is that Hitler loved dogs.)

Wages "are rising too quickly"? You mean unlike the top .01%, whose income rose by $1.3 trillion just during the pandemic?

Who set the dress code? The Taliban? I'm surprised they didn't Photoshop burkas over them.

God only knows why The View hasn't fired Meghan McCain, yet.

Oh, FFS, you, too, with the Holocaust bullshit?

An authoritarian sociopath to the very end.

"I think her brain is broken." Simple but accurate appraisal.

Just in case you thought Liz Cheney magically turned into the voice of reason...

I love it when right wingers eat their own. Witness Gordon Sondland's massive lawsuit against Mike Pompeo.

UFOs are not a joke, any more.

Because he hates the same people we hate.

"A school district official said shortly after his arrest that Luna had passed a background check before he was hired in summer 2020."

Who did the background check, Cyber Ninjas?

“‘How much do you pay?’ that’s one of the first questions out of their mouth,” he said. “When they opened the economy, they should have decreased the amount of unemployment.”

If they have to ask, that means you're not telling them. And if you're not telling applicants, that says more about you than them.

Republican rat fuckery is alive and well in Minnesota, I see.

Tough-talking tough guys. You claim to Back the Blue but apparently the Blue's not willing to back you.

"Media outlets face an increasingly difficult conundrum in trying to figure out what conservative voices to elevate. If a Republican is reasonable, then they're not really representative of true conservative thought in the modern U.S. If they are representative, however, they're going to be too stupid or bigoted — or, as Santorum shows, a combination of both — to put on the air." Marcotte.

Xmas Eve Giuliani was pulling this shit with Arizona election officils. Days later, Trump was leaning on Raffensberger in Georgia.

Right wing nut job Amanda Carpenter thinks she knows why the GOP fears Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's not because they fear her. They fear the psychopaths standing behind her.

Right wing conspiracy theorists are now spreading lies about white humiliation that are shutting down classes. And finally...

Says the high school dropout who didn't get her GED until the year she was elected to Congress.

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Pottersville Digest

(Like Bush, lost both popular votes. And we need the electoral college why?)

Moving with shocking rapidity and abruptness, CNN fires Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum after just four years of racist and misogynist remarks.

Do any of us actually believe this bullshit is going to end any time soon? Or ever?

Ivanka: "Allen Weisselberg? Who is this Allen Weisselberg of whom you speak, stranger?"

Say hello to Donnie's little friends!

According to Kirk Swearingen, the Republican Party is a black hole that is so dense, not even truth can escape it.

Right wingers really, really suck.

Maybe it's time to get rid of school resource officers since all they seem to be good at is victimizing black children.

I've heard a lot of defenses from these rioters, and they all tend to be ridiculous but they all have one thing in common- None of them take responsibility for their actions. Which is typical for right wingers, starting with Trump.

In other words, he with the most toys wins.

Joel Greenberg is a career petty criminal. It's in his DNA. He can't help himself. Yet, the idiots in Seminole County, FL thought he'd be a better bet to collect their taxes than the Democrat running against him.

The insanity of Maricopa County has metastasized to Fulton County, Georgia.

How about pink triangles? I hear that worked real well for the Germans.

There you have it- Roy Blunt refuses to commit to putting country above party. Then again, Blunt's retiring after next year. What does he care?

I hear the Trump clan's in the market for a white Ford Bronco.

Note that at least 80-85% of the Nay votes against the hate crimes bill are from states south of Mason-Dixon, showing another reason why the South won't rise again.

Bobo shows once again why she's the Special Needs congresswoman.

If you don't want to be called Kremlin Cruz, then stop posting Russian military propaganda videos.

Newsmax? Left wing news? Yeah, I can see OAN collapsing in a puddle of flop sweat.

Are you SURE you don't want that January 6 Commission, guys? And finally...

Suuuure, it didn't, Greg. I'm sure your fascist voters suppression bill was just a happy coincidence.

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Pottersville Digest

(While the wealthy make them work.)

I'm sure it sounded better in the original Russian...

Just so we have this straight: This cop killed a man threatening suicide. He was convicted of that murder. The murder conviction means he can't be a cop, any more. Yet, he's still on the job, still drawing pay and can't be terminated... because he... wait for it, changed his leave status. And elsewhere in the Shitheel State...

The Lord certainly works in mysterious ways.

Hippies? What is this, 1967?

Sometimes you have to wonder if men like Trump think they're too evil or not evil enough.

Ah, those rock-ribbed conservative Republican family values!

It's almost a given that virtually every political scandal will have a woman in the middle. Or, in Matt Gaetz's case, an underage girl. And Congressman Frat Boy's ex is singing like a canary to federal prosecutors.

Then the stupid cops tried to claim the child's cremated remains tested positive for meth.

Don Lemon is right. Democrats need to grow a set and lead by example.

Sorry, Charlie.

The law and order party.

And this psychopath wasn't ordered to undergo a mental health exam... why?

“The Republican Messiah”, ladies and gentlemen.

I don't look at the search for extraterrestrial life to be a "religious" quest, as the author says, but a vigorous pushback against the arrogant belief that we're the only intelligent species in the universe.

Never read it, don't know what's in it but whatever it says, I'm against it.

Except for the persecution of an entire religion, mass gassings and ovens and the 6,000,000 death toll, yeah, exactly the same thing.

Florida man, the world's worst superhero.

"Election integrity has to be one of the big ideas on the political right going forward because Eric Holder and the rest and Stacey Abrams, they mechanized ballot laundering." And, no, he didn't explain what that was, silly readers.

Fox "News", of course, resorts to ceaseless fear-mongering when Democrats are in power in the White House. But stranding 17,000 interpreters when we pull out of Afghanistan is something the Biden administration needs to more seriously address.

The AP, Peter Prengaman & the Stanford College Republican scum need to be raked over the coals for firing a reporter they'd just hired last month. Over nothing.

Watch what you pray for or you just may get it.

Meanwhile, these New Hampshire hillbillies were busy this week.

Well, HERE'S a surprise... not.

Another jester cap gets thrown in the ring.

Maddow: "This is incredibly stupid and occasionally hilarious. It is also at the same time way more serious than we are taking this as a country. They're just getting started."

These right wing scum are actually profiting off each other's deaths.

"Sullivan recorded video of the confrontation between rioters and police just outside the U.S. House of Representatives chamber that included the shooting of protester Ashli Babbitt." And finally...

Yes, we're resorting to million dollar bribes to get people vaccinated.