Cyril Does Dallas!

 

(By Cyril Blubberpuss, Conservative-American.)

Well, I'm finally back from my important trade mission in Greenland, one that was hastened not only by the president's brilliant about-face but also because of news the Danish military had mined the one runway at the airport in Nuuk. 

     But, never one to be called a mossback, I sprang right back into action and took an 18 hour red eye flight to Dallas, Texas so I could attend CPAC 2026! This is the first one the president hasn't attended since coming down that escalator in 2015 so I'm acting as his official envoy and representative. And, as always, CPAC always offers the usual conservative Illuminati of people just past their relevance.

 

    In fact, just moments ago, I had a brief conversation with Greg Bovino, the always over-achieving former Border Patrol Commander. Greg was sporting some seriously snazzy foot gear that brought up his height to an imposing 5'4". Commander Bovino revealed to me his impressive plan to deport 100,000,000 people from our shores.

    "Commander," I asked, "Are you sure that's feasible considering we haven't even deported 400,000 after over 14 months? Plus, wouldn't that involve deporting at least 86,000,000 Americans?"

     Commander Bovino just snarled something about "coastal liberal elites" and unsteadily clomped off, arms outstretched. Godspeed, Greg. We patriots wish you luck.

   As always, there are intellectually stimulating panels such as, "Hitler: Brilliant Leader or Misunderstood Genius?" and "Airports: Who Needs Them?" One such panel was headed by the always lovely Mercedes Schlapp, "Let's Admit It: Air Traffic Controllers Are Overrated". As she spoke to a TSA official, Mercedes struggled with a short leash barely restraining her husband, Matt, as he was on all fours and ogled young male aides with a wild gleam in his eye. I always admired Matt for his youthful spirit.

     Unfortunately, it seems not everyone got the memo that I'm the president's official representative. He put out a post on Truth Social that I'd be arriving. He wrote, "Attention: Cyril Blubberpuss will be my official representative at the Great CPAC in Dallas, a city that I won by A LOT three times in a row and achieved greatness by hosting radical liberal Democrat John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Cyril is a great patriot and, unlike me, is fat and bald and looks like someone out of an anti-homosexual junior high training film from the 60s. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT!"

      The one big difference that I've noted from last year's CPAC is an enthusiasm gap. Last year, after the president's stunning comeback, in which there were cattle prods in elevators galore, this year there's a lot of doom and gloom about this year's midterms. I spoke with a young man who was breathing into a paper bag and asked him if he was alright.

     "I didn't vote for this in 2024. I wanted the country to be a lot whiter. I expected the middle class to get wiped out. Instead, I waited in a TSA checkpoint for 35 hours!"

     He then said he was committing suicide after the midterms.

The Save Me From Impeachment Act

     The Republican-driven SAVE Act, that Trump has cynically renamed the SAVE America Act, looks as if it's as dead in the water as a Venezuelan fishing boat, at least in the Senate. Among its Pandora's Box of evils is making women prove their identity if they got married and changed their names. Here's the thing and maybe something right wing activist Cleta Mitchell never realized: Republican women also get married and change their names.

      If the SAVE Act, God forbid, passes (It ground its way through the House, passing by a 218-213 vote), it'll make it much more difficult for married women to even register to vote much less actually vote. As usual, Republicans are dressing this up as an attempt to save voting integrity even though instances of illegal voting always falls far below 0.01%. But this is how Republicans are trying to sell it. 

     Trump, believe it or not, is much more nakedly honest about it. Last January 6, ironically, Trump told Republicans that Democrats will "find a reason to impeach me." 

     So there you have it. Trump is so frantic about getting impeached and expelled from office (although that would be a tall order in the Senate) that he's even willing to disenfranchise Republican female voters. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) said, "Nearly 69 million women in America have a birth certificate that do  not match their current name and therefore 69 million American women would no longer be eligible to vote."

      That's a pretty huge hunk of the US electorate. According to the US Census Bureau (pdf), 174,000,000 Americans were registered to vote in the 2024 election. That means Republicans are willing to take away the vote of a whopping 39.66% of the electorate just because they got married.

     That's pretty insane, not to mention misogynist, because that would disenfranchise tens of millions of Republican female voters. And male Republican lawmakers couldn't care less because those antidiluvian douchebags secretly wish women never got the right to vote in 1920.

      But, really, it's all about Trump escaping impeachment. Republicans (including, amazingly, every single Republican female in the House) gave Trump what he wanted. Because, when Republicans crunch numbers, they zero in on demographics they deem insufficiently loyal to their party. They enact, or try to, voter suppression tactics hat home in with surgical accuracy on those demographics in which they're underperforming. Rather than work to get those voters to their side, these authoritarian assholes always default to voter suppression tactics under some risible ruse such as "electoral integrity" even if it means denying their own voters the right to vote.

     In other words, throwing out the baby with the bath water. 

Trump Folds Again...

     ...like a dropped accordion.

     Today was supposed to be the day. Today was the day when Trump was supposed to authorize air strikes against Iranian power plants if they didn't open up the Strait of Hormuz to US vessels.

     Then the Dow tanked yesterday by 1100 points in anticipation of the global economic catastrophe. Then Trump did what Trump does best- He folded. He graciously gave them another five days.

     The Strait of Hormuz is a major shipping route through which approximately 20% off the world's oil is shipped, thereby making it one of the world's most vital and important waterways on earth. And as far as experts know, nothing has changed in the strait since the war started on February 28th. So, why did Trump cave again?

      Well, the answer to any such inquiry begins with one of Trump's phantom phone calls (aka one of his infamous "Sir" stories). Trump claimed to have spoken with Iranian leadership and that he had "very good" conversation with them.

      Here's the problem: Iranian state TV says that no such conversations ever took place. Apparently, such a conversation belongs in the same nether regions of what passes for Trump's brain as the phone call he claimed to have had with a former president who was supposedly all rah rah sis boom bah over the Iranian invasion.

    The problem with that was none of the offices of the four living ex-presidents claimed that such a phone call ever took place.

     Essentially, this means that the most ruinous war ever launched against a sovereign nation since Iraq in 2003 is being led by a guy who literally can't distinguish fantasy from reality.

     Doesn't that scare the shit out of you? I know it does me.

Behold, the Presidential Pog!

 

    This is some serious banana republic bullshit.

    CNN reports that Trump's handpicked Commission of Fine Arts decided on this 24 carat monstrosity. The commission's vice chair, James McCrery, insisted it be "as large as possible".

     Namely three inches, which would make it about as large as a pog.

     24 carats. That's solid gold. At least, that's what they claim. Look for microscopic fine print specifying that only the cheap electroplating is 24 carats (or 24-ish).

     It's supposed to make Trump look stern, large and in charge, his scowl intended to reflect the grim duty of running the greatest nation on earth. Instead, it just makes him look like a pissed off nursing home resident stalking an orderly on a walker.

 

     I respectfully would like to submit another engraving, one showing the future president in the full bloom of his youth and lechery.
 

The Iran War: Week Three

     Our nation is led by war criminals. That's the long and the short of it.

     Their war crimes started last year when we'd begun bombing fishing boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela and maybe even before that. Of course, all this mayhem to which a horrified world has played witness these past two-plus weeks is being carried out by two frauds and career criminals who, by all rights, ought to be in a prison cell.

     And the joint opening salvo the US and Israel is still, by all accounts, the worst.

     That was on February 28th when we'd begun bombing Iran. We were ostensibly aiming for an Iranian naval base and wound up bombing a girl's elementary school. Obviously the school had no connection to the IRGC but, apparently, neither we nor Israel cared very much. At last count, the death toll at the school stands at 175, mostly children.

     While our officials aren't sniping at and threatening journalists and news outlets, they refuse to talk about the school bombing in Minab, Iran. They're, as always, hiding behind the always-convenient dodge that we're "investigating", even though we're doing no such thing.

     I could go on and on about how illegal this war is, at how criminally feckless is our worthless, supine Congress and how it's surrendered its Article Two powers to this White House. I could talk about the shifting, conflicting rationales, with us getting into yet another proxy war for Israel, the complete lack of an exit strategy.

     I could also mention the arrogance of this criminal junta for not putting in even an iota of effort toward shoring up support for this war either in the press or the grassroots. At least the Bush administration put in a lot of effort to lie us into the Iraq war in 2003. This time around, this fascist junta couldn't care less what the American people think.

     And the Strait of Hormuz is closed (which was precisely what Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine warned him would happen) and we're lying about that. No, it isn't, the government is saying but the oil isn't getting through (which is why some California gas stations are charging over $8 for a gallon of gas). Trump is claiming that Iran's military is smashed, despite Iran having having one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East and one that won't be destroyed in a few days. So Trump spent the weekend begging our allies to reopen the Strait that he claims is still open. Guess what? This so-called Coalition of the Willing isn't so willing, after all.

     "Doesn't matter," Trump blustered, "We can do it alone. We don't need anyone."

     Russia certainly isn't going to help. Why should they? The lack of Iranian oil getting on the market means petrodollars are once again flowing into Russia's coffers, which means they can finance their endless war with Ukraine for the foreseeable future. Because everything Trump does somehow benefits Russia.

      

One Tin Soldier Stumbles Away

 

    Often, what passes for Trump's chaotic though processes are likely nothing more meaningful than endorphins randomly popping in his Swiss cheese brain, bubbles rising in a flattening glass of Diet Coke. A decade ago, David Brooks once said Trump's brain was like fireflies randomly beeping in a jar.

     During that same span of time, I've occasionally looked at this silly picture of an 18 year-old Donald Trump wearing his equally silly tin soldier uniform the day he graduated from New York Military Academy, which is no more an actual military academy than is Star Fleet Academy. I'd like to think we all know the basic reasons Trump was sent there in the 50's.

     Starting when he was at least seven years-old, Trump had been acting out violently. He kicked his music teacher in the shin at that age and began victimizing his younger, weaker siblings and classmates. By the time he was 13, his behavior was so violent and ungovernable, he was caught throwing rocks at a baby in a playpen next to his house in Queens.

      At their wit's end, Fred and Mary Trump had no choice but to enroll him at New York Military Academy. The idea was to prepare him for a military career, although Fred Trump later busted his hump getting Donald a total of four deferments due to bogus diagnoses for "bone spurs" to keep him out of Vietnam.

     But at least in the beginning, the idea was to straighten him out so he wouldn't spend the rest of his sociopathic life in Rikers Island. New York Military Academy's job was to give the boys a disciplined, structured environment to put them on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, any such environment is also going to create an unintended subculture that might makes right and toughness is more important than developing character.

     As soon as Trump put on that silly uniform, a transformation took over him and he must have felt the petty, limited authority that costume gave him. In a way, the well-meaning mission of the academy had opposite the desired effect on students like Trump. The warped culture of the school just exacerbated Trump's already pathological bullying instincts that are still very much in evidence today.

     Stories persist over six decades later of Trump punching or shoving students against walls acting very much like the martinet that he apparently thought that uniform allowed him to be. The original idea was instill discipline in him. But all NYMA did was allow him to indulge in his preexisting worst inclinations, inclinations that are having disastrous effects all over the world that are costing innocent people their lives.

    That's why it's impossible to divine why Trump chose to put that old picture on his Truth Social account nearly two weeks after his chickenhawk war against Iran began. 

     And the warmonger who still lusts after a Nobel Peace Prize, who has bombed nearly a dozen nations and threatened others has already toppled Venezuela's president (largest oil reserves), is grasping after Greenland's untapped rare earth minerals (as well as Ukraine's), and is now coveting Iran's oil and natural gas fields.

     "On the mountain was a treasure
     Buried deep beneath the stone,
     And the valley-people swore.
     They'd have it for their very own." 

     That toxic mindset that was channeled and refined at New York Military Academy, which he started out by kicking teachers and throwing rocks at babies, has in the last six decades exponentially bloomed into something far more hideous and dangerous, a man who thinks he has the right to bully everything and everyone on the planet. Individuals, entire nations, law firms, companies.

     Yeah Iran is an evil, belligerent regime But you know what Iran never did? They never bombed one of our schools and killed over160 of our girls.

A Word of Explanation

Those of you who still tune in fairly regularly may've noticed  that I haven't posted in about 4 or 5 days. It's not as if I'm trying to avoid burning the candle at both ends and concentrating on my WIP. Lately, I've been barely able to manage a few hundred words a day. I've also been radio silent on social media. The reason I've been at low ebb is because last Friday I caught a very bad cold, which is alarmingly similar to the one I'd caught two Decembers ago. By yesterday, I felt much better and even walked into town for the first time in days. Then when I returned, I had a relapse. By this morning I started vomiting over the patio. I thought my immune system would've purged this disease and that I only had to deal with the aftereffects. But no such luck. All I can do right now is just hope for the best and that this cold will eventually go away for good. So, this is to let you know that I'm still kicking, albeit feebly, and that I fully expect to be back at 100%.

OK, Who's the Fucking Comedian?

 

The Day of the Dog

     Right about now, Cricket the dog is probably looking down from doggie heaven and snickering like Muttley. Or maybe she's anointing Kristi Noem, the woman who murdered her, with a golden shower.

     Former Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, a creature who makes Katie Miller look like Mrs. Santa Claus after smoking a pound of sinsemilla, got shitcanned by Trump. He cheerfully announced her termination, typically, on social media, naming her as the, get this, "Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas."

     Which sounds like something an 11 year-old would make up after being banned from playing Dungeons and Dragons by their parents.

     But it wasn't just that this overmade-up sociopath got fired but the timing and the manner in which she got the news. She was about to take the stage in Nashville to deliver a speech. She knew she was out of a job but, as they say in show business, the show must go on. She delivered the speech and made no mention of her humiliating termination even though the whole world knew of it by then.

     Trump then tapped Sen. Markwayne Mullin as his nominee to replace Noem, which took Mullin completely by surprise.

     At first blush, it looks as Trump did the first decent thing since stealing the White House for the second time but that would be foolhardy and misguided. Noem made Trump look bad and Trump can't have that. As for her squeeze, Corey Lewandowski, the human tampon... Well, his future is far more uncertain. Maybe Trump will name him the Fig Leaf of Freedom or something similar.

     Just yesterday, Noem followed up her testimony before the House on Wednesday by getting grilled before the Senate. Oddly, it was Sen. Thom Tillis, who's not seeking re-election, who savaged Noem the worst. Tillis ragged on her for killing her dog, Cricket, blaming her for not properly training the dog before taking it to a gravel pit and killing it before shooting a goat that same day..  (I'm sure Ted Bundy had days like that, when he just had to kill his way through a bad day.)

     The previous day in the House, Noem was called on the carpet for the outrageous expenditure of $220,000,000 in ad buys so she could preen in front of Mount Rushmore. And, it wasn't just that but the final destination of $143,000,000 of that nearly quarter of a billion dollars.

     It was given, without rhyme or reason, to a company that was formed just 11 days before the no-bid contract was given out (according to Sen. John Kennedy), to the husband of former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, Ben Yoho (Yes, that's his real name). DHS's legal counsel, James Percival somehow said with a straight face, 

     "I have personally reviewed the allegations against Ms. McLaughlin, and I find them to be baseless. Nothing illegal or unethical occurred with respect to these contracts. Ms. McLaughlin was not involved in selecting any subcontractors. She is, however, a superstar in the public affairs world, so I am not surprised that she married a successful businessman whose services were attractive to these outside firms."

     So if there's nothing opaque about the transaction, then how come Yoho's house is blurred out on Google?

     That's the very definition of opacity.

     Trump doesn't mind if his Cabinet Secretaries are corrupt  Hell, he encourages it. Where he draws the line is if their corruption becomes conspicuous and can be traced back to him. If their corruption starts to rival his own, he gets jealous.

     There's no telling, yet, if those two jets worth nearly $150,000,000 that Noem ordered through the Coast Guard will actually be bought, even though Trump can't talk considering he accepted a gift of a $400,000,000 jet from Qatar.

      But Noem's 13 month-long tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security has been an endless skein of scandals from the beginning, culminating with her disastrous supervision of the crackdown on Minneapolis residents that resulted in the murders of two of them and Noem calling both of them domestic terrorists. 

     So lift a leg, dear Cricket, and bless your former owner with that golden shower she so richly deserves. 

Crenshaw Out

 

      In one of the biggest political stories at this moment, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (TX-Argh) has lost his primary to hang onto his seat to State Rep. Steve Toth. What's most remarkable is that Crenshaw lost by nearly 20 points.

     TX-2 is a tiny, ruby red district so it looks as if Toth will win the general election against whatever  sacrificial lamb the Democratic Party will put up against him.

     Despite Crenshaw's strong voting record rubber-stamping almost everything Trump wanted, he ran afoul of the thin-skinned sore loser after refusing to amplify Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Crenshaw was the only Texan running in tonight's primaries that Trump never endorsed.

     Crenshaw also didn't do himself any favors by threatening Tucker Carlson's life in a hot mic moment. Now MAGA voters are laughing themselves sick over Crenshaw's humiliating primary loss, one of the most stunning ones since Eric Cantor lost his in Virginia years ago.

     It only goes to show how unforgiving MAGA is over one transgression.

     Oh well. Maybe Crenshaw can play an extra as a short-lived foil for Johnny Depp if they ever make another Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Make (White, Male, Christian and Straight) America Great Again

 

     Let's get one thing straight- Whenever you hear some loudmouth bellow, "MAGA!" or "Make America Great Again!" or, God help us, "America First!", they're really talking about making themselves great again. Yeah, there are a lot of female MAGAts out there but the ones usually screaming the loudest about recapturing America's lost glory are white, straight, Christian males. 

     And if there's any one wedge that will irreparably split MAGA into two rump factions, it's anti-Semitism. And MAGA is having a simmering civil war over it.

      Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN) invited Nick Shirley, the right-wing YouTuber who claimed to have found widespread fraud in Minnesota’s safety net programs, and got two people killed and hundreds illegally arrested, as a result, to the State of the Union last week. One of Shirley’s fanboys, Tyler Oliveira, released a video that week in which he claimed, “I exposed New Jersey’s Jewish invasion."

     Immediately thereafter, Shirley (aka Baby Teeth), responded by saying, “EXPOSE IT ALL.”

     There are Old School MAGA factions who still stubbornly pretend to support Israel and all Jews (albeit with the cynical, unspoken dream of converting the last 144,000 to Christianity after Armageddon).

     Then there are those who are letting their anti-Semitism freak flag fly. Those consist of Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes, the biggest mouths of the far right.

     When Trump came down that escalator in Trump Tower nearly 11 years ago and began ragging on Mexicans, he gave the waiting and primed MAGA base a huge permission structure to hate not only Mexicans but anyone else they, and Trump, don't like. That quickly metastasized into anti-Semitism. Trump didn't create or radicalize these people. He knew they were already out there just waiting for his message of hatred and bigotry. He merely energized them.

     If you look throughout all of American history, back to the 18th century before the Know Nothings, you'll see that virtually every racial and religious demographic had been stigmatized. Native Americans, African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Muslims, Jews, the Irish, Catholics, Germans, Italians, gays, transgenders. Even white American females, who had to wait 133 years after the Constitution was ratified for the right to vote. The list goes on. The only demographic that has not been seriously stigmatized has been white Christian males.

     Ever.

     Because they'd never allow themselves to be treated the way they treat those they hate. Of course, that doesn't stop some of them to hoarsely scream about "white genocide".

     It was white Christian males who formed the entirety of the KKK, which reached its peak about a century ago and even marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in huge numbers in 1925. Just 14 years later, the American Bund held a large rally in New York City under the protection of the NYPD.

     Yet, even as those large gatherings turned out to be the last big hurrah for both the KKK and the American Nazi Party, it wasn't their disgusting positions that brought them down but, in the case of the KKK, a woman's murder and, in the case of the American Bund, rampant corruption. Otherwise, we never disavowed their positions. After their seeming downfall, these factions merely went into hiding, recalibrated, softening their message. And they waited.

     Finally, their new savior came down an escalator, scowling down at them and they knew they found their man.

     David Duke, the former Grand Dragon of the KKK, almost immediately endorsed Trump in 2016 because he knew and recognized the dog whistle when he heard it. Rather than disavow Dukes' endorsement, Trump merely pretended not to know who he was because he didn't want to alienate his most reliable base. Later, he refused to blame American neo-Nazis after the deadly riot in Charlottesville. For all his polemics against countless people and organizations, Trump has never once come close to condemning anti-Semites and Neo Nazis.

     But many right wingers have always been anti-Semites and now they're trying to shoot a tranq into the Frankenstein they helped create. It started out by shambling. Now it's breaking into a sprint, pulling out the ineffectual darts.

     Right wing assclown Christopher Rufo is now taking it upon himself to sound the alarm about the anti-Semitism that's always been a feature, not a bug, of the far right. Which is a laugh, because Rufo was the one who started that despicable story about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio eating peoples' dogs and cats, a disgusting conspiracy theory that found its way on a presidential debate stage.

     And what these right wingers never realize is that, given the right time and opportunity, eventually, the rest of the base will come after them. It's inevitable. When you base your entire adult life on an ideology of hatred and throw in your lot with other like-minded people, they will start eating each other, betraying each other. We saw it in the bunker in the twilight of WWII.

     But out of all the prejudices that have infected the American mindset, the most durable is anti-Semitism.

     And then, there's Candace Owens. In her podcast Bride of Charlie just today, Owens said, "Now, I believe on the basis of evidence that Charlie's murder was likely a very sophisticated military operation that was meant, and here's the funny part, this is how insane these people are. Ironically, they wanted his murder to galvanize American support behind Israel. That was their plan."

     Owens is getting a lot of free lunches over Charlie Kirk's murder last September but if anyone will bring about that permanent rift between the Jew-hating and the Jew-tolerant MAGA factions, it'll be Owens. And when Owens inveighs against Israel, it's never through a Zionist lens but a simple-minded religious one.

     Then of course, there's avowed Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, who wrote last week, "The conservative movement is falling out of love with Nick Shirley because he expressed support for Tyler Oliviera, who exposed fraud in the Jewish community. They actually believe that the rules just shouldn’t apply to Jewish people. The double standard couldn’t be clearer.”

     In other words, "How dare the right step on our God-given right to publicly hate on and lie about Jews?"

     But it really starts with Trump and his economy-sized permission structure to others to hate those he hates. Which is everyone not named Donald Trump. More than once, Trump slandered American Jews for not showing sufficient loyalty to him, which is part and parcel to the Nazi mindset. Starting even before his rise to power in 1933, Hitler stated in Mein Kampf that the Jews were to blame for Germany losing WWI. Like Trump nine decades after him, Hitler was savvy enough to know there were tens of millions across Germany who nursed a grudge over that and the tanking economy in the Weimar Republic and were casting about for a common villain. The Jews fit the bill, especially the bankers.

     But the so-called MAGA movement is in serious danger of not only splitting in two but splintering off until the entire movement becomes an irrelevant collection of cranks sniping at each other.

     And I have to think about that famous poem by Martin Niemöller: 

     First they came for the Communists     

     And I did not speak out     

     Because I was not a Communist      

     Then they came for the Socialists     

     And I did not speak out     

     Because I was not a Socialist      

     Then they came for the trade unionists     

     And I did not speak out     

     Because I was not a trade unionist      

     Then they came for the Jews     

     And I did not speak out     

     Because I was not a Jew      

     Then they came for me     

     And there was no one left     

     To speak out for me.

“Now, I believe on the basis of evidence that Charlie's murd ..

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“Now, I believe on the basis of evidence that Charlie's murd ..

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This, Too, Shall Pass

     Maybe it's encroaching old age and diminished energy. Maybe it's outrage fatigue. I don't know what the problem is.

     The day I began blogging over 21 years ago, I recall having written five or six posts that first day. Four and a half years later during the last time Iran had seen this level of unrest, I was posting up to two dozen times a day.

     I'd always prided myself on being able to write 100,000-200,000 word novels while still maintaining this blog. Yeah, there many times when I had to push myself to write something. But there was always this stubborn sense of responsibility, obligation, if you will, to write about what's going on politically in this world, in this country. Yes, many times it's a grind but, until lately, the words still got written.

     But lately, I've been sitting on my patio looking out over Phoenix like an invalid. I spend hours and hours a day out here. Then, when the sun sinks into the west and I prepare to make dinner, I look at what I'd written and am amazed at how unproductive I've been. Some days, yes, I wear my pajama bottoms, keenly aware of how that feeds into the blogger stereotype. My new rescue cat, Midnight, zips around the house as if making a mockery of my lack of energy and motivation.

     Some would reflexively refer to what's afflicting me as "writer's block". I don't believe in that. I think it was Stephen King who'd dismissed writer's block as just a lack of interest or focus. But in my case, I don't think either applies. It's a curious and troubling form of paralysis with a dimly-realized provenance. 

     I may or may not have stated months or years ago about how difficult it was for me to get back my writer's identity. When Barbara began her final, awful decline in 2022-2023, I found I didn't have the time or energy to write and my writer's identity transformed into something else- Barbara's sole caretaker. Before and after she went in the hospital and, eventually, that nursing home, I tried, and failed, to complete no fewer than six novels. Even after she died in September 2023, I still couldn't put anything together. It was a loss of identity, an especially pernicious form of Imposter Syndrome, something virtually every writer goes through at some point. You're only as good as your last book, after all.

     I fought like hell to get that identity back. In the fewer than two years I've been in Phoenix, I've written two novels and, until lately, was proceeding rapidly with two others. My novella, The Final Bullet, was the first novel I'd published in nearly four and a half years, my first since Hollywoodland in December 2020. That's quite a drop-off for someone who was used to publishing 1-2 books a year.

     I'm in the home stretch of one but lately, I've gone from writing several thousand words a day to several hundred. I tell myself that I want to get the denouement right, that I don't want to have to engage in major carpentry when I start the revision process.

     But, deep down, I know better. And this paralysis has metastasized into my blogging.

     Now, anyone who knows anything at all about me knows that I never considered this dying form of citizen journalism anywhere nearly as important as my long fiction. Writing has been the sole constant in my life since my senior year of high school in 1977. Barb is long dead and no longer needs my care. And in this, the twilight of my life, this is the only identity I have left. It's the only thing that validates me as a human being, that gives my life purpose.

     Yet, as stated, there's another facet to my writing life. This damned blog writing about damned politicians. It's a stubborn sense of responsibility, undertaking this endeavor in the most thankless of mediums. And I've been prolific since coming to Phoenix. It's not as if the place inspires me. I can't wait to leave Arizona for good and get back to my beloved Massachusetts. Maybe it's a growing sense of my own mortality. It'd been said often that the older he got, the more prolific Isaac Asimov got. I think it was because he recognized the end was drawing near and that that little white light at the end of the tunnel was turning into a blinding spotlight.

     So maybe that's it.

     And lately, I've been afflicted with this crippling sense of paralysis, especially as regards the pages of this blog. In the nearly 18 years I've been running it, I've written well over 4500 posts. That's millions of words, easy. Sometimes I post daily for weeks on end. But now, I feel thick-tongued, incapable of weighing in on anything without sounding like an ignoramus. If I ever feel that way, my default setting is to not write anything, to put it off for another day and see if I'm in a better frame of mind.

     And it all started last Saturday when we bombed Iran again. I'm awestruck, and not in a good way, at the hideousness we've unleashed on the Iranian people. It's obvious to me that our so-called Commander in Chief is a blithering fucking idiot who never had any exit strategy in mind, never even questioned the ramifications of starting a proxy war for Israel's benefit. I'm horrified that we callously killed over 500 Iranians, including 85 schoolgirls.

     Yes, their Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was a brutal repressive dictator but we can't be the assassins much less the policemen of the world. He was their responsibility. And now we're about to unleash sectarian violence, if not civil war, in Iran and destabilizing the entire region. It was waged with simple-mindedness but the consequences are far more complex and I don't feel as if I'm up to the task. That's better done by people with far better minds than mine, people who have a better grasp of what's going on with the Middle East.

     But this sense of paralysis, hopefully, will prove to be just a blip on my intellectual and emotional radar. This, too, shall pass. Hopefully.

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Pictures Straight

 

     Yesterday, former NY senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was deposed by the House Oversight Committee in Chappaqua, NY over her alleged connection to Jeffrey Epstein. Cue Yakety Sax.

     Seriously, if that shitshow of a deposition had a soundtrack, it would've been written by Boots Randolph.

     A little context for those of you who haven't been following this story:

     In their ongoing obsession with the Clintons, the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee decided to compel the Clintons' testimony as regards the Epstein files. At first, they refused and when Republicans began gleefully making plans to refer them to the DOJ (hereafter referred to as Donald Trump's law firm) for contempt of Congress, they relented and decided to talk... but in an open door session.

     Republicans couldn't have that because God forbid something embarrassing should slip out about Donald Trump. They demanded a closed door hearing.

     So, yesterday the secretary met with the committee in Chappaqua. The chairman, James Comer, read the rules aloud before the start of the testimony, which included a prohibition on photography within the room. Their own rules, in other words.

     But Lauren Boebert was never one for following rules, even the ones set down by her own party. Instead, she took out her cell phone, took two pictures of Clinton and promptly sent them to Benny Hill, excuse me, Benny Johnson, which he breathlessly put on his Twitter feed. The leak was uncovered within moments, bringing the hearing to a screeching halt.

     As usual, Boebert was defiant, asking, "Why not?" when asked why she'd leaked the photos to a right wing rodeo clown like Johnson. Later, she was more contrite after obviously getting a dressing down by party leadership.

     But, of course, since this is the Clinton Derangement Syndrome GOP we're talking about, that wasn't the only laugh line of the day. After her six hour-long deposition, Clinton walked outside and took the podium. "I think they could have spent the day more productively," she drily said.

     Because the Republicans grilled her not just about Jeffrey Epstein, a man she never met, but also about UFOs and Pizzagate, a long-discredited right wing conspiracy theory naming the Clintons as being involved in a child sex trafficking ring beneath Comet Ping Pong Pizza and a non-existent basement.

     James Comer knew this was his one shot at compelling Clinton's testimony and, by God, he was going to get his money's worth. One is amazed they never mentioned her emails and Benghazi, for which Secretary Clinton had already given testimony for 13 hours years ago.

     But UFOs and Pizzagate?

     It's obvious they got the wrong First Lady. There's a growing movement on Capitol Hill of deposing Melania Trump as well as Donald. The Epstein files that have been released have shown nothing more incriminating than Bill Clinton in a hot tub and standing next to Jeffrey Epstein. There are also no emails alleging that Clinton sexually abused a minor, unlike someone else we can think of.

     Essentially, someone in the Republican Party leaked a couple of anodyne photos of Secretary Clinton when they weren't supposed to while the DOJ  deleted photos of Howard Lutnick walking next to Epstein on his pedophile island.

     This was supposed to be James Comer's long-delayed orgasm, when he was supposed to spooge all over the faces of the Clintons, the one glorious moment that would make up for all the empty wells of persecuting the Bidens and the Clintons. Instead, his orgasm was ruined by one of his own, a woman most famous for jerking off a guy in a theater.

     And, once again, just as Secretary Clinton had during her marathon Benghazi hearing, she made chumps of the GOP. 

     Stick a fork in these assclowns. They're done. 

Republicans, Trump Couldn't Care Less

    The most extraordinary thing about Trump's State of the Union Address, and the one thing brought up most often by the media, was its length. "Marathon", "record-setting" and so forth are used to describe a 107 minute diatribe that sounded more like a MAGA rally than a State of the Union address.

    Just about everything I predicted last night came to pass. I have, after all, been writing about this venomous orange toad for going on 11 years. He's as predictable as a fart after a Mexican dinner. He bragged about the economy, slung insults at Democrats, the Supreme Court, immigrants. That's why I abdicated my self-enforced responsibilities as a political blogger last night. What's the point?

     However, the usual autopsies have to be conducted, the toxicology determined, the political prognosis advanced.

     It started with what is now becoming a tradition: Rep. Al Green getting booted out of the chamber. Green held up a sign just feet from Trump reading "Black People Aren't Apes." Steve Scalise, cock-gobbler extraordinaire, ripped the sign out of his hands like a random bleacher bum at a MAGA rally and Green was thrown out of the House chamber. Because God forbid anyone, especially a Black man, should call Trump out for his racist post showing the Obamas as apes.

     In the run-up to the speech. Democratic "leaders" cautioned restraint, telling the rank and file basically to sit down and shut up. Green was one of those who didn't listen. Neither did Reps Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar, who heckled Trump as mercilessly as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert did to Joe Biden, the last democratically-elected president we ever had. 

     It was a dramatic escalation from Rep. Melanie Stansbury's simple sign last year that said, "This Is Not Normal."

     While not once mentioning DHS or ICE, Trump inveighed against immigrants during what has been appraised as the most racist State of the Union in American history. All Trump needed to do was carry a noose to the podium.

     Before the address, one pundit predicted that Trump would tell about 40 lies. O ye of too much faith! For Trump, lying is an autonomic reflex. He lies like the rest of us breathe. If he ever told the truth about anything, he'd spontaneously combust.

     Let's pick one thing he lied about: The economy. He'd bragged about presiding over the greatest economy we'd ever had. He bragged about GDP being higher than in the Biden years. During the Biden years, In President Joe Biden's final year in office, the Gross Domestic Product rose to 2.8%. In the last quarter under Trump, it's half that. Yes, inflation was rampant under Biden but that was attributable largely to the COVID-19 pandemic that was allowed to get out of control thanks to Trump's sociopathic inattention.

     Under Trump, inflation is largely driven by his ridiculous (and now illegal) tariffs which, again, are taxes on the American consumers and companies. It's also caused by Trump's equally insane immigration crackdown that has decimated farms and businesses from coast to coast. With fewer migrant workers to harvest the crops, inventory becomes scarcer and prices skyrocket. Supply and demand, after all.

     And Trump's boasting about prices going down are at stark odds with the reality facing everyday Americans. As stupid and gullible as they are, Republican voters nonetheless only have to look at their bank balances before realizing they're not, in fact, better off than they were a year ago.

     Essentially, Trump rejected the reality and substituted his own. And it's not him that has to directly face the voters. That'll be the congressmen and senators that have to go home and hold town halls, at least, those who still have the guts to face their enraged and dissatisfied constituents.

     In his self-congratulatory speech, Trump gave the Republican party nothing to run on for this year's midterms. He offered nothing but, at best, a few rotten planks to take back to their states and districts. And, again, the voters aren't having it. Trump's approval rating in every poll on the economy and trade are underwater. That's unlikely to change. Remember the $2000 checks we were supposed to get last year? If all the approximately $133 billion we've taken in from added tariffs were handed to every American, it would total fewer than $400 per head. And the government has no intention of sharing even that pittance with any of us.

     Of course, Trump wouldn't tell us that.

     The national average for a gallon of gasoline stands at about $2.94. Trump, a guy who's never had to go to a gas station in his life, claimed it was $1.85.   

     He started out sounding like a carnival barker on meth then as the speech wore on, he began sunsetting as his Adderall wore off. Nonetheless, JD Vance and Mike Johnson continued popping up every few minutes like Jack in the Box clowns, especially after he said he had the right to bypass Congress and unilaterally do whatever he wanted, which is exactly how autocrats think.

     The roar is getting louder by the minute and every Republican in that chamber knew what it is: the blue tsunami that will engulf the GOP and this failing administration. And Trump couldn't care less except inasfar as an inevitable third impeachment.

I'm Not Doing My Job Tonight

     And, if you're in this shitty avocation, I'd urge you not to, either.

     What's the sense? We know that tonight's State of Union will be densely packed with lies, bile and nastiness. He'll probably whine about the 2020 election, tell us the economy is the best of all time, brag about bombing Iran (and probably spilling military secrets), boast about bringing law and order to Minneapolis, rag on Democrats and Republican RINOs, squirt sewage at the Supreme Court for taking away his favorite ball: His cherished tariffs.

     Or, he just may decide to punch the microphone for 90 minutes, growling and scowling incoherently to the delight of Mike Johnson and JD Vance (or whatever fake name he's going by this week). It's all the same thing.

     Back in the day, regardless of who was president, regardless of their political stripe, I felt an obligation to cover the SOTU in real time. But that was when we actually had real presidents delivering the State of the Union and not frauds like Bush or Trump.

     But what's the point?

     Instead, I would urge you to watch the first season of Daredevil Born Again and parse the similarities between Wilson Fisk and Trump. Watch Kingpin's speeches and you'll hear Trump speaking, only with the superior diction and gravitas of Vincent D'onofrio.

      Republicans will give him countless standing ovations like Italians from a century ago gave Mussolini. Right wing pundits will proclaim this as the greatest SOTU of all time. Some things never change. And what can one expect from the guy who told over 30,000 lies during his first term?

"I can destroy the country!"

     Right about now, Donnie Dumbo is spackling the walls of the White House with Heinz ketchup. This morning, the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping tariffs as illegal. Trump had tried to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), thereby circumventing Congress. The Constitution in Article 1 invests Congress with the power to raise or lower tariffs. Trump saw the IEEPA as yet another way to do an end run around Congress.

     The problem for Trump was that he was never able to show just cause for invoking IEEPA or to show what the big emergency was. The lower courts had struck down Trump's tariffs and, as always, he just naturally assumed his lackeys on the Supreme Court would give him what he thinks he's entitled to.

     Another problem was that two of those lackeys, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberals on the court. Now Trump is fuming at them, calling them "an embarrassment to their families". He obviously looks upon the Supreme Court as a giant permission structure granting him the power to do whatever he wants.

     And now he's screaming and kicking his feet like a three year-old whose parents won't buy him that candy bar at the grocery store. For the foreseeable future, no sandcastle within reach of his cloven hooves will be safe.

     Of course, Trump never thinks he ever breaks laws. And when he does, he thinks they should be retroactively made legal or overlooked. And if the SCOTUS rules against him on the rare occasions they do, well, there must be a good reason for them to do so other than Trump being a serial crook who wants to run the US like a king or dictator.

     Naturally, Trump had that covered in his snarling, conspiratorial press conference today: The justices were in the grip of shadowy foreign influences. Of course, it's up to us to decide what those foreign influences were.

     And, it goes without saying that Trump is already showing his contempt for the high court by scheming ways to circumvent their ruling. Of course, he's no longer allowed to victimize nations, namely our biggest trade partners, All he can basically do is the equivalent of leaving flaming bags of dog shit on their stoop, ring the doorbell and run away.

     And what's perhaps the real source of Trump's discontent is the one thing to which the MSM should pay greater attention. This was what Trump said today:

     “But I am allowed to cut off any and all trade or business with that same country; in other words, I can destroy the trade, I can destroy the country! I'm even allowed to impose a foreign country-destroying embargo, I can embargo! I can do anything I want, but I can't charge $1!”

     That's patently false. The SCOTUS never said that he couldn't charge nations tariffs. He just cannot do it unilaterally without the consent of the US Congress. But the real source of his rage was in his inability to "destroy" nations with tariffs that are senseless and sadistically putative. Trump is incapable of actually creating anything worthwhile unless it's wealth for him or generational wealth for his family. 

     And tyrants like Trump always find it easier to destroy than to create. That's the true test of statesmanship. Does a head of state create rather than destroy? When it comes to Trump, I think we can agree on the fact that he fails the statesmanship test every single time.

No Forever Wars, Eh?

 

     As we speak, our orange venomous toad masquerading as an actual head of state is sending the USS Gerald R. Ford, a huge, state of the art aircraft carrier, toward Iran. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, another massive aircraft carrier, and three guided-missile destroyers have already arrived.

     It shouldn't surprise anyone that Donald Trump has conveniently jettisoned yet another campaign promise. Just as he promised in 2024 to bring back manufacturing jobs, to make life more affordable for Americans and 100 other carrots on 100 sticks, it's obvious that the only promises he's kept are the ones that have visited untold misery on tens if not hundreds of millions all over the world, particularly his fascist immigration crackdown.

     The government has just wrapped up a second round of negotiations with the Iranian government an the results were what you'd expect of a kakistocracy straight out of Mike Judge. The Trump "administration" decided to make Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program the sole focus of the negotiations. Typically, Iran dug in its heels.

     Last year, when the Iranian protests resulted in thousands of deaths. Trump rattled his saber and feigned sympathy and support for the dead Iranians. Then, in its newest round of saber-rattling, suddenly, the Trump administration isn't even mentioning the protesters and doesn't seem concerned about the state-sponsored executions that will follow later this year.

     To all but guarantee the failure of the "negotiations", Trump sent to Geneva the Three Stooges: Intellectual flyweight Marco Rubio, professional son in law Jared Kushner and the Zelig of the administration, Steve Witkoff.

     In his ridiculous and dangerous posturing as the policeman of the world, Trump tipped his hand by mentioning Venezuela in the same breath as Iran. He's said it wouldn't be like Venezuela and he's right. What happened in Venezuela was an illegal, extra-judicial kidnapping. Iran would be a lot more difficult.

     If we invade Iran, nearly every other Muslim nation in the Middle East would dogpile on us. Iran also has a sizable and potent military. It would take decades to pacify Iran, if that's even possible (Afghanistan, anyone?). It would cost trillions, just like the Iraq war that cost us over 4500 American lives.

     Trump also tipped his hand by mentioning Venezuela because at the time he was bombing those fishing boats, any idiot could see it wasn't about regime change (Maduro's loyalists remained in charge after we kidnapped him). It was about the oil because Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. We were brazenly stealing their oil tankers.

     Iran has the third largest. Do the math, people. If and when we invade Iran, rest assured, it'll be all about the oil.

The Ultimate Bellwether

     Marjorie Taylor-Greene's seat in GA-14 has been vacant since she left Congress on January 5th. Her resignation sparked a free for all in Republican circles in the district, which alone is an indication of how vulnerable Republicans see Greene's old seat. No fewer than 16 have thrown their hats in the ring.

     The primaries will be held on March 10th and the wide Republican field all but guarantees that none of them will get even close to the necessary 50% to avoid a runoff election in April. On the Democratic side is former Marine Shawn Harris, who ran against Greene in 2024 and had his ass handed back to him. Harris lost to Greene by nearly 30%. 

     Georgia 14 is a sprawling district that covers a whopping 10 counties in northwest Georgia, nudging against the state lines in Alabama and Tennessee. In 2024, Greene took all 10 and the only one in which Harris was competitive was in Cobb County. To look at the electoral map from 2024, most people would say that it's not looking very rosy for the Democrats in that district.

     However, 15 months is an eternity in political time. Since Greene easily won re-election in November 2024, a lot of Republican voters have grown disenchanted with either Greene, Trump or both. The fallout of their very public spat in the twilight of Greene's congressional career did no favors to either.

     So, suppose GA-14 went blue? Well, it would be like AOC losing her next re-election bid in NY-14, a deeply blue district encompassing Queens and the Bronx, in which congressional and state-wide elections going back decades always heavily favored Democrats. If that ever happened, Republicans would be short-stroking that all the way to the Rapture.

     Obviously, that won't happen in any of our lifetimes. In fact, it's far likelier that GA-14 could elect Harris.

      Out of all 20 candidates for Greene's seat, only Shawn Harris has a shot of getting 50% or more of the vote in the primary. Avoiding a runoff election in April would present him as a popular candidate at least on the Democratic side. Clay Fuller, a local DA who's seen as the GOP frontrunner and has gotten Trump's problematic endorsement, has been surprisingly measured and pragmatic regarding his chances. Recently, Fuller said when asked if the seat could be flipped by the Democrats,

     "Absolutely, and we've got to operate that way. If Georgia 14 turns blue, it would be a tragedy for the president's agenda, and we as a party need to start having an honest conversation about that."

     Republicans are every bit the political animals that Democrats are and virtually all politicians have a preternatural awareness of what matters to their constituents or would-be constituents. They know their disaffections and many tailor their campaign strategies to address those issues.

     But Harris is a known quantity in GA-14 and he did get nearly 135,000 votes in '24. That year, he ran against an established Republican in Greene. This time around, he won't be facing those headwinds.

     What worries me about Harris' campaign is that he seems to be relying on Trump fatigue to pull this out and he's going to have to give Democratic voters in that district more than just, "I'm not Trump." Voters tend to be pretty hidebound, especially Republican voters who see Democrats one-dimensionally as tax and spend liberals who want to take away their money. He needs to focus on issues that matter to those voters at the kitchen table. Immigration. Affordability. Tariffs. To assure them he's going to fight hard for ways to put money in their pockets, not subtract money from them.

     If he wants to reach out to Republican voters and Independents, then by all means, he should. In fact, he'd be stupid if he didn't. But he's going to need to do more than capitalize on exhaustion with Trump. There are enough Democrats and Independents in GA-14 to pull out this election. He just has to give them solid reasons to vote for him. And if Harris flips this district, it would be the ultimate repudiation of Trump's policies.