Abomination Of Desolation (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Twelve.)

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

...

The behavior of the Taliban as well as their extremist attitudes do not correspond in any way with a tolerant Islam. We have always been opposed to extremist tendencies of Islam and we still are. We have not stopped insisting on defending an Islam of tolerance which would be profitable to every Muslim, in Afghanistan and in the whole world, and we will always defend it. ~Ahmad Shah Massoud

I saw this earlier.

Missouri Republican lawmakers are trying to force through a strict dress code only for women in the state legislature.

I'm confused. What the fuck do these people think they are? The Islamic Republic Of Iran? The fucking Taliban? How is this horseshit even American?

Also, still not a word from all the fake Republican moralists, about George Santos.

Which is exactly why I'm disinclined to listen to anything these fucking people have to say about morality. 

You are the company you keep, and today I saw Matt Gaetz bro it up with somebody who's, thus far, lied about basically everything. I'm still confused as to how Republicans think George isn't going to fuck them over and lie to them, too.

And these are the same fucking people who can't wait to prostrate themselves before the Hammer And Sickle and Vladimir Putin, because they think Russia is "Christian" or something.

You know, it's funny, all these "Christian" countries the Right glorifies seem to have shockingly low rates of actual religious observance, high rates of abortion and substance abuse, and a tendency to allow men to act like beasts.

Which is, of course, the fucking point.

George Santos isn't being tolerated because they actually need him that bad. Don't tell me they couldn't get another Republican for that district, or somewhere else, to replace his vote. No, all the lying is something they see as a good in and of itself...and the fact that nobody can do anything about it...to Republicans, that means Power.

Until he screws them over, anyway. Then it's bad.

Same with all the bad shit going on in Ukraine. The fact that the criminal mercenary Wagner Group hired some guy to fight, who'd killed his own mother in a "Drunken Frenzy" is, to the Wagnerites, simply about needing another body to throw at the enemy. The Ukrainians obligingly killed the son of a bitch.

For Republicans, it's about casting off the constraints of modernity and morality. They purport to claim Roman and Western values, or at least a sort of fascism that uses such things as an excuse. 

But, when push comes to shove? No, that's not it. Deep down, These people fancy themselves as Odoacer, the Barbarian King, conquering Rome...and it's "their" time and they're going to do what they want to do. 

And you...Can't. 

Which is of course the goddamn point.

They see themselves as the Abomination of Desolation, standing in the Holy Place and declaring themselves gods.

These fucking people, with their bushy beards and creepy obsessions and fascinations with European nobility and Medieval Catholicism all figure they're going to get to tell other people how to be "Christian" or what to believe, or even simple things like what kind of dog you can have or not. 

And somehow, they consistently fail to remember how this shit ended the first time, how it always ends, with the storming of the castles and Jacobin revolutionaries and National Razors. Why? Because people get fucking tired of it. At best you end up with neutered monarchies and socialism, at worst, a bloody history, a tumultuous century of barricades and empires and revolutions and typically several Republics before shit settles down.

You very rarely end up with Pure Unadulterated Male Power, at least in the Western world, anyway. Seems like it only works out that way in the Middle East on any kind of consistent basis, although it's not working out so well for the Iranians lately.

Which is exactly why I figure these fuckers will eventually get around to preaching Radical Islam, not that there's much difference between that and what passes for their idea of "Christianity."

In the end, all the Christian stuff is just a lie, all the eschatology, all the philosophy, all the sophistry these assholes use to try and make their own debased urges sound like anything else.

It's all crap.

But this is America and we don't have to put up with it. That's the whole damn point of this country.

Remember that. There's going to be a test later.

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Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. ~Karl Marx

Idiocritus Maximus (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Eleven.)

The beginnings will not be easy; they shall be extremely difficult. All the oligarchies' powers of repression, all their capacity for brutality and demagoguery will be placed at the service of their cause. Our mission, in the first hour, shall be to survive; later, we shall follow the perennial example of the guerilla, carrying out armed propaganda ... the great lesson of the invincibility of the guerrillas taking root in the dispossessed masses; the galvanizing of the national spirit, the preparation for harder tasks, for resisting even more violent repressions. Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy. ~Che Guevara

On Sunday, a bunch of the followers of Jair Bolsonaro, the ex-President of Brazil, stormed the centers of the Brazilian government. After a five hour conflict, the Brazilian Army and police defeated the insurrection and began arresting the people who'd ransacked their government, including issuing arrest warrants for high officials thought to be involved, or who abdicated their responsibilities, and dismissing and suspending others who were lenient with the rebels.

And they're not done yet, the arrests and investigations are still ongoing.

Make no mistake about it, this insurrection was likely planned in the United States, with the full connivance of a bunch of people associated with the American "Conservative" movement in general and Trump/MAGA in particular. Steve Bannon's greasy fingerprints are all over this thing, for one.

But here's my thing;

How is it these assorted Pentecostal kooks keep trying to turn "God" into one of the coup plotters?

First these assholes say that America's Constitution and government were both somehow divinely inspired, then they try to overthrow both of them.

And now they're exporting their piss-poor attempt at "Revolution?"

And, as much for the Brazilian dude I saw a picture of, perched on a file cabinet with his ass hanging out and a flag draped over his head as for the Americans...if you love your country so much why do you want to piss and shit all over it? Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro are not Nations, they are not even decent men.

Do people really have so little going on in life, and so little need of anything, that they would follow after somebody who's only "desirable" quality is "They talk bad about people that I don't like??"

And not just follow them, but love them more than their country, or God himself?

I mean, seriously, I've heard Donald Trump talk enough times to know that he's a dumb motherfucker with all the charisma of an overcooked hotdog who's never happy about much of anything.

Everything I've ever heard about Jair Bolsonaro suggests he's an idiot, with the kind of social views that lead to eventual prosecution for war crimes and his own armed services refusing to have his body buried on their land.

Tell me something:

Why the fuck do so many people in this world want to live like medieval peasants in some kind of dictatorial or monarchist Idiocracy??

Seriously, what do you the citizen, as a human being think you're going to get?

Is *Living With Other People* really so difficult?

Is *Thinking* really that hard?

Do you really *Want* to die of disease?? If so, WHY?!?!

I'm legitimately angry about this one. I can remember when somebody who said they were an "American Monarchist" would have got beat up, by conservatives. I can remember when the default response to Kings was "This is America, Jack." I've studied enough history...hell, I learned enough of it in various Christian elementary schools when I didn't really have a choice, to know that our whole country was founded on the violent rejection of Monarchy.

Do you really think the kind of social systems that gave rise to lines like "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore..." are going to bring you prosperity and security??

And not only that, but these fucking people are going around stanning for all this anti-American shit, led by (I'm not kidding here) dudes like Matt Schlapp that are going around grabbing other dudes dicks and shit.

And don't give me any "It was the Left" bullshit, either. Matt Schlapp grabbed some dude that worked for Herschel Walker's campaign, and tried to invite said staffer up to his hotel room. There was no "Left" involved.

The "Grooming" and sexual predation are coming from inside the house, Republicans. Every accusation you fuckers make turns out to be a confession sooner or later.

Insurrectionists and Insurrection-exporters, freakish Monarchists in a country literally founded on the basis of the rejection of Monarchy, religious weirdos and homosexual sexual predators (while accusing other people of being the same) whose own leadership takes five days and fifteen votes to even perform the most basic functions of their jobs...and who've spent the first few days of their legislative terms cranking out performative bullshit nonsense they know will never see the light of day in the Senate, and wouldn't make it past the President if it did...whose sole seriously articulated legislative position at this point is that they want to cut health care and old-age pensions for senior citizens.

My Mom is 72, got her goddamn Masters Degree at 53, and has a pension and wouldn't make it without her Social Security. Her partner's in the same boat...and he's an Army Aviation retiree with not just one pension, but two. Nobody can afford your ridiculosity, Republicans.

And mostly because of my job and where I currently live, I know lots of people that Social Security is all they have...or all they're ever going to have.

These fucking people don't need to just be voted out, every last one of them needs their ass whupped like a snotty child, the equivalent of a pants-down spanking in the middle of the grocery store or a knock-down-drag-out beatdown in the middle of the street for even saying this dumbass bullshit.

And all these corporate, government, and media enablers, who keep promoting this shit basically because they think it's funny, or there's some profit in it somewhere for them? Or because it gives them some kind of ideological hard-on or some shit?

Not just beat up or removed from their positions, we're talking "Never Work Again" level of "You're Fired." We've got way the hell too many people making decisions in this country, as far as I'm concerned, who've never had a real goddamned job for even one day in their lives.

Seriously, we live in a country where an actual murderer like Kyle Rittenhouse is going around talking up how much of a "Christian" he is, and people just give his ass money. How the hell is that kid ever going to be a part of society or ever even have a simple-ass job?? And then these right-wing motherfuckers will drop his ass the second he becomes inconvenient. 

Do these fucking people think God is dumb??

I literally can't be the only one who sees the problems with this bullshit.

This shit is not going to stop until we make it stop. These fucking people are not going to feel shame until they have it beat back into them and then nobody listens to their sob-stories afterwards. What the fuck is it going to take, people, some jackass trying to have himself crowned King at the foot of the Washington Monument??

And then these same goddamn people can't wait to talk shit about the Ukrainians, you know, people who are actually fighting for their own freedom and right to exist, or about our government and the EU/NATO for helping the Ukrainians.

Seriously if people had talked this way about the Afghan Mujahideen (You know, the future Taliban) or the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa (the country that gave us Elon Musk) back in the 1980's, they'd likely have discovered time travel by getting knocked into the next week. 

Or is it that a lot of Americans think people are only "Freedom Fighters" when there's the possibility of Patriarchy or Wealth involved? Note: As I've said before, certainly in traditional, 1980's-like terms Ukraine is a conservative, religious country. 

Or is that actually the problem? That Ukrainians and their assorted EU allies, many of whom did suffer under the yoke of Soviet Communism, hold a mirror up to the debased entitlement of the American "Conservatives" and Mr. Honkey don't like that??

I rather suspect that's what's really going on here. A conservative, religious country is not what these fucking people actually want.

They want to "Drink 'til you get sick Saturday night" and then they want the "Make a big show at the Altar Call in church on Sunday morning" like they think no one will ever notice the hypocrisy.

They want the kind of gluttony and orgies that Christian moralism attributed to ancient Rome, to have absolute power with zero accountability and never have to see anybody they don't like or conduct themselves as part of a society. Worse, somehow they think they'll avoid the decline and fall part of the story.

These fucking people would be perfectly happy to see America defeated and conquered by Russia if they thought being good little Commies would secure their "Power" and let them practice their debasement and perversions without challenge.

Then they want to keep talking about Jesus and Judgment and The End Time and shit, but they don't really believe in that stuff themselves or that they would ever face it, or they wouldn't be acting like it's all crap. It's a lie...and they know it.

They just hope you don't.

(And somehow they think that you'll never find out, either.)

I don't know how Action/Consequence or Cause And Effect or the inevitable historical result of this kind of shit continually escapes these fucking people, but it does.

Thus, with these fucking people, all roads lead to Idiocracy.

You want to prevent that from happening, it's eventually going to come down to a fight. In Brazil, it just did. As Reagan said; "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen. If you want a better world, you have to be a better person. 

And this ain't it, yo.

Ten

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Get Bent (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Ten.)

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I just saw this.

Apparently, yesterday during round two of the shitshow, Florida Representative Kat Cammack accused Democrats of drinking on the job.

To wit, quoting the article from Crooks & Liars:

In what feels like the eleventy bazillionth vote for the Speaker of the House, Rep. Kat Cammack took to the floor, claiming that Democrats want division. She then said that Democrats were drinking on the job.

"They want us divided. They want us to fight each other," she insisted. "That much has been made clear by the popcorn and blankets and alcohol that is coming over there."

I mean, if they are, so what? 

You're in a government building, not a church.

I think it needs to be said.

If I was sitting there, on the House Floor, stuck watching this goddamned shitshow, captive to the goddamn mob on the other side, you bet I'd be drinking, and smoking a blunt, and I'd be playing "Ferret Fishing" with my ferret with his snake toy and I wouldn't mind a bit if Buddha The Weasel stole somebody's shoe. I'd probably be making rude, yet suggestive comments at Lauren Boebert, too. 

You think Congressional Democrats have posted a bunch of snarky shit about this mess on social media? I can guarantee you I'd be a lot less nice about it than they are.

Yeah, go ahead and stick me in a workplace where conventional H.R. rules openly mean fuck all and then make me watch this cage full of screeching monkeys throw shit at each other and the world, I dare you! All this just to make the whole soup sandwich somewhat bearable.

If I'd ran my squad in the Air Force like you Republicans are running your Party right now, we'd all have been shitcanned faster than you could say "Administrative Discharge."

I mean, fuck, if I acted like this at my current job, I'd get bum-rushed right out the door.

But more to the point, lady, you and your party enthusiastically supported Donald Trump, who debated Hillary Clinton and gave more than one speech where he was clearly coked out of his goddamn mind. Your party has a history of tolerating all type of shit, so long as it's done by a Republican who's in good standing (Whatever that means at the time.)

The Republican Party has degenerated into such a goddamned mess you fuckers can't even select a goddamned Speaker Of The House. Don't try and act all high and mighty and moralistic about what the other side is doing when you people cannot even do your goddamned jobs at the most basic level.

My Grandpa was a retired Navy officer. Three of my uncles served in Vietnam. I was a sergeant in the United States Air Force Security Forces. I was taught from an early age not to suffer fools gladly, and I started out as a Baptist, so I can get really articulate and Biblical about not suffering said foolishness gladly.

And then you motherfuckers have the goddamned balls to try and make this seem like it's somehow the fault of the Democrats that you idiots can't get your act together?

Typical Republican, literally everything is somebody else's fucking fault. 

Seriously what the hell is wrong with you?

I mean, shit, John goddamned Boehner and Paul "Dead-eyed Granny Starver" Ryan kept things together better than this.

Grow the fuck up and do your goddamned job, or get bent, go fuck yourself, and go get a real damn job.

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." ~Ronald Reagan

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Nine

Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that. ~George Carlin

Relentless Self-Abuse (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Nine.)

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Generation Of Swine.

I saw this earlier.

Note that I say this as a former Republican myself, I am goddamned tired of Republicans relying on Democrats to extract them from their own idiocy. I'm not alone, apparently, so is Hakeem Jeffries. 

I can't help but take note of the fact that nobody, except for Republicans themselves, or Dude-bros who obviously have Republican sympathies, actually thinks Democrats should have to bend on the behalf of Republicans who absolutely refuse to  compromise or give anything themselves. Seriously, fuck these motherfuckers.

Maybe it's just me, but I think we need to stop promoting people, politics and philosophies that take a savage glee in being an unreasonable son of a bitch for the sake of being an unreasonable son of a bitch.

Not that I would expect anything better of Italian Satellite Conspiracy Theory Guy...and this dude was a fucking General officer? 

My God.

Stop promoting the village idiot, America.

So much of this crap is nothing but performative bullshit, on the part of people who...if they are who and what they say they are or if their oath was ever worth a crap...should 100% know better. 

But of course they aren't, they don't, and it's not.

We as a people need to start expecting better of our government and of people in leadership positions, both civil and military, both public and private, and that is not a joke.

Because as of this evening, by the end of Day Two of the Great Republican Dumpster Fire, Kevin McCarthy had lost a total of seven votes for him to become Speaker Of The House.

Used to be if somebody couldn't, or wouldn't, do their goddamn job they got bum-rushed out the door, discharged under other than honorable conditions, fired, not reelected, you name it. 

You get what you tolerate, America.

This is the inevitable result of people being given participation trophies, passed when they should have washed out, or allowed to do whatever so long as they tick certain ideological boxes or have the right friends or, of course, are right-wing white dudes.

My last job was a complete soup sandwich because people basically got promoted, not based on ability or competence or work ethic, but on the basis of who laughed with who in the breakroom, who hung out with who outside of work, and so on.

Of course, the Right side of the aisle in Congress at least, would be no different. Why should we expect anything better than that?

But of course, now Republicans are looking at Democrats, hoping the other side will throw them a lifeline, go for a compromise candidate, whatever.

How the hell do you compromise with people who think "Compromise" means "Now you're going to do what I want, right?"

Like, here's Marge having, effectively, a Come-To-Dis-Pater moment about the fact that she can't even have a chance of getting what she wants without effective government. Like, you're a citizen of the United States of America, a member of Congress for fuck's sake...and how did you get this far without knowing that first??

And she's mad about it, mad I tell you!

Did she think, like in Russia, that she only had to fuck the right mafia don, schmooze with the right oligarch, talk nice to the little KGB President, whisper in the right ears or give some 300-pounds no-neck-double-ugly motherfucker named Ivan who had all the right prison tattoos a whole bunch of money and things would just fall her way?

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if this mess ends up with Kevin McCarthy being thrown out a window or eating a mysteriously radioactive sandwich or shanked in the back by Elise Stefanik...but this is America and we're not supposed to do things that way here.

You want things to work out your way, compromise politically you vote, you work with other people as needed...pragmatically...until you get there.

But of course, that's not the world MTG wants to live in. She, like most modern Republicans, thinks the body politic and the vote exist solely to ratify what she already wants, to give her what she desires.

And I'm here to tell you I've seen assorted fanatics and religious nuts literally wreck themselves being fanatical about shit that only exists in their own heads and they're still waiting for "God" to give them what they want and/or somebody else to bail them out 20 years later.

And inevitably, everything is somebody else's fault.

Why the fuck do we let people like that be in our government, like at all?

Stuff like this is why I, being an ex-Christian, a former Republican, and a military veteran, distrust fanatics, idealism and ideology.

Inevitably these sons of bitches always think somebody else should die, should sacrifice, should suffer, for them and their ideas. 

And increasingly, from the perspective of the Right, that burden should be dumped off on those least able to shoulder it, or who possess the least ability to politically stand up and say "No."

Why should we, as a people, keep putting up with this garbage??

'Cause if we don't stop putting up with it I can tell you exactly what that leads to. We see it every day on the news, in Ukraine. We see it in the horrors perpetrated in places like Iran and Russia in the name of Power.

And that's exactly the world the Right wants to live in, right there, but instead of Bucha, they want it in Birmingham, instead of Mariupol, they want it in Minneapolis. Instead of Engels getting bombed, they'd rather it was Edwards. These motherfuckers don't want to live in the same world as the rest of us. They'd rather strap bombs to themselves and die in fire shouting "Ayn Rand Akbar!"

Because for them the cruelty and the selfishness are the point, indeed, the moral purpose of their lives.

Because who will suffer more in such a world? The rich white "Conservatives" who can just go somewhere else if things go sideways? Or the less-rich, the middle class and poor, of all creeds, politics and colors who have to live here?

If government will not protect the powerless from the ruthless, what the hell good is it? 

And it's funny, just which side has decided on complete, willful obstruction, even of its own agenda if need be, to enable fascism and vapid, braindead populism here and abroad, now isn't it?

Reagan Wept.

When is enough, going to be enough?

How can people reach for the stars, when they can't even be bothered to do something so basic to their job and even their own claimed ideology as decide who's in charge?

And then to cover their ass, they claim it's the End Times and things will get worse! Why should we even tolerate this shit?!?! And they know it's a lie, but they also know that a third of the population will reflexively, or out of tribal loyalty, agree with that shit or at least pretend to. Why do we accept this??

Go ahead, I'll wait.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen, and this ain't it.

Religion, and religious fanaticism, outside of houses of worship and certain other appropriate circumstances is nothing more than public masturbation, and These Fucking People have turned performative Right-wing bullshit into their own, albeit very self-serving, religion.

Now they demand we bow before their debased altars.

Why are we putting up with this horse shit?!?!

Eight

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If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Dark And Rolling Sea (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Eight.)

Oh you set your course for the furthest shores
And you never once looked back
And the flag you flew was a pirate cross
On a field of velvet black
And those landsmen who you but lately knew
Were left stranded on the lea
Don't call on them when the storm clouds rise
On the dark and the rolling sea

Oh I have no need of a chart or creed
You told your waiting crew
For the winds of chance, they will bear us straight
And you spoke as though you knew
So you paid no mind to the warning signs
As you gave your words so free
Don't change your tack when the timbers crack
On the dark and the rolling sea

Now the thunder rails in the great mainsails
And the stars desert the skies
And the rigging strains as the hands of rain
Reach down to wash your eyes
And your oarsmen stands with his knife in hand
And his eyes spell mutiny
Don't call my name when your ship goes down
On the dark and the rolling sea.
~Al Stewart,
On the dark and rolling sea.

Today, Kevin McCarthy failed three times to secure enough votes to become Speaker of the House, after he spent the last two years selling his soul to the Far-Right for...basically a pack of rolling papers, an eighth of weed that's mostly seeds and stems, and a slice of cold pizza.

And the terrible thing is, none of the people he sold his soul to even appreciate it. And, by "Terrible" I mean, it's fucking hilarious.

All the sudden, Marge is realizing that we've got to have a functioning government for her to even have a shot at getting what she wants.

I have no sympathy for any of these fucking people.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

You break it, you buy it.

Maybe it's just me, and yes, I say this as a former Republican who came up in a different era with a whole different set of values; But I think it's past time we stop exalting a political philosophy that lifts up meanness of spirit and takes a savage glee in being an unreasonable son of a bitch and a set of social beliefs that says it's Okay to work other people into the ground for your own sociopathic greed.

(And then the motherfuckers have the balls to wonder why nobody wants to work for them anymore?)

Maybe we should stop listening to people who promote every form of addiction and bigotry, political fentanyl and social herpes known to man for no better reason than their own financial and political profits?

Maybe, just maybe, there's close to half our population that should have higher expectations of our commercial and governmental enterprises than getting fuck all except told it's okay to be racist or practice empty religiosity and hope for a Rapture or some shit that ain't even in the Bible? 

'Cause let me tell ya, the rest of us are sure getting sick of this shit.

And maybe it's just me, but like I keep saying, Communism hasn't even been a thing since 1989.

Stop bitching about it. 

Especially if you're somebody like Tomi Lahren who wasn't even born yet when the Soviet Union fell on Christmas Day, 1991.

Seriously this dumb hoe was born over 8 months after that happened. 

And by that time, there wasn't much at all left of Communism. Seriously the Chinese started with capitalism in the 1970's. In the Soviet Union, Communism fell apart in the 1980's and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was literally banned before the Soviet Union itself even fell.

More to the point, she's perfectly willing to excuse people like Vladimir Putin, who are trying to bring Communism and the Soviet Union back, minus any kind of social welfare programs.

I watched my world change beyond recognition as a young man and I've written about how that felt, to me, as a young Republican. Seriously, fuck anybody who thinks we have Communists in America. Fuck anybody who wants to change back or take away that history.

Especially for some garbage political points that exist only in your own empty head. 

Communism and modern liberalism are not the same thing. Social change or "Thing that I don't like" or "Other People Exist" does not = Communism.

If you are completely unable, or unwilling, to adapt to or function in the modern world you shouldn't be in government or in any position that deals with the public, I'm serious.

It seems to me like today's...failure...was basically all these strains of dysfunction that've been building up in the Republican Party since Newt Gingrich became the Speaker of the House 28 years ago this month finally coming together in a crescendo of infinite impotent rage.

And they couldn't even perform the most basic function of their own philosophy of government; picking who's in charge.

And a good chunk of the Republican base thinks Kevin McCarthy, the literal GOP leader, is a Democrat.

Think about that, take all the time you need.

We're in for two years of this shit, even if Hakeem Jeffries ekes out 218 votes for Speaker on Wednesday. They'll be pulling this kind of unending bullshit for the next two years.

These fuckers ain't going to straighten up by tomorrow. Modern Republicans literally do not believe in functioning government.

These fuckers have repeatedly managed, now...even if just barely, to finally get what they wanted and then completely soup sandwich it all up.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Seven

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Sword And Shield Of The Party (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Seven.)

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Generation Of Swine.

Last night at work I saw this. Madison Cawthorn in his Trump-wannabe suit, posing with a bat that has "We The People..." written on it. Next to him, some douchebag posing with a curvy novelty-knife and a pistol.

Sword and Shield of The Party, right there, y'all.

I commented that it was all of modern "Conservative" thought in one image.

One of my regular commentors replied that "Thought" was doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Seriously what the fuck is it with these people and their idea that they can, one way or another, beat their beliefs into people? Seriously, these fucking people think their beliefs are actually transmissible by either relentless-simplistic brain-pounding propaganda (that actually, if you look at it, has nothing to do with Christ or Christianity but rather the "supremacy" of both) or by actual physical assault.

Their real message of course is "OBEY ME" the hell with Jesus. Or reality, or really anything else.

And they can and will keep at this shit when reality and the people they're trying to coerce have flatly and forcibly told them no. 

Like, literally these people think if they believe in it hard enough or think "good" enough thoughts they can somehow bullshit the universe into giving them what they want.

And if not, they think they'll just beat it out of you and take what they think they want.

And then, invariably, they find out that it didn't work out the way they thought it would and/or they're not happy anyway. It works out the same way every time you run the experiment. 

I used to be a conservative Christian. Trust me, these people are everywhere and they don't react well either to correction or to people who actually know things.

And of course these shitty little narcissists never understand that all they're actually doing is making people hate them or for that matter turning the people who stay in their movements into a bunch of bitter assholes.

Yeah, I pretty much think at this point the Evangelicals, the Far-right, the Republicans and the Russians all richly deserve each other.

None of these fucking people believe in anything, and they're all trying to use each other for no better reason than to gain personal power.

And then when it doesn't turn out the way that they wanted...they're going to preach about things endlessly getting worse until Jesus comes to save them and zaps everybody they don't like.

And all that crap is a lie, and it always was a lie.

All the End Times Prophecy Bullshit is literally rooted in a fear of the world adopting any kind of liberal values. And I'm here to tell you these people already regard all of Eurasia outside of Russia as "Lost" and they have for 30 years.

Meanwhile the GOP is slouching toward becoming a Christianized version of the Communist Party Of The Soviet Union, which itself died just over 30 years ago...but without any of the social welfare aspects or anything else that helps the average person.

While it holds Twitter Spaces with the Taliban. There's no enemy of America that these people won't get on their knees and blow.

Reagan Wept.

It's a new day, it's a new goddamn year. You don't have to be like these fucking people.

Remember that.

Six

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Small Dick Energy, Taliban Edition (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Six.)

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

...

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran  

I saw this last night at work.

Sameera Khan, former beauty queen and current right-wing influencer, hosting a Twitter space with the Taliban to discuss Andrew Tate's arrest.

You know, maybe it's just me, but as far as I'm concerned if you've picked sides with the goddamned Taliban for any reason, that shouldn't end well for you and I say that as somebody who used to be a conservative Republican.

Of course this...person...this alleged American, is a devotee of Ramzan Kadyrov, tin-pot Chechen strongman. Maybe it's just me but I can remember when all these things would come together to get this bitch a rather unfriendly visit from the FBI, a national scandal, and a not-necessarily-metaphorical tarring-and-feathering in specifically Conservative media.

Now? Meh, it's Sunday. No one, at least on the side that allegedly should, cares. Of course we have long ago established that these motherfuckers don't believe in one damn word of traditional conservatism in any sense that it has previously existed in America.

Supporting American values or, ya know, supporting your own country over its enemies is apparently optional for the trendy-online-"Conservative"-Right.

Fuck these motherfuckers and I say that with all the invective I can manage as a former United States Air Force security police Sergeant. 

There's effectively no enemy of America these fucking people won't get on their knees and blow under the table, like some kind of a high-class hood-rat, and they [think they] call this crap "Owning The Libs."

But that's not really what's going on here. They'd rather be owned by some dirty Commie stooge with an office in the Kremlin and a Dacha in Sochi who makes his real money off a criminal empire that does god-knows-what. Or they'd rather be owned by some semi-literate warlord who buggers little boys and both deals and uses drugs...while claiming to be Muslim, knowing that any pious Muslim should reject narcotics automatically...but of course none of this is ever really about any of that.

Because they've looked at America and said no, they want to be Dirty Commies like the newly re-Sovietized Russia where you an get hauled away by the police for any reason, or none at all, with no recourse against either the power of the State nor the whims of the current Strongman.

It's New Years Day, the last day of our holiday season.

Tell me how the fuck we live in a world where Ukrainians are doing a better job of fighting for freedom and (small-D, small-L) liberal democracy, you know, living the values espoused by dudes like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush than current American Republicans are doing??

Like I said awhile back, can you imagine Reagan or George H.W. Bush if, say, things would have been less peaceful at the time, and Ukraine had ripped down the Hammer And Sickle and told the Russians to go fuck themselves while either of them was in office? 

Especially Bush 41 right after the fall of the Berlin Wall when, yes, we were looking for something to use all that big green and haze-gray firepower on while we still had it at the ready, simply to prove that there'd been a need for it all this time? 

The response would've been right out of all those Cold War novels and it would've been on like Donkey Kong...because Freedom, and at the time that was more than just an empty slogan. I ain't saying it's right or wrong. That's just how it was.

Sweet Jesus, if the Ukrainians are fucking the Russians up this bad with a few HIMARS systems and flood of more basic weapons we've given them...any conflict where it's us against the Russians would make Desert Storm look like slow motion, leave a big smoking crater where the Red Army used to be, and leave the Commies wondering what the fuck even happened.

The difference between the citizen-soldiers of a democratic nation and their courage and values, and the subservient conscripts of Neo-Communist totalitarianism in their obedience to Power could not be any more plain than the battlefields of Ukraine have made it.

And back in the day Uncle Sam would've kicked their ass, used the Red Banner for toilet paper and put Lenin's taxidermied ass in the wax museum at Knott's Berry Farm (Look that place up, its history and who started it, I fuckin' dare you) as a trophy of war and triple-dog-dared anybody to do anything about it...judging from the battlefield performance of Putin's New Soviet Men, we'd have gotten away with it.

And don't get me started on the fucking Taliban, I'm old enough to remember the days after 9/11 when saying you agreed with a bunch of drug-addled illiterate goat-fuckers who'd given shelter and operational support to Osama Bin Laden would have got you beat up, and the beatdown probably would've been pretty Bipartisan at the time. 

But I'm here to tell you, it would've been the Republicans wearing the steel-toed work boots and using phrases like "Bite the curb, Bitch."

The Taliban, you know, the motherfuckers that had conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats alike outraged at their brutality and evil towards women and children, at their disrespect for their own country's history, at their use and selling of drugs, the list goes on...

I was there. I remember. 

A couple of the guys I'd served with were still in, and went over there. I've heard some stories. There's a reason pretty much everybody hated the goddamned Takfiris, let alone the Arab terrorists they feted and gave arms and money to and these so-called pious holy warriors let Bin Laden's goons hack up innocent Afghan civilians, for basically no goddamned reason.

No one cried for the goddamned Taliban.

Trust me, given some of the friends I had at the time I can tell you straight up that any observant Muslim whose belief was worth the time it took to say "Allah Akbar" hated those motherfuckers just as much as we did, more, even.

And that's what a whole bunch of "Americans" think they want to be like??

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that seem a little fucked up to you?

There is no enemy of America that modern American "Conservatives" won't get on their knees and fellate, and they'll openly claim to do so in defense of human traffickers and rapists, on a mainstream social media platform at the presumed sufferance of Elon Musk.

Let that sink in.

To be clear, I've occasionally found Feminists annoying.

But I hate Fascists, Putinist neo-Commies, Radical Islamists, and any of those who would gleefully hop into bed with the same...especially if they are or want to claim to be Americans.

Especially when it's for no better reason than to show off some kind of trendy anti-Americanism.

Like there was a whole bunch of people yesterday insulting our military because some troops posed for a selfie with the Vice President. For the love of God, why? Who cares? Why does this even bother you?

I can remember when plenty of conservative Airmen were perfectly well willing to shake Bill Clinton's hand, and there was nothing wrong with that. 

Dude was...for better and worse...the personification of so much of what we were in the 1990's. I know, I was there. I was a Republican. If you did not live it, you will not understand the mind-flattening level of change packed into that one decade and I can't explain it to you. It really was a brave new world.

So let the kids have their goddamned Selfie.

You know, when the Left did that whole anti-American Radical Chic thing, and you had the whole Jane Fonda thing and lots of dudes walking around dressed like Che Guevara, at least they could say that Jane was kind of dumb and the dudes dressed like Che were at least following after somebody that had morals and had acted on them, even if he was on the other side. 

(And for what it's worth, I read The Motorcycle Diaries in the 1990's as a conservative during my first attempt at college. You might not have agreed with Che's course of action, but he was acting on principle.)

What's these fucking people's excuse? 

I've never heard about nor read any accounts of the 1960's/1970's American Left that come anywhere close to billionaires and beauty queens conversing with the Taliban in the public square of the era, over the fate of a human-trafficking rapist whom a foreign ally likely has dead to rights and intends to put away for a long time.

As far as I'm concerned, at the very least, Sameera Khan should get politically tarred-and-feathered for 50 years the same way as the conservatives treated Jane Fonda, and fuck, throw Elon in on that for good measure and make an example of him, too. His platform facilitated that shit!

People collectively need a reminder of just what these motherfuckers are stanning for. People need to hear that all that Left Behind End Times Rapture shit was a lie, for it surely must have been if this is what those same people support now!

You cannot have both the Cross of Christ and the Hammer And Sickle. You cannot support Takfiri radical Islam and claim the Blood of Jesus. You can't support either and claim to be for democracy.

One of these things is not like the other one. Yet not one goddamn "Conservative" Evangelical preacher will point that out.

Pick a goddamned side, and then be prepared to face the consequences.

We're all going to have to choose, no one will be exempt.

And there's going to be a test, soon.

Слава Україна!

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran  

Five