Kind of a slow news week, meaning American fascism creeped a little more quietly than usual, I suppose. Which is welcome enough, as is the subsiding of the Delta surge, certainly…I guess I just wish we’d managed to build a better world for John Hinckley to come back to, y’know?

A Turd Reich-era DHS whistleblower reminded us that a return to power by the Deposed Dotard “would be a disaster” for U.S. intelligence, a warning sure to resonate with the third of the electorate that reviles our national security apparatus as a fiendish, disloyal “deep state,” to say nothing of their instinctive antipathy for the word “intelligence.”

An enterprising election clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, Tina Peters, decided she wasn’t going to let an insignificant detail like “the will of the people” loosen her loser death cult’s grip on power, especially with seditious bedding peddlers offering so much soothing, crime-justifying disinformation, so she took it upon herself to smuggle some random jagoff into her office to COPY THE COUNTY VOTING MACHINES’ HARD DRIVES for…who the fuck even knows? For whatever dipshit scheme this clown brigade cooked up with the half-dozen-or-so misfiring brain cells they share amongst themselves.

And that’s how it happens here! Yeah, IT. A few more Tina Peters, and one or two fewer Brad Raffenspergers*, in just the right posts, and the GOP can finally send the consent of the governed to live on a farm upstate.

I wouldn’t worry about it, we’re obviously living in sane, healthy, almost drearily normal times, it’s not like local school boards have banded together to beg the federal government for assistance with the legions of anti-mask maniacs threatening them with violence. It’s not like any hospitals are handing out personal panic buttons to staff in response to a threefold surge in assaults from crazed patients demanding to be medicated like worm-infested cattle. OH WAIT, IT’S ACTUALLY EXACTLY LIKE THAT! CAP, YOU WILY SCOUNDREL!

Well, deranged MAGA cartoonist Ben Garrison went and got himself a heapin’ helpin’ of Covid-19, and, with his characteristic grip on objective reality, chose to self-medicate, washing down the now-obligatory ivermectin cocktail with a tall, frosty glass of beet juice, probably with a Lysol chaser. Get well never, fuckhead.

Brett Kavanaugh has it, too. Bet he got it from boofing with Squee.

You wouldn’t think the governorship of a state as small as South Dakota offered enough power to go especially mad with, but bless her unscrupulous little heart, Kristi Noem is doing her level best. Seems that when she’s not busy sacrificing her constituents’ lives on the altar of her national ambitions, Noem likes to unwind by purging state agencies of officials who insist upon holding their governor’s subpar spawn to the same standards as the commoners.

Remember when an abuse-of-power scandal like that was enough to drive these scumbags out of office? Underappreciated times, those.

Stephanie Grisham obsequiously enabled the shittiest people alive as they assaulted American democracy, plundered the Treasury, and spread disease and death from sea to shining sea, but now she’s looking to cash in with yet another trashy tell-all about life behind the scenes in Ruptured Hemorrhoid Camelot. Anyway, while it’s certainly a humiliating enough anecdote for the Marmalade Shartcannon, fuck Grisham sideways with a rake for making us think about Donald Trump’s (allegedly) toadstool-esque wang again.

Speaking of Th’Best People™️, hey Corey Lewandowski, looks like you overestimated the sturdiness of your lil’ flight harness, didn’tcha, you shitty Icarus, you? One can certainly understand how this walking bathtub drain hair clog came to believe he was invincible; neither serial incompetence nor video evidence of physical assault could dislodge him from Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot’s orbit, such has been the potency of his ass-kissing. Still, groping a high-rolling donor? In the GOP? Kid must have a dang death wish.

Congressional hearings on Afghanistan offered an informative glimpse into the kakistocracy to come should the increasingly authoritarian, decreasingly rational Republican Party ever retake power. Watching a thuggish pedophile like Matt Gaetz and a shabby drug dealer like Ronny Jackson furiously regurgitate batshit right wing talking points at Chairman Milley, dreams of Newsmax stardom twinkling in their otherwise-dead eyes, makes me realize we need a whole new word, to describe that unique combination of disdain and dread and disgust and despair one feels when staring directly into modern conservatism’s dark heart. (Especially on election nights, right?) Perhaps a simple, primal yowl will do.

Wisconsin Republicans, contending the real victims of racism are white folks’ feelings, are pursuing a bill that would mandate white supremacist gaslighting in their state’s public schools, with lead author Chuck Wichgers helpfully providing a list of words and phrases he’d like to see burned out of every textbook in the land, including “patriarchy,” “systemic racism,” and “Chuck Wichgers is a clownish bigot with the brain of an unusually inadequate gerbil.” Glad Scott Walker’s no longer around to sign this monstrosity into law.

Well, some timorous taintfungus firebombed the Travis County Democratic Party headquarters in Austin, Texas. Nobody got hurt, thank God, but maybe the national media could’ve spared a moment or two from their ‘round-the-clock investigation of the trash cans outside Joe Manchin’s house to mention this act of domestic right-wing terrorism? Anyway, here’s Chris Cillizza with five winners and three losers from the Reichstag fire.

I see Sammy Alito became the latest member of the stolen wingnut SCOTUS majority to sullenly whinge about all the uppity peasants criticizing the way he and his fellows have been imposing their illegitimate will on the public. Harumph! If the serfs can’t accept their diminished slate of rights in respectful silence, maybe something needs to be done about that pesky First Amendment…

I guess Santa finally opened all those letters I’ve been sending, because once again, comeuppance time has arrived for the grimy bucket of toenail clippings and marmot diarrhea known as Alex Jones. Seems the judge got fed up with Alex’s deadbeat stall tactics, and issued default judgments against him and his trashfire website, in lawsuits filed by two of the Sandy Hook families he terrorized for years. To the jury tasked with determining the precise amount to be awarded, remember, Jones is a tick who has engorged himself for years on the suffering of innocent strangers, and richly deserves a Dickensian denouement. Do your duty.

And I see Pat Robertson retired from public hate-mongering, to spend more time trembling in fear in anticipation of the eternal damnation that’ll kick off any minute now. Say hi to Rush for us, Pat!

…yeah, bit quiet this week, though I’m certainly open to the possibility that I overlooked some shit, as real life (boo) and comic book publishing (yay) made some heavy demands on my time. Feel free to berate me in the comments for any shortcomings; I always figured I’d have more trolls by now.

* Brads Raffensperger?**

** Will I ever get tired of this gag?***

*** Doubt it.