Well, it was difficult to find time in my busy schedule of drinking beer and perpetually re-sterilizing every inch of my apartment, but I figured I’d drop by for a quick news round-up. It’s been a real positive, uplifting, week, full of daisies and puppies and exotic French pastries, except for that one thing that’s fucking up every aspect of life on Earth. Also there were no daisies, puppies, or pastries. Sorry.

In the midst of the greatest global emergency since the international success of the Blue (Da Ba Dee) song, the Shart House has been hard at work. On containing the virus, or procuring desperately-needed equipment for the hospitals about to experience catastrophic shortages? Don’t be silly, the Clowncar Full of Bleeding Rectums running the country is focusing on the really important shit: a government-wide communications strategy to blame China for everything from the coronavirus to the economic crash to the photographs that make Tangerine Idi Amin’s ass look half a mile wide in golf pants.

Beyond the endless, fatal, fuckups, the Turdworm Administration is also staying on-brand by using the coronavirus crisis to attempt a clumsy dictatorial power grab, how predictable, if terrifying. Yes, Redactor General Billy Barr wants the authority to detain folks indefinitely without trial during emergencies, and you can go ahead and mark me down as FUCK NO, YOU FART-SNIFFING FASCISTS on that one. I swear, that Barr kid is like a poorly-trained dog, always snatching food off the counter if you turn your back on him for a minute…only with freedom instead of bacon.

Is there anything Rand Pauler than Rand Paul catching the coronavirus, and smugly going about his life, giving a staunch libertarian middle finger to social distancing, lunchin’ with his homies, spreading his disease (in addition to his everyday Paul family cooties, of course) all over the Senate gym, sending several of his colleagues into quarantine? You’re such a rugged individual, Rand! Surely you won’t require any medical treatment, we can just drop you off at the edge of the jungle with a bow and arrow, and you can hunt and kill your own ventilator.

Republicans, bless their blackened, bile-pumping, little hearts, tried to structure the emergency stimulus bill so it would dump $500 billion directly into a bucket in Steve Mnuchin’s office, which he would then disperse however the fancy struck him, with no oversight whatsoever, and even the added proviso that he could conceal the identities of the recipients for six months. Like, “Surprise! We gave sixty million dollars to Marm-a-Lago while every small business in your hometown withered and died!” I’m just trying to imagine the possible non-corrupt reasons to keep stimulus payments secret, and giving thanks that the crooks in charge aren’t better crooks.

Turns out last July, Hairplug Himmler, in one of those fits of very stable genius that overtake him from time to time, figured he’d trim down the big, bad, government by eliminating the position of a certain CDC expert. Whose job was to monitor disease outbreaks. In China. Hindsight is 20/20 and all, and in the end, this would have simply meant one more expert for the bloated jackass to ignore, but honestly, if, hypothetically, Donald Trump knew in advance this outbreak was coming, and he wanted it to inflict maximum damage on the United States…is there anything he’d have done differently? He is a machine that fucks things up, and is damn near perfect in that regard.

All of us are having trouble adjusting to life under quarantine, of course. Routines have been disrupted, and emotional needs are going unmet. It’s really tough to live without all those little snippets of human contact one takes for granted; the familiar strangers from your morning commute, the barista who starts your drink the moment you walk in the door, the joggers and dog-walkers and stroller-pushing young parents who populate your neighborhood sidewalks. And if you happen to be a tar-souled narcissistic egomaniac, hopelessly addicted the adrenaline rush that comes from whipping angry mobs into deranged, hateful, frenzies, well…then you’ve got real problems.

Luckily for him, if not for the safety and health of the general public, the Marmalade Shartcannon has jury-rigged a passable substitute for his Klan rallies, and he even gets to pretend they’re press conferences. The howls of blind adulation may be missing, but the other elements translate rather cleanly: self-praise, whinging victimhood, sinister misinformation, and all the lies you can handle for only 7.99, add the dessert bar for just a dollar more.

Not to disrupt any boiling frogs or anything, but it is Ken-Russell-on-bad-acid insane that we find ourselves at this dizzyingly fucked up point, where this self-serving madman, this barely-human poosquirt, is handed this enormous platform, every single goddamn day, to shamelessly belch out whatever dangerous fabrications he imagines will hold his poll numbers up for a few more hours, without a single passing thought for the well-being of his millions of constituents, and nobody seems to know how to stop him.

It’s very strange, not being able to believe the President during a time of crisis, but I confess it’s even stranger that anyone anywhere still trusts that mendacious bag of excised colon polyps. Like, folks, this is the same sad little clown who launched his term with a pathetic series of falsehoods about the size of his inauguration crowd, you’re really gonna defer to his snake-oil-peddling ass when it comes to medical treatment? Over the actual FDA? And real doctors? Unbelievably, some folks do, and Fat Q*Bert’s cynical pimping of an untested malaria drug as a miracle corona cure, while a transparent bid to trick the stock market into thinking everything’s copacetic, has actually prompted nationwide shortages, to the chagrin of those who actually, y’know, need the stuff to live.

And of course, a man has already died, and his wife was hospitalized, after swallowing chloroquine phosphate on their Turd Emperor’s expert advice. While President Crotchrot’s handling of the entire situation has been a disaster sandwich between two slices of What the Fuck is Wrong with You, you have to give the old dolt credit, he keeps finding innovative new ways to get people killed.

With the nation looking to the steady, even, hand of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for much-needed comfort, his Florida counterpart, a walking butter statue by the name of Ron DeSantis, refuses to take necessary precautions and lock down the Sunshine State, even as, to the shock of literally no living thing, spring break beach partiers who defied calls for social distancing have begun coming down with COVID-19. It’s certainly an unconventional political strategy, actively facilitating the deaths of thousands of your constituents, and I’m excited to see how it plays out when Ronboy seeks reelection in 2022, assuming we aren’t all clubbing one another with tire irons over ten-year-old cans of Beefaroni by then.

So, a fun way to pass time during quarantine is to start a “Fauci watch” group with your friends on social media, wherein everyone makes bets on how long it will take for Government Cheese Goebbels to finally fire the only member of his team that still holds the public’s trust, for the high crime of Telling Folks the Truth Rather Than Comforting Lies That Will Only Get More Americans Killed in the Long Run. Frankly, between his competence and expertise, I’m surprised Dr. Fauci hasn’t been replaced by Diamond and/or Silk already.

Sorry serfs, but your feudal overlords have grown weary of this whole “taking the steps needed to combat a global pandemic” thing, now that the truly important shit (money) is involved, so it’s time for all you filthy takers to get your asses back to the charnel house, excuse me, the “workplace.” Yes, the malignantly wealthy, through the mouths of their demonic spokesgoons at Fux Nooz, have announced “the cure is worse than the problem,” because all this life-saving social distancing has cut into their yacht-and-racehorse funds, which simply will not do…why can’t the lesser classes have the good manners to understand how expendable they are?

President Liposuction Clinic Dumpster really wants to “re-open” the economy, and he’s not gonna let anything silly, like “scientists and doctors,” or “mountains of human corpses” spoil his fun. One of the few remaining functional processes in the wad of used chewing gum he has for a brain reminds him constantly that bad economy = no reelection = no presidential immunity = bunkmates with Harvey Weinstein, so please understand he would giddily accept any death toll, however high, to get the stock market back up, even it means going from hospital to hospital to personally unplug ventilators with very own (tiny, inadequate) hands.

Defying all common sense and basic decency, the murderous idiot actually wants to relax the standards that haven’t even been in place long enough, or universally enough, to slow the spread of this wily motherfucker. He’s openly fantasizing about shit being more or less back to normal come Easter. When that doesn’t happen, because the body count will have a couple more zeros tacked on by then, expect him to recklessly tell the nation that COVID-19 can be cured by ingesting a mixture of bleach, paprika, and Marshmallow Peeps.

(It goes without saying that doing things Donnie Dotard’s way only leads to the worst of both worlds; more senseless deaths, and all the economic damage plus more to boot, but you have to look at it from his point of view…I mean, what if tomorrow never comes?)

In addition to the ridiculous cure/disease branding, he’s test-driving some fresh new bullshit about quarantining leading to a massive wave of suicides, presumably because folks will just be so goshdarn distraught at the financial losses of the Republican donor class. Can’t speak for y’all, but along with my stash of Pringles and beer, thinking about Sheldon Adelson’s vanishing billions is just about all that’s keeping me going lately. In fact, ruminating on it right now, I’m about as far from suicide as the night I lost my virginity.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is certainly eager to serve as conductor aboard America’s 3:10 to Yuma, taking it upon himself to speak for all of the nation’s elderly, and volunteering them as willing sacrifices to the voracious volcano god men call the Dow Jones. Ah yes, as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough immediately propose mass murder of the old. It’s been, like, a week. Dan. Bro. Let’s pursue a few non-genocidal solutions before we jump right into Soylent Green territory, okay?

And yes, even as the turds deposited by this shitstorm bury us up to our goddamn necks, the Treasonweasel Administration is STILL fighting in court to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, because obviously what this country really needs right now is a few million more uninsured folks, especially with the ranks of the unemployed swelling by the hour, with no place to turn for insurance but the Obamacare exchanges. Their unerring instinct for making shitty situations even shittier leads me to believe that while the medical equipment shortage isn’t likely to be addressed any time soon, Stephen Miller will likely organize the release of immense swarms of bees into every hospital in America within the week.

Anyway, the rest is all most bad news. The Olympics are postponed and Terrence McNally died and Donald Trump didn’t. What can I say? It’s kinda like “It’s raining men” only with shit instead of men.

To all my readers out there, I don’t think I need to say this, but I value you a great deal more than the stock market,* so please take care of yourselves out there. We’ll pull through this crap, and the party we throw when we finally fire these rat finks in November will be all the sweeter for it. See y’all soon.

*Not you, Kevin.