I hope you’ll bear with me, True Believers, as I dedicate today’s post to the late great Stan Lee. I’m sure I don’t need to talk about his influence on me, you probably gleaned it from the tone. Or maybe the outfit. Anyhow, let’s call this one…Cap’s Soapbox.

That filthy liberal rag, the Wall Street Journal, says it’s seen evidence that Orange Julius Caesar was personally involved in paying out all that hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, which makes him a liar and, let me shout this for the folks in the back, A CRIMINAL. I must have missed Trey Gowdy and the rest of the investigation-horny House GOP demanding an inquiry, though. I’m sure they’ll get around to it.

I see our old chum Jeff Sessions burned one last cross on America’s lawn on the way out the door, signing a last-minute directive aimed at making it more difficult to hold abusive police departments accountable for civil rights violations, because hey, what good is local law enforcement if it doesn’t preserve the supremacy of subpar white dudes like Ol’ Beauregard?

As if on cue, police in Robbins, Illinois, shot and killed a black man who had subdued an actual shooter at the bar where he worked as a security guard. See, you have to squint to see it, but the fine print on the “good guy with a gun” theory the NRA is so fond of spinning reads, “whites only.”

Whelp, I guess we can add “Democracy” to the increasingly-distressing list of Things That are Partisan Now, alongside once uncontroversial ideas like “sexual assault is bad,” “pedophiles probably shouldn’t be Senators,” and “it would be better if hostile foreign nations didn’t meddle in our elections.”

But yeah. They’re treating the act of counting votes like it’s some sort of satanic ritual performed by reefer-smoking African-American abortion doctors. Counting votes is a vast international criminal conspiracy funded by George Soros. Counting votes would be the worst thing since the Holocaust, if the Holocaust were real.

Rick Scott practically called in a damn SWAT team to stop folks from counting votes. He’s filed lawsuits to have cops impound voting machines (and, thankfully, lost). Taking a cue from his neighbor, anti-democracy zealot Brian Kemp, he’s abusing the power of his current office in his quest for the next one. I feel like my 7th grade civics textbook left some shit out, y’know?

And of course, utterly baseless claims of voter fraud are all the rage in the right-wing screechosphere. I’ll say this for the GOP, they’ve certainly internalized the lesson that their manic base will never, ever, ask for evidence so long as you give them a fresh new reason to rage and bitch and moan at liberals. And if it winds up burning American democracy to the ground, well, the important thing is that white folks get all the best ashes, right?

President Crotchrot himself got in on the action, because hey, it’s never too early to get started on delegitimizing all those democratic institutions that are increasingly holding you accountable for your many crimes, right? In Shart-O’s defense, the office of the Presidency is the only thing standing between him and god knows how many felony indictments, and he seems rather dangerously unpopular with those pesky voters. I just hope the country survives his panic.

No, the Velveeta Vulgarian does not seem to enjoy Democracy, especially in light of the Blue Wave that washed away so many of his sniveling congressional enablers last week. Even engaging in one of his favorite hobbies, hurling racist insults at black reporters, failed to improve his mood, perhaps because his open racism has reshaped the electoral map to his own detriment?

And then he flew to France for what was supposed to be his consolation parade, after his own attempts to play dress-up Generalissimo proved too expensive, only to be thwarted by his most feared and dangerous foe: A Small Amount of Rain.

So Baron Golfin von Fatfuk sat in his hotel room and seethed as world leaders roasted him one after another for his frailty. Surly old bastard’s probably gone through six or seven Emmanuel Macron voodoo dolls by now.

The California wildfires seem to have cheered him up a bit, killing a number of residents in a state that didn’t vote for him, and giving him an opportunity to petulantly threaten to cut off federal funding, while simultaneously demonstrating his trademark Ignorance of Basically Everything, in assigning blame to…fuck, I can’t even make sense of it. Whatever the voices in his head told him to scream at that day.

I think it’s kind of weird to see the President essentially side with a natural disaster against American citizens, but we live in interesting times. Anyway, he’s an international laughingstock condemned by first responders’ organizations, but he’ll always have Sean Hannity.

We learned that the Dopey Dotard with Diminutive Digits doesn’t know the difference between the Balkans and the Baltics, surprising literally not one human being anywhere on Earth. That he took his mistake so far that he yelled at the leaders of the Baltic nations for starting the war in Yugoslavia also surprised literally no one human being anywhere on Earth.

There’s lots and lots of exciting new pornography available these days, in the thrilling new “midterms post-mortem” genre, and you should be sure to check some of it out. Easily the finest example of pure, unrefined, schadenfreude comes from the tidbit that while KKKris KKKobach was too lazy to actually campaign, he made time for a tour of the Kansas Governor’s Mansion, BWAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! We can only hope that he literally measured the drapes.

Kellyanne Conway helpfully addressed the Acosta video controversy by insisting the video the Shart House shared wasn’t altered except for the way in which it was altered. Shitty Orwell Theatre strikes again.

Faced with the unique problem that even the highest honors he is empowered to bestow would be rejected by any decent human being if offered by his (tiny, inadequate) hand, the Marmalade Shartcannon devised a clever workaround, in awarding his tainted Presidential Medal of Freedom to some dead people, Withered Hate Raisin Orrin Hatch, and loathsome GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson. He’s certainly leaving no aspect of the Presidency un-degraded. We may never get the ketchup-and-Diet-Coke stains out of Resolute desk.

I guess Steve King is now Extra Special Deluxe Officially Racist, because the Weekly Standard has a recording of him hanging out with other racists while they all say racist shit to each other. I confess I’m confused when I see King out in the media, denying that he’s Klan-level bigot; it’s sort of his whole brand. It’s like watching a 3 Musketeers bar insist that it’s not filled with nougat.

Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is a fucking United States Senator in the 21st century, was looking to praise some rancher who endorsed her, and apparently could imagine no higher compliment than “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

In Mississippi. Jesus fuck.

I’m trying to fathom the sort of mind that expresses gratitude or admiration in terms of How Much I Wanna Watch a Lynching With You, but I confess I’m coming up short. Maybe Cindy can launch a new line of Valentines Day cards for the far right. Shit like “I’d throw migrant children in cages for U,” or “Tear down the wall around your heart so we can build one on the border.”

Anyway, Hyde-Smith, who refuses to apologize*, is still heavily favored in the Mississippi Senate run-off, because for some reason we insisted on letting the South back in Union after the Civil War. Democrat Mike Espy is a long, long, long shot, but I certainly won’t stop you if you want to donate to his campaign.

And I see 2018 has brought us the indelible image of a gaggle of shitty little white boys, decked out in their shitty little prom clothes, throwing the goddamn Nazi salute. The school’s mascot is probably Stephen Miller’s bald spot. As depressing as this picture is, let it remind you that the fight is ongoing, and never-ending. Nice wins lately, but don’t take your foot off the gas.

Satellite images reveal that North Korea continues its ballistic missile program in numerous secret sites, despite the Shart of the Deal’s insistence that he won a commitment to disarm and can he please have his Nobel Prize now? Students of high stakes diplomacy are building a complex theory of the Trump Doctrine, one that posits it’s probably best to work out the verifiable details of a signed treaty before you mint challenge coins.

President Valor Thief observed Veterans Day with his customary grace and class. Or he would have, were it not for that verdammte Small Amount of Rain, which kept him from visiting Arlington National Cemetery, despite the fact that it’s RIGHT BY HIS HOUSE. Y’know, maybe if we just hire somebody to perch above Strawberry Shartcake’s bedroom window with a watering can, we can pass the next couple of years in relative peace.

Maybe he wanted to stay dry, and hang out with his new Acting Attorney General, who was involved with a company that scammed vets out of their life savings. Or maybe he wanted to focus on his tweet calling for our military personnel serving overseas to be officially disenfranchised in Florida. Maybe he was too busy planning that trip to visit the troops in combat zones that he’s been avoiding. Maybe he was thinking of the soldiers staring down a Thanksgiving spent apart from their families, deployed uselessly at the border for his forgotten last-minute political stunt.

Or maybe he’s just a festering asshole who doesn’t care about people generally, or veterans specifically.

Apparently not content with their midterm electoral drubbing, the turd-gargling death merchants at the NRA helpfully launched a new mass movement against themselves with a snotty tweet ordering “self-important” doctors to “stay in their lane” and shut their dirty, life-saving, pie holes about gunz. Since then, social media has been full of images of medical professional in blood-soaked scrubs, and stories of treating (and more often than not losing) the victims of gun violence. It’s served to shine a new and tremendously large spotlight on the human cost of letting the frothiest gun nuts dictate laws for the rest of us. Thanks for the massive own-goal, NRA. You’re closer than ever to the dustbin of history.

Birther Jagoff/Roger Stone Pal Jerome Corsi says he’s about to be indicted, victim of the Bobadook and his wily “perjury trap,” which is an interested way of spinning “I lied to the FBI and they caught me.” I’ll be up all night weeping for him, I’m sure. Anyway, Rog sure does seem t’be sweatin’ these days.

And after a few days of joyfully refreshing the Arizona senate results every few hours, watching Kyrsten Sinema’s lead grow and grow, she was finally proclaimed the official winner of the Arizona Senate seat Jeff Flake has been trembling ineffectually in for the last few years. Oh, and there are still a few House races yet to be called, and we’re favored to flip a few more seats, so if you’re tired of winning, TOUGH SHIT, THERE’S STILL MORE WINNING TO COME.

Alright. This has been Cap’s Soapbox. I can’t think of any better way to sign off than by saying…

EXCELSIOR!

*FOR INVOKING LYNCHING IN MISSISSIPPI