If there’s a limit to my personal capacity to process madness, I’m gonna hit it this week, friends. After St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago and three hours of the Bermuda Triangle on Acid known as Amazon customer service, I’m feeling about as mentally sound as a Lovecraft narrator. Forgive me if I drool on you at some point in the course this blog, is all I’m saying.

In the aftermath of last week’s horrific mass shooting, the government of New Zealand got straight to work enacting gun control legislation WHICH IS WHAT ANY EVEN MARGINALLY SANE SOCIETY WOULD DO IN THIS SITUATION. Isn’t it fun living in a country where an act of such basic, simple, common sense seems radical? “Oh, dozens of people were murdered by a psychopath, so you took steps to prevent anything like that from ever happening again? How BIZARRE!” If anybody needs me, I’ll be in the corner, weeping.

I know we’re all constantly fending off 20-foot high waves of news sewage these days, but I confess I’m shocked the Maddow story on Scott Lloyd of the Office of Refugee Resettlement didn’t land harder. You’ll remember Lloyd as the scumfuck religious fanatic who believed God wanted him to torture refugee children by forcing them to have their rapists’ babies. This creep actually kept spreadsheets tracking the underage refugee girls’ menstrual cycles, I guess to make sure he had all the data he needed to make their reproductive choices for them. Spreadsheets. Y’know, like all totally normal humans do.

Like a third-rate pop star trying to gin up public interest in a crappy new live album, Shart Garfunkel renewed his social media feud with…hang on, this can’t be right…with John McCain? But he’s been dead for months. I suppose I could attempt to decipher the doddering old nitwit’s rage-filled tweets, but honestly, we’re talking about the deranged rantings of rapidly-declining madman, screaming at ghosts while painting the walls with his own poo…who gives a fuck?

Meanwhile Senator McCain, from whatever afterworld there may be, simply grinned and offered his old foe one last spectral thumbs down.

Other thoughts that drifted across the Candycorn Skidmark’s experimental-hair-tonic-addled mind before he lost control of his wee little thumbs and couldn’t tweet anymore included a Distressingly Dictatorial But Hey I Guess We’re Used to it by Now So No Biggie rant threatening Saturday Night Live, and a big, sloppy, tantrum that his beloved Judge Jeanine had been suspended for (checks notes) using her platform to belch up hate speech worthy of a Klan rally.

It’s nearly Shakespearean, by way of Curious George; a man who holds the power to annihilate entire cities, pacing the room in a fury because he can’t make the lady on the magical teevee box come back. Lord. If they ever cancel his favorite Saturday morning Ninja Turtle cartoon, he’ll probably order the marines to invade New York City’s sewers to get them.

The Republican Party, perhaps having grown weary of the tedium of stoking hatred of the same boring ol’ minority groups day in, day out, dipped wayyyy back into their catalogue to pull out one of the real classics of American bigotry; anti-Irish stereotypes! Yes, the official GOP Twitter account figured St. Patrick’s was the perfect occasion to photoshop a little green hat with a shamrock onto Beto’s old DUI headshot, cuz HAW HAW HAW THE IRISH ARE ALL DRUNKS HAW HAW HAW.

Again, folks, this was the OFFICIAL GOP account. The voice of the whole dang party. There’s no policy anymore, just petty nastiness. As it happens, I’ve obtained an early draft of their 2020 platform: “Take away our health care, give all our money to the rich, send our jobs overseas or give ‘em to robots, we don’t give a fuck, just protect our god-given right to bray like jackasses.” That’s it. That’s the whole fuckin’ thing.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s check in with the Missouri State Rep who proposed a bill mandating AR-15 ownership! This chump, now that the massacre in New Zealand has left him looking like a background actor in Shock Corridor, insists his bill wasn’t a real bill, he was jus’ trying to OWN THE LIBS! This is a fucking LAWMAKER. Campers, your job is not trolling, it’s legislating. Does your party have any purpose anymore beyond irritating folks on the other team?

While the rest of us are fighting to take our country back from a hateful walking shitpile who inspires white supremacist terrorists, Chuck Todd is busy rending his garments while wailing into the thin night air his lament that Barack Obama, for all his so-called gifts, failed to unify this great nation! How? Howe’er did he fail to bring his coalition into perfect harmony with the segment of the electorate that was ravenously waiting for George Wallace But Dumber to come along? I tell you what, if bothsidesism turns out to be fatal, Chuck Todd doesn’t have long.

The Failing New York Times published a horrifying report detailing the Saudi crackdown on dissidents under Kushner pal/puppet-master MBS. That murderous thug is lookin’ to get as much killin’ and torturin’ in as he can while America’s moral authority is for sale (and so cheaply), before Dad comes back home to make him knock it off with all the journalist-dismembering. Don’t forget the Crown Prince is very likely conducting this reign of terror utilizing high-level American intelligence, sold by desperate, cash-poor, how-the-living-fuck-did-he-get-his-security-clearance Jar-Jar himself.

The Big Dumb Trade War is going as well as you’d expect; tens of billions in added costs for American consumers, plus an estimated trillion-dollar sledgehammer to the GDP’s nuts over the course of a decade. And still the Very Stable Geenyuss thinks that if he just shouts loudly enough, he can magically erase the job losses at GM that everyone alive warned him would come if he insisted on meddling with forces he doesn’t understand.*

Steve King really seems to be having trouble filling his spare time since he got his racist ass booted from his committee assignments. He could’ve used the opportunity to catch up on his reading (though I imagine he knows Mein Kampf backwards and forwards by now) or maybe start a (whites only) model train display, but I guess he just sits in his office, looking whimsically out the window, fantasizing about civil war.

Turns out Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy got raided by the feds last summer, which is for the best, because he probably would’ve gotten super jealous that all the other RNC finance bigwigs were in massive legal trouble, but nobody was interested in his crimes. “What, am I less important than Michael Frickin’ Cohen? I’m an influence-peddling, money-laundering scumbag too, y’know!”

Hey, remember that story about how Alex Acosta used his power as U.S. Attorney to shield Jeffrey Epstein from punishment for his crimes? Which were, for those of you who may have lost track of all the crimes in the news these days, TRAFFICKING CHILDREN FOR SEX? Well, it turns out Acosta’s office let Epstein’s legal team cherry-pick from among his 40 accusers a slightly older child, thus significantly reducing his requirements to report as a sex offender. That’s right, the guy who operated a child sex ring doesn’t even have to report as a sex offender in New Mexico, where he owns a great big fucking ranch. Pretty sweet deal you n’ Alex worked out, Jeff!

The good news is, Acosta has been punished for his shameful actions, having been chased permanently from the halls of power, and indeed from all polite society. Excuse me, that doesn’t appear to be quite accurate, I’m now being told he’s the current serving Secretary of Labor.

Truly, the GOP is the party of family values.

Oh hey, speaking of sex traffickers who travel in and influence the highest circles of Republican politics, Democratic congressional leaders are calling for an investigation into that whole “Florida massage parlor owner/sex slaver with connections to the Chinese government selling access to the President” thing, before we forget it about because Hairplug Himmler tweets that Daffy Duck should burned alive at the stake, or some shit. That’s good, but are we certain there are even any available FBI agents left at this point?

We finally figured out why Ben Carson doesn’t generate as many What is He Fucking Up/How Much Did He Steal headlines as some of his griftier peers in the Cabinet; he just doesn’t show up very much! He rarely meets with staff, and enjoys shortening the work week whenever possible, because lecturing the working poor on their laziness is just plain exhausting.**

Devin “Pigfucker” Nunes, no longer useful to his Turd Emperor since losing his House Intelligence Committee gavel in the Blue Wave of ’18, and desperate for attention, is suing Twitter, citing the ludicrous conspiracy theory of “shadow-banning.” He’s also seeking damages because there are all kind of hilarious parody accounts that poke fun at his infinitely-mockable ass. Me, I think Devin’s just upset that tales of his treasonous stoogery have made the rounds at Ma Shelton’s pork farm, and none of the patriotic piggies will give him the time of day anymore, so he’s backed up seven ways from Sunday, if you take my meaning. 

Gags aside, this is a United States Congressman trying to punish private citizens for making fun of him. It’s kinda scary, but…I can’t help but laugh at the dude’s paper-thin skin. Call it “Dipshit Wuss Authoritarianism.” Good ol’ Devin. Coming through right when we all really needed a fucking laugh.

Look, folks, if any other news breaks tonight, you’re on your own. I’ve blocked out the next 53 hours of my life to just giggle about the Pigfucker till I pass out.

* ”forces he doesn’t understand” here refers to “the economy,” but in other circumstances could mean “NATO,” “human empathy,” or “umbrellas.”

**This marks Dr. Ben’s first appearance in this blog that does not end in a joke about storing grain. OR DOES IT?