If you’re just tuning in, and O how I envy your blissful ignorance if you are, a substantial chunk of the American electorate has gone quite insane, and seems determined to stay that way. They simply will not be enticed from the madhouse, though it is filling with sewage and infested with angry badgers and also on fire. It’s the damndest thing.

From a certain angle, the United States is a public pool, one we must all share, and I just wish dudes like Kanye West and Elon Musk would stop peeing in it. Or maybe the trouble is the people who like the pee. People who, in fact, only come to the pool at all to get pissed on by fit-pitching celebrity dipshits. Republicans, in other words.

Kanye. Elon. Trump.

That’s what the House Judiciary Committee GOP tweeted out, and since no “name a more emotionally-stunted trio of asshats” follow-up ever arrived, one can only assume their intentions were complimentary. Neither Musk’s Dunning-Kruger diplomacy dress-up, nor Ye’s anti-Semitic freakout seem to have prompted anyone involved to reevaluate this proclamation of allegiance, and all I’m saying is Republicans are bad at choosing role models, and more people should say so.

Take Mike Flynn, for example, recruiting an “army of God” from amongst Christian nationalism‘s most pliable rubes. Or Roger Stone, who certainly sounds tougher salivating to “get right to the violence” than melting down into a puddle of softboi rage when his second pardon fails to materialize.

Or that one guy. Mouth like a butthole. Never quite figured out how pants work. Used to be President, I think. Poor role models, these men.

Somehow, Off-Brand Orbán’s rallies keep getting dumber and racister, which, now that I think of it, must be what happens to any room Tommy Tuberville enters, but still.

Certainly no semi-fascists in the crowd that went apeshit over election-denying Nevada Secretary of State candidate Jim Marchant’s proposal to predetermine the results of the 2024 presidential election. Or anywhere in a party ruled by Big Lies and bigger liars.

And you know you’re in a healthy democracy when you see stories about Marjorie Taylor Greene belching up the white nationalist “Great Replacement” theory at a Trump rally alongside ones about Marjorie Taylor Greene working her way back into Kevin McCarthy’s good graces.

Boy, lately we’ve been getting a nice, leisurely tour of K-Dog’s many deficiencies, haven’t we? Kevin McCarthy is so perfectly, cartoonishly unfit for the job he seeks, and may soon attain, that he feels like a lazy writer’s device, like the antagonist in some direct-to-video Shrek sequel.

Marjorie Taylor Greene should not be a difficult ethical test to pass. She is a raging anti-Semite and a habitual inciter of violence, and dumber than a bucket of mallets to boot. Seriously, Kev, this is one of the easy ones, they’re not even asking you to identify a drawing of a horsey or anything. You are not a strong enough man to steer a fucking dinghy during a storm of this magnitude. Stand the fuck down before anybody else gets hurt, you weaselly little nothing.

They’re already emitting piercing, giddy shrieks about government shutdowns, of course. Boy, that little ritual’ll be extra fun with vindictively regressive proto-fascists at the table, won’t it? Let’s let Lauren Boebert decide whether to raise the debt ceiling or not, that’ll turn out well.

An explosive new report from the crack team over at Sean Hannity’s fading I Hate All the Same People Tucker Carlson Does Remember Me? Show revealed that President Biden…oh, I hesitate to even say it…loves his son. I apologize for exposing the reader to such disturbing words and ideas, and I humbly beg your forgiveness.

Let us cleanse our minds of the preceding unpleasantness with a far more virtuous example of fatherhood: Herschel Walker. Rick Scott and Tom Cotton lent their Lugosian charms to his meth den trash fire Senate campaign, where they were treated to a folksy little fable about a bull who could probably teach us all a lot about life, if only Herschel Walker’s brain worked well enough to tell a story.

John Durham’s latest sad, sordid attempt to wring something resembling relevance out of his caffeine-free Shasta special counsel investigation arrived at the fighting-with-your-own-witness-and-losing stage almost immediately, which was pretty darn hilarious…and then it got worse.

Tulsi Gabbard emerged to beg for attention this week, and didn’t get much. Moving on.

The persecution of Alex Jones continued, and it’s getting so you can’t even build obscene levels of personal wealth by terrorizing survivors of incomprehensible tragedies in this country anymore. It probably struck you as fairly distressing that so many prominent Republicans leapt to such a monstrous taintmaggot’s defense, but you have to remember how essential the right to rile up their feral base with malicious lies has become to their project.

Ted Cruz once again proved that all the Ivy League education in the world doesn’t mean shit once you invite the MAGA brainworms in, uncritically sharing a hoax of the approximate sophistication of Not Actually Throwing the Ball to Confuse the Dog, and maybe automatically believing anything that allows you to hate your political opponents a little more isn’t the best information-filtering strategy for these complicated times. Especially if you’re, y’know…a Senator.

Well, the January 6th commission returned from hiatus with their latest episode of American Horror Story: Recent/Current History. Sure was somethin’, that time the shittiest of all possible game show hosts broke our peaceful transfer of power streak. I liked that streak. We should start a new one.

But yeah, turns out the Turd Reich began plotting Operation: Just Lie About Losing and Hope Nobody Complains months in advance, in case anyone was wondering how the President of the United States spent his time and energy while COVID-19 tore through the world. As always, the strategy relied heavily on loudly demanding the enforcement of imaginary laws, and hey, that’s good enough for Aileen Cannon.

Seems those Secret Service communications the committee got hold of had some tales to tell, huh?  Woooooooooo. Somebody oughta look under the hood over there, I’m not sure that organization is operating at maximum efficiency. Sure does chill one to the fucking core, seeing the many, many, (MANY) extremely specific warnings they chose to ignore.

It turns out when you take people who openly fantasize about political violence and feed them a steady diet of bullshit justifications for political violence, what comes out at the end is terrorism, who’d’ve guessed?

Anyway, the committee issued the Dotard a subpoena he’ll blow a few million donor dollars more defying, so now America can get back to waiting for November 8th to see if any of this, or indeed anything at all still matters, which is not as fun as it sounds. Doesn’t really sound fun, I suppose.

Low candidate quality is a knife that cuts both ways when you’re running against a cult that worships mediocrity. You’d think that after a dignity-annihilating performance like the one he gave against Tim Ryan in Ohio, JD Vance would exile himself to some far-flung island, to spend the rest of his days hiding in shame and composing hillbilly porn, but MAGA voters want a groveling sycophant for a Senator, not to make laws or fix problems, but to battle Lindsey Graham for space at the foot of the bed at Mar-a-Lago.

They want Ron Johnson, not in spite of his petty mean-spiritedness but because of it. Not in spite of his pudding-brained susceptibility to conspiracy theories, but because of it. Not in spite of his mold-ridden mind or cancer-chewed soul but…well, you get the picture.

We’ve joked before about whether the pollsters’re appropriately weighting for the sheer number of Republican voters who will be incarcerated for crimes committed in their turd messiah’s name, but between the insurrectionist militia twits and the Antifa Arsoned Me hoaxsters and the Let’s Swing By the School Board Meeting to Lob Death Threats at Trans Kids crowd, it may be worth actually investigating.

Then of course there’s the question of how many of MAGA’s most fervent have dewormed their way to livestock heaven. God love ‘em, they’re still at it, too. That Ladapo quack they installed as Surgeon General of DeSantistan actually used some random, non-peer-reviewed “study” as justification to issue official guidance against vaccination, because that’s just the sort of thing you do when you measure success in mobile morgues.

Um, hope nobody got too attached to Liz Truss. Zounds.

Looks like somebody gave Vlad Putin the most appropriate birthday gift possible, a firm-but-gentle reminder that he has no business going around starting wars or annexing things, but was he grateful? Nooooooooooooooo.

In the latest of a series of acts of strategic petulance destined to be mocked for the remainder of human history, Pootie Tang dipped deep into his dwindling missile stash to put on a little murder show to briefly distract Russia’s bloodthirsty wingnut media from all the defeat n’ humiliation n’ whatnot, with the entirely predictable consequence of earning Zelensky another shopping spree through the ol’ NATO armory. Oh, and Ukraine intercepted more than half your barrage with their old shit, so I hope y’all enjoyed your war crimes, your opponents are more determined and better armed than ever.

Anyway, I’m confident I’ve proven my “bad at picking role models” thesis, so I’m going to proceed to the drinking portion of the evening now. You stay safe, my friends, it’s gettin’ pretty weird out there.

PS – I wasn’t really able to follow the Warnock/Walker debate tonight, but I am pleased to report my sky-high expectations were met and exceeded. Holy crap.