Atticus Finch and Larry Flynt vs the White Supremacist “Values Voters”

Shit’s been so fucked up for so long, I totally assume that every time I check in on shit, I will find that shit to be fucked up. Day after day, insane story after insane story…I wouldn’t say I’m desensitized, but I will say that I fully expect every trip through the news cycle to be basically an outtake from Lewis Carroll’s bedside dream journal.

Still, even I find myself stunned by the sheer malice emanating from the White House these last few days. Its like “Wow, our government sure is working hard to…well, to HURT us. That’s…different.” I’m no great historian, but I’m pretty sure shit’s not supposed to be like this.

The big news of course is the President of the United States of America deciding to fuck over a whole bunch of his constituents, and the whole dang American economy, in a spite-fueled tantrum, because…excuse me, sometimes the absurdity can be overwhelming, but…because we are governed by a man with no empathy whatsoever who thinks absolutely nothing of lashing out and hurting millions of human beings when he doesn’t like the way he’s covered on television.

In a fun bit dumbfuck jujitsu, this act of ACA sabotage will both raise middle-class premiums AND add billions to the national debt. Oh, and the cuts will disproportionally hit residents of states that voted for Trump, so let me take a moment to congratulate the Rube Army for facilitating their own future medical bankruptcies. Nice work!

Speaking of Rube Legion, Don the Con’s spent over a million dollars of the money you’ve donated to his campaign on…HIS SHITTY FAMILY’S LAWYERS FOR THE RUSSIA PROBE! Congrats on being the easiest marks in the history of the planet, you stupid, stupid, fucks.

(Oh, and since the campaign got subpoenaed to turn over all records pertaining to the women who accused the Pussygrabber of sexual assault, you rubes can look forward to paying for THOSE lawyers, too.)

Also, the President gave a speech to a hate group, that was a thing that happened in real life.

He babbled for a bit about how he finally released all the prisoners Obama sent to the gulag for saying “Merry Christmas,” to thunderous applause, for the War on Holiday Greetings is surely the greatest issue facing our nation in the 21st century.

Yup yup, all these alleged “Christians” even rolled out the red carpet for noted (excuse me, I mean “bloated”) white nationalist Steve Bannon and America’s doughiest Nazi, Seb Gorka.

“Dr.” Gorka whipped the pious attendees into a frenzy at the thought of “how much more damage we can do them as private citizens” (them being us dastardly libtards) since getting fired from their Shart House posts, because if there’s one thing Jesus was totally all about, it was harming your neighbor. That’s a Commandment now. Bannon’s writing a new Bible. With Milo. In stores this Xmas season.

And Darth Wino gave the crowd, whose patriotism is exactly as real as their Christianity, permission to extend the phony shield of “insulting the troops” to not just NFL kneelers, but Senators who have such sinful, troops-hating natures as to disparage the President! Isn’t that a neat trick? By next Thursday, all critical speech will be labeled Anti-The-Troops, giving the shrieking legions of Cult45 something else to pretend to be angry about on social media.  Wheeeee.

I think I’m gonna adopt this tactic myself, actually. Anytime anybody disagrees with me about anything, I’m going to indignantly insist it’s an assault on our troops. “Oh, you prefer 7Up to Sprite? WHY DO YOU HATE THE MEN AND WOMEN IN UNIFORM WHO FIGHT AND DIE TO PROTECT THE SUPERIOR LIMON FLAVORED SOFT DRINK?!?”

Anyway, getting back to Klan rally. Todd Starnes accused the left of wanting to “criminalize masculinity.” Yes, well…at least when that day comes, you need not fear, Todd-o.

Hey look, the director of the National Background Investigations Bureau says that Jared Kushner‘s dishonesty on his security clearance forms is totally unprecedented! Congrats, Jar-Jar, you’re finally the best at something!

So, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has a flag. He had his own personal flag made, which flies over Interior’s HQ when he’s in the building. This is a totally normal thing for Cabinet secretaries to do* and is not at all Cowboy Z laying the groundwork to become Immortan of Zinkestan once President Manbaby gets Stephen Miller to undo the childproof locks General Kelly installed on the nuclear football.

The Shartcannon also announced that he won’t re-certify the Iran nuclear deal, going so far as to flat-out fucking lie about Iran’s compliance, because the reputation of the United States, and the need for the rest of the world to trust that we’ll live up to the terms of the arrangements we negotiate and ratify, is less important to the American President that stickin’ it to that black guy who made the nation laugh at him one night.

Experts say dishonestly walking away from the Iran deal makes negotiations with North Korea over their nuclear program all but impossible, but maybe you didn’t hear me: A BLACK GUY LAUGHED AT HIM.

Hey, Reince Priebus had his interview with Team Mueller on Friday! I hope Rugged Robert had the foresight to stock the room with Kleenex…there had to be a lot of crying, y’know? Like, John-Turturro-in-MILLER’S CROSSING-level shit.

And we learned from Reuters that the administration has been cutting funding to halfway houses, without anybody really noticing between the government-inflicted humanitarian crises and the provoking of nuclear regimes and whatnot. Let it never be said that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III isn’t doing all he can to keep a fresh new generation of young black men trapped in the prison/industrial complex. No Facebooking at the office for Ol’ Beau, he is a man deeply in love his work.

Which is institutional white supremacy.

I see President/Secretary in Charge of Balloons and Napkin Origami/Treasurer of the Congressional Putin Fan Club Dana Rohrabacher brought a Holocaust-denying right wing troll to a meeting with Rand Paul. Did I mentioned that Mike Pence, he of the taxpayer-funded-phony-NFL-walkout stunt, did a fundraiser for Rohrabacher a few days back? The GOP’s just one big happy hateful family, like Tennessee Williams filtered through Eli Roth.

Some Republican state congressjag in Indiana has a proposal to require licensing for journalists, because while trickle-down economics never works, trickle-down fascism is REAL. (It’s actually a stunt because Jag is angry that there’s even a little gun control, I guess because he thinks domestic abusers should be able to carry firearms on school busses. Meet your 21st century Republican Party.)

We learned that Paul Manafort has “ties” to Kremlin-connected Russia oligarch Oleg Deripaska, surprise surprise. What kind of ties? Sources tell me one night last July while Manafort was running Shart’s campaign, he and Deripaska stayed up all night beating the original Contra on NES and furthermore, they called Putin when they couldn’t remember the Konami code.

Just kidding. The ties are millions of dollars in “loans” passed through a labyrinth of shell companies. I’m sure Manafort remembers the Konami code, and I don’t mean to slander him by implying otherwise.

Paulie’s spokesman (do they still have that Dirty Jobs show? Jeeeeezus) carefully insists he never colluded with the Russian GOVERNMENT, hoping all the laundering provides a veneer of plausible deniability.

(I bet all the kids in Manafort’s neighborhood are wearing Bob Mueller masks this Halloween, and it’ll scare him so much he’ll stop answering the door by 6:15.)

One of KKKris KKKobach’s toadies on his voter disenfranchisement Kommission got arrested on child pornography charges, because this team wants to make sure it checks off every possible box on the Evil Bingo card.

Puerto Rico continues suffering, but don’t worry, FEMA’s sending out little baggies of Skittles and Vienna Sausages! Or least, that’s what they’re doing when they’re not enlisting the local survivors to give them a sweet discount on a “Spa Day” in the middle of a disaster zone when they’re supposed to be helping people.

Also, Shartboy met with the President of the Virgin Islands, which I guess means he’s finally sunk so deeply into madness that he’s pacing around his office yelling at fake Time Magazine covers of himself. I’m sure that meeting brought great comfort to the Puerto Ricans drinking chemically contaminated water from Superfund sites.

Chad withdrew its troops from the fight against Boko Haram in Niger, after being included in Team Shart’s shitty racist travel ban. It’s kinda weird, isn’t it? That when you work so hard to alienate your allies that they wind up getting all…alienated n’ shit.

Anyway, for those keeping score at home, the travel ban, which is supposed to keep us safe from terrorism, just caused an ally to abandon the fight against…a terrorist organization. GOOD JOB, GOVERNMENT!

Larry Flynt has offered up a 10 million dollar bounty for info that can be used to get the Factory Reject Muppet impeached. Shit, maybe Mike Flynn’ll take him up on it to get out from under what must be a metric shit-ton of legal bills.

And the Man With Phalangeal Stunting took to the SpectroMatic Twitter Machine to brag about how proud he was that his ACA sabotage caused health care stocks to tank. Remember when the President of the United States didn’t actively attack the American economy? Or take victory laps when the attacks were successful? It’s weird the shit you didn’t even realize you NEEDED to take for granted, before 2017. What next? Will Mnuchin dispatch treasury officials to stand outside closing Toys R Us stores to just point and laugh?

And a Mississippi school district pulled TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD from its curriculum, which is about par for the course these days. I’m sure it’ll give more time for the unit on the literary oeuvre of Ann Coulter to really breathe in young students’ minds. Or maybe they’ll just institute the two minutes hate.

Speaking of petty racism, there’s a horrifying little piece in the New Yorker about how Sniveling Grievance Avatar Stephen Miller basically single-handedly manipulated the levers of executive branch power to lower the number of refugees the U.S. will accept.

Miller remains one of the greatest sub-tragedies of this whole never-ending shitshow. I guess a few thousand human beings have to suffer and die because one scrawny loser started balding three days into puberty, and chose far-right politics rather than therapy. Fuck these awful, awful people.

And yeah, while the people of Puerto Rico drank poison, and California burned, Littlefinger went golfing. Again. With his new BFF, Lindsey. Senator Graham is no doubt the latest in a series of fools to imagine they’re getting through to this dope, just because he’s nodding and agreeing with everything they tell him. Lindsey, my dude, he has a gaping vacuum where most of us have a soul; he’ll do absolutely anything to attain your approval (or submission), then forget every single word you said ten minutes into Hannity.

Anyhow, a group of mental health professionals marched in New York to call for the President’s removal. Man, how fucked up do you have to be an entire protest full of just psychologists telling the word what a dangerous lunatic you are? Did even Nixon get a “Holy Fucking Shit This Man is Nuts” march?

And now Rex Tillerson goes on the Sunday Shoz to drop the horrifyingly Orwellian line “Diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.” In the same interview, Tilly insisted he wasn’t castrated, and also discussed how America must not allow a mineshaft gap.

With that little snippet of raw, unfiltered insanity, I leave you, my friends. Allow me an evening’s respite, disappearing into welcome-if-temporary comfort of craft beer and playoff baseball. I’ll get catapulted, against my will and screaming, back into the real world soon enough.

*Nope