There’s very little in life I enjoy more than a cool, refreshing Blue Wave. The soothing spearmint flavor of flipping governorships, ending red state supermajorities, and winning statewide races for the first time in decades freshens breath and rejuvenates the beleaguered American experiment. Ahhhhhhh!

(That’s a relaxed-and-reinvigorated ahhhhhhh, rather than a guttural spasm of primal terror, for the first time in, oh, say, a year?)

I guess Project 2025 doesn’t cover what happens when you don’t quite get around to ending democracy before the electorate has a chance to weigh in on your multitudinous failures. Good thing no one frantically implemented a mid-decade gerrymander that relies on a coalition that’s already demonstrably fractured, amirite?

…wait.   

Seems like an ideal time for an intraparty slap fight over precisely which minority groups are to be ground beneath the state’s iron boot, and how hard. Sure, Nick Fuentes and his groyper brigade are functionally Nazis, but now that we’ve seen the electoral consequences of repurposing federal law enforcement as Stephen Miller’s personal Make-A-Wish Foundation, can you afford to kick them out of the suddenly spacious tent?

Golly, I’d sure hate to see the fissure in the Heritage Foundation over this issue continue to grow…BEFORE I GET BACK FROM THE CONCESSION STAND WITH A BIG OL’ BUCKET OF POPCORN!

It should be one of those novelty popcorn buckets like they do for the movies, incidentally. You have to reach into Tucker Carlson’s gaping, plastic maw, that kind of thing.

Anyway, NOW WHO’S IN DISARRAY, YOU FASCIST FUCKS?

Aw, I wouldn’t worry; you can always run on your economic record. Sure, October layoffs just hit a 22-year high, but you should be okay so long as nobody celebrates cutting off tens of millions of struggling Americans’ SNAP benefits by throwing themselves a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party.

Your president doesn’t wanna hear about “the affordability,” America; he’s got a ballroom to build. Having apparently run out of indoor surfaces to desecrate, his pathological gilding has spread to the exterior of the White House. The Oval Office is now helpfully labeled, not that anyone’s been confusing it for a malfunctioning septic tank or anything, where did you hear that?

Still, I imagine he’ll be hearing quite a bit more about “the affordability” since the tariffs keep sending the prices through the roof. And despite his extensive cognitive accolades, he can’t seem to figure out why the lying isn’t working this time.

PRICES ARE DOWN, ACTUALLY, he bleats, pleased with his cleverness. But of course the grocery store charges what it charges. Though I can definitely picture, say, Catturd pitching a fit, demanding to pay $2 for gas until they drag him away.

(Incidentally, please do not lose consciousness during the price bleating, lest your medical emergency intrude upon his precious spotlight.)

So the “Peace President” has his pet Pentagon preparing for war with not just Venezuela but Nigeria as well, because I guess they’re insufficiently appreciative of Two Corinthians over there. Tommy Tuberville seems excited at this prospect, which I suppose is fine…just don’t let him coach the offense. (ZING!)

Hope all this warmongering doesn’t jeopardize his shot at the prestigious FIFA Peace Prize, a very real and coveted honor that definitely wasn’t created solely to feed a single prominent narcissist’s ego. I’m sure the judges will be particularly impressed at his commitment to starving his own constituents.

Yeah, somehow the ol’ approval rating’s fallen even lower than that time he tried to violently overturn that one election he lost, confounding the conventional wisdom that Americans will tolerate more or less anything so long as you give ‘em a shiny new playroom where oligarchs can bribe a rapist.

I suppose the masked, unaccountable paramilitary police force might have something to do with it. I’ve never actually spoken to a political pollster, but were one to seek my opinion of the thugs who refuse to stop tear-gassing little kids in my city, I’d be tempted to strongly disapprove.

As a Chicagoan, I’m living for the day Greggie Bovino’s impunity runs out. Can’t wait to see the little weasel up on the witness stand (we’ll get him a booster seat, of course), stripped of his toys and therefore his swagger, as he’s held accountable for every giddy lie, every broken family, every terrorized child.

Seems a $787.5 million defamation payout wasn’t enough to get the folks over at Fox News to invest in a fact-checking department, though in their defense, if you left a shitty AI TikTok of a Black woman screaming about her “7 different baby daddies” under one of those cartoon traps with a box held up by a stick on a string, you’d catch the entire Murdoch family.

Speaking of Republicans erupting in frenzied hatred over something they misinterpreted on the internet, some high school math teachers in Arizona got deluged with death threats because why would anyone wear a bloody t-shirt on Halloween if not to mock Charlie Kirk’s assassination?

I think everybody who’s mad at Kash Patel for burning through massive stacks of taxpayer money to fly the FBI jet to Nashville to hang out with his country singer ladyfriend will eat crow once they hear the record. I actually got to hear a demo of the lead single, “I Can’t Catch No Assassins Unless Their Daddy Turns Them In.”  Reasonably catchy ditty.

Furious that the public learned of his corruption, Kash fired the 27-year FBI veteran overseeing the agency’s pilots, which made him feel like a big, big man, no doubt. I’m sure the replacement will be just as good, or at the very least more willing to accept their salary in kickass challenge coins.

I’m choosing not to dwell on the hypocrisy of 60 Minutes editing a presidential tantrum out of their interview with a certain decomposing septuagenarian, because I think the larger issue was the inability to harvest half an hour’s worth of mental acuity from the available footage.

“Oh, you have no idea who the guy you pardoned is? Even though he’s literally in business with your family to the tune of $2 billion? Cool. Follow-up question: would you say this is a drawing of an elephant or a horsey?”

The vindictive prosecution of James Comey is going so well the insurance lawyer is trying to hide grand jury materials from the defense, but the Reich’s legal incompetence is no laughing matter.

For tonight, a sandwich lobber roams free. How, I ask you, HOW is a brownshirt supposed to drag a teacher from a day care center not knowing from which direction the next hoagie may be flung? My God, what if the bread’s a little stale next time?

Seems like only yesterday Laura Loomer was just another attention-seeking bigot, disrupting Shakespeare in the Park and handcuffing herself to shit, but look at her now: a fully credentialed member of the new Pentagon Press Corps. And if anybody’s looking for a framing device for their Decline and Fall of the United States screenplay, you can have that one for free.

I see the doughy nerd that turned Twitter into a white nationalist playground gets a trillion dollars for tanking an electric car brand, lending further credence to that “life may not be fair” theory I’ve been working on.

Nancy Mace’s mental health journey seems likely to linger on this airport thing until, oh, the heat death of the known universe, give or take. And once upon a time, I thought I lived in a country where an ongoing public breakdown would doom a politician’s quest for higher office, but I know better now.

Anyway.

Something about trouncing fascists at the ballot box fills me with warm, gooey feelings about America. And if you feel the same way, HAVE I GOT A COMIC BOOK FOR YOU!

It’s been said the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants…but who decides which is which?

GENERAL WASHINGTON AND THE LIBERTY TREE imagines a Captain America-like mantle falling under the control of the Trump administration, and explores what it means to fight for truth, justice, and the American way in a country that can’t stop fighting about what those things mean.

I wrote this book with readers of this blog in mind, and I do think you’ll dig it. Plus, OH MAN, the middle weeks of a Kickstarter campaign are…humbling. It’s been, um, quiet the last few days, so if you want your pledge to have MAXIMUM IMPACT on Cap’s battered self-esteem, pledge NOW.

Plus, if you missed my earlier comics, you can get ‘em here! And of course the beer fund (accepting, as ever, Cash App, PayPal, and Venmo) remains open. Okay, that’s all I got, friends. Stay safe out there!