Lotta fun little stories this week about cocaine hippo personhood and zebra honeypots and such, and I bet having a funny animal news blog would be goddamn delightful. Alas, I’ve made…different choices. Well, let’s wade into this shit, shit ain’t gonna wade into itself…we’ve added little windshield wipers to the visors on your hazmat suits, should help.

Just to drop you right in the deep end of the pool, looks like Ron Watkins, the skeevy little shit who put the Q in QAnon, is running for Congress, to join the Gosars and the Taylor Greenes in all their fashy reindeer games. Creatures like Watkins really should be frightened of the bright light of day, and they no longer are, have you noticed that?

Watkins would surely be greeted with open arms by the burgeoning Kooky Kakistocrat Kaucus. Anyway, Kevin McCarthy escalated his campaign of vengeance against the apostate Liz Cheney, threatening the GOP consultant class with excommunication-by-association should they refuse to participate in her ritual shunning. Cheney’s sin, for those who’ve forgotten, is her belief that democracy is preferable to eternal servitude to a family of perverts and grifters.

Meanwhile, still yet to receive so much as a “naughty boy” from ol’ Keville Chamberlain is Matthew Louis Gaetz II, who faces a federal investigation that keeps on attractin’ new prosecutors, including an expert in child exploitation crimes. I would urge the American public to accept the Minority Leader’s demonstration of his party’s ethical priorities at face value.

Gaetz’s long-term career plans rely almost exclusively on securing a pardon from a future regime of lawless thugs immoral enough to accept a known pedophile into their inner circle; to that end, he uses his platform as a United States Congressman to normalize the thugs’ fascist ideals, seeking their attention and approval, which is, WOW, really unhelpful right now, but in the creepy little bastard’s defense…I mean, yeah, that’s looking like his best shot.

Well, the federal vaccine mandates are finally kicking in, as part of the Biden Administration’s Operation: Keep the Cultists Away From the Kool-Aid. Outside of a few feeble resignation pageants, and a particularly grating rendition of “On My Own” from Dan Bongino, tantrums have been kept to a minimum, even as our police departments benefit from the sort of addition-by-subtraction workforce realignment that’d normally cost billions in consulting fees.

More importantly, vaccination numbers are up and infection rates are down, so maybe it’s finally possible to save enough of the brainwashed from themselves to inch our way back to sweet, sweet normalcy. We’ll appreciate you more this time, normalcy. We will buy you exotic cheeses and chocolates and rub your weary limbs each night, normalcy; just never leave us again.

Of course there are still holdouts, vowing unyielding resistance to the forces of sanity and life. Yet another talk radio jag rode the HydroxyHorsepaste Express to Covidsville, which was really his super-secret geenyus plan all along, wink wink, and like, if, after 734,000 deaths, you still trust these fanatic howler monkeys more than doctors and scientists, at a certain point, I stop wondering why you keep hitting yourself in the face with a brick; I just get tired of prying it out of your hands.

Down in Texas, that laboratory of American apartheid, white supremacy is getting institutionalized with frankly impressive speed and efficiency from a political party that cannot seem to accomplish literally anything else. You’d think ramming through a racial gerrymander obscene enough to make John Roberts blush would be enough, but no, Governor Greg Abbott decided to put a lawyer who WORKED ON AN ATTEMPTED OVERTHROW OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT in charge of his state’s elections, which isn’t the sort of behavior one engages in when one sees oneself in a long-term relationship with democracy.

The Republican rank-and-file seems all too willing to accommodate Abbott’s authoritarian ambition, growing more comfortable with violence and threats of violence all the time. Mask mandates got your bee-filled skull all a-tizzy? No need to coexist peacefully in a shared society, just RAISE A MILITIA! Uppity state Democratic Party Chairman blaspheming against the Turd Emperor on the op-ed page? Time to fire off your best LYNCHING THREAT!

Oh, and the violent insurrectionist block in the D.C. penitentiary has a fan club now, sleep tight. Ashli Babbitt, Kyle Rittenhouse…I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that it’s so frequently violent criminals this movement chooses to canonize. Such a wacky death cult.

Nebraska Republican Congresscrook Jeff Fortenberry resigned from his committee assignments following federal indictments for campaign finance law violations and lying to the FBI, which is almost charming, really; in a party increasingly devoted to justifying mob violence, such old-fashioned corruption practically makes you a Cub Scout.

Well, Oleg Deripaska’s D.C. home got raided by the feds, and Lev Parnas got convicted, and dagnabbit, I know my Sleazy Slav scorecard is here someplace, but it’s buried beneath beer cans and articles about Madison Cawthorn smuggling knives into schools. Fuck it, I’ll find it later.

Condoleezza Rice is SO bored with democracy, you guys, and insists we all “move on” from the whole “seditious acts of terrorist violence” thing, and honestly, I totally agree, it’s just that your side has to go first, Condi. Not out of politics or pettiness, but because y’all are the ones being violent. Don’t say “move on” when you mean “unilaterally disarm,” okay?

Incidentally, Secretary Rice, I actually think we should keep picking through the wreckage of the Turd Reich, on account o’ the whole unpunished coup/dress rehearsal thing, yes, but also because gems like “Stephen Miller tried to deploy half the U.S. Army to the southern border” keep turning up. When your party stands for Shitty White Guy Supremacy at Any Cost and very little else, people are gonna talk about it, we’re just gossipy, I guess.

It was like getting hit in the throat by a t-shirt cannon filled with sports clichés when the Boy Who Failed At Everything From Casinos to Being President finally, after seven decades of punching himself in the dick, earned massive, late-in-life success JUST KIDDING Freddy Fuckup’s latest endeavor, a wingnut social media platform with crazy dreams of someday arm-wrestling Zuck himself, endured a public rollout so perfectly, gobsmackingly humiliating, I have to assume it was an op staged by a vengeful deep state. The fall from “we’re gonna drive CNN out of business” to “an account on the former President’s platform purporting to be the former President himself posted a photograph of a pig shitting on its own testicles” turns out to be a short, sharp shock.

As expected, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ voting rights bill, believing as they do that there’s far too much of this silly “voting” stuff going on already, particularly amongst the insufficiently alabaster.

If we’re honest, on a day-to-day level, the Republican Party serves no function whatsoever beyond pouring used kitty litter into the gears of justice. Run out the clock till the shitbags get away with everything, including the future, that’s the plan. Little “Ron Johnson holds up a U.S. Attorney nomination” here, little “Donnie Dotard’s strip mall legal team sues to block release of Shart House docs” there, the hourglass starts fillin’ up.

So yeah, watching the Bannon in Cuffs Please Oh Please marble work its way slowly through the Rube Goldberg federal Justice bureaucracy has been…a touch on the frustrating side. Still, the January 6th commission means business, they’re doing their job; your ball, Mr. Garland. (Understanding there was some clown-jousting that required your attention first, of course.)

Anyway, I’ll let you get back to screaming in horror at every step of the sausage-making process, though I’d recommend setting the Manchin/Sinema voodoo dolls down for now, and joining me in a beer and a comic book out back while the weather still permits.

Speaking of smooth transitions into comic book promotion, YES, the Kickstarter for the next comic, ODD YARNS, indeed draws ever nearer! Launching November 9th, in fact. I know I’ve been asking for your support a lot this year, but this one’ll be the last one for a bit, and besides, I think it’s cool as heck. One way or another, stay safe out there, chums.