They laughed at Warren G. Harding, but he was light years ahead of his time with that return to normalcy shit. Returning to normalcy is pretty fucking great, in my opinion. The more normalcy I return to, the more I like it. Lately, I find I have even less tolerance for the fuckery we document here in this blog, it’s like…quit messing up my return to normalcy, you asswipes.

Boy, Republicans do not have the first fucking idea what to do about all this corporate pushback against their fascist assault on voting rights, do they? The only thing they know how to do anymore is lash out in anger, but you don’t get a key to a GOP cloakroom without conditioning yourself to instantaneously submit to the slightest shifting whim of the Hand That Feeds You, so all this is real confusing for the poor little tykes, y’know?

Seriously, it’s about time for somebody to call Elaine Chao to come get her husband; you know Mitch, if he can’t get what he wants by abusing arcane parliamentary procedure, he gets all flustered n’ fussy; he’s one self-aggrandizing Rand Paul filibuster away from wandering onto the Senate floor in a poorly-tied bathrobe, mumbling to himself about the fifteen bucks Daniel Moynihan still owes him. Pro tip, Yertle: if you can’t finish a threat without begging the threatenee for money, best not to bother.

As limp and embarrassing as the whole sordid show has been, we should still make note that Republican officials no longer even hesitate before threatening to bring the full unholy fury of the state down upon the heads of uppity private sector dissenters, and like, I know I come off like a broken record sometimes, but this is yet another Thing Republicans Do That’s Indistinguishable From What Fascists Do.

Another Trump-administered lesson in authoritarianism swiftly internalized by the entire GOP is that when it comes to their credulous, grievance-crazed base, there is simply no limit to the power to fool some of the people all of the time. New polling shows alarming numbers of Republicans blindly believe every dumb, crazy lie the Velveeta Vulgarian and his enablers told about the 2020 election, because gaslighting and victimhood are two whiny wingnut tastes that taste great together.

So it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that the official messaging around these voter suppression laws (seamlessly harmonized between elected Republicans and the right-wing media, as is typical in this, our intensely healthy democracy) has been to simply straight-up fucking lie about the content of the bills, and then defend the horseshit misrepresentation with the sanctimonious fury of a forgotten sitcom actor doing Atticus Finch on the dinner theatre circuit.

For example, when Major League Baseball announced Denver as the new host for this year’s All-Star Game, following its withdrawal from Atlanta, (over the legal enshrinement of white supremacy thing, in case that slipped anyone’s mind) the entire right-wing jagoffosphere howled in perfect unison COLORADO’S VOTING LAWS ARE STRICTER THAN GEORGIA’S, which of course isn’t anywhere close to true; in fact, that’s a claim so ridiculous that once upon a time, they would’ve shipped you out to a farm in the country to run around with Dan Quayle for making it, but nowadays, well, the bigger the lie the better, and indeed, at this very moment, some long-lost cousin or classmate or co-worker of yours is engaged in a ferocious Facebook debate, and he is infuriatingly unshakeable in his belief that voting laws are stricter in Colorado than in Georgia. Because that’s just how stuff works now. Wheeeeee.

That poll was really something. 64% of these rubes believe the Tooth Fairy is real, of whom 91% say she’s a filthy socialist who should be strung up in front of the Capitol alongside former Vice President Mike Pants, who has a book coming out, apparently, in case you’re curious about the lies a spineless wannabe theocrat tells himself to justify his own prominent role in the creation of the violent anti-democracy movement that ultimately attempted to murder him. I’ll wait for the movie.

Anyway, yeah, conservatives have declared war on both Coke and baseball, so I figure we’re about six weeks away from some sort of manic, Roger Corman-esque, nationwide bald eagle hunt.

Still, after failed boycotts of Starbucks and Netflix and Nike and Keurig and…well, basically everything except shag carpeting woven from Mike Lindell’s back hair, nobody’s willing to offer up so much as a courtesy shiver in the face of this latest promise of righteous economic wrath. It took what, two whole days from Sultan Spraytan’s Churchillian call to arms before he got caught consorting with the enemy? Yeah, I can’t figure out why those North Korea negotiations never went anywhere, can you?

Hey, you might not want to finish this sentence without first procuring access to a fainting couch, but it appears as though the Trump campaign ripped off their own supporters! I know, right? Who could’ve imagined the guy who extorted a piss ransom from the people tasked with risking their lives to protect his would stoop so low as to deceive his most faithful followers into unknowingly committing to weekly recurring donations until their bank accounts were (in the middle of a pandemic/economic crisis, so what, quitcher bitchin’ ya filthy takers) bled completely dry? Who indeed, except, y’know…literally everyone?

Honestly, HOW ARE YOU STILL FALLING FOR THIS SHIT? I’m really asking, and you’re invited to respond in the comments; please post your SSN, along with any account and/or routing numbers you may have, or I won’t be able to follow up.

No sooner did news of this massive, $64.3 million fraud break than the NRCC went, “Public shaming? How are we not using that one already, that’s Extracting Money From a Cult of Dumbasses 101!” So now when you make a donation, you either sign up for regular tithing, or they declare you a “DEFECTOR” and you go on a list that gets sent to Marm-a-Lago and then some random night Weehands McNodick himself breaks into your house to steal your pork rinds and hit on your daughters.

I see Greg Gutfeld ushered in a bold new era of conservative comedy, bringing his trademark What if an Impacted Toenail Had Opinions About Cancel Culture act to a new show on Fux, where he forces his interns to chuckle nervously while he monologues like a drunken Klan Dragon.

Meanwhile, on the very same cable channel, Tucker Carlson inches ever closer to simply reading Mein Kampf aloud from a rocking chair next to a fireplace. The language of “white replacement” felt chilling enough, screeched by tiki-torch-wielding incels in Charlottesville; seeing it piped into millions of American living rooms, on the lips of wolves dressed as the trusted newsmen of generations past…can’t say I’m a fan, friends.

Because a GOP official in Texas just got caught trying organize, in his own words, a “brigade,” an “army” to invade minority neighborhoods in Houston in order to…”monitor elections,” and if there’s anything useful about pretending this dude wasn’t calling for meticulously coordinated violence targeting non-white voters, I don’t fucking see what it might be.

But lose ye not hope, my friends, for though the enemy is black of heart, he is dull of mind. Normally you have to get into a sword fight with Graham Chapman to experience the sort of self-inflicted humiliation Peter Doocy earns by repeatedly insisting upon matching wits with Jen Psaki, but bless his heart, he shows no signs of letting up. (Hey Fox, if you’re looking to put some actual comedy in Gutfeld’s slot, I’ve got an idea.)

Somehow, this week was even worse for Matt Gaetz than last week, which is not only thoroughly hilarious but also quite nourishing, for our justice-starved nation. However, I confess I fear that if we continue on this trajectory for even a few days more, the degree to which the Congresscreep from the Florida 1st is fucked may progress beyond the capacity of the human mind to comprehend. This kid is fucked on a cosmic scale, folks. There are whole Greek myths about dudes suffering eternally in Hades who aren’t as fucked as Matt Gaetz.

I think we’ve all learned more than we cared to about Matt’s sewage-gargling chum, Joel Greenberg, who has turned out to be…well, more or less exactly what you’d expect from someone willing to socialize with Matt Gaetz, which is to say the Mildred Call the Police That Strange Man Is Leering Near the Playground Again type of fellow.

Anyhow, Joel, indicted on 33 total charges and no doubt hoping to reclaim at least some small corner of his scrotum from the vice on Johnny Law’s desk, seems positively giddy to strike a plea bargain, prompting his lawyer to publicly speculate Gaetz “is not feeling very comfortable today,” a reasonable enough assessment of the mental state of an ambitious young pusbucket who mere months ago flew on Air Force One at the President’s request, but now finds himself under federal investigation in a sex-trafficking scandal.

That assessment only got reasonabler when news broke of the extremely public trail of Venmo transactions Gaetz and Greenberg helpfully left for investigators, and Matt’s legal troubles hardly stop there. Allies have abandoned him, and now he faces a shiny new ethics investigation in Congress. As I said, Sisyphus ain’t got shit on this kid.

Seems during the And Fall days of the Turd Reich, young Mattward nervously inquired of the Shart House, “say, y’all wouldn’t happen to have any preemptive blanket pardons lying around, wouldja?” Alas, whereas other prominent dingleberries orbiting the Adderall-Addled Assclown, your Roger Stones and your Duncan Hunters, had the good sense to get convicted before Sheriff Biden rode back into town, Gaetz’s woes didn’t surface until Hairplug Himmler’s authority to pervert justice had been reduced once more to petty golf course fraud.

Bad timing, bro. Sucks to be you. If it makes you feel any better, watching it happen to you is absolutely fucking stupendous.

We learned the kakistocrat cronies Shart Garfunkel installed at HHS (remember Michael Caputo?) gleefully celebrated their successful attempts to corrupt and distort the CDC’s scientific findings relating to the coronavirus outbreak, which, yes, amounts to dancing on the mass graves dug in the doomed, damned quest to extend an idiot tyrant’s mad reign. Y’know, history already taught us that fascists will happily send hundreds of thousands to the slaughter if it means one more day in power, but I guess 21st century America needed that lesson the hard way.

On that merry note, I’ll leave you to your weekend. Hey, if you missed the Kickstarters for my first two comics, check out the home page, you can get hooked up right now! Get vaccinated, buy comics, and stay safe out there, Resisters!