Goddammit, I hate doing the blog on days like this. Y’know, we took so much for granted for so long, we assumed so much progress was permanent…we took our eyes off the ball, and now we live in this cesspool of ascendant hate, and people are fucking dying. What do you even say in the face of all this awfulness?

Fuck it, let’s do this. Let’s look these evil fucks in the eye. Let’s laugh at them where we can, because mockery diminishes them. And where that isn’t possible, let’s bring vigilance, and the resolve to pry the world back out of their shitty little hands, and never, ever, give it back.

So I guess Shart Garfunkel threw up a plaque at one of his tacky-ass golf clubs, commemorating his mighty victory…in a tournament he didn’t even play in. This is the sort of Trump story we all like, isn’t it? Tales of a petty, insecurity-driven, buffoon, puffing out his doughy chest, parading his entirely fabricated accolades, imagining he’s admired even as the whole world snickers. I wish we could just point and giggle at his pathetic, distended, ego, but my God, the noxious wad of pure hate, festering at the man’s core…

Oh my, I guess some rich people got caught doing crimes to get their shitty kids into fancy colleges? Such a scandal! Wait until the American people find out that the wealthy have purchased an entire political party, and use it to turn the world economy into one long private hog trough at which to gorge themselves, while the rest of us subsist on the odd bits of slop that drip from their jowls. O, what “Aunt Becky” jokes shall be tweeted out upon that day!

The folks over at Media Matters have been having quite a time, teasingly doling out snippets of Tucker Carlson’s somehow-even-more-reprehensible-than-the-bigotry-he-vomits-up-five-nights-a-week past, as advertisers flee his Fux Nooz White Power Hour. Liar Tuck’s allies in the right-wing jagoffosphere keep trying to paint this as some dishonest lefty hit job, but y’all…it’s just recordings of Carlson saying things. If there’s a vast conspiracy to bring down Tucker Carlson, it’s being run by Tucker Carlson.

But it’s not all waffles and blowjobs in Hategriftertopia; the Axis of Evil running from Bipedal Tumor Ann Coulter to President Crotchrot has splintered, and now they’re divvying up their mutual friends (Ann gets the Klan, Donnie keeps the Proud Boys?), and sitting on opposite sides of the school cafeteria, pelting one another with playground insults and fecal matter. It’s all terrifically amusing until you remember millions of Americans actually admire these two monsters.

Young Jacob Wohl continues testing the frontiers of white privilege, filing a police report over fake death threats from one of the fake accounts that got him banned from Twitter. And now Michael Avenatti has inserted himself into this shitshow, because what, Carter Page wasn’t unavailable?

Well, it took a little pressure, but President Ostomy Bag finally grounded the Boeing 737 MAX, days after the rest of the world did, presumably because Mick Mulvaney duct-taped him to a chair and explained, loudly and slowly, that being responsible for another deadly crash from a clearly-unsafe plane would net him bad press in the Rust Belt. Of course, this only came after Grandpa Dotard opined that all them new-fangled aero-planes with all their fancy switches and little flashin’ lights and whatnot are just too dang complicated for any pilot to figure out, and back in his day, planes were made of balsa wood and powered by tiny mice on treadmills and that was better, in his estimation.

Oh, and didja see where Fat Q*Bert’s shutdown tantrum delayed work on crucial software fixes for the plane? Oh well. At least it was all for a good cause, and important things were accomplished in the end.

…wait.

After scoring a ridiculously light sentence from a judge who thinks crimes don’t count if you’re rich and white enough, Paul Manafort finally ran into some serious jail time courtesy of Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Paul whined that he really didn’t WANT to go to prison, so please Your Honor, can’t we just overlook all those silly ol’ “felony convictions” and send a career criminal back home to his life of unearned privilege and comfort?, and she said ehhhhhh maybe after 7.5 years, ’til then you are…#Manafucked.

And Precocious Paul got a nice little going-away present from Manhattan prosecutors…a shiny new 16-count indictment on state-level charges! While Manafort has been frantically holding out hope that Santa Shart leaves a pardon in his (ostrich skin) stocking this year, these new charges are 100% presidential-pardon-proof! Guess you shouldn’t have spent your entire life breaking laws and fucking up the world, bro.

Speaking of New York, the AG has opened yet another investigation into the Velveeta Vulgarian’s life of crime, this time…wait, hang on. I’m actually confused here. I’m not fucking with you, I wrote “NY Investigation” on my outline, and now that I’m sitting down to write, I don’t know which NY investigation I was talking about. Is it the subpoenas to Deutsche Bank? Did we talk about that already? Or is this about Shartboy’s lawyers dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen? Perhaps some new investigation into the President’s ongoing transgressions against Perfectly Good Steaks? THERE ARE TOO MANY CRIMES AND I CANNOT KEEP THEM ALL STRAIGHT.

One of the things that happened this week that was a little less than awesome was when the President of the United States suggested that if Democrats insisted on continuing to perform their constitutional duty to conduct oversight, maybe his “tough” supporters in the military/law enforcement/roving gangs of bikers would just have to get together and murder them! Yeah, the peaceful transition of power had a nice little streak going, but the showrunners are trying something a little different this season; a sociopathic crook whose last flimsy shield from the long arm of the law is the very office of the presidency! Will he call for civil war just to stay out of prison? SET YOUR DVR!

While there’s some controversy over whether or not a sitting President can be indicted, an appeals court ruled that he sure as shit can be sued, because laws still matter sometimes, no matter what Mitch McConnell says. So Summer Zervos’ defamation suit can proceed, even it cuts into Little Donnie Two-Scoops’ golf time.

So, the Shart of the Deal, who wasted all his political capital failing to repeal Obamacare, who has alienated our closest allies, who has been utterly outmaneuvered at every turn by a clownish third-rate dictator like Kim Jong-un, thinks Theresa May should’ve bowed to his superior deal-making prowess on the whole “Brexit” thing, cuz he’d have sorted it all out by now. This seems like a good time to remind everyone that it took this Stable Genius nearly a month to find the light switches in the White House.

Vice President Mike Pants is seeking a donor match for a hand transplant, after he was forced to meet, and shake hands with, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his partner. Mikey Hairshirt will also require extensive skin grafts, after boiling his ears following the pro-equality speech Varadkar gave in his presence.

Wilbur Ross woke up just long enough to get good n’ thoroughly dragged by the House Oversight Committee over his 2020 census fuckery. I like to picture Wilbur hanging out with Alex Acosta, the two of them just shaking their heads in disbelief that nobody’s gotten around to firing them yet.

Seeking to tout his Commander-in-Chief cred, Howard Schultz proclaimed that among all the Presidential candidates, it is Howard Schultz who has the most experience with the military, which is an interesting thing to say because Howard Schultz has exactly zero military experience, while there are a couple of actual veterans running in the Dem field. Congratulations, Howard, you’ve somehow managed to make me take Tulsi Gabbard’s side in a fight. You are practically magical in your dislikability.

So, the headlines on the Senate vote to overturn Shartolo Colon’s Bullshit Fake Border Emergency tended towards stuff like “Trump Losing Grip on Republican Party as 12 GOP Senators Vote With Democrats to Rebuke His Punk Ass.” Nah, folks. That ain’t it. The story here is “Horrifying Majority of Republican Senators Decide Constitutional Democracy is for CUCKS, Idiot Dictator Should Be Allowed to Do Whatever the Fuck His Gumball-Sized Brain Tells Him To.”

Special bonus points to North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, who just last month wrote a whole WaPo op-Ed* about how the Constitution is good and we should keep it and read it from time to time and maybe even follow the rule of law, only to completely roll over and decide to go, “Look, it’s a musty old document, and it had a good run, but six more years of Thom Tillis in the Senate is obviously more important. I’ve grown attached to my barber and my salary and really, who needs checks and balances anyhow?”

Lindsey Graham lives his life like a man who wants his biography to be titled, “STOOGE,” doesn’t he? After a literally unanimous House vote in favor of a resolution calling for the public release of the eventual Mueller report, Senator Igor blocked the measure in the Senate, perhaps because the President promised him he could sleep at the foot of the bed tonight, instead of in his drafty little LindseyGrahamhouse on the lawn outside the residence.

Pissant Pol Pot himself doesn’t think there should be any report at all, of course. Criminals are consistently anti-investigations-of-criminals, don’t you think that’s weird?

Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. will deny visas to investigators from the International Criminal Court who might be looking into potential war crimes by American citizens. Mike gets a little more affably villainous all the time, doesn’t he? One of these days, he’s gonna call a press conference to jovially announce he’s tied some woman to the railroad tracks just outside town.

Rugged Robert Mueller has asked for another delay in Rick Gates’ sentencing, on account of how little Ricky is still squealin’, and has plenty of relevant squealin’ yet to do. I imagine watching his old boss get booked for an extended stay at club fed has stimulated Mr. Gates’ memory on any number of topics.

Shit be cray, folks. So cray, that we’ve already moved on from that thing where a sex trafficker connected to the Chinese government has been selling access to the President. That story broke just last weekend, and nobody’s talking about it today, isn’t that something? Living in Hell kinda sucks.

And…fuck. New Zealand.

A white supremacist terrorist killed 49 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The murdering dirtbag live-streamed his mass shooting on Facebook, and wrote a manifesto referring the President of the United States as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”.

I’m not really close to making my pick in the 2020 primary, but I feel like “will not inspire white supremacist terrorism” is one litmus test the entire field could pass.

While I’ve long since stopped expecting decency from the American right, I have to admit I’m blown away by some of the responses to this tragedy. It takes the intelligence of the mold on an overripe pear to just say “mass murder is bad,” and leave it at that, which might explain why Louie Gohmert wasn’t up to the task. I’m not usually a gambling man, but if anyone would care to wager that the Republican response to Louie’s little statement will be somewhat less than equivalent to their recent performative outrage directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar…I am your Huckleberry.

Rush Limbaugh felt the need to pick up Alex Jones’ spittle-drenched banner, suggesting the shooter murdered 49 human beings at their houses of woship as an elaborate “false flag” operation to make conservatives look bad. Hey Rush, the only thing we need to do to make conservatives look bad is FUCKING TALK TO YOU. Just point a recording device at you loons while you rant and ramble about the things you believe and the way you see the world, and you look like fucking maniacs.

And of course, Hairpiece Himmler, asked point blank whether he thought white nationalism was a threat, said, “nah, it’s all good.” Actually, I’m not gonna ride him for this. There’s an election coming up, and you can’t expect a guy to attack his own base. Take away the potentially-violent white supremacists, and you’re left with people who really really liked The Apprentice, and people who rank “the ongoing humiliation of Ted Cruz” as their #1 issue.

Somehow, this rabbit-turd-souled bastard, at a ceremony vetoing the resolution overturning his racist fake national emergency to finance his racist wall, actually had the gall to regurgitate the very same phony, racist, conspiracy theories that had inspired another racist mass-murderer, only a few months ago, in Pittsburgh.

I am very tired of this hateful old man, my friends. I am tired of the violence he inspires and provokes.

But goddammit, I refuse to despair. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit. To that end, in the face of all this horror, let me leave you with good news. With hope. Did you see the worldwide student climate strike today? Tens of thousands of young people, all around the planet. Beautiful. Draw strength from them, if you need it. Today, I needed it. The bastards will not grind us down.

Anyway, fuck all that shit. It’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s birthday, y’all. I’ve got some drinking and planking t’do. Well…mostly drinking.

*Say it out loud. “WaPo op-ed.” Hee.