I could almost enjoy the news if the bumbling Christopher Guest hucksters weren’t also playing the leads in the Tom Clancy thriller. Pie to the face, steps on a rake, stumbles around blind…it’s all very amusing till he feels his way to the big red launch button.

I bet Mike Lee’s mom is proud of him tonight. Aced the WWJD standard. Aced that shit.

I don’t think I could handle disappointing Tina Smith that badly. It’s nice to see Mike Lee slink away in shame, because Mike Lee is a fellow who should slink away in shame a lot more often. This was not Mike Lee’s first shameful act.

Grownups don’t “dunk” on the grieving friends and family of political assassination victims. That’s a fucked-up impulse to follow, Mike. It’s like mooning a funeral.

United States senators should not lend their platforms to right-wing disinformation mobs, and people who lend their platforms to right-wing disinformation mobs should not be United States senators. But here we are.

I’M NOT GUNNA CALL GUVNER WALZ IN FACT LET ME TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO LIMPLY FLING SOME PLAYGROUND INSULTS AT HIM. What an impressive strongman. What a healthy culture that defers to him in all things.

Is this how democracy dies? Not with a bang, but with the faint squeaking of tanks as they roll past a handful of barely conscious rubes?

Again, I don’t want it to sound like I’m asking for better autocrats, but Discount Donnie’s Demonstrably Shittier Than Kim Jong-un’s Birthday Jerkoff didn’t exactly scream American greatness.

Especially compared to one of the largest political protests in the nation’s history: the coast-to-coast No Kings march. Losing the ratings war so badly, backed by the unlimited budget of the federal government, on your birthday? Some showman.

People who literally cannot throw a parade are debating matters of life and death right now. Cannot, let history note, even spell parade. Life and death.

HEY TEHRAN, he mashes out with the fingers that can’t quite find their way to “parade,” YOO BETTER EVACUATE YOOR WHOLE CITY RIGHT FREAKIN’ NOW!!!

And thousands flee. Because maybe the old coot means it this time. Can you imagine what that feels like to a narcissist?

You see stuff like “Hegseth and Gabbard sidelined during unnecessary crisis,” and that sounds like good news, because those two clowns shouldn’t be anywhere near these rooms, but my god…who’s even lower on that totem pole, y’know?

Bobby Brainworm’s down the hall torturing Galileo, can he spare a moment so we can get his input on the nuclear conflict? Is Linda McMahon too busy liquidating the Department of Education to weigh in? Fuck you all for making me miss Rex Tillerson. 

Oh look, Mike Huckabee’s trying to write himself into a Bible story; that’s distressing. Please do not pour messianic delusions into that particular game show host. Any god that sent us Donald Trump means us harm.

Put Huck’s texts in the Smithsonian, though. It’s like watching the Christian nationalist Three Stooges reenact the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Two weeks. If civilization survives, that line’ll get a laugh. Charlton Heston running around screaming, “You madmen, it’s just something he says!!”

Tune in in two weeks’ time to watch an addled sociopath pluck the fate of millions from a hat! Sure, he’ll probably back down, but he is dumb and crazy, and Lindsey Graham keeps filling his head with fantasies of bombs falling from invisible planes.

Lindsey sold his whole soul for moments like this. Just so he can get close enough to lean in and whisper startawarstartawarstartawarkillemkillemalllllll. It’s what God wants. Netanyahu tempting him with visions of beachside Gaza resorts once the ethnic cleansing’s done.

Hey, here’s a flagpole. Might drop a nuke later. I stepped away from the room where we’re making that decision to show you all this big, dumb flagpole. Flagpoles and fake gas prices and marines on American streets and perhaps I’ll try my hand at regime change in the Middle East.

The saber-rattling has caused something of a schism in this normally unified death cult, so many of the world’s worst people are spitting venom at one another for a change. Wouldn’t it be nice to just lock Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz in a room forever? Isn’t that both guys’ personal hell, and don’t they both deserve that? What a horror that these men are consulted on matters of war.

Anyhoo, Tucker criticized Fox Nooz for “just turning up the propaganda hose to full blast,” while Trump attacked them as “Crooked,” “FAKE,” and “discredited.” I dunno, this feels like an issue where we can find some bipartisan common ground.

Domestically, our populist government made it juuuuuuuust a little easier to get cancer, throwing a legal wrench into the implementation of an asbestos ban. Had to grease the asbestos industry’s off-ramp with just a liiiiiiiittle more cancer. A few human lives. You’ll never miss ‘em.

We need the money for parades, you see. For the marines in California. We can either have that LGBTQ youth suicide hotline or marines in California, but who, I ask you, is holding back the Mexican hordes?

Gotta pay for a whole buncha new masks and a buncha unaccountable “law enforcement agents” to wear ‘em. Gotta turn ‘em loose to meet Stephen Miller’s quotas. Gotta forcibly detain a few more uppity elected Democrats. Should probably ask Speaker Moses to work something up making it illegal to record ‘em as they violate the plebs’ precious rights.

Anyway, the bill. We were waiting on the dynamic CBO score, because the dynamic score was gonna factor in all the magical economic side effects of taking a few million Americans’ health insurance away. The dynamic score was gonna kick so much sand in our stupid libtard faces.

Except it didn’t.

What the dynamic score actually says is the bill is, and it’s kind of a funny story, actually even shittier, if only slightly. But there’s a score someplace that says what we want it to, and if that score turns out to be the work of a cactus artist or a white nationalist shitposter, we’ll apologize later.

Sure, consumer spending is down as we all keep finding fun new ways to pay Donnie’s tariffs, but Ron Vara assures us everything is going according to plan.

Can’t run a parade, mayyyyyyybe dropping a nuclear bomb on a modern metropolis later, petulantly demanding a Nobel Peace Prize for forcing the world to endure his bullshit. Prediction: at least three prominent Trumpworld figures will turn out to be Peter Sellers. Kid Rock has been Peter Sellers this whole time. Lutnick, probably.

President Rapist swung by Juneteenth just long enough to grouse, “We have too many holidays, bah humbug!” So noted, racist grampa president.

The G7 Summit can’t be much fun for a dotard; absolutely everyone there understands how tariffs really work, for starters. He showed up for a day to vouch for his genocidal benefactor, who got kicked out of the club over one measly war of aggression. Then he scampered off, because he knew he could never handle Zelensky without home field advantage in a room packed with conniving stooges. The Trump Doctrine is isolation through cringe.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wants his state to host a migrant detention facility he calls “Alligator Alcatraz,” because all good law enforcement officials fantasize about the cool dungeons they’d like to build.

The just-announced Trump Phone will not be made in America, but even Junior n’ Eric, bless their hearts, understand their target audience doesn’t exactly follow up on that shit. There’s an app that automatically diverts your paycheck into the family crypto scheme, so that’s convenient.

I guess Mike Lindell’s defamation defense had some holes. He keeps saying the pillow money’s almost run out, but any man with a discount code and his own private “news” network has a chance, I suppose.

Apparently the guy in charge of staffing the executive branch has been ducking his own security clearance paperwork because he lied about what country he’s from? Probably Russia? I think we’ve found the Peter Lorre role. Good thing our intelligence agencies are too busy chasing conspiracy theories to vet these guys.

A radical deep state activist judge denied the American taxpayer the honor of footing the bill for President Rapist’s latest appeal of the E. Jean Carroll judgment, which calls, in my humble opinion, for a rousing round of stochastic terrorism.

3rd generation Dick Tracy antagonist Charlie Kirk advised the nation’s young women to attend college, if only to find a pallid TPUSA manchild to mate with. For life. Understand, Charlie’s boys need all the help they can get.

Strangely enough, all available polling tells us people hate this shit. Turns out inflationary kakistocrat misrule pairs poorly with perceptibly authoritarian power grabs. To put it another way…NO KINGS.

Ok, quick heads-up, NO BLOG NEXT WEEK, as I need to catch up on a bunch of stuff now that the comic book project I’ve been working on is finally, FINALLY in production! Let me see if I can figure out how to tease some artwork…

We’re all pretty excited about how it’s coming together, so be on the lookout for the Kickstarter! Not that I’ll shut up about it.

If this diatribe brought you a chuckle in these discouraging times, feel free to drop a buck or two into my tip jar (now accepting Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal!) or to follow @john_luzar. Sign up for email updates at showercap.blog.com. I’ll be back in two weeks. I know how that sounds, but I mean it. Stay safe out there till then, okay?