The news cycle continues its slowdown, and though these quieter days take some getting used to, the change is mostly welcome. Even so, it turns out that a focused, contained return to the batshittiest Trump-era scandal levels can be tolerable, even pleasant, at least in the context of God’s own holy wrath coming down on the head of one of the very worst people alive.

Look out Washington, cuz Major Biden is hardly the only member of his household running wild these days. There’s still cake in the fridge from the We Passed a $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill and Made Mitch McConnell Watch party, and Smilin’ Joe’s already pushing for a couple trillion more in infrastructure spending. Why? Maybe, as some speculate, he’s angling for an FDR-worthy legacy. Maybe he’s trying to do as much good as he can before his honeymoon period runs out. Maybe he just wants more cake.

Whatever the case may be, Yertle’s all flustered and colicky; don’t Dems understand they’re supposed to obediently abandon their agenda and their mandate to his famed legislative graveyard? Instead, he’s watching Majority Leader Schumer rifle through the sofa cushions in search of extra reconciliation tokens…shit, how’s an inept death cult supposed to regain political power if the opposition keeps improving folks’ lives? It’s not fair!

Joe’s infrastructure plan actually gets more popular when people find out rich folks’re paying for it. And the plutocrat class was already trembling at the popularity of Democrats’ For the People Act, even among Republican voters; I swear, it gets harder to buy a government all the time.

While Biden works and wins, his predecessor appears to be on some sort of epic quest to journey beyond the reach of subjectivity and get the Guinness World Records people to proclaim him History’s Biggest and Biggest Imaginable Loser. Now, I enjoy Fat Q*bert’s humiliation as much as the next patriotic American, but watching a dude who was President of the United States just three short months ago shuffle around his tacky-ass golf resort, like an escaped hospital patient, gown swinging wide open, looking for weddings to crash so he can blubber his way through his latest laundry list of grievances…I mean, if all the losers from every Tom Waits song and Robert Altman film and Sam Shepard play congealed into one giant mega-loser in order to battle it out for loser primacy, I still think Donnie gets the first-round KO. He’s a wonder of loser science; such extreme loserdom surely defies the laws of physics.

And he’s nowhere near finished failing, of course. The New York attorney general’s office seems to be closing in on Allen Weisselberg, aka The Guy Who Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried and a federal judge invalidated his campaign’s heavy-handed non-disclosure agreements and Summer Zervos’ defamation suit cleared another procedural hurdle and even the coupons for free hugs he got Don Jr. for his 21st birthday have been declared illegitimate and void.

The Arkansas GOP passed a legislative hate crime targeting the state’s transgender residents, because voting Republican is mostly about wanting a government that hurts your neighbors for being different. I confess I’m tired of all this fear-driven regressive spite; you’ve had your Nazi lynch mob and your mass pandemic graveyards, can you truly find no better use for your time (or your power) than to torment the survivors of your malicious malpractice?

Before gettin’ to the good stuff, everyone here at Shower Cap’s Blog would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Congressman Matt Gaetz, who not only delivered much-needed blog fodder to an otherwise (blissfully) slow news week, but granted the weary, schadenfreude-starved American left the glorious spectacle of one of Trumpism’s archbishops melting down before our eyes into a puddle of filth, reeking of sulfur and the vile ambition of the cruel and petty.

The day started promisingly for Gaetz, actually, amidst leaked rumors that he was contemplating leaving boring ol’ Congress behind to pursue fame and fortune with the disinformation-spewing fascist factory men call “Newsmax,” like a shittier Jim DeMint*, prompting a great deal of chin-stroking about the precise location of the center of power within the throbbing mass of shrieking buttholes that is the Republican Party of 2021.

Shit like that is like crack to an attention whore like Gaetz, but the high was not to last, alas.

For ordinary mortals, a gigantic, late-breaking news story containing your name alongside words like “trafficking” and “17-year-old” would surely constitute the low point of, at the very least, your day, but our Matthew is a true once-in-a-generation scumbag, and he was just getting warmed up.

Gaetz knew he needed a softball interview, STAT, and so he called up Tucker Carlson, because that’s just whatcha do when you’re an American Nazi in search of a safe space. Now, Liar Tuck has helped many a wingnut jagoff disseminate their horseshit spin, but young Mattward was on a mission to make Sam Nunberg look like Droopy. Panicked and desperate, he attempted to lash himself to Carlson like an anchor**, proclaiming the two of them Best Sex Crimez Buddies 4Ever, earning a speedy defenestration from the only media figure extreme enough to even consider helping him.

Because no sooner had the scandal broken than every Republican in Washington called up their favorite access journalist to issue the same We Aways Knew That Gaetz Boy Was No Good statement. When you think of all the shit those cowardly doormats excused and enabled over the last few years, it’s sort of staggering to contemplate what sort of massive asshole you’d have to be to merit such instant, unanimous excommunication.

Outside of Gym Jordan’s mumbled, half-assed “Matt Gaetz is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life,” his lone congressional defender is our old friend Marjorie Taylor Guam, and she’s only looking for something, ANYTHING, to piggyback on to get some of that sweet, sweet attention she no longer commands since the media moved on from her sad little geek show. Point is, the assemble-the-team montage isn’t going well for Rep. Florida Man.

Anyway, he belches up this zany-ass, Elmore-Leonard-meets-Carter-Page story about extortion and hostages and all kindsa weird shit, which, amazingly, seems to be at least partially true? Problem is, the whole reason he’s being extorted is that he’s under investigation for some extremely major, extremely disturbing crimes. It’s a bit of an ethical sticky wicket, I admit, but I imagine most folks’d side with the blackmailers here.

I mean, maybe this all turns out to be more innocent than it looks. I guess. Maybe. Somehow. Buuuuuut what it looks like right now is a sitting U.S. Congressman hanging around with a sex-trafficking scatbucket and paying to commit sex acts with minors.

Can’t wait to see what the future holds for ya, Congressman!

Now that we’re actually fighting the pandemic instead of letting it run wild in the name of placating one broken old man’s fragile ego, our successes have led to an All-New, All-Stupid front in the culture war, because that’s just how shit works in a “culture” imbecilic enough to elevate frat house dumpster babies like Matt Frickin’ Gaetz to the highest halls of power.

I’m speaking, of course, about the right-wing freakout over vaccine passports. See, we’ll need a passport system going forward, so that those us with brains and consciences and such can safely gather in crowds without the freedumb crew ruining everything by letting Covid-19 tag along as their uninvited plus-one. You creeps are perfectly free to stick with your Immunization is For Cucks conniption; just understand that doing so means that sporting events, concerts, indoor dining, and the like are equally For Cucks. We, the responsible majority, have been prisoners of your reckless selfishness for a goddamn year and change; you are most definitely not invited to join in our reindeer games now that we’ve finally fought our way free of your fuckery.

Of course, to a Republican, nothing is more important than preserving the rights of egomaniacal crotchtumors to inflict harm upon strangers, so now we actually have to have a giant political squabble over what really ought to be an entirely non-controversial public health measure, but since objective reality has been partisan for quite a while now, are we even allowed to complain about this crap anymore? I vote yes.

Obviously, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is on board with this insanity; he’s sided with the damn virus so consistently I assume it’ll be his running mate come 2024. And naturally, all the predictable persecution junkies are whinging about Nazi Germany and “Biden’s mark of the beast” and “corporate communism;” you’ve gotta expect that sort of thing when a major political party starts conducting their candidate recruitment in meth dens.

I don’t understand why we need a passport anyway, can’t we just scan the microchip Bill Gates painstakingly inserts, by hand, into every single dose?

Georgia Republicans, facing corporate pushback for their recent authoritarian/white supremacist assault on voting rights, swiftly turned vindictive, with their state House majority voting to repeal a significant tax break for Delta, one of the state’s largest employers, following a critical memo issued by CEO Ed Bastian. That’s open warfare on their own economy, in the name of vengeance for dissenting speech, if anyone still imagines these goose-stepping bastards are just fucking around.

Now that Major League Baseball has pulled the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta, I guess we’ll see how many billions these thugs are willing to piss away in the name of adding a few extra spasms to the death throes of institutionalized whites-only rule. Personally, I get strong “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” vibes off Brian Kemp and his giddy minoritarian cronies, so I’m not optimistic.

In fact, Jim Crow fever is sweeping through MAGA nation, alongside all the usual pre-existing conservative conditions, (racism, Covid, brain-eating maggots, etc.) with over 350 bills designed to curb stomp voting rights introduced throughout the country.

Texas Republicans are tripping over themselves to rush their own Silly 21st Century Electorate, Voting is for White People law onto the books, generating their very own corporate condemnation/totalitarian retaliation threat cycle; I imagine this’ll become a familiar ritual as the country works through this whole Fascism or Nah phase.

In their defense, if you were tasked with re-electing the murderously incompetent Abbott/Patrick regime, to say nothing of Ted “Already the Most Punchable Man Alive Before Fleeing to Cancún While His Constituents Froze to Death” Cruz, you wouldn’t want the citizenry weighing in either.

Another day, another attack on the U.S. Capitol, another Capitol Police officer slain in the line of duty, with one more injured for good measure. Don’t normalize any of this shit, folks, no matter how often it happens.

That’s about all I can stand for one week, friends. May the Vaccine Fairy visit you and all your loved ones as soon as possible. Until then, I leave you in the capable hands of (trust me) John Boehner.

*One of the least pleasant revelations of the last few years has been that there are indeed people who are observably, inarguably shittier than Jim DeMint.

**An anchor that pays for sex