Folks, we, as a country, are one boiled-ass frog. Today feels like the day, where if you’d fallen into a coma after election night, 2016 (and who could fucking blame you?), and woke up just this morning, you’d wonder how we let everything fall so completely to shit, why we’re not all out in the streets ‘round the clock, demanding our country back. How the goatfucking hell has it come to this?

So apparently, in 2017, treacherous Russian Congresspet Dana Rohrabacher visited malodorous cat neglector Julian Assange in his London embassy home, to tempt him with a full pardon from President Crotchrot himself, in exchange for a statement denying Uncle Vlad had anything to do with the DNC hack. Good lord, there’re more turds in the preceding sentence than at sewer treatment plants that service multiple White Castles. It’s a whole row in Dirtbag Traitor Bingo. You rarely see so many assholes in one place outside of a hot dog processing plant. Anyway, in the wake of this revelation of shocking corruption at the highest levels of our government…nothing whatsoever has happened, and Dana is still walkin’ the streets, doing whatever it is ex-Congressmen on Putin’s payroll do with their days.

Watching Rod Blagojevich’s sad little attempt to reinvent himself as a sort of 21st Nelson Mandela Only with Lego Man Hair was good for a laugh, though. Congrats are in order for Rodward, I suppose, for referring to himself as a “freed political prisoner” without immediately getting struck down by lightning. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that he’ll probably be in the Cabinet by the end of the year, or that he’d be one of the most-qualified, least corrupt, creeps there?

Jerk of All Trades Mick Mulvaney confirmed the most obvious thing this side of the nose on your face; it’s not just your imagination, the GOP’s apocalyptic screeching about the deficit really does vanish into thin air the very instant they seize power from Democrats. Well, I’m glad we’ve got that out in the open. We’ll all remember this when Dems are back in charge, yes? When we’re trying to pass some legislation that’ll help Americans outside the Republican donor class for a change, and Chuck Todd wags his finger in our faces, chastising us about deficit spending, we can smack him square the face with Mick’s confession until he runs away, crying, “I understand I was never qualified for this job and I apologize for my role in degrading the public discourse!” right? RIGHT?

For those who find it darkly amusing to understand precisely how and why the world is falling to shit, in sort of a reading-a-book-about-where-glaciers-come-from-on-the-deck-of-the-sinking-Titanic kind of way, may I recommend WaPo’s article detailing the manner in which conservatives have manipulated Facebook into transforming itself into a massive right-wing propaganda distribution system. See, because one side disproportionately relies on disinformation, you can’t combat disinformation without seeming like you’re biased against that side, which you must never do for…reasons. Y’know, bothsidesism comes from a good place, it really does, from a place that believes in and desires fairness, but here in the real world, it’s leading our culture to continuously reach out to pet this snake that just keeps on biting us, over and over and over, and I fear we may not learn our lesson until the poison has spread through our entire bloodstream.

Speaking of sinister chuckles, didja see the bit where Donnie Two-Scoops’ favorite ongoing grift, the one where We the People Chumps pay him to play golf at his own properties, essentially makes him America’s 10th-highest paid athlete? Yeah, I’ll be snickering like Muttley next time we go through the quarterly ritual where he theatrically donates his salary, as the rubes of Cult45 praise his selflessness, before loading up AF1 for another weekly trip down to Marm-a-Lago, merrily brainstorming new upcharges for the Secret Service. “Oh, you want a pillow to sleep on while you risk your life protecting your petty mobster commander-in-chief? That will be $7,000. Per night.”

Roger Stone started a change.org petition to demand pinstriped jumpsuits and garish top hats within the federal corrections system, because he’s looking to serve his shiny new 40-month prison sentence in style. We’re still in that magical place after the sentencing but before the pardon, when we can fantasize for a bit about living in a country with real laws that matter. It’s a similar thrill to when me and my buddies made Ninja Turtle costumes out of refrigerator boxes and shot videos in the sewers near our house. ”Rich white men facing long-overdue justice? COWABUNGA!”

Today in Direct Assaults on the United States that Republicans Can’t Even be Bothered to Pretend to Condemn, we learned that Russia is once again interfering in our elections, to keep their ugly little dog with his tiny, inadequate, little paws in power here, because he’s done such a fine job of undermining American interests that Putin believes he deserves four more years of that sweet golf vacation money, as a treat. And it’s hardly been a news story, this act of war by an enemy nation.

Moving on to Presidential Cover-Ups of Foreign Attacks That Republicans are Apparently Totally Down With, when the Acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, briefed Congress on this attack on the nation by a hostile power, Hairplug Himmler fired him for (checks notes) doing his job and protecting his country. I know our expectations of Republican patriotism and/or decency are pretty low after the impeachment trial debacle, but I would’ve thought at least Susan Collins would have wanted to break out her best furrowed brow over FIRING THE DNI FOR TELLING CONGRESS ABOUT A FOREIGN ATTACK.

Then, in Seriously Ben Sasse, After All Your Hectoring Lectures on Ethics You’re Really Not Gonna Say Shit About This news, the Marmalade Shartcannon replaced Maguire with, of all his malicious, clownish, stooges, Richard Fucking Grenell, a glorified internet troll with nary an hour’s worth of experience in the intelligence field, a thuggish hack whose appointment screams, “the USA’s entire intelligence apparatus will now serve its criminal president rather than, and indeed at the expense of, the nation.”

Can we seriously not get a single Republican to muster a simple, “Hey, this is sub-optimal?” Some milquetoast tweet from Marco Rubio, condemning the politicization of the intel community’s work? Is it really too much to ask a retiring backbencher like Pat Roberts to stand straight and tall for the first time in his useless professional life, and proclaim “I for one stand with my country, and against her enemies?”

Please don’t answer any of the questions in the above paragraph; doing so will only make you sad.

The clips from Tangerine Idi Amin’s Klan rallies keep getting nuttier and nuttier, coming off like a smug grad school performance artist doing an extremely non-PC monologue mocking your racist grandpa’s descent into dementia. Regrettably, these incoherent babblings, these slurred laundry lists of petty grievances, do indeed reflect the mental state of the most powerful person* alive. A xenophobic rant about the (kickass) South Korean film PARASITE winning Best Picture over all the REAL MURICAN movies, movies about burning your sneakers when Nike put Colin Kaepernick in an ad, appears to be a new staple. No, he’s still not offering plans to improve health care, or infrastructure, or the economy; he’s just riling up a white supremacist hate cult, and you can’t say he doesn’t know how to give his audience what they want.

And the new Shart House personnel head, Johnny McEntee, previously fired by John Kelly for alleged financial crimes and gambling problems, is already positively horny to purge the federal government of anyone less crooked than himself, lest ye think the standards couldn’t get any lower. We’re about six months away from initiation ceremonies where political appointees have to bump off a member of the “deep state” before they’re “made,” and thus able to officially assume their post.

In keeping with the purge theme, Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, claims to be diligently hunting for that wascally wabbit, the anonymous New York Times op-ed writer. I suppose it’s a better use of Pete’s time than doing his actual job, which has so far cost the country untold billions. Ok, told billions, we know how much the farm bailouts have drained from the Treasury, and what the bonehead trade war has cost the American consumer, but sometimes you just have to be a little dramatic, for effect, y’know? I’m not actually even a super-hero. (The beer stuff is all real, tho.)

Ah, a criminally emboldened, increasingly reckless, cabal of malignant dipshits, cleansing the government of the patriotic and the competent, just like the founders intended! I for one am ready for the weekend. And just a heads up, I’ve got a personal life thing to attend to on Monday (nothing to worry about), so I won’t be able to check in next week until Tuesday. But no, you can’t help yourself to the leftover pie in the fridge just cuz I’m not around. It’s mine. Get your own fuckin’ pie. 

*Well, vaguely-person-shaped, semi-mobile, lump of wildebeest shit, anyhow.

P.S. – Aw, I see Devin “Pigfucker” Nunes, emulating his beloved Turd Emperor, was humiliatingly defeated in court today. Sniff…they grow up so fast! (But seriously, California pork farmers, lock the pens tight tonight, Devin gets aggressive when he’s angry.)