I tell you folks, the bungling incompetence and pathetic dishonesty I can handle, but the hatred? Some days, the hatred wears me out. I’m getting mighty tired of living in Eli Roth’s unproduced Pleasantville sequel, is all I’m sayin’.

Looks like John Bolton is finally flexing his mustache, er, “muscles,” doing those crazy John Bolton things you we always knew John Bolton would do. Pulling the United States out of a nuclear disarmament treaty? Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, Trump + Bolton is like giving a bunch of howler monkeys speed and turning them loose in a chemistry lab. Anyhow, I dare you to watch Dr. Strangelove tonight. Or if you’re feeling really brave, Fail-Safe.

Precocious Paul Manafort, in his legally-mandated prison jumpsuit, pulled the old “wheelchair-in-a-bid-for-sentencing-leniency” bit, and I’m sorry to say, Mr. M, I spent all my sympathy on the children locked up in cages. You sir, can eat shit. Anybody else see Paulie in his wheelchair and think of For Your Eyes Only?

We keep hearing about Bodacious Bob Mueller circling Roger Stone, talkin’ to all his friends, rummaging through his underwear drawer looking for cigarettes and porn. Rog insists he’s done nothing wrong, and that he’d certainly never roll over on his dear and loyal friend, Mr. Trump! Me, I see that, and I grin, because I remember Manafort saying the same things once upon a time. And Gates.

Oh, didja see where some Russian woman got charged with fuckin’ around with the midterms? HO HUM. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a government that, I dunno, tried to protect the nation from foreign attacks? I think that’d be cool.

The cover-up of Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific murder (and DISMEMBERMENT) is going…shockingly badly, when you realize the collaborators include one of the wealthiest families in the world and the President of the United States.

“Oh, it was crazy. Everybody was Kung-fu fighting. Honestly the guy chugged a bottle of tequila and started cutting himself up with the bonesaw. Anyway, we dressed somebody up in his clothes and had him walk out for the cameras, as one typically does in such situations.” I’m not sure what’s most cringeworthy, that the Saudis would attempt such obvious bullshit, or that the President of the United States and his henchmen would work so hard to sell it.

Meanwhile, the President’s shift manager, Vladimir Putin, gave a little speech celebrating the decline of American hegemony, which he pulled off for the low low price of Ordering Pizzas and Mountain Dew for a Handful of Tech Nerds Sitting in Cubicles Trolling Idiots on Facebook. “The Cold War coulda ended years ago, if we’d only thought sooner to weaponize our foe’s most ubiquitous natural resource: morons,” said Vlad, before laughing nonstop for 11 hours.

As you certainly know by now, the GOP is a-tremblin’ at the Blue Wave that’s growing ever nearer and larger. They can’t stave it off by talking about their record, because they’ve spent a year and a half doing a bunch of things that everybody fucking hates.

(I’m not sure WHY. We told them we hated these things. We were…actually pretty damn vocal about it. But here we are.)

Backed into a corner and lacking other options, the entire institutional Republican Party seems to have shrugged, and said, “Well, dance with who brung ya, even if it was NAKED WHITE NATIONALISM that brung ya.” She’s a cheap date; all she wants is a little blood.

So, ummmm…to be honest, the rest of the news is basically just HATE. It’s not my favorite thing, to do a This Week in Hate round-up, but, well…these are the times in which we live. Lucky us.

Nancy Pelosi went down to Florida for an event, and she encountered some “protesters,” though they were not of the “let’s knit hats and make signs” variety, but more of the “far-right violent gang” ilk. Yes, it turns out the local Republican chapter decided to team up with the Proud Boys, who you may remember from their recent act of street violence in New York.

So what we have here, and let’s not mince words, is GOP officials literally partnering with terrorists. Immediately after their most publicized act of terrorism to date. Cool.

And allllllll the Republicans who’ve used every available moment of camera time to offer stern lectures on civility are stone silent on the Proud Boys, aren’t they? And when Tangerine Idi Amin praises a violent criminal for assaulting one journalist even as he orchestrates a cover-up of the murder of another, why, he isn’t inciting violence, he’s just playfully joking around, isn’t that right, Steve Scalise?  Spare me.

Boy, Steve King keeps testing the boundaries of decency, doesn’t he? Seems Steve-O took a little Austrian vacation and sat down with a far-right website for a little chat about white supremacy, NEAT. This demented old fucker’s gonna start slipping earmarks into spending bills, making sure his Iowa district is first in line for the new concentration camp construction. Some folks wonder why Republicans don’t censure or expel King. I’ll you why, they’re planning on making him the next Speaker of the House. Dance with who brung ya.

As if to demonstrate that they haven’t lost their flair for vileness, the Shart Administration is toying with altering some bureaucratic language here and there to formally dehumanize transgender Americans, and strip them of civil rights protections.

It’s this administration in a nutshell; telling th’Base, hey, we can’t keep our promises to bring back manufacturing jobs or improve your health care or repair your infrastructure…what we CAN do is hurt people. People who are different than you.

Nobody benefits from this shit. Nobody becomes richer, or safer, or healthier, or happier. It simply serves to send a little malicious thrill down the spines of the sort of people who enjoy inflicting suffering on others.

And of course, Government Cheese Goebbels himself has desperately lashed his immediate political future to the migrant caravan moving through Mexico. To hear him tell it, this congregation of desperate people seeking a better life is full of MS-13 and ISIS and ebola and those irritating guys who play guitar in sandwich shops, and it’s coming to YOUR TOWN.

It’s a national crisis! And he may need to deploy the military to the border! Fuck, you know he’s asked General Kelly if he can just bomb them.

On the one hand, it’s a pathetic gambit…on the other, one must admit this Walking Colon Tumor fear-mongered himself all the way to the White House.

Yeah, Donnie Two-Scoops is gettin’ nervous. He knows what a Democratic-controlled House means. And lacking any actual accomplishments, well, he’s just makin’ shit up. The Big Dumb Wall is almost built, and they’re rioting in California, and the arms deal with Saudi Arabia generates so fuckin’ many jobs, we’re gonna need every American to work part-time in a munitions factory to meet the demand! Oh, and Republicans are just about to deliver a big fat tax cut even though, y’know…that is not a thing that is happening, and Congress isn’t even in session.

Meanwhile, WaPo reports Circus Peanut Sydney Greenstreet’s rallies are more of a retreat than anything else. If it feels like Lil’ Man Shart is avoiding major metropolitan areas where he’s unpopular because he’s frightened of protesters, well…that’s because he is. And even though he acts like he’s selling out football stadiums, he’s really working in smaller venues than he used to. Look, if getting 6,000 people in Buttfuck, Ohio is the qualifier, then the Little River Band could be President.

So he’s touring Appalachia diners, stirring up…

…y’know what? Fuck hate. Fuck these hateful people and their bullshit, vapid, bigotry. I’m not leaving y’all like this, you deserve better. Let’s wrap up with some GOOD news, okay?

Because we’ve got people CAMPING OUT TO VOTE in this country right now. CAMPING OUT. Not for a new iPhone, not for concert tickets, but to exercise their right to VOTE IN THE GODDAMN MIDTERMS!

And do you see our candidates kicking ass and taking names in their debates? Andrew Gillum ran circles around Ron DeSantis, which actually might explain Ron’s frequently dazed expression. One of my very favorite Congressional candidates, Abigail Spanberger, was not having Dave Brat’s crap, and let him know in no uncertain terms. (Hey, you wanna donate to these good good people? Click right on their names, you’ll be magically transported to a fundraising page!  Check out all the candidates at Cap’s Action Guide for the Goddamn Midterms!)

And have you been following the live polling over at the Failing New York Times? There are some really interesting seats in play. If you’re looking for a last minute donation target, why not help out our great team in Virginia? With the GOP’s borderline-fascist Senate candidate dragging down the ticket, we might be able to elect not just Spanberger, but Elaine Luria, and Leslie Cockburn!

And do you remember Danny O’Connor from the the special election in the Ohio 12th? Well, without the undivided attention of the entire Republican donor class, his opponent, Troy Balderson, looks more vulnerable than ever! Help Danny out if you can!

Plus, check out this great article from Mother Jones on how Clarke Tucker has put a seat in deep-Red Arkansas in play! And hey, how about Laura Kelly, opposing KKKris KKKobach for the Kansas governorship, earning the endorsement of every living non-Brownback Kansas governor, Republican or Democrat?

And at least we can take a moment to appreciate the complete and utter debasement of Ted Cruz. Think about the minute-to-minute humiliation of walking around as Ted Cruz, especially today…**shudder**

Oh, and if you need a chaser to wash down all that schadenfreude, I suppose I could show you what The Mooch is up to these days.

Good lord.  And it’s only fuckin’ Monday.  Two weeks to the midterms, friends!  Make every minute count!